Request Tracker User Guide

Chapter 6:

Common Tasks

Now that you know your way around Request Tracker’s web interface, there are probably many tasks you can figure out on your own. However, we wanted to make sure you had a step-by-step guide to the most important and common tasks such as using RT's search functionality and working with tickets.
Note: You will not find information about how to modify tickets, people or relationships in this chapter. These are already described in Chapter 5: Tickets Interface.

Searching and Reporting

Request Tracker has three ways to search for tickets ranging from simple to advanced features: Simple Searches, Quick Searches and Ticket Searches (Query Builder).

Simple and Quick searches can appear on the RT home page (if selected for display) and have already been explained in Chapter 4: Home Page.
The remainder of this section is devoted to more detailed and advanced ticket searches and reporting results using Query Builder.
To begin, click on Tickets in the top navigation bar. The Tickets menu item expands to reveal three options for building a search criteria or query. These options all refer a feature in RT called Query Builder.

• 
  New Search – displays a blank Query Builder screen
  
• 
  Edit Search – displays the same Query Builder screen, but populated with the latest search criteria entered
  
• 
  Advanced – displays the latest search criteria, but in an SQL format to allow for SQL editing.
  

The Query Builder screen display contains four areas used for building a custom query:

• 
  Add Criteria
  
• 
  Current Search
  
• 
  Saved Searches
  
• 
  Display Columns
  

These areas can be collapsed or expanded by clicking on the up/down ( ^ ) arrow next to the title bar.

If you previously clicked a queue name under Quick Search on the Home page, you will see search criteria already entered in the Query area.
Add Criteria

This area displays the field names and search criteria selections. Use the dropdown lists and text boxes under Add Criteria to construct your search. If a queue uses custom fields, first select that Queue from the dropdown list, then click Add in order to see the custom field(s) display. After clicking the Add button the search criteria will now appear in the Query area of the Query Builder screen.

Current Search

The Current Search area can be used to modify the selected search criteria. Highlight the line or lines you want to modify in the query area and select the left, right, up, or down buttons to move the select lines. Use the And/Or button to change the aggregate. Delete selected text by clicking the Delete button.

Display Columns

The Display Columns area of the Query Builder screen, allows you to add or delete columns that you want to show in your report. This area also allows you to select multiple fields for sort order and select how many rows to display.

To add a column to the Show Column list, select the column(s) from the Add Columns list (choose optional formatting features if desired) and click the button. You can select more than one column to move by holding down the shift key or Ctrl for (noncontiguous selections).
To delete a column from the Show Columns area you have to select a column and click the Delete button. This must be done for each column you want to remove, one at a time; the shift or Ctrl selection does not work here (dumb, we know. We have a better way below).
The easiest (if you have an understanding of SQL) way to remove more than one column from the Show Columns area is to click on the Advanced navigation item in the navigation bar. The lower half of the Advanced query window shows the displayed columns. Highlight the columns you want to delete and click the delete key on the keyboard. This editable list allows you to add, delete, or move columns. Click the Apply button when you are satisfied with your changes.

To initiate a search click the button at the bottom right of the screen or the “Bulk Update” option in the navigation bar just above your query.

Saved Searches


The Saved searches area allows you to save a query for your own use (like your home page) or enables you to share the query with other queue members (but only queues you are a member of). Under the Saved Searches area type the name of the query in the description field.

Tip: Keep the descriptions meaningful but brief. The Saved Searches window will lengthen to display the longest description name you have entered. This can make horizontal scrolling tedious.
The query will save to the Privacy area “My saved searches” by default. Only you will be able to see and retrieve saved queries from this area. They will also be available for Home Page display.




Sharing queries with other queue members: In the Saved Searches screen area, under privacy, RT displays the name of the collected “saved queries” for every queue that you are a member of. This is an area where you can save your search so other users of that queue can access the saved query. To do this, select the saved searches area for the queue from the dropdown list. Add the query description and click the Save button.
The query now appears under the area you selected.

.

Loading a saved query: Select the query name from the “Load saved search” dropdown list and click the Load button.
Advanced
The Advanced option on the navigation bar is a powerful tool that allows you to type in a search criteria using RT’s special-purpose query language called TicketSQL (slightly different than ORACLE SQL).
Type in the criteria you want and click the Apply button to have that search criteria applied to the Query area. To execute the query click the Show Results button in the navigation bar or the Add and Search button in the lower right corner..
To search for custom field values, prefix the name of the custom field with CF. to indicate to the Ticket SQL parser that you are searching a custom field.



Selecting sort options
RT allows the user to sort by more than one displayed field, in either Ascending (ASC) or Descending (DESC) order. The choice can be selected from the list of fields provided in the Order By drop down tabs in the right-hand part of the screen. Although some custom fields will be listed, sorting by custom field(s) does not work at present. This type of sorting is different than sorting the search results, which can only be done one field at a time (see Sorting Displayed Tickets below).




Some Search Criteria Samples
Date Range:


Custom field value searches. Prefix the custom field name with CF.



Sorting Displayed Tickets
Click on the title heading of a displayed report to sort in ascending or descending order (toggles).

Reporting Search Results
Technical Services supports the use of two buttons that exist in the lower right hand corner of the screen. One allows you to do a bulk update of the tickets (or subset of tickets) with a variety of information or change of information. The other one allows you to export your report results to an Excel Spreadsheet. The RSS and Work Offline options should be ignored.


Update multiple tickets: offers a “check box” selection of all the tickets that are displayed in the Show Results area.

Below the list of checked tickets are all the fields (in blocked categories) that can be modified on a Bulk Update (the tickets that are checked) basis






Spreadsheet: displays the tickets and selected fields in the Show Results area.

To bookmark a search so you can return to the results later, click Bookmarkable URL for this search and add the page to your Bookmarks, Favorites, or whatever applies for your browser.

Searching Ticket History
To do a full text search on the contents of the history field, use the Add Criteria box of Query Builder. Content is one of the options in the same dropdown list as Subject.

Unless you specify the Content Type, all of the history contents will be searched, including Word documents, etc. This is very powerful and can be quite useful, but can also take a long time if you do not narrow your search enough. For example, it is not a good idea to search all the history of all the queues.

If you do not want to include attachments in the search, add “ContentType LIKE ‘text/plain’“ to your criteria.

Common Content Types:

• 
  Text/plain
  
• 
  Application/msword
  
• 
  Application/rtf
  
• 
  Application/mspowerpoint
  
• 
  Application/msexcel
  

A complete list of content types (more than you will ever need) can be viewed at the following URL:

Your link URL address

Searching Tips
Searching in RT is fairly intuitive, but there are some features worth noting:

• 
  Searches, by default, are sticky. That is, if you return to the Search page during a session, it will display the most recent search.
  
  
  
• 
  Clicking queue links takes you to a search page that displays search results for new and open tickets in that queue. That search can then be further refined by re-sorting by column and/or ordr-by. By selecting a type of chart and selecting “GO” you get the results in a chart.
  
  
  
• 
  Searches are, by default, limited to 50 results per page.
  
  
  
• 
  Searches are iterative -- you build them up. If you search for tickets owned by Jane, then search for open tickets, you'll get open tickets owned by Jane.
  
  
  
• 
  Iterative searches do work with incompatible conditions, that is, x OR y. If you search for tickets owned by Jane, and then for tickets owned by Alice, you'll get tickets owned by Jane OR Alice.
  
  
  
• 
  When RT displays multiple search results, it will also display Previous, Next, First, and Last links for navigating through the matching tickets.