NAME

RT::Extension::CustomerGroups - Make RT operate on "customers" not individual accounts

SYNOPSIS

You don't generally use this module directly from your own code, it's an RT extension. See "CONFIGURATION"

DESCRIPTION

RT::Extension::CustomerGroups is designed to give RT the concept of a "customer" entity, a collection of one or more user accounts who should all share access to the same tickets and all be notified about the same events. It's designed to limit the amount of maintenance required when managing groups of contacts by ensuring that contacts that're newly added to a customer are automatically given access to the customer's history.

This is a workaround for RT's lack of a two-level account entity like a "customer" that has-many "contacts". We use RT users as contacts, and designate select groups as "customer" entities. If RT's lack of multiple email addresses per user is driving you insane, this module is designed to help.

When tickets are created or users are added to a ticket as Requestor/Cc/Admincc and the user in question is a member of one or more customer group(s) the user entry is replaced by the customer group(s) found. So if "bob@example.com" submits a ticket his Requestor entry will be replaced with an entry for the customer group "customer-ExampleDotCom" . If the user is a member of more than one customer group all will be added.

It is recommended that the customer contacts be given unprivileged accounts, and all privileges the customer should have be assigned to the group they're a member of. Since individual users will get replaced by groups using unprivileged users will avoid confusion caused when not all users in the group have the same rights. The extension will work fine with privileged users, you might just have to think about your granted rights a little more.

ROADMAP AND FUTURE WORK

A future goal for this extension is to add a subclass of RT::Group and fields that make RT aware of these customer groups as first class entities. For now, they're just ordinary groups that're recognised as customer groups by a naming pattern match or a custom field.

INSTALLATION

Install RT::Extension::CustomerGroups using CPAN or using the usual:

perl Makefile.PL
make
sudo make install

For the first installation only you can also:

make initdb

to add the scrip actions to the database. Alternately, you can add the actions to the database manually.

Do not run "make initdb" multiple times, you'll get multiple actions in the database. If you do this accidentally you can remove any scrips that use them, then delete the actions directly from the database.

process.

CONFIGURATION

# Add the plugin to your RT_SiteConfig.pm's plugin list. (Append to any existing
# @Plugins setting rather than adding a new one).
#
Set(@Plugins, qw(RT::Extension::CustomerGroups));

You can now apply the actions to scrips. The blank template may be used as the template is not used for anything.

RT's scrips are run in alphabetical order. You probably want to name your scrip something like 00customergroups so that it runs before the email notification scrip, otherwise the submitting user will get an email alert but other users in their customer group(s) won't.

AUTHOR

Craig Ringer <craig@2ndquadrant.com>

Copyright 2013 2nd Quadrant

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

ConvertTicketUsersToGroup

If the passed user is a customer, as determined by its membership in one or more customer- groups using CustomerGroupsForUser, add the customer groups to the ticket's Requestor list and remove the original user.

The 2nd argument must be a comma-separated list of ticket pseudo-group categories:

Cc
AdminCc
Requestors

CustomerGroupsForUser

Return an array of the customer groups (RT::Group) this user is a member of, or the empty array if the user is a member of no customer groups. An RT::User must be passed.

Only groups that the passed user has permission to see will be returned.

At this time, a group is determined to be a "customer" group if it is prefixed with "customer-".

cpanm RT::Extension::CustomerGroups

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install RT::Extension::CustomerGroups