What benefits can be gained from using RT instead of our shared mailbox solution?
- asniadach
- William Schneider
- Andrea Mocko
Tell me
When a small group of people need to respond to a single email address, they are advised to use a generic email address with a shared mailbox or listserv list. RT improves on this by:
Tracking request history.
Sorting related tickets into queues.
Allowing a ticket to be assigned to a given staff member.
Allowing priorities to be assigned and automatically escalated.
Sending copies of changes by email to the staff and to the original requestor.
Consistently using a departmental email address, so that personal staff email addresses are not involved.
Allowing some changes by email if convenient.
Using Shibboleth, so no additional passwords need to be remembered.
Allowing interaction via the Web, with any Web browser. No special client is involved. Further, the original requestor can check the status of his ticket and view appends on the Web.
Allowing administration -- new queues, ticket assignment, new users, etc. -- to be done directly by a departmental administrator.
Typical departmental usage:
A department might have 2-3 students assistants and a supervisor who answer inquires about admissions. RT would allow the supervisor to assign a given request to a specific student or let any student answer any unassigned request. The supervisor can add or remove students assistants as needed.
If the department also provides tech support to its faculty and staff, those requests could be tracked in a separate queue, either using the same email address as used for admission queries or a different one. A different set of staff would review the requests for tech support, and the student assistants answering admissions questions don't have to know about this queue.
Additional queues, groups of people, and email addresses can be added, perhaps for classroom support or for a specific classes. Tickets can be moved from one queue to another as needed.