OTRS 3.0 Ticket Templates

You all know the need of our agents to have Ticket-Template-Buttons in Phone and Email View.
This is of course not as good as it could be, because you need to modify standard *.dtl files. Therefore you actually need to change something that is not update save.

but …

NOW THERE IS OTRS 3.0 !!!

AgentNavigationBar

If you hit this new created navigation item you are redirected to the normal phone ticket view, but the page is magically prefilled with content. The content can be the default Queue for requests regarding software, the ticket type for incidents, a meaningful subject and body … maybe with a checklist … open your mind and create your own templates

This is the resulting screen – just as an example:

AgentTicketPhone

But how does this magic works???

Simple answer: by extending options in the OTRS 3.0 SysConfig

You need it more specific? Here we go:

|-> SysConfig

|-> Ticket

|-> Frontend::Agent::ModuleRegistration

|-> Frontend::Module###AgentTicketPhone

There you just need to add a new SysConfig hash where you can describe additional menu entries with URL params as you want.

Adding a new hasg is simply done by clicking on theplus sign on the bottom.

My configuration for the screens above:

AdminSysConfigEdit

Where the Action Param is:

Action=AgentTicketPhone;Subaction=StoreNew;ExpandCustomerName=2;Subject=Example+Subject;Dest=1%7C%7CPostmaster;NextStateID=4;TimeUnits=5;Body=%3Cstrong%3E%3Cspan+style%3D%22color%3A+rgb%28255%2C+0%2C+0%29%3B%22%3EMy+bonnie+is+over+the+ocean%3C%2Fspan%3E%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2C+%3Cspan+style%3D%22color%3A+rgb%28230%2C+230%2C+250%29%3B%22%3E%3Cspan+style%3D%22background-color%3A+rgb%280%2C+0%2C+255%29%3B%22%3Emy+bonnie+is+over+the+sea%3C%2Fspan%3E%3C%2Fspan%3E%2C+%3Cspan+style%3D%22color%3A+rgb%280%2C+128%2C+0%29%3B%22%3E%3Cspan+style%3D%22font-size%3A+16px%3B%22%3E%3Cspan+style%3D%22font-family%3A+Comic+Sans+MS%2Ccursive%3B%22%3E%3Cem%3E%3Cu%3Eoh+bring+back+my+bonnie+to+me%3C%2Fu%3E%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fspan%3E%3C%2Fspan%3E%3C%2Fspan%3E!%3Cbr+%2F%3E%0D%0A

Define the ticket’s options, all are optional as argument for
“Action=AgentTicketPhone;Subaction=StoreNew”

Remember to encode everything non-ASCII (even a SPACE is represented as ‘+’)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding

Subject      : Subject=Example+Subject
Target queue : Dest=1%7C%7CPostmaster  (means: 1||Postmaster)
Next state   : NextStateID=4           (check your configuration for valid state IDs)
Time units   : TimeUnits=5
Type         : TypeID=1                (check your configuration for valid type IDs)
Service      : ServiceID=5             (check your configuration for valid service IDs)
Priority     : PriorityID=3            (check your configuration for valid priority IDs)
...

Hint:

To find valid values for the above xxIDs, please have a look into the Admin interface or the source of a generated website.

And there is more power !!! Unlike other systems, you can now define permission groups for EACH template. This enables you to provide IT related ticket templates to your IT Department guys and HR related templates to your HR guys … again, open your mind … to OTRS 3.0!

Have phun with OTRS 3.0

9 thoughts on “OTRS 3.0 Ticket Templates”

Again, one more KIX4OTRS-function which made it into OTRS-mainstream. However,
we think that the way it’s configured could be improved…

I tried to adapt it to Frontend::Customer::ModuleRegistration::CustomerTicketMessage

Unfortunately, the link :
Action=CustomerTicketMessage&Subaction=StoreNew&Subject=New+project&Body=Project+name

raises the following error :

Error: Need TicketID! Comment: Traceback: ERROR: OTRS-CGI-10 Perl: 5.10.0 OS: linux Time: Thu Nov 11 19:59:26 2010

Message: Need TicketID!

Traceback (6339):
Module: Kernel::System::Ticket::Article::ArticleCreate (v1.259) Line: 118
Module: Kernel::Modules::CustomerTicketMessage::Run (v1.73) Line: 409
Module: Kernel::System::Web::InterfaceCustomer::Run (v1.55) Line: 956
Module: ModPerl::ROOT::ModPerl::Registry::opt_otrs_bin_cgi_2dbin_customer_2epl::handler (unknown version) Line: 48
Module: (eval) (v1.42) Line: 204
Module: ModPerl::RegistryCooker::run (v1.42) Line: 204
Module: ModPerl::RegistryCooker::default_handler (v1.42) Line: 170
Module: ModPerl::Registry::handler (v1.99) Line: 31

Looks like it ask for a TicketID but this should be a template …
Is there something wrong ?

Try this action params:

Action=CustomerTicketMessage;Subaction=StoreNew;Expand=3;Dest=1||Postmaster;Subject=Test;Body=Test;PriorityID=3

Cheers, Nils

Hi Martin,

could you please explain this a little more? Having the possibility of Ticket Templates is in OTRS since versions. So I don’t see any reference to KIX4OTRS here. Feel free to enhance the configuration

Hi Jens,

for sure, I like to explain this.
I can agree with you – Ticket Templates via URL is possible in any version (, I’ve ever used). To enable this in a more friendly way, we’ve extended AgentTicketPhone and added a special part in SysConfig. Please take a look at http://tinyurl.com/3xhgoov and http://tinyurl.com/36e6ssu to see how it is configured. You can find the new perl code starting with “Self->{DefaultSetName}” approximately in line 275.

Well, now you can easily create a new template and register it without the need of a non-ASCII encoding.

What do you think?

Greetings, Martin B.

Hi Martin,

I really like you idea.
Maybe you could be so kind and share your code and description as an enhancement entry in our bugzilla? This would be great!

Many thanks for your effort and your inventiveness!!

Cheers, Nils

One simple way to do the percent encoding (since you’ve got a machine with Perl installed) is to design the HTML for your email body in a text file, remove all of the carriage returns (in vi, just hold down shift+j) and then run the following:

perl -e ‘use URI::Escape;print uri_escape();print “\n”;’ < html.txt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8mZ9Ku_bA&feature=channel_video_title

A video to go along with this post (almost)

Hi Shawn,

thanks for your great video. Just keep in mind that this is working but not update save as the AgentTicketPhone file has to be modified. Adding just a few XML lines into a new file in Kernel/Config/Files/MyConfig.xml makes more sense I feel

Cheers, Nils

Martin Balzarek on November 8, 2010 at 10:22 said:

Again, one more KIX4OTRS-function which made it into OTRS-mainstream. However,
we think that the way it’s configured could be improved…
1010 on November 12, 2010 at 16:27 said:

I tried to adapt it to Frontend::Customer::ModuleRegistration::CustomerTicketMessage

Unfortunately, the link :
Action=CustomerTicketMessage&Subaction=StoreNew&Subject=New+project&Body=Project+name

raises the following error :

Error: Need TicketID! Comment: Traceback: ERROR: OTRS-CGI-10 Perl: 5.10.0 OS: linux Time: Thu Nov 11 19:59:26 2010

Message: Need TicketID!

Traceback (6339):
Module: Kernel::System::Ticket::Article::ArticleCreate (v1.259) Line: 118
Module: Kernel::Modules::CustomerTicketMessage::Run (v1.73) Line: 409
Module: Kernel::System::Web::InterfaceCustomer::Run (v1.55) Line: 956
Module: ModPerl::ROOT::ModPerl::Registry::opt_otrs_bin_cgi_2dbin_customer_2epl::handler (unknown version) Line: 48
Module: (eval) (v1.42) Line: 204
Module: ModPerl::RegistryCooker::run (v1.42) Line: 204
Module: ModPerl::RegistryCooker::default_handler (v1.42) Line: 170
Module: ModPerl::Registry::handler (v1.99) Line: 31

Looks like it ask for a TicketID but this should be a template …
Is there something wrong ?
Nils Leideck on November 12, 2010 at 21:37 said:

Try this action params:

Action=CustomerTicketMessage;Subaction=StoreNew;Expand=3;Dest=1||Postmaster;Subject=Test;Body=Test;PriorityID=3

Cheers, Nils
Jens on November 26, 2010 at 09:19 said:

Hi Martin,

could you please explain this a little more? Having the possibility of Ticket Templates is in OTRS since versions. So I don’t see any reference to KIX4OTRS here. Feel free to enhance the configuration
Martin Balzarek on December 3, 2010 at 11:22 said:

Hi Jens,

for sure, I like to explain this.
I can agree with you – Ticket Templates via URL is possible in any version (, I’ve ever used). To enable this in a more friendly way, we’ve extended AgentTicketPhone and added a special part in SysConfig. Please take a look at http://tinyurl.com/3xhgoov and http://tinyurl.com/36e6ssu to see how it is configured. You can find the new perl code starting with “Self->{DefaultSetName}” approximately in line 275.

Well, now you can easily create a new template and register it without the need of a non-ASCII encoding.

What do you think?

Greetings, Martin B.
Nils Leideck on December 3, 2010 at 16:55 said:

Hi Martin,

I really like you idea.
Maybe you could be so kind and share your code and description as an enhancement entry in our bugzilla? This would be great!

Many thanks for your effort and your inventiveness!!

Cheers, Nils
Mothra on March 8, 2011 at 15:08 said:

One simple way to do the percent encoding (since you’ve got a machine with Perl installed) is to design the HTML for your email body in a text file, remove all of the carriage returns (in vi, just hold down shift+j) and then run the following:

perl -e ‘use URI::Escape;print uri_escape();print “\n”;’ < html.txt
Shawn Beasley on July 21, 2011 at 09:05 said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8mZ9Ku_bA&feature=channel_video_title

A video to go along with this post (almost)
Nils Leideck on July 22, 2011 at 10:32 said:

Hi Shawn,

thanks for your great video. Just keep in mind that this is working but not update save as the AgentTicketPhone file has to be modified. Adding just a few XML lines into a new file in Kernel/Config/Files/MyConfig.xml makes more sense I feel

Cheers, Nils

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OTRS 3.0 Ticket Templates

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