Because queues are very important in OTRS, this section tries to explain
more detailed the meaning of queues.
On common mail systems all messages are saved into an inbox file. An inbox
is a big file where the messages are arranged on to another. New messages
are appended at the end of the inbox file. The mail program, which is used
to read and write mails, reads the inbox file and presents the content to
the user.
A queue in OTRS is some how comparable to an inbox file, but has some
more features. It also can store many messages, but the mails are saved in
another way. You don't need to know any detail of queues if you only want
to use OTRS, the only important thing to know is in which queue a ticket is
stored. The users of OTRS, better called agents, can open and edit tickets
in a queue and of course they can move tickets from one queue to another.
But why should they move tickets?
To explain it more practically, remember Max's company describe in the
section about a
example of a ticket system
. Max' has installed OTRS to get rid of his support chaos. He and his
agents are using the system to manage the support requests for the video
recorders. One queue that contains all request is enough for this
situation. But some times later Max also sales a DVD recorder. Now the
customer not only have questions about the video recorder but also for the
new product. More and more emails get into the one queue of Max's OTRS and
its hard to keep the overview. Some day Max decides to optimize the
structure of his support system and adds two new queues, so now three
queues are used by the system. Into the old queue (called "raw") all mails are
stored if they arrive at the ticket system. The two new queues are one for
the video recorder (called "video recorder) and the other one for the dvd recorder
requests (called "dvd recorder"). Max tells Sandra to watch the "raw" queue
and sort (dispatch) the mails either into "video recorder" or "dvd
recorder", depending if a customer asks for support for a video recorder
or dvd recorder. John only has access to the "video reorder" queue, Joe can
only answer tickets in the "dvd recorder" queue. Max is able to edit
tickets in all queues. Because OTRS supports access management for users,
groups and roles, it is easy to setup queues that only are accessible for
some specific accounts. Max could also use another way to get his requests
into the different queues, with filter rules or if tow different mail
addresses are used Sandra only has to dispatch emails into the two other
queues, that can't be dispatched automatically.
Sorting your incoming messages into different queues helps you to keep the
support system structured and tidy. Because your agents are arranged into
different groups with different access rights onto queues, the system can
be optimized even more. Queues can be used to define work flow processes or
they create the structure of a company. Max could implement for example
another queue called "sales". this queue could contain the sub queues
"requests", "offers", "orders", "billing", e.g. Such a queue structure
could help Max to optimize his order transactions. The better a system is
structured, the less time is needed for the different tasks. That results
in less working time that is needed for the different tasks and that saves
money. Queues can help to optimize the processes in your company.
