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OTRS 2.4 - Admin Manual

Copyright © 2003-2009 OTRS AG

René Bakker, Hauke Böttcher, Stefan Bedorf, Shawn Beasley, Jens Bothe, Udo Bretz, Martin Edenhofer, Manuel Hecht, Christopher Kuhn, André Mindermann, Henning Oschwald, Thomas Raith, Stefan Rother, Burchard Steinbild

This work is copyrighted by OTRS AG.

You may copy it in whole or in part as long as the copies retain this copyright statement.

UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are: SUSE and YaST of SUSE Linux GmbH, Red Hat and Fedora are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. Mandrake is a registered trademark of MandrakeSoft, SA. Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. MySQL and the MySQL Logo are registered trademarks of MySQL AB.

All trade names are used without the guarantee for their free use and are possibly registered trade marks.

OTRS AG essentially follows the notations of the manufacturers. Other products mentioned in this manual may be trademarks of the respective manufacturer.

Table of Contents

1. Basics about trouble ticket systems

1.1. What is a trouble ticket system and why do you need it?
1.2. What is a trouble ticket?

2. OTRS - Open Ticket Request System

2.1. Basics

2.2. Features

2.2.1. New features of OTRS 2.4
2.2.2. New features of OTRS 2.3
2.2.3. New features of OTRS 2.2
2.2.4. New features of OTRS 2.1

2.3. Hard and software requirements

2.4. Community

2.5. Commercial Support for OTRS

3. Installation / Upgrade of the OTRS framework

3.1. The simple way - Installation of pre-built packages

3.1.1. Installing the rpm on a SUSE Linux server
3.1.2. Installing OTRS on a Debian system
3.1.3. Installing OTRS on Microsoft Windows systems

3.2. Installation from source (Linux, Unix)

3.2.1. Preparing the installation from source
3.2.2. Installation of Perl modules
3.2.3. Configuring the apache web server
3.2.4. Configuring the database
3.2.5. Setting up the cron jobs for OTRS

3.3. Upgrading the OTRS Frameworks

3.3.1. Upgrading .tar.gz
3.3.2. Upgrading RPM

4. First steps in OTRS

4.1. Agent web interface
4.2. Customer web interface
4.3. Public web interface
4.4. First login
4.5. An overview to the web interface
4.6. What is a queue?
4.7. User preferences

5. The admin area of OTRS

5.1. Basics

5.2. Users, groups and roles

5.2.1. Users
5.2.2. Groups
5.2.3. Roles

5.3. Customer users and customer groups

5.3.1. Customer users
5.3.2. Customer groups

5.4. Queues

5.5. Salutations, signatures, attachments and responses

5.5.1. Salutations
5.5.2. Signatures
5.5.3. Attachments

5.6. Auto answers

5.7. Email addresses

5.8. Notifications

5.9. SMIME

5.10. PGP

5.11. States

5.12. SysConfig

5.13. Using mail accounts

5.14. Filtering incoming messages

5.15. Executing automated jobs with the GenericAgent

5.16. Admin email

5.17. Session management

5.18. System Log

5.19. SQL queries via the SQL box

5.20. Package manager

6. Configuring the system

6.1. The config files of OTRS
6.2. Configuring the system through the web interface

7. Sending/Receiving emails

7.1. Sending emails

7.1.1. Via Sendmail (default)
7.1.2. Via SMTP server or smarthost

7.2. Receiving emails

7.2.1. Mail accounts configured via the OTRS GUI
7.2.2. Via command line program and e.g. procmail (PostMaster.pl)
7.2.3. Fetching emails via POP3 or IMAP and fetchmail for PostMaster.pl
7.2.4. Filtering/dispatching by OTRS/PostMaster modules (for more complex dispatching)

8. Time related functions

8.1. Setting up business hours, holidays and time zones

8.1.1. Business Hours
8.1.2. Fixed date holidays
8.1.3. TimeVacationDaysOneTime

8.2. Automated Unlocking

9. Ticket responsibility and ticket watching

9.1. Ticket responsibility
9.2. Ticket watching

10. Customize the PDF output

11. Using external backends

11.1. Customer data

11.2. Customer user backend

11.2.1. Database (Default)
11.2.2. LDAP
11.2.3. Use more than one customer backend with OTRS

11.3. Backends to authenticate agents and customer users

11.3.1. Authentication backends for agents
11.3.2. Authentication backends for customer users

11.4. Customize the customer self registration

11.4.1. Customizing the web interface
11.4.2. Customer mapping
11.4.3. Customize the customer_user table in the OTRS DB

12.1. Predefined states

12.1.1. New
12.1.2. Open
12.1.3. Pending reminder
12.1.4. Pending auto close-
12.1.5. Pending auto close+
12.1.6. Merged
12.1.7. Closed Successful
12.1.8. Closed Unsuccessful

12.2. Customizing states

13. Modifying ticket priorities

14. Creating your own themes

15. Localization of the OTRS frontend

16. PGP

18. Access Control Lists (ACLs)

19. Stats module

19.1. Handling of the module by the agent

19.1.1. Overview
19.1.2. Generate and view stats
19.1.3. Edit - New
19.1.4. Import

19.2. Administration of the stat module by the OTRS administrator

19.2.1. Permission settings, groups and queues
19.2.2. SysConfig

19.3. Administration of the stats module by the system administrator

19.3.1. Data base table
19.3.2. List of all files
19.3.3. Caching
19.3.4. mkStats.pl
19.3.5. Automated stat generation - Cron
19.3.6. Static stats
19.3.7. Using old static stats
19.3.8. Default stats

20. Additional applications

20.1. Calendar
20.2. Content manager
20.3. File manager
20.4. Web mailer
20.5. FAQ
20.6. System status

21. Performance Tuning

21.1. OTRS

21.1.1. TicketIndexModule
21.1.2. TicketStorageModule

21.2. Database

21.2.1. MySQL
21.2.2. PostgreSQL

21.3. Webserver

21.3.1. Pre-establish database connections
21.3.2. Preloaded modules - startup.pl
21.3.3. Reload Perl modules when updated on disk
21.3.4. Choosing the Right Strategy
21.3.5. mod_gzip/mod_deflate

22. Backing up the system

22.1. Backup
22.2. Restore

A. Additional Resources

A.1. Homepage OTRS.org
A.2. Mailing lists
A.3. Bug tracking
A.4. Commercial Support

B. Configuration Options Reference

B.1. Framework

B.1.1. Core
B.1.2. Core::LinkObject
B.1.3. Core::Log
B.1.4. Core::MIME-Viewer
B.1.5. Core::MirrorDB
B.1.6. Core::PDF
B.1.7. Core::Package
B.1.8. Core::PerformanceLog
B.1.9. Core::SOAP
B.1.10. Core::Sendmail
B.1.11. Core::Session
B.1.12. Core::SpellChecker
B.1.13. Core::Stats
B.1.14. Core::Stats::Graph
B.1.15. Core::Time
B.1.16. Core::Time::Calendar1
B.1.17. Core::Time::Calendar2
B.1.18. Core::Time::Calendar3
B.1.19. Core::Time::Calendar4
B.1.20. Core::Time::Calendar5
B.1.21. Core::Time::Calendar6
B.1.22. Core::Time::Calendar7
B.1.23. Core::Time::Calendar8
B.1.24. Core::Time::Calendar9
B.1.25. Core::Web
B.1.26. Core::WebUserAgent
B.1.27. Crypt::PGP
B.1.28. Crypt::SMIME
B.1.29. Frontend::Admin::ModuleRegistration
B.1.30. Frontend::Agent
B.1.31. Frontend::Agent::Dashboard
B.1.32. Frontend::Agent::ModuleMetaHead
B.1.33. Frontend::Agent::ModuleNotify
B.1.34. Frontend::Agent::ModuleRegistration
B.1.35. Frontend::Agent::NavBarModule
B.1.36. Frontend::Agent::Preferences
B.1.37. Frontend::Agent::Stats
B.1.38. Frontend::Customer
B.1.39. Frontend::Customer::Auth
B.1.40. Frontend::Customer::ModuleMetaHead
B.1.41. Frontend::Customer::ModuleNotify
B.1.42. Frontend::Customer::ModuleRegistration
B.1.43. Frontend::Customer::Preferences
B.1.44. Frontend::Public
B.1.45. Frontend::Public::ModuleRegistration

B.2. Ticket

B.2.1. Core::ArticleFreeText
B.2.2. Core::FulltextSearch
B.2.3. Core::PostMaster
B.2.4. Core::Ticket
B.2.5. Core::TicketACL
B.2.6. Core::TicketBulkAction
B.2.7. Core::TicketFreeText
B.2.8. Core::TicketFreeTextDefault
B.2.9. Core::TicketFreeTime
B.2.10. Core::TicketWatcher
B.2.11. Frontend::Admin::ModuleRegistration
B.2.12. Frontend::Agent
B.2.13. Frontend::Agent::CustomerSearch
B.2.14. Frontend::Agent::Dashboard
B.2.15. Frontend::Agent::ModuleNotify
B.2.16. Frontend::Agent::ModuleRegistration
B.2.17. Frontend::Agent::NavBarModule
B.2.18. Frontend::Agent::Preferences
B.2.19. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ArticleAttachmentModule
B.2.20. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ArticleComposeModule
B.2.21. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ArticleViewModule
B.2.22. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ArticleViewModulePre
B.2.23. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::MenuModule
B.2.24. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::MenuModulePre
B.2.25. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewBounce
B.2.26. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewBulk
B.2.27. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewClose
B.2.28. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewCompose
B.2.29. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewCustomer
B.2.30. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewEmailNew
B.2.31. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewEscalation
B.2.32. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewForward
B.2.33. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewFreeText
B.2.34. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewHistory
B.2.35. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewMailbox
B.2.36. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewMerge
B.2.37. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewMove
B.2.38. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewNote
B.2.39. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewOwner
B.2.40. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewPending
B.2.41. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewPhoneNew
B.2.42. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewPhoneOutbound
B.2.43. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewPriority
B.2.44. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewQueue
B.2.45. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewResponsible
B.2.46. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewSearch
B.2.47. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewStatus
B.2.48. Frontend::Agent::Ticket::ViewZoom
B.2.49. Frontend::Agent::TicketOverview
B.2.50. Frontend::Customer
B.2.51. Frontend::Customer::ModuleRegistration
B.2.52. Frontend::Customer::Preferences
B.2.53. Frontend::Customer::Ticket::ViewNew
B.2.54. Frontend::Customer::Ticket::ViewSearch
B.2.55. Frontend::Customer::Ticket::ViewZoom
B.2.56. Frontend::Queue::Preferences
B.2.57. Frontend::SLA::Preferences
B.2.58. Frontend::Service::Preferences

D. GNU Free Documentation License

0. PREAMBLE
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
2. VERBATIM COPYING
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
4. MODIFICATIONS
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8. TRANSLATION
9. TERMINATION
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents

List of Tables
3-1. Needed Perl modules for OTRS
3-2. Description of the several cron job scripts
5-1. Default groups after OTRS has been installed
5-2. Rights in the user groups of OTRS
5-3. Events for auto answers
5-4. Function of the different X-OTRS-headers
A-1. Mailinglists

List of Examples
5-1. Sort spam mails into a specific queue
7-1. .fetchmailrc
7-2. Example jobs for the filter module Kernel::System::PostMaster::Filter::Match
7-3. Example job for the filter module Kernel::System::PostMaster::Filter::CMD
11-1. Configuring a DB customer backend
11-2. Using company tickets with a DB backend
11-3. Configuring a LDAP customer backend
11-4. Using Company tickets with a LDAP backend
11-5. Using more than one customer backend with OTRS
11-6. Authenticate agents against a DB backend
11-7. Authenticate agents against a LDAP backend
11-8. Authenticate agents using HTTPBasic
11-9. Authenticate agents against a radius backend
11-10. Customer user authentication against a DB backend
11-11. Customer user authentication against a LDAP backend
11-12. Customer user authentication with HTTPBasic
11-13. Customer user authentication against a radius backend
18-1. ACL which only allows to move tickets with ticket priority 5 into a queue
18-2. ACL, which disables the closing of tickets in the raw queue and hides the close button
18-3. ACL, which removes the status for all agents, and only provides it for a group
19-1. Definition of a value series - one element
19-2. Definition of a value series - two elements

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