Look into RT alternatives/supplements

[isteves]

An alternative to RT would need to meet the following requirements:

• be able to initiate submissions with an email to support
• be able to communicate with PI's via email (act as an email gateway)

So far, we've discussed:

• GitHub
  • using GitHub issues to track complex submissions
  • looking into a GitHub plugin that can support (email) conversations with non-GitHub-users (currently, GitHub can do some of the above tasks, but requires that all users have GitHub accounts)
• RedMine
• ZenDesk ($$$)

[isteves]

I found some possibly useful RT extensions:

• Memo - Adds a memo widget to tickets. It is displayed on the top of the history in the display page of the ticket, therefore gathering all information at the same place. It can be edited directly on this same display page, with all information about the ticket at hand. (This improves on the built-in comments feature)
• Tags - I think this would allow us to tag tickets as "easy," "medium," "hard," in addition to having statuses (open/stalled/new/etc)
• MenuBarUserTickets - lists tickets belonging to a specific user. Appears to make it easier to filter by user/owner

@amoeba did you configure RT originally? or do you know how these extensions work?

[amoeba]

Hey @isteves: No, but I was around when we chose it. I'm curious if you're thinking of alternatives because RT isn't doing something you need it to do or another reason?

Those, and other, RT extensions should be easy to set up. We can also write a totally custom dashboard if you just need alternate displays. The real feature we make use of RT for is the automated email management.

Re: ticket statuses: RT is already set up to support totally custom ticket statuses but we've stuck with the defaults. Though we'd be happy to change them!

[isteves]

@amoeba I think RT as it is now is annoying for us on several fronts:

• the search feature is terrible
• complicated tickets are difficult to catch up on
• it's unclear which tickets are good to take (for interns, etc.)
• it's ugly (doesn't really affect our work though)

Good to hear that it's easy!!!

I think @jagoldstein likes the statuses as they are now, but being able add an extra "intern" or "fellow" tag (or "easy," "medium," "hard") to a new ticket might help automate the process of interns/fellows starting on tickets.

@jagoldstein probably has a load of other opinions though! maybe also @maier-m and @dmullen17 ?

[isteves]

Btw, @amoeba context: this issue started as a summary of what we discussed with Matt when we brought up our RT complaints with him a while back

[amoeba]

complicated tickets are difficult to catch up on

I'm curious to hear more about this. I think I might know what you mean from personal experience. RT doesn't keep a tidy log, even though it could, so a lot of the content in each comment/reply is hidden around quoted email text and other garbage.

Btw, @amoeba context

Ah thanks!

[isteves]

Re: complicated tickets Yeah, I think a lot of the frustration is all the junk that's included in the thread (new submission, merge, outgoing email and other notices). It's particularly confusing when a ticket has been partially completed - as it is now, it's not always obvious what has been done/still needs to be done since the comments are interspersed among all the other stuff. (but memo would probably solve this)

If there's a way to separate emails out from everything else, that would be another great improvement!

[jagoldstein]

I do find the chronology of events helpful. For example, I often want to know who merged when and/or who owned a ticket at a certain point in time.

But in addition to retaining that chronology, it would be helpful to be able to list key points and TO DOs at the top of a ticket for quick and easy reference. I like how GH labels seem to jump out with their color-coding, a feature I doubt RT supports

Per Matt's recommendation, I am going to contact GH to see if it's possible for users to interact with us here even if they do not have a GH account.

[amoeba]

a feature I doubt RT supports

I don't think RT has this type of technical limitation, so the limiting factor in adding a feature like this would be the time to implement it. I haven't looked into RT plugins but, considering there are so many, RT seems pretty extensible. I think RT's built in email gateway feature is valuable enough for us to consider customizing RT for our needs to be worthwhile.

For the TODOs (RT::Memo), it sounds like the group could definitely look into that, and other plugins.

[jagoldstein]

If RT can meet our increasingly picky needs/desires, I'm all for sticking with it and adding plugins to customize. That certainly sounds easier that migrating to a whole new ticketing system. We can investigate deeper, maybe even contact Best Practical Solutions LLC.

Are we currently paying for this service or is RT free to use?

[amoeba]

Free AFAIK

[mbjones]

As I've mentioned before, if we can find an alternative system with the key feature of acting as an email gateway then I don't think it would be that hard to switch. I think the new system has to 1) accept new requests via email without the user creating a new account, and 2) track the back and forth between the support team and user via email alone. There are a bunch of tools in this space, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are others that might do what we want. Certainly worth a little poking around. I spent an hour a month or so ago looking at FreshDesk, which seemed to have many of the features, albeit in the form of a cloud service not a hosted solution. They seem to support email gateways. If you want to take a peek: https://arcticdatacenter.freshdesk.com I just sent Jesse an account and he can make more.

[amoeba]

Cool, nice find with FreshDesk. Looks pretty good by comparison to RT. They have a pre-canned Slack integration which looks good enough for our use case.

[jagoldstein]

I am logged into FreshDesk, thanks Matt.

This does look pretty sleek! I will poke around more in here.

[jagoldstein]

Reply sent to me from Shawna Jean at GitHub:

All actions on GitHub are associated a GitHub user, so in order for someone to email a reply to an issue or be a member of an organization or private repo they would need to have a GitHub account. This applies to GitHub Enterprise as well.

[amoeba]

Thanks for asking @jagoldstein. If you want to tinker with FreshDesk and Slack integration this week let me know and we can turn it on and test it a bit.

[isteves]

Working on this by developing out the RT package: https://github.com/nceas/rt