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<chapter id="first-steps-in-otrs">
<title>First steps in OTRS</title>

<abstract>
<para>
This chapter 's goal is to give a quick overview about how OTRS is working and how
the web interface is structured. The differences between agents, customers
and administrators are explained , and the first login as OTRS admin will be
accomplished to take a closer look at the user preferences which are
available for every account.
</para>
</abstract>

<sect1 id="agent-interface">
<title>Agent web interface</title>

<para>
All agents use the agent web interface to work with OTRS. Agents answer the
customer requests, create new tickets for customers or other agents, write
tickets about telephone calls with customers, write FAQ entries or edit
customer data, e.g.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>index.pl - Agent login screen</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="index.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/login.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
Lets say that your OTRS host is reachable via the URL

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com</citetitle>
</ulink>

then the agents and also the OTRS administrator can reach the login screen by
using the address

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/otrs/index.pl">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com/otrs/index.pl</citetitle>
</ulink>

in a web browser.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="customer-interface">
<title>Customer web interface</title>

<para>
Customers have a special web interface in OTRS. Through this web interface
customers can create new accounts, get an overview on own tickets, create
and edit tickets, change the account settings, e.g.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>customer.pl - Customer login screen</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="customer.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/customer-login.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
Lets say the host with the OTRS installation is reachable via the domain

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com</citetitle>
</ulink>

then the login screen for customers can be reached by the URL

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/otrs/customer.pl">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com/otrs/customer.pl</citetitle>
</ulink>

with a web browser.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="public-interface">
<title>Public web interface</title>

<para>
In addition to the web interfaces for agents and customers OTRS has a
public web interface. It provides public access to the FAQ system, and
lets visitors search through the FAQ entries without any authorization.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>public.pl - Public web interface</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="public.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/public-interface.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
The public web interface can be reached via the URL

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/otrs/faq.pl">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com/otrs/faq.pl</citetitle>
</ulink>

. Also the address

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/otrs/public.pl">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com/otrs/public.pl</citetitle>
</ulink>

makes it possible to access the FAQ system.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="first-login">
<title>First login</title>

<para>
Like described in the section on

<link linkend="agent-interface">
the agent web interface
</link>

the login screen for agents and the OTRS administrator can be reached through
the address

<ulink url="http://www.example.com/otrs/index.pl">
<citetitle>http://www.example.com/otrs/index.pl</citetitle>.
</ulink>

.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>index.pl - Login screen for the OTRS administrator</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="index.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/login.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
The screen lets you enter a user name and a password. Because no users are
created after a fresh installation of the system, you have to login as OTRS
administrator first. To login as OTRS admin use "root@localhost" for user name
and "root" for password.
</para>

<warning>
<para>
This account data are default on every new installed OTRS system. For
that reason you should change the password for the OTRS administrator as
fast as possible! This can be done via the

<link linkend="user-preferences">
preferences
</link>

for the OTRS administrator account.
</para>
</warning>

<para>
If you don't want to login as OTRS administrator just enter the user name and
password for your normal agent account. With the list box below the input
fields for the user name and password you can select the language that you
want to use in the web interface.
</para>

<para>
If you have forgotten your password, you can get a new password through the
system. Just enter the mail address that is registered for you OTRS account
into the input field at the lower part of the login screen and submit the
input.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="gui-overview">
<title>An overview to the web interface</title>

<para>
After you have successfully logged into the system the web interface is loaded.
Per default you are in the QueueView after the login.
The QueueView provides you a quick
overview about tickets in the different queues, notifies about new
messages, tells you how many locked tickets you have, e.g.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Screen after first successfull login</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="First screen - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/first-screen.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
To improve the clarity the web interface is separated into different areas.
The black bar on top of the windows shows some general information like the
current time and date, your name and your mail address. Also on the left
site a link is displayed that can be used to reload the page.
</para>

<para>
The white bar below is the navigation bar. It shows buttons that enables you to
navigate to different areas or modules of the system and lets you execute
some global actions. The navbar is divided into three parts. In the left
area the logout button, the button to activate the QueueView, a button to
load the customer back-end and a button to load the full-text search are
displayed. The "Phone-Ticket" button and "Email-Ticket" button lets you
create a new phone or email ticket. The stats button is leading  to a screen
where some system stats can be generated. With the preference button you
can reach the screen to change your own account settings. "Bulk-Action"
opens a screen to execute some actions on marked tickets, e.g. to close or
move more than one ticket.
</para>

<para>
The middle part of the navbar shows the buttons for the navigation to the
other modules of the system. After a standard installation you only see the
"Admin" button, if you are logged in as OTRS administrator. If some additional
application are installed, e.g. the file manager or the web mailer, buttons
to reach this applications are also displayed.
</para>

<para>
At the right site of the navbar you can get an overview on how many tickets
you have locked and if new messages for you have been arrived.
</para>

<para>
The grey bar below the navbar shows different system messages. If you are
logged in as OTRS administrator you get a message, that you should not work
as administrator. If the calendar module is installed, the next events are
displayed in this section.
</para>

<para>
The black bar below shows the queue, which is currently selected or tells
you, that "My Queues" is selected. "My Queues" are the queues, that you
want to observe more attentive. You can select the queues for "My Queues"
in your

<link linkend="user-preferences">
account preferences
</link>

.
</para>

<para>
Below the area with the currently selected queue a grey bar is displayed
that contains informations about the tickets in the system. The next bar
shows all queues and their number of open tickets. On a fresh installed
system you can see, that the "raw" queue contains one new ticket and "My
Queues" is empty.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Content of the "raw" queue after first sucessfull login</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="raw queue - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/raw-queue.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
If you select the "raw" queue, the interface will be reloaded and the
content of the queue is displayed. Now the lower part of the screen
contains additional information about the new ticket in the "raw" queue. A
black bar is filled with the ID of the ticket and its age. At the left site
of this bar the checkbox is available that lets you mark the ticket for
the bulk action. The next grey line contains the actions that can be done
with the ticket (e.g. Lock, Zoom, History). On the right site of this line
the date and time when the ticket was created is displayed.
</para>

<para>
Below the interface is divided into two parts. On the left site a preview
of the ticket is displayed in white color. The sender of the ticket, the
recipient address, the subject and the first lines are shown. On the right
site some additional information for the ticket are displayed in grey color,
e.g. the priority and the status. Some buttons allow to answer the ticket,
make a telephone note or move the ticket into another queue.
</para>

<para>
On the bottom of the screen the site footer is displayed in black color. It
also contains some buttons to activate the QueueView, jump to the beginning
of the screen, e.g.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="what-is-a-queue">
<title>What is a queue?</title>

<para>
Because queues are very important in OTRS, this section tries to explain
more detailed the meaning of queues.
</para>

<para>
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.
</para>

<para>
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?
</para>

<para>
To explain it more practically, remember Max's company describe in the
section about a

<link linkend="basic-tts-example">
example of a ticket system
</link>

. 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.
</para>

<para>
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.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="user-preferences">
<title>User preferences</title>

<para>
Many settings of a user account in OTRS can be configured to their own needs
via the user preferences. Customers, agents and the OTRS administrator have
the possibility to adjust their own account preferences. The preferences page
can be reached via the "Preferences" link in the customer or agent
interface.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Account preferences screen for customers</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="customer.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/customer-preferences.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
A customer can select the web interface language, the maximal count of shown
tickets and the refresh period for the interface. Also it is possible
to set a new password and activate/deactivate the display of closed tickets.
</para>

<para>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Account preference screen for agents</screeninfo>
<graphic srccredit="index.pl - screenshot" scale="40" fileref="screenshots/agent-preferences.png"></graphic>
</screenshot>
</para>

<para>
An agent can adjust the interface language, the theme, the default
dictionary and the view for the queues. Also the refresh period for the
interface, the maximal count of shown tickets per page and the screen that
should be displayed after a new ticket is created can be set. It is
possible to change the password and select the events when the system
shall send a notification to the email address, that is registered for your
account.
</para>

<para>
The queues, that you want to monitor in your "My Queues" settings, can also
be selected in the user preferences. You should only select such queues that
are important for you.
</para>
</sect1>

</chapter>