1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
|
=head1 Articles
Articles are a way of managing stock answers or frequently asked
questions. Articles are a collection of custom fields whose values can
be easily inserted into ticket replies or searched and browsed within
RT. They are organized into classes and topics.
=head2 UI
The user interface to Articles is available from the Articles menu. Admin
functionality can be found under Admin -> Articles. Once configured, articles
will become available for searching on the Reply/Comment page on tickets.
There are L</"Configuration Options"> to make Articles available on ticket
creation.
For the Articles menu to be visible to your Privileged users, you must grant
Privileged the ShowArticlesMenu right globally (Admin -> Global -> Group
Rights). You may grant the right as selectively as you wish if, for example,
you only want a certain group of your users to use articles.
=head2 Basics
You will need to make some decisions about how to organize your
articles. Articles will be organized into one Class and multiple
Topics. They will use Custom Fields to store their article data.
These Custom Fields can be configured on a Class by Class basis.
Classes can be made available globally or on a per-Queue basis.
=head2 Organization
=head3 Classes
Classes are equivalent to RT's queues. They can be created by going
to Admin -> Articles -> Classes -> New Class. Articles
are assigned to one Class. When you create Custom Fields for use with
Articles, they will be applied Globally or to a Class, like Custom
Fields are applied to a Queue in RT.
A common use for Articles is to store frequently
used replies for requestors, like troubleshooting steps or how to sign
up for a new account. When you insert Article text, you may or may not
want to include the Article name and summary, in addition to the content,
when inserting the Article in a reply. You can control this behavior on
the Class configuration page.
Classes need to be Applied, just like a Custom Field, by using the
Applies To link on the Modify Class page (Admin ->
Articles -> Classes, select the class to modify). You can apply
them globally or on a queue-by-queue basis.
=head3 Topics
You can also use Topics to organize your Articles. While editing a
Class, there is a Topics tab for Class-specific Topics. You can create
global Topics from the Global tab under Admin.
When editing Topics, type the name (and optionally description) of the
Topic, and then click the button at the appropriate location in the
Topic hierarchy. This should allow you to build a tree of Topics. This
tree of Topics should show up when creating or modifying articles in
the class. These can be arbitrarily nested.
Global Topics will be available for all Articles, regardless of their
Class. Articles can belong to both global and Class-specific Topics.
Article topics can be set from the Modify screen for the article --
simply select as many topics as you desire from the list at the bottom
of the screen.
=head2 Custom Fields
Articles don't have a single "body" section for each
article. Everything is a custom field (except for name, summary and
some other basic metadata). So to put information on an
Article, you need to create some custom fields to hold the Article
body and other data. When you create these new Custom Fields, set
the Applies To field to Articles.
Once you've created your Custom Fields, go into your Classes, click
on Custom Fields, and add the Custom Fields you want to each Class.
Alternatively, use the Applies To link from each Custom Field.
=head2 Creating Articles
You can create an Article from scratch by going to Tools -> Articles ->
New Article and then picking which Class to create the Article under.
You must have a Class to assign the new Article to.
The Summary, Description and Custom Fields will all be searchable when
including an Article and you can control what Custom Fields end up in
your Ticket from the Class configuration page.
=head3 Extracting an Article
You can extract the body of a ticket into an article. Within RT, you
should now see an "Extract to article" button in the upper right hand
corner of RT's UI when working with tickets. When you click that
button, RT will ask you which Class to create your new Article in.
Once you click on a Class name, the Ticket's transactions will be
displayed, along with a set of select boxes. For each transaction, you
can pick which Custom Field that transaction should be extracted to.
From there on in, it's just regular Article creation.
=head2 Including an Article
When replying to or commenting on tickets or creating tickets, there
is a UI widget that lets you search for and include Articles in
your reply. (They're editable, of course).
Articles can be included by searching for them, knowing the Id of the
article, using the Article Hotlist and using the Queue-specific
dropdown.
=head3 Disabling Escaped HTML
By default, when an article is inserted into the ticket message box,
as a security measure, HTML tags are escaped and only text is displayed.
For example, RT will display "Me You Greeting Hello world!" from the
following XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
<to>Me</to>
<from>You</from>
<heading>Greeting</heading>
<body>Hello world!</body>
</note>
In cases as above, where the content is harmless and displaying it on the
ticket might be necessary, there is an option to disable escaping these
tags per article class. This can be done by unchecking the "Escape HTML"
box on the Modify Class page. Please note this is potentially unsafe and
its use should be limited to trusted administrators.
=head3 Disabling Ticket Linking
When an article is included in a ticket's comment or reply, the article
is automatically added as a link to the ticket. This means that the article
will be listed under the Links portlet on ticket display page, and also on
the article display page. If you use an article many times, it can result
in a very long list of links on the article page.
To avoid this, you can disable automatic linking globally (via
L<RT_Config/LinkArticlesOnInclude>) or by class. To disable it on the class
level, uncheck the "Link article to ticket" option under "When inserting
articles in this class into emails" on class modify page. Note that
disabling this feature will only affect future comments/replies on tickets.
Existing links to articles will remain linked.
=head2 Queue-Specific List of Articles
You can use Topics to organize a set of Queue-specific Articles.
Simply create a global Topic called 'Queues' and then create Topics
under Queues named after each of your Queues. Within each Queue-named
Topic, create some Topics and then assign Articles to those
sub-topics. This creates a hierarchy like this:
Queues
\-> General
\-> Topic 1
\-> Topic 2
If you are replying to a Ticket in the General Queue you will be
offered a choice of Topic 1 and Topic 2 along with the searching.
After choosing Topic 1 or Topic 2, you will be given a list of
relevant articles to choose.
Alternately, you can now implement this by applying a single Class to
your Queue and using the L</"Article Hotlist"> feature described below.
=head2 Article Hotlist
The Modify Class page has a checkbox labelled "All Articles in this
class should be listed in a dropdown of the ticket reply page".
If you select this for a Class, a dropdown will be available on the
Ticket Create or Update page which allows users to quickly include
Articles in this Class.
The Class needs to be set up and Applied for the dropdown to appear
(see L</"Classes">).
=head2 SelfService Interface
If you grant the Unprivileged user group the right ShowArticle, they
will get a Search box at the top of their interface. This allows users
to look through your Articles for answers to questions before creating
a Ticket.
=head1 Configuration Options
=head2 ArticleOnTicketCreate
Set this to a true value to display the Article include interface on the
Ticket Create page in addition to the Reply/Comment page (Create.html
in addition to Update.html).
=head2 HideArticleSearchOnReplyCreate
On Ticket Reply (and Create if you set the above config var)
RT's Article system normally displays a search box and an include box
(for inputting an article id) and configurable dropdowns
of Articles. These can be configured using Global Topics or
on the Class page.
If you set this to a true value, RT will only display
dropdowns and hide the search boxes.
=cut
|
