Ticket Forms

For service organizations that use the OTRS helpdesk software in different departments or that have to respond to many different types of customer requests, this feature is a definite must-have. With it you can display different ticket masks and forms in the agent and external interfaces, depending on which dynamic fields are relevant to the customer request. Moreover, the ticket creation process is faster as headlines and message body fields are pre-filled with the necessary information. You can define required fields for forms as well as display pre-filled fields, such as ticket types and services, in the external interface based on the customer group settings. You can also pre-fill ticket masks by adding attachments, using Rich Text format, or using the OTRS smart tags <OTRS_CONFIG_*> and <OTRS_CURRENT_*> in the template body.

With this feature the following screens can be configured:

• Agent interface

  • New phone ticket

  • New email ticket

• External interface

  • New ticket

In addition, the Hide/Show Dynamic Fields feature enables you to define which dynamic fields you want to display in your ticket forms and which ones you want to hide. This gives you more freedom to configure all ticket screens to your specific needs.

The Dynamic Ticket Templates feature uses the extension to the ACLs mechanism to create ticket templates based on the selected ticket type and service. These templates include a predefined ticket body, title, attachments and full dynamic fields visibility configuration.

For this example we will use the same fields as in the example of Hide/Show Dynamic Fields, but is necessary to comment or remove the ACLs.

To show the full functionalities of the dynamic ticket templates we can simply remove all dynamic fields from the New Phone Ticket screen by resetting the system configuration setting Forms###AgentFrontend::TicketCreate::Phone::CreateProperties to the default value, or disable the specific dynamic fields in the YAML configuration of this form:

- Label: Dynamic Fields
  Collapsible: 1
  Fields:
  - Name: DynamicField_Brand
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_VWModel
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_VWProductionFacility
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_PeugeotModel
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_PeugeotProductionFacility
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_Fuel
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_Accessories
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_Remarks
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_RegistrationDate
    Inactive: 1
  - Name: DynamicField_InvoiceDate
    Inactive: 1

To define a dynamic ticket template it is necessary to specify a ticket type and a service. If these features are not activated by default, please follow the next steps before start using this feature.

To activate ticket type and service features:

1. Go to the System Configuration screen.

2. Search for the setting Ticket::Service and enable it.

3. Search for the setting Ticket::Type and enable it.

To activate ticket type and service features for the external interface:

1. Go to the System Configuration screen.

2. Search for the setting ExternalFrontend::TicketCreate###Service and enable it.

3. Search for the setting ExternalFrontend::TicketCreate###TicketType and enable it.

Create the following services:

• Peugeot Service

• VW Service

All services should be available for the customer user who will use this feature, or marked as default services.

The goals of this example are the follows:

• If the selected service is VW Service and the selected dynamic ticket template is VW Template 1, the ticket form should look like:

  Subject	VW Service Request 1
  Body	Oil Change Oil Filter Change Air Filter Change Fluids Check
  Dynamic Fields	VWModel: visible and required VWProductionFacility: visible

• If the selected service is VW Service and the selected dynamic ticket template is VW Template 2, the ticket form should look like:

  Subject	VW Service Request 2
  Body	The selected accessory reports the following issues:
  Dynamic Fields	VWModel: visible Accessories: visible and required Remarks: visible RegistationDate: visible InvoiceDate: visible

• If the selected service is Peugeot Service, the ticket form should look like:

  Subject	Peugeot Service Request
  Body	The car computer reports the following issues:
  Dynamic Fields	PeugeotModel: visible PeugeotProductionFacility: visible Fuel: visible

To create a dynamic ticket template:

1. Open the Dynamic Ticket Templates module of the Ticket Settings group in the administrator interface.

2. Click on the Add template button in the left sidebar.

3. Fill in the required fields.

4. Click on the Save button.

If you have added other dynamic fields by your own, the template form will show more fields than the ones explained in this examples. There is nothing to worry about, just leave all other dynamic fields as Hide while you create the new templates.

There are special dynamic fields from other packages that are not displayed in the template form. These special fields have a determined behavior and they should be always hidden, always shown or their visibility depends on other configurations, so they can not be part of the template definition. Also any dynamic field marked as Internal will not be displayed in the template form.

Create the VW Template 1 dynamic ticket template with the following data:

Create the VW Template 2 dynamic ticket template with the following data:

Create the Peugeot Template dynamic ticket template with the following data:

Once there are one or more templates activated in the system, you can use them.

To activate a dynamic ticket template:

1. Click on the Take Phone Call menu item of the Action menu in the header bar.

   There is a new field called Dynamic Ticket Template. By default it is empty and it will be filled automatically when you select the appropriate combination of ticket type and service.

2. Fill the form with the following data:

   • Type: Unclassified

   • Customer user: Customer 1

   • Queue: Misc

   • Service: VW Service

3. The Dynamic Ticket Template field will be automatically populated with VW Template 1 and VW Template 2.

4. Select each template and match the resulting New Phone Ticket form with the expected results.

5. Now change the selected service to Peugeot Service. As there is only one template defined for this combination of ticket type and service, the template will be automatically selected for you.

6. Compare the resulting New Phone Ticket form with the expected results.

This complete example can be tested also New Email Ticket or external New Ticket screen without changing anything.

The template definition is independent from the screen and once a template is defined, it can be used on any ticket creation screen, but please review the dynamic field configuration on each screen for the default fields configuration when a template is not selected.