Don’t let Out-Of-Office emails change your ticket

Jens Bothe22. Oct 2010 | Modifications & Packages

One of those situations – you’ve sent an email to a customer, put the ticket to “pending reminder” and promptly receive an reply “I’m currently out of the office but will return to you as soon as possible”…

If you want that information in the OTRS but you don’t want your ticket reopened and a don’t want a notification about it – then read on.

If your position is – I do want to be informed by the OTRS about my customer being out of the office, then please skip this article.

Idea

We use a Postmaster Filter to set a special X-OTRS-Header on subjects and signal the OTRS – do not change the status of the ticket but create a followup article on it anyway.

Prerequsites

New Sysconfig setting

You may know the procedure from my other blog postings – here is a small XML file, which provides a new SysConfig setting. Please save it in Kernel/Config/Files/OutOfOffice.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<otrs_config version="1.0" init="Application">
 <ConfigItem Name="OoO-Header" Required="0" Valid="0">
   <Description Lang="en">The X-OTRS-Header which indicates that the current status
    of a ticket should NOT be altered.</Description>
   <Description Lang="de">Der X-OTRS-Header welcher signalisiert, dass der aktuelle Status
    eines Tickets NICHT verändert wird.</Description>
   <Group>Ticket</Group>
   <SubGroup>Core::PostMaster</SubGroup>
   <Setting>
    <String Regex="">X-OTRS-OutOfOffice</String>
   </Setting>
  </ConfigItem>
</otrs_config>

If the file is in place, please rebuild the OTRS configuration by calling
perl bin/otrs.RebuildConfig.pl

Patch for Postmaster/FollowUp.pm

The attached patch has to be applied to Kernel/System/Postmaster/Followup.pm and simply checks the presence of the new Sysconfig setting and then if the specified X-OTRS-Header is set in the email.

*** Kernel/System/PostMaster/FollowUp.pm.dist   2010-10-19 23:33:14.000000000 +0200
--- Kernel/System/PostMaster/FollowUp.pm        2010-10-20 03:24:41.000000000 +0200
***************
*** 79,85 ****
      elsif ( $UserInfo{ValidID} eq 1 ) {
          # set lock (if ticket should be locked on follow up)
!         if ( $Lock && $Ticket{StateType} =~ /^close/i ) {
              $Self->{TicketObject}->LockSet(
                  TicketID => $Param{TicketID},
                  Lock     => 'lock',
--- 79,88 ----
      elsif ( $UserInfo{ValidID} eq 1 ) {
          # set lock (if ticket should be locked on follow up)
!         if ( $Lock
!             && $Ticket{StateType} =~ /^close/i
!             && !( $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('OoO-Header') ? $GetParam{ $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('OoO-Header') } : 0 )
!            ) {
              $Self->{TicketObject}->LockSet(
                  TicketID => $Param{TicketID},
                  Lock     => 'lock',
***************
*** 121,127 ****
          $State = $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'};
      }
!     if ( $Ticket{StateType} !~ /^new/ || $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'} ) {
          $Self->{TicketObject}->StateSet(
              State => $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'} || $State,
              TicketID => $Param{TicketID},
--- 124,132 ----
          $State = $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'};
      }
!     if ( ($Ticket{StateType} !~ /^new/ || $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'})
!         && !( $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('OoO-Header') ? $GetParam{ $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('OoO-Header') } : 0 )
!         ) {
          $Self->{TicketObject}->StateSet(
              State => $GetParam{'X-OTRS-FollowUp-State'} || $State,
              TicketID => $Param{TicketID},

Configuration

The configuration is straight forward – create a new X-OTRS-Header, enable the patch, configure the Header to use, configure a new Postmaster Filter -> done.

SysConfig – Ticket::Postmaster

Please create a new X-OTRS-Header which will be used for the Out-Of-Office settings.

New X-OTRS-Header

Now enable the patch and enter the new X-OTRS-Header you just created.

Out-of-Office Header

Postmaster Filter

Create a new Postmaster Filter which sets the X-OTRS-Header (see above) of an incoming email based on whatever regular expression you want to use.

Postmaster Filter

Done!

Please note: changing the OTRS sources is done on your own risk! All changes will be – most likely – lost when upgrading the system so please document everything!

Download

Here is a ZIP file containing the patch, the XML file and the screenshots used in this post -> Out of Office Patch

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