OTRS 2.0 - Admin Manual

Richard Kammermeyer, Christian Schöpplein, Stefan Rother, Thomas Raith, Burchard Steinbild, Andre Mindermann, Christopher Kuhn, Martin Edenhofer

This work is copyrighted by OTRS GmbH.

You may copy it in whole or in part as long as the copies retain this copyright statement.

UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are: SUSE and YaST of SUSE GmbH, Red Hat and Fedora are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. Mandrake is a registered trademark of MandrakeSoft, SA. Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc.

All trade names are used without the guarantee for their free use and are possibly registered trade marks.

OTRS GmbH essentially follows the notations of the manufacturers. Other products mentioned in this manual may be trademarks of the respective manufacturer.


Table of Contents

Preface
1. Basics about trouble ticket systems
What is a trouble ticket system, when do you need it?
What is a trouble ticket?
2. OTRS - Open Ticket Request System
Basics
Features
Hard and software requirements
Community
Commercial Support for OTRS
3. Installation of the OTRS framework
The simple way - Installation of prebuilt packages
Installing the rpm on a SUSE distro
Installing OTRS on a Debian system
Installing OTRS on Microsoft Windows systems
Installation from source (Linux, Unix)
Preparing the installation from source
Installation of needed perl modules
Configuring the apache web server
Configuring the database
Setting up the cron jobs for OTRS
4. First steps in OTRS
Agent web interface
Customer web interface
Public web interface
First login
An overview to the web interface
What is a queue?
User preferences
5. The admin area of OTRS
Basics
User, groups and roles
User
Groups
Roles
Customer users and customer groups
Customer users
Customer groups
Queues
Salutations, signatures, attachments and responses
Salutations
Signatures
Attachments
Auto answers
Email addresses
Notifications
SMIME
PGP
States
The graphical configuration frontend (SysConfig)
Using POP3 accounts
Filtering incoming messages
Executing automated jobs with the GenericAgent
Admin email
Session management
System Log
SQL queries via the select box
Package manager
6. Configuring the system
The config files of OTRS
Configuring the system through the web interface
7. Sending/Receiving emails
Sending emails
Via Sendmail (default)
Via SMTP relay/smarthost
Receiving emails
Via POP3 accounts - the easy way (PostMasterPOP3.pl)
Via command line program and e.g. procmail (PostMaster.pl)
Fetching emails via POP3 or IMAP and fetchmail for PostMaster.pl
Filtering/dispatching by OTRS/PostMaster modules (for more complex dispatching)
8. Time related functions in OTRS
Specifying the relevant times for OTRS
TimeWorkingHours
TimeVacationDays
TimeVacationDaysOneTime
Automated unlocking of tickets
Pending tickets
Ticket escalation
9. Using external backends
Customer data
Customer user backend
Database (Default)
LDAP
Use more than one customer backend with OTRS
Backends to authentificate agents and customer users
Authentification backends for agents
Authentification backends for customer users
Customize the customer self registration
Customizing the web interface
Customer mapping
Customize the customer_user table in the OTRS DB
10. Modifying ticket states and ticket state types
11. Modifying ticket priorities
12. Creating own themes
13. Localization of the OTRS frontend
14. PGP
15. Additional applications
Calendar
Content manager
File manager
Web mailer
FAQ
System status
16. Performance Tuning
OTRS
TicketIndexModule
TicketStorageModule
Database
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Webserver
Preestablish datababase connections
Preloaded modules - startup.pl
Reload perl modules when updated on disk
Choosing the Right Strategy
mod_gzip/mod_deflate
mod_dosevasive
17. Backing up the system
Backup
Restore
A. Additional Resources
Homepage OTRS.org
Mailinglists
Bugtracking
Commercial Support
B. Overview on all config parameters
C. Credits
D. GNU Free Documentation License
0. PREAMBLE
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
2. VERBATIM COPYING
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
4. MODIFICATIONS
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8. TRANSLATION
9. TERMINATION
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents

List of Tables

3.1. Needed perl modules for OTRS
3.2. Description of the several cron job scripts
5.1. Default groups after OTRS has been installed
5.2. Rights in the user groups of OTRS
5.3. Events for auto answers
5.4. Function of the different X-OTRS-headers
A.1. Mailinglists

List of Examples

5.1. Sort spam mails into a specific queue
7.1. .fetchmailrc
7.2. Example jobs for the filter module Kernel::System::PostMaster::Filter::Match
7.3. Example job for the filter module Kernel::System::PostMaster::Filter::CMD
8.1. Specifying the relevant working hours for the system
8.2. Specifying regular holidays in the system
8.3. Specifying irregular holidays in the system
8.4. GenericAgent job to send notification on escalated tickets
9.1. Configuring a DB customer backend
9.2. Using company tickets with a DB backend
9.3. Configuring a LDAP customer backend
9.4. Using Company tickets with a LDAP backend
9.5. Using more than one customer backend with OTRS
9.6. Authenticate agents agains a DB backend
9.7. Authenticate agents against a LDAP backend
9.8. Authenticate agents via HTTPBasic
9.9. Authenticate agents against a radius backend
9.10. Customer user authentification against a DB backend
9.11. Customer user authentification against a LDAP backend
9.12. Customer user authentification with HTTPBasic
9.13. Customer user authentification against a radius backend