RT 4.4.6 Documentation

Customizing/Approvals

Some types of change requests processed through RT can require an approval before being fulfilled. You can configure RT to set up such an approval workflow for tickets in queues you select.

This document walks through the steps to set up a "Change requests" queue with approvals. You should try this in a test instance first. If you don't have a test RT instance, you should read through the entire document first, change the details as needed for your approval scenario, and then set up approvals.

Overview

The approvals solution in RT involves using a special queue, called ___Approvals, to hold approval requests. Scrips and templates automatically create the necessary tickets and process the approval or rejection.

Change Management Queue

Since this example will use a change management queue as the queue where tickets need approval, first we'll set up the queue.

When you set up this queue, do not select the "approvals" Lifecycle. That selection is for the ___Approvals queue itself, not for queues that need tickets approved.

Change Management Template

Once the Change Management queue is created, select Templates -> Create in the queue configuration menu. Enter the Name 'create approval', leave the default Type as Perl and in the content area enter the following:

    ===Create-Ticket: Manager approval
    Subject: Manager Approval for {$Tickets{TOP}->Id} - {$Tickets{TOP}->Subject}
    Depended-On-By: TOP
    Queue: ___Approvals
    Owner: root
    Requestors: {$Tickets{TOP}->RequestorAddresses}
    Type: approval
    Content-Type: text/plain
    Due: {time + 3*24*60*60}
    Content: Please approve me.

    Thanks.
    ENDOFCONTENT

All of the text should be against the left side of the textarea with no spaces.

Click create.

You'll now use this template when you create the scrip.

Change Management Scrip

Now you need a scrip. On the queue configuration page, select Scrips -> Create. For the Description, enter 'Create an approval on ticket create', select the 'On Create' condition, 'Create Tickets' action, and select the template you just created. Click create.

Testing

You can already test your first workflow with approvals. Create a ticket in your new 'Change requests' queue. You're logged in as 'root' and the owner of the approval is root (based on the template), so it's your job to approve or deny the request. Select Tools -> Approvals in the RT main menu. You should see your first approval request.

Select the 'Deny' radio button, write 'too expensive' in the notes area and click Go! You just rejected the approval request. If you open the ticket you created for testing then you will see that it's rejected as well and has the correspondence:

    Greetings,

    Your ticket has been rejected by root.

    Approver's notes: too expensive

You may need to search for the ticket since the rejected state means it's no longer 'active'.

Where did this message come from? From templates in the ___Approvals queue.

___Approvals queue

___Approvals is a special queue where all approvals are created. The queue is disabled and is not shown in until you search for it. Go to Admin -> Queues, leave "Name is" in the search area and enter ___Approvals into the search field. Check 'Include disabled queues in listing.' and click Go! You should now see the ___Approvals queue configuration page.

You may want to change the name of the ___Approvals queue, but parts of RT expect it not to change. The name normally isn't shown to users, however, so it will be largely invisible.

Approvals' templates

From the ___Approvals queue configuration page, click 'Templates' in the page menu. You should see templates that are used after actions on approvals. For example if you click on the 'Approval Rejected' template in the list, you will see the template that generates the correspondence mentioned above.

New Pending Approval

Owners of new approval requests get this message.
Approval Passed

Recorded as correspondence on the ticket when it's approved by an approver, but still requires more people to approve.
All Approvals Passed

Recorded when no more approvals are required.
Approval Rejected

Recorded when the approval request is rejected (denied).
Approval Ready for Owner

Sent to the Owner of the ticket when it's approved and no more approvals are required.

You can customize these templates to meet your needs. However, note that there is just one ___Approvals queue for the system, so make sure changes work with all queues that use approvals.

Approvers

Navigate back to the template used to create approvals. It has the following line:

    Owner: root

With this code you set the owner of the approval request to root. Approvals, as well as tickets, have Ccs, AdminCcs and Requestors. For example the following line copies requestors from the Tickets to the approval request:

    Requestors: {$Tickets{TOP}->RequestorAddresses}

Let's create a group 'Change Approvers' and let any user of this group approve 'Change Requests'. Create the group, and add root as a member. Open the 'create an approval' template, and replace the 'Owner:...' line with the following:

    AdminCcGroup: Change Approvers

Note that this line only works in RT 4.0.5 and newer.

Create another test ticket, and you as root still should be able to see the newly created approval, but now because of the group membership. You can accept or deny it.

Any member of the group can accept/deny without consulting the other members, which is useful with more complex multistep workflows.

Approvers' Rights

Since the ___Approvals queue is a regular RT queue, you need to grant rights to allow your approvers to operate on approval requests. As root, you have super user rights and haven't needed specific rights for this example.

It's wise to grant rights via roles as there is only one queue for all approvals in the system.

To grant rights to your Change Approvers group, go to the queue configuration page for the ___Approvals queue. Click on Group Rights in the page menu. Grant ShowTicket and ModifyTicket rights to the Owner and AdminCc roles. This should be enough for most cases.

Now members of the 'Change Approvers' group can act on approvals even if they have no SuperUser rights.

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