Scheduler: add note to ticket?

Technical assistance
1

Infos:

  • Used Zammad version: 2.8.x
  • Used Zammad installation source: docker-compose
  • Operating system: Debian stretch
  • Browser + version: Chromium Version 71.0.3578.98 (Offizieller Build) Built on Ubuntu , running on Ubuntu 18.04 (64-Bit)

Expected behavior:

EDIT 2019-02-02: I’ve since figured out that Zammad already has a feature that mostly does what I want - the “pending reminder” state. I didn’t know about this back when I wrote this posting.

I’ve attempted to add a follow-up feature to our Zammad test instance. The intended workflow looks like this:

Our sales agents often close tickets e.g. after they’ve written a mail to the customer. But in some cases (e.g. when the sales agent has sent a sales quote) the agent wants the closed ticket to automatically re-open itself after a certain configurable time (days, weeks, maybe even months) so that he can reach out to customers that haven’t responded yet.

Our old ticket system Kayako had a “Follow-Up” feature for this purpose where you could say:
In [minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/specific date]: [numeric value, e.g. 4]
Set status = open
(plus some more possibilities, e.g. change department, owner, type, priority; add a note, post a reply or forward the ticket)

Most of these features we don’t really need; IMO it would be enough if we had a date field “Follow-up” where you could e.g. put 2018-02-01, and when this date is reached, Zammad re-opens the ticket. I’ve implemented it like this:

  • Settings → Objects → Ticket: add a new attribute:
    • Name: followup
    • Display: Wiedervorlage
    • Format: Date
    • Allow future: yes
    • Allow past: no
  • Settings → Scheduler: add a new scheduler:
    • Name: Wiedervorlage-Tickets wieder öffnen
    • When should the job run: I just checked everything :smiley:
    • Conditions: [Wiedervorlage] [before (relative)] [1] [Minute(s)]
    • Execute changes:
      • State → open
      • Wiedervorlage →
    • Disable notifications: no
    • Note: Durch automatische Wiedervorlage wieder geöffnet.

(I hope I’ve got the condition right, before and after (relative) somehow are very confusing to me)

Actual behavior:

Generally, this seems to do what I expect. When I set the follow-up field of a ticket to a date in the past (e.g. 2019-01-01) to simulate a ticket that has reached it’s follow-up date, the scheduler lists this ticket in it’s preview and will also re-open it after 10 minutes.

  • Side note 1: why can’t I manually run schedulers? Waiting makes it annoying to test.
  • Side note 2: why does Zammad even allow me to set the field to a date in the past, when the field has Allow past: no?

But no note is added to the ticket. Nothing about a note in the ticket history either:

Martin von Wittich - 40 minutes ago

  • updated Ticket followup ‘2019-01-15’
    • 26 minutes ago
  • updated Ticket followup ‘2019-01-15’
  • notification sent to ‘martin.von.wittich@example.com(update:online)’

Am I misinterpreting the purpose of the note field? Is it to describe the scheduler? There doesn’t seem to be an Action to add a note (I see only a Delete Action).

The documentation seems to imply that this note should be added to the ticket: Scheduler — Zammad Admin Documentation documentation

  1. Insert a note to the ticket so that everyone can see what has happened in the ticket (only agents can read the note)

Is it bugged for anyone else?

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  • Create a scheduler and put some text into the note field.

Not sure if the other steps are needed, but I’ve documented everything above just in case.

2

Seems to be broken in general. I’ve created another scheduler that matches two tickets and only adds a note. The scheduler says that it has processed two tickets, but they don’t have any notes.

3

This seems to be a known bug that has been fixed, but the fix hasn’t been released yet: "Allow past" setting is not respected · Issue #1598 · zammad/zammad · GitHub

4

I’m pretty certain by now that the note field is only there to describe the scheduler, it doesn’t add notes to the tickets it handled. This is consistent with every other type of object you can edit in the administration area (user/group/role/…); all of these have a note field to describe that specific instance of the object.

Unfortunately the “Notes are visible to agents only, never to customers.” tooltip is needlessly confusing, and the documentation is just plain wrong here.

EDIT: I’ve create a merge request to fix the documentation: manage-scheduler.rst: completely overhauled by martinvonwittich · Pull Request #14 · zammad/zammad-admin-documentation · GitHub

5

I’m checking the PR right now, thanks for your work (again!).

You’re right, the note on the scheduler is simply a description for (in this case) the admin trying to understand the scheduler.

It does not add a new note to e.g. a ticket.

Beside of that, the conditions look perfectly fine.

@martini might let you know how to run scheduler jobs manually (if it is possible)

6

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