Akeeba Ticket System

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 14:21 CDT

x2tech

I've searched the DB and troubleshooting areas and just may not have come across the exact verbiage to match a search.

I'm looking into the option of being able to "merge" two tickets together. Is this possible within ATS?

I am using the fetch email and create via email options because my clients want to send me emails. I know, I know, you don't recommend using it for ticket creation and I'm going to PUSH them not to use it and instead login to the client interface instead.

Is there a way or is there a feature request already for being able to take 2 tickets and merge them together? Many ticket systems have this function. I'm just curious as to whether you have thought of adding it or why you decided NOT to add it.

If you are not adding it, is there a way to add a reply "for a customer as the customer" via the interface? Similar to the ability to open a ticket for a client?

Thanks!

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 15:17 CDT

nicholas

There is no such feature or any plans to implement it. The reason is that conflict resolution is impossible to handle.

If you merge two users, one from User A and one from User B who owns the ticket? User A? User B? None?

What is the title you want to keep?

Who is the person handling the ticket?

Is the ticket private or public?

Is the ticket low, normal or high priority?

What is the status of the ticket (e.g. open, closed, pending, ...)?

Which is the post order?

You see there are so many possibilities of conflict that ticket merge will never be what you expect it to be. So we won't implement it.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 15:25 CDT

x2tech

Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind it. I knew there was a lot of conflict resolution that would have to take place and I could see some of it being questions to the "merger" that could be answered on a ticket merge screen. The ticket order would be based on time and date, I guess. That would be the tough one. it would be less of an automated process and more of a manual process, like a code merge when merging two files and doing a diff. Since you are a coder, I hope that made sense :)

Okay, so no merge ticket feature, but is there any functionality in the system where I could kind of do what merge would. Is it possible to add a reply to an existing ticket but do it AS the original user, like you can when you open a new ticket on behalf of another user. So, when I reply, I get the choice of what user to assign it to? That would give me the ability to add the replies from another ticket Into the same ticket. It's a manual process and one that I would do myself, not automated.

Is that possible or something that could be added? I at times get replies to tickets in my normal email from a client instead of to the support system. I'd like to be able to add those as replies from the client instead of from me and putting a line in "REplied from User X; added by RKC".

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 16:20 CDT

nicholas

I did think of the time factor, but it lead to an impasse when considering our own tickets. For example, I have these two cases (fake ticket numbers, just to give you an idea):

User files ticket 12345. At some point he gets confused, posts ticket 12389 as a reply, then we continue our conversation in 12345. Intended merge: keep 12345 intact, move posts from 12389 into it.

User files ticket 12345 with wrong title and missing information. User immediately closes 12345 and files ticket 12346 with the correct title, the missing information but not the problem description which is in ticket 12345's sole post. Intended merge: keep 12346 and move posts from 12345.

It gets a bit hairy when I reply to 12345, Dale replies to 12346 and we figure out that it should be one ticket. If I remove ticket 12346 Dale doesn't get credit for his worked hours.

So, really, merging tickets is not straightforward. It's like merging keyed arrays (name-value pairs) in every programming language: if you're not too careful which one is merged into which other you end up with the inverse result than what you intended. Considering that ticket merge is a catastrophic process –as in "data gets irreversibly modified in the database"– we can't really implement it. Not to mention that if you do accept replies by email you are beyond screwed once you merge tickets: your client WILL reply to the wrong ticket by email. It's kind of a law of the Universe... :(

That's how we ended up with Manager Notes. If some important bit of info needs to be transferred to the "main" ticket (whatever that is...) we put it in Manager Notes. Then we close the "wrong" ticket with a final post that the conversation is to be carried on in the "main" ticket, complete with a ticket number and a link.

As for replies on behalf of a user, well, that's not a convenient thing to program into the system. It gets so complicated in so many aspects of the software that it's bound to create far more problems than it solves. You wouldn't know all the complications the seemingly simple "ticket on behalf of user" feature carries with it. To this day, nearly a year later, there are still issues related to this and the email feature which cannot be fixed without screwing up the regular emails we send out to administrators and regular users. The only reason we keep this feature is that if you do not have the correct ownership of the ticket itself then the user cannot reply at all. This is far more serious than getting an administrator email when you shouldn't be receiving it so the feature stays in.

There's always the low-tech solution you're currently employing, file a reply noting "Replied from user X; added by RKC". This is actually the most convenient and least error-prone way to do it.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 18 March 2015 16:52 CDT

x2tech

Thanks for the explanation! I figured it would be something of a nightmare I might be bringing up. If you don't ask, you may not get something you COULD implement without major headaches. You are the one that knows if it is major headaches in the end :)

Close this ticket as solved.

Support