RIPE ncc The RIPE NCC Request Tracking System

RIPE ncc The RIPE NCC Request Tracking System Maldwyn G. T. Morris RIPE NCC 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 1

RIPE ncc C u s t o m e r s 25 th June 1998 General Customer Request Handling System Communications from customers Staff Communications from staff CENTR Workshop 2

RIPE Less General System 1 ncc Only work with emails C u s t o m e r s emails from customers Mail System Staff emails from staff Key Human beings Programs Information Emails 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 3

RIPE Less General System 2 ncc Store Requests C u s t o m e r s emails from customers Mail System Request Processing Staff emails from staff 25 th June 1998 Request Tracking System CENTR Workshop 4

RIPE ncc Less General System 3 Pass General Enquries to other staff C u s t o m e r s 25 th June 1998 Request Mail System General Mail System Request Processing Staff General Mail Person CENTR Workshop Request Tracking System 5

RIPE ncc Less General System 4 One person to distribute mail C u s t o m e r s 25 th June 1998 Request Mail System General Mail System Mail Distributor General Mail Person CENTR Workshop Request Processing Staff Request Tracking System 6

RIPE NCC Request Handling Now RIPE • Automate distribution - human to monitor • Automate some request processing • Customer status queries on web ncc C u s t o m e r s autohm Request Pre-Processor humanhmdist Problem Mail Handler ack 25 th June 1998 autohmdist Request Mail Handler/Distributor Hostmasters ack General Mail System General Mail Person Rtt query Web page RTT CENTR Workshop 7

RIPE RTT ncc One ‘ticket’ per request, containing the following : m All Correspondence under that ticket: -Customer Emails -Acknowledgements to Customer -Replies to Customer from Staff Stored as files in Unix directories m Request Details: -Ticket Number -Customer -Type -Dates: Opened, Closed -Status -Log Messages -Handler -Origin -Links to Correspondence files Stored as Ticket record in SQL database 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 8

RIPE ncc RTT Interfaces: rtt - command line xrtt - X Windows GUI Functions: Show a ticket Scan tickets Show pending tickets - per User Group Get a ticket Make a new ticket Change ticket details Show mails under tickets Add mails to ticket Reply to mails Add log messages to ticket 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 9

RIPE ncc RTT Internal Programs rtt - command line - perl xrtt - GUI - perl/tk autohmdist - mail handler/distributor - perl autohm - request pre-processor - perl stt - standard reply generator - perl webrtt - customer ticket query - cgi perl External Programs mysql - ticket database mh - mail system 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 10

RIPE RTT Statistics ncc m ~16000 tickets in system ( all tickets since March 1995 ) m ~35 new tickets per working day m ~130 customer mails per working day m m m ~60 customer queries on web per working day ~10 Hostmasters using system m m ~6 mails per ticket including acks and replies ~10% of mails not handled ~50% of mails handled by hostmasters ~40% handled by pre-processor robot generating ~3 user queries per week Performance acceptable m 25 th June 1998 Pentium II 233 Mhz, SCSI RAID CENTR Workshop 11

RIPE Observations ncc m Speed of rtt was a problem m m m m Used database (msql) Then used faster database (mysql) and faster hardware User education important Mail robots tricky to write Boring work automated pleases users Information on web & quick error checks please customers Statistics please managers Always a demand for new ticket fields Always a demand for more intelligent automatic mail handling 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 12

RIPE ncc m m m m URLs http: //www. ripe. net/cgi-bin/rttquery http: //www. terena. nl/task-forces/tf-etinu/survey_results. html http: //www. mcs. anl. gov/home/evard/papers/req. html http: //www. stonekeep. com/ http: //nsipower. com/ http: //www. iac. honeywell. com/Pub/Tech/CM/index. html http: //www. gps. caltech. edu/~blair/bookmarks. html http: //dxcoms. cern. ch: 8000/ttshelp/tts. Guide. Contents. html http: //www. eng. utah. edu/rust/ ftp: //ftp. ccs. neu. edu: /pub/sysadmin/tracking/sun-managers-summary http: //www. cs. wisc. edu/~curt/wgnats/webgnats. html http: //www. helpdesk. com/ http: //www. benchin. com/$index. wcgi/cat/1183 http: //www. softsearch. com http: //www. grdata. com/products/helpdesk. html http: //www. grdata. com/ 25 th June 1998 CENTR Workshop 13