OTRS/introduction
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< OTRS
- Note: This page is mirrored from the copy on the OTRS wiki, please submit changes there and not here.
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Contents |
[edit] Finding recruits.
If someone volunteering has good contributions, user_talk page history, and RFxs; ask them if they'd like to do the intro. If they do, ask them to do for homework:
- reading through OTRS again and its links, especially OTRS/en and its queue descriptions;
- have a look at http://otrs.org/demo/ and play around with the interface for a ticket or two (tell them we use a slightly different system though).
[edit] Code of conduct
- Be polite and patient
- Protect the privacy of the customer and the confidentiality of the ticket. The requests that come through OTRS can contain very sensitive information. NEVER (EVER) give out (in the IRC-channel, on the wiki or anywhere else) any personal information (names, email address, specific places etc.). If for obvious reasons (i.e. the person who complains is the subject of the article) you need to give personal information, please do so in a private IRC-window to the person you think can take care of the problem.
[edit] Suggested comments for a quick run thru on IRC.
Take a few tickets which are appropriate, lock them, and remove personal info to paste in room when explaining the rules of ticketing.
This is currently just an edited IRC log:
- OG: Anything you're not sure of after looking thru the OTRS pages, and the demo?
- OG: and please tell me when you want to take a break.
- Volunteer: I've pretty much got the idea with the demo system, and ran two emails through it which I sent to myself, and am quite clear on the OTRS system. OTRS/en lists the subqueues and templates available?
- OG: Yeah, please keep that templates page open while I go thru some tickets.
- OG: When you select info-en, you see the newest unsorted ticket - mostly spam.
- OG: info-en also gets tickets in many different languages, so I use http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/tools/guesser-ISO-8859-1.en.html to figure out what lang. If we have a queue for it, you just move it there.
- OG: See OTRS#Info queues for the languages.
- OG: You can also move it to something close if no one's taken the ticket after about 10 days, e.g. move pt to es, dk to no, @.za to nl...
- OG: I've used some online translation sites for languages I couldn't find a close one for, and the list of online translators are growing nicely. You should only do that if the ticket's really old tho.
- OG: I'll show you later how to file the spam. A mistake I've made is filing as spam those emails with random sentences, which really should simply be closed to not confuse the spam filter.
- OGD: Oh. I didn't realize that
- OG: I only figured that out preparing for this ;)
- Volunteer: Is there a _very_ big spam problem?
- OGS: yeah, there is. lots of stock spam ATM
- OG: The spam's worst in the unsexy queues (info-en, dal, donations)
- OG: The 3rd rule of ticket club: "OTRS is not a badge. You must still follow the rules for each project and work to build consensus."
- OG: Some editors confuse us with office actions, but its important that we explain we're just grunts.
- Volunteer: OK - hence we direct disputes to en:WP:DR rather than helping, to avoid making it look like OTRS gives disputants an unfair advantage.
- OG: In a ticket where some academics asked about doing a survey, I said that it sounded like a cool project. Our ticket disclaimers say we're just volunteers, and not foundation bigwigs.
- OG: They then said in their user_talk messages (after confusing namespaces something awful) that the foundation gave them the OK to do the survey.
- OG: So, 4: "When replying to emails, leave the disclaimer at the bottom intact."
- OG: and 5 "Remember that you do not and cannot speak for Wikipedia or for the Wikimedia Foundation.", unless you're, you know, mindspillage
- OG: 6: "Apply the principle of constant respect."
- Volunteer: So, if there's a message for the foundation, it goes to their queue? or a message we can't deal with..
- OGS: find Danny if something like that comes up, usually
- OG: We now get board emails, but there are urgent, legal, and other emails that don't come to us.
- OGS: oh, seventh rule? assume the person at the other end can put out a nasty press release if we piss them off too much
- OG: We have a queue called strange stuff which is where we can file the funniest and weirdest tickets. You can also come blow off steam in here as long as you don't release private info of course.
- OG: Okay, here's a ticket in dal-feedback (daily email):
- OG: "My short bio. My name is foo, a foo student in the foo department of foo, fooland. I am foo years old, and my hobbies are foo, fooee, and foofoo. i was born in foo."
- Volunteer: "Can I write about myself" template
- OG: Yes, but first check (at least) en.wikip to see that there isn't/wasn't a bio article on this person.
- OG: People often assume we know what the hell they're talking about, leaving out the important bits, like: My ex-girlfriend vandalized it, if you don't fix my bio with that I've written to you, I'll sue Jimbo.
- OG: Also, dal-feedback is the wrong place for this kind of thing, so you won't be able just click the autobio template.
- OG: I'm moving it to courtesy.
- OGS: oh, if you get legal letters, put it in urgent (and tell someone if possible)
- OG: In case you don't know where the template's gonna be, just go to OTRS/en and copy/paste from there.
- OG: If you combine two templates remember to remove any contradictions.
- OG: Next ticket: stock prices - just file as spam
- OG: Next ticket: dal: "NOW I'M FUCKING PISSED! STOP SENDING ME THESE FCKING GOD DAMMED EMAILS."
- Volunteer: = Sorry, and link to unsubscribe page http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l
- OG: If they're mentioning possible previous mails, you have to do a merge first.
- Volunteer: Ahhh OK, and check the link works
- OG: You're supposed to click on the new ticket, click on merge, and paste the old ticket number, e.g. 2006121410014158
- Volunteer: OK - I think I may have tested that on the demo system
- OG: The problem with merge is that if you do that for a ticket someone else's already the owner of, the entire thread will have the status (new, open, closed) of the old ticket, so it's good to keep the oldest ticket open in a tab, and afterwards "open" the ticket again.
- Volunteer: do you then get the ownership of it?
- OG: Nope, but you can take ownership of a ticket if you want. I'll show you when you've got access.
- Volunteer: What's the time period after which one closes a ticket (after replying, if no returning reply is made?)
- OG: If you can give a useful answer, you immediately close it, if you want to remind yourself to follow it up later, you can leave it open.
- OG: If there's no hope of any answer being satisfactory, just close it "unsuccessful". It's sometime better to not answer.
- OG: Next ticket: "I have added some more information and a picture to your article on foo, but the picture has come up on the page sized incorrectly. Could you please fix the problem. -- Bar/foo Instructor"
- Volunteer: Check the page, move to courtesy (merge if needed), reply with post to helpdesk, we don't make edits, and the links at the bottom of "Image adding and uploading"
- OG: It's got a huge image, so I'm thumbing it.
- Volunteer: so you'd tell him what you've done, and give the links to image syntax pages
- OG: Yip.
- OG: Important to remove the unrelated info from the templates. An AOL user went ballistic on me once for including the complete AOL IP blocked/editing template when he didn't want to edit WP. EVER. AGAIN!!11
- OG: ticket: This is the Postfix program at host foo. I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below. [...] <bar>: host baz[qux] said: 450 4.1.1 <bar>: Recipient address rejected: undeliverable address: host quux[qux] said: 550 unknown user <bar> (in reply to RCPT TO command) (in reply to RCPT TO command)
- Volunteer: Find out who the untended recipient was, and merge it with that ticket, leaving a note. Try to resend and if it fails, close (unsuccessful). Also, you could try to contact them on-wiki if there was a wiki username given
- OG: Yip, no need to try to resend.
- OG: There's a very powerful search function. You can save searches, so that when an OG leaves, you can save a search for their old opened tickets, and finish them off.
- OG: Normally tickets with numbers in their email subjects are left a couple for days for the OG to handle, but if the OG left they may have switched off email alerts, so it'll just languish.
- OG: I'll look at your tickets and make suggestions if needed. I want you to also review some of my tickets and make suggestions.
- Volunteer: Okay - sounds good
- Volunteer: If I have access by then, would you like me to limit the number of tickets I deal with tomorrow?
- OG: I want you to focus on the "courtesy" queue on the first day. After that you'll probably mostly work in the "quality" queue.
- OG: Okay, I'm gonna contact an OTRS admin. If you have any questions fell free to ask here, or my user_talk page.
- Volunteer: OK, thanks for the intro :)
- OG: Please edit the meta pages with things that don't make sense. Since most of us are used to the system, we usually don't notice the incorrect/outdated things on there.
Email an OTRS admin asking them to assess the volunteer and consider giving them access.
[edit] Intro with access.
If they get access, go thru a few tickets on IRC, and ask them to update OTRS/personnel, and en:Template talk:PermissionOTRS, and remove themselves from OTRS/volunteering.
[edit] Keep an eye on their tickets.
Check their tickets in the beginning with suggestions if needed.
