Using RT search function

How to search for objects in the Request Tracker

Often times the staff and volunteers at VCN will need to find an older ticket or user, in these cases, the easiest way is to search for them through the search function of the Request Tracker. You can find the search function on the main page of the Request Tracker in the top left corner of the webpage.

There’re three options here:

  • Tickets: To search for a specific ticket, the ticket search function is further divided into Simple search and New search
  • Articles: To search for articles, it is rarely used
  • Users: To search for a VCN user

If you know exactly the information about the ticket you’re searching for, such as ID number, subject title, username or email address and others, you can perform a simple search to find what you’re looking for.

As the simple ticket search page displays, you must input the information in the correct format, otherwise, the search engine will default to searching through the ticket subject.

The other available search option is the search builder. It can be accessed either through the ‘New search’ option in the dropdown menu from the top left of the webpage or through clicking on the link provided in the simple search page. This will take you to the query builder page, a more complex search tool.

Here is where you can find the more complex options of objects and terms to add for your search. You’re able to set individual criteria and combine them to produce a unique list of tickets.

To add the search criteria, simply click ‘Add these terms’, or if you only need a single criteria, you can click ‘Add these terms and Search’ to begin searching through the tickets immediately.

The criteria to be set can be seen on the page, each field contains one or several options to be configured:

1st field:

  • ID: The unique identification number of any given ticket. It can be configured to be: less than, equal to, not equal to, greater than a certain ticket number. Generally, you can apply this criterion when you know the rough range of a ticket but not its exact ID

2nd field:

  • Subject: The subject title of the ticket
  • Content-Type: The specific content of a ticket. (not particularly useful)
  • Filename: The filename or filetype of a file attached to the ticket, such as .mp3 or .wav

3rd field:

  • Queue: Search in a specific queue for the ticket, the list of queues can be picked from the dropdown menu

4th field:

  • Status: Search the status of a ticket. Whether it’s open, pending, resolved or otherwise

5th field:

  • Owner: Search the current owner of a ticket. Whoever has taken the ticket will be the owner
  • Creator: Search the creator of a ticket. Most tickets are created by the RT system, some can be created by staff or volunteers
  • Last updated by: Search who last updated the ticket
  • Updated by: Search who have updated the ticket in general

6th field: Too many options to list. This field is generally for other accounts attached to the ticket, such as the requestor, anyone who will be CCed the emails or anyone to be sent a notification when the ticket updates

7th field: Search tickets by groups, which is a catalogue of VCN accounts by their roles. This function isn’t widely used so there’s no need to apply it

8th field: Search tickets by date of change. Each field should be rather self-explanatory. A calendar is provided in the target field to easily select the desired date

  • Created
  • Started
  • Resolved
  • Last Contacted
  • Last Updated
  • Starts
  • Due
  • Updated

9th field: Search tickets by time spent. Each field should be self-explanatory.

  • Time Worked
  • Time Estimated
  • Time Left

10th field: Search tickets by the priority number. This function isn’t widely used so there’s no need to apply it.

  • Priority
  • Initial Priority
  • Final Priority

11th field: Search tickets by their relationship to other tickets. This function isn’t widely used so there’s no need to apply it.

  • Child
  • Parent
  • Depend on
  • Depended on by
  • Refers to
  • Refers to by
  • Links to

This lets you add multiple criteria into your search and pick whether all of them should apply or only some of them have to apply. More complicated search terms can also be set once you’ve added some criteria to the current search, such as applying the ‘And’ aggregator to some criteria and ‘Or’ to others.

For example, we’ll search for tickets in either the ‘Help’ or the ‘Spam’ queue that has been resolved. To do this, first, add the matching criteria from the list.

We’ve added the ‘help ‘queue, but to search for a ticket in either the ‘help’ and ‘spam’ queue instead of a ticket in both queues (which wouldn’t exist), we have to change the aggregator to ‘or’ for the operation to function. To achieve this, click the “queue = ‘help’” search criteria in the right field and click the right arrow under it.

Brackets will appear in the search field, enabling you to add additional criteria with different aggregators.

The final search criteria will let you search in both queues for tickets that have been resolved.

Scrolling down the page, there are options for sorting the result page of the search and customizing the display columns of the results.

The sorting options are relatively simple, select the order to sort the results by and select to sort them ascending or descending. The display column is rarely used so there’s no need to set any of the options under it.

Once you’re done editing your search criteria, applying the search will show the results matching the search criteria.