Best way to implement helpdesk functionality?

[Sebastian Hagedorn]

Kevin,

--On Montag, 25. Oktober 2004 8:46 Uhr -0400 Kevin <cyrus at gnosys.biz> wrote:

> I'm running cyrus-imapd-2.2.8 and cyrus-sasl-2.1.19-r1 on an x86 Gentoo
> Linux box and trying to figure out the best way to implement some sort
> of helpdesk functionality.  I have O'Reilly's book _Managing IMAP_ and
> it discusses both shared mailboxes and the bulletin board mailbox (owned
> by system but with access rights by several), but I'm not sure that
> either will do everything that I'd like.

not by themselves, but potentially together with other tools.

>  In particular, I'd like the
> following functionality:
>
> 1) email sent to info at example.com gets sent directly to some list of
> maybe 4-8 "helpdesk" users (cyrus mailboxes) for action by any one of
> them;

That's trivial, but may actually be a bad idea, because that way you'd have 
4-8 copies of the mail.

> 2) replies to any of those messages (the ones that were written To:
> info at example.com) from any of this list of 4-8 helpdesk users get sent
> to all of the helpdesk users (so that all of them know when a message
> has been replied to and needs no other action);

That's a function of the MUA you're using. See below for more regarding 
this.

> 3) state of the mailbox preserved between access by different users
> (again, so that all of them can see what's been done already by someone
> else);

You can have that with a shared mailbox.

> 4) any of these replies (written by pam at example.com or joe at example.com)
> actually have (as From: fields) the original address info at example.com
> and no trace of the actual user's email address.

Yet another function of the MUA. 2) and 4) are very easy to achieve with 
Mulberry: all you need to do is set up an "identity" for the helpdesk role. 
I am (among other roles) postmaster and listmaster for Cologne University 
and have identities that do precisely that: set the 'reply-to' (could be 
'from', but I prefer to use my real address there) and the 'cc'.

> Any suggestions on the best way to implement this sort of functionality?
> I'm sure that (1) could be done with the MTA (postfix-2.1.5).

Right.

>  I'm not
> sure about (2)...  would sieve accomplish that?

No, sieve is for incoming mail only.

>  I know that (3) should be easy enough with a shared
> mailbox (not a bulletin board).

Right.

> But (4) looks like it's
> non-trivial---would sieve do this?

No, see above.

> Any ideas?  What have other folks done?  Is there a good reference for
> this subject?  I've read my book, looked through the archives, and
> googled around, but haven't found anything really useful.

We currently use wreq for some jobs and have looked at OTRS and RT. Those 
tools may work better for you, but they require additional setup.

<http://www.math.duke.edu/~yu/wreq/>
<http://otrs.org/>
<http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/>

Cheers, Sebastian
--
Sebastian Hagedorn M.A. - RZKR-R1 (Gebäude 52), Zimmer 18
Zentrum für angewandte Informatik - Universitätsweiter Service RRZK
Universität zu Köln / Cologne University - Tel. +49-221-478-5587
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