OTRS 3.1 - Admin Manual OTRS 3.1 - Admin Manual Copyright © 2003-2012 OTRS AG René Bakker, Stefan Bedorf, Michiel Beijen, Shawn Beasley, Hauke Böttcher, Jens Bothe, Udo Bretz, Martin Edenhofer, Carlos Javier García, Martin Gruner, Manuel Hecht, Christopher Kuhn, André Mindermann, Marc Nilius, Elva María Novoa, Henning Oschwald, Martha Elia Pascual, Thomas Raith, Carlos Fernando Rodríguez, Stefan Rother, Burchard Steinbild, Daniel Zamorano. This work is copyrighted by OTRS AG. You may copy it in whole or in part as long as the copies retain this copyright statement. The source code of this document can be found at source.otrs.org [http://source.otrs.org/viewvc.cgi/doc-admin/]. UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are: SUSE and YaST of SUSE Linux GmbH, Red Hat and Fedora are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. Mandrake is a registered trademark of MandrakeSoft, SA. Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. MySQL and the MySQL Logo are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. All trade names are used without the guarantee for their free use and are possibly registered trade marks. OTRS AG essentially follows the notations of the manufacturers. Other products mentioned in this manual may be trademarks of the respective manufacturer. Table of Contents Preface .......................................................................................................................... xii 1. Trouble Ticket Systems - The Basics ............................................................................ 1 What is a trouble ticket system, and why do you need one? ....................................... 1 What is a trouble ticket? .......................................................................................... 2 2. OTRS Help Desk ......................................................................................................... 3 Basics ..................................................................................................................... 3 Features .................................................................................................................. 3 New features of OTRS 3.1 ............................................................................... 5 Top new features of OTRS 3.0 ......................................................................... 9 New features of OTRS 2.4 ............................................................................. 10 Hardware and software requirements ...................................................................... 13 Perl support ................................................................................................... 13 Web server support ....................................................................................... 13 Database support ........................................................................................... 13 Web browser support ..................................................................................... 14 Community ............................................................................................................ 14 Commercial Support and Services for OTRS ........................................................... 14 3. Installation ................................................................................................................. 15 The simple way - Installation of pre-built packages .................................................. 15 Installing the RPM on a SUSE Linux server ..................................................... 15 Installing OTRS on a CentOS system ............................................................. 17 Installing OTRS on a Debian system ............................................................... 17 Installing OTRS on a Ubuntu system .............................................................. 17 Installing OTRS on Microsoft Windows systems ............................................... 17 Installation from source (Linux, Unix) ...................................................................... 17 Preparing the installation from source ............................................................. 17 Installation of Perl modules ............................................................................ 18 Configuring the Apache web server ................................................................ 21 Configuring the database ............................................................................... 22 Setting up the cron jobs for OTRS .................................................................. 28 Upgrading the OTRS Framework ............................................................................ 32 Upgrading Windows Installer .................................................................................. 37 Upgrading Microsoft SQL Server Data Types .......................................................... 37 4. First steps ................................................................................................................. 38 Agent web interface ............................................................................................... 38 Customer web interface ......................................................................................... 38 Public web interface ............................................................................................... 39 First login .............................................................................................................. 40 The web interface - an overview ............................................................................. 40 What is a queue? .................................................................................................. 42 User preferences ................................................................................................... 43 5. The ADMIN area of OTRS ......................................................................................... 45 Basics ................................................................................................................... 45 Agents, Groups and Roles ..................................................................................... 45 Agents ........................................................................................................... 45 Groups .......................................................................................................... 46 Roles ............................................................................................................. 49 Customers and Customer Groups ........................................................................... 53 Customers ..................................................................................................... 53 Customer Groups ........................................................................................... 55 Queues ................................................................................................................. 56 iii OTRS 3.1 - Admin Manual Salutations, signatures, attachments and responses ................................................ 58 Salutations ..................................................................................................... 58 Signatures ..................................................................................................... 59 Attachments ................................................................................................... 60 Responses .................................................................................................... 63 Auto responses ...................................................................................................... 65 Email addresses .................................................................................................... 68 Notifications ........................................................................................................... 69 SMIME .................................................................................................................. 71 PGP ...................................................................................................................... 72 States .................................................................................................................... 72 SysConfig .............................................................................................................. 73 Using mail accounts ............................................................................................... 74 Filtering incoming messages .................................................................................. 75 Executing automated jobs with the GenericAgent ..................................................... 77 Admin email .......................................................................................................... 78 Session management ............................................................................................. 79 System Log ........................................................................................................... 80 SQL queries via the SQL box ................................................................................