Request Tracker 4 (RT4)
Implementation
Project
Lisa Tomalty, ltomalty@uwaterloo.ca
Information Systems and Technology
Background: RT Investigation
Project (2012-13)
• Recommended RT4
– Open source; support available from Best
Practical Solutions LLC
– Existing expertise for RT exists on campus
– Well liked, stable solution
– Many new features, customizable and expandable
– Active user community
– Many issues identified can be addressed via
• Process changes/leveraging existing RT
functionality
RT Investigation Project
• Recommended RT4
– Meets critical requirements identified
– Works with browsers/operating systems used on campus
– Ability to integrate with asset management and other
systems
–
Request Tracking Investigation Project Recommendation
Campus Wide Involvement
• Members from each IT area on campus to
provide input/participation
– In implementation
– In on-going use and development
• Consistent user experience
• Key success factor:
– adoption of common request tracking system
RT4 Implementation Project
• Continue to provide an ongoing, reliable RT
system
• Meet the most important request tracking
needs of the IT areas on campus
• Implement a knowledge base
• Integrate with the service catalogue
• Enable processes to improve IT support
•
Benefits of Campus Wide
System
Efficiency
– Shared tool, one installation
– Share administration and development
• Improved IT service support through
–
–
–
–
–
–
Collaboration between and within IT units
Improved communications, support
Increased functionality
Enable/automate improved IT service processes
Shared knowledge base
Common tracking and metrics
Program of Projects
• Program of related projects will include:
– RT4 Implementation Project
– IT Best Practices Project
– Asset Management Project
– SLA Project
– Possibly other projects
• Dependencies between projects will be
defined
Objectives/Goals-1
• Work together with IT areas on campus to leverage
the many benefits of RT4
• Enable IT units to share and collaborate on requests
• Upgrade to the most recent version of RT4
• Update user request forms
• Import existing data
• Provide training, documentation and communication
• Expand the use of RT4 to other IT units on campus
Objectives/Goals-2
• Implement new functionality and configure the new
system based on:
– Requirement information gathered in the RT Investigation
Project
– Requirements that will come out of the IT Best Practices
project (TBA)
– Other requirements that are deemed necessary for IT
support on campus
• Non-IT areas use of the system:
– Non-IT areas may continue to use the system
– Focus will be on meeting IT needs of campus for request
tracking
New functionality/features-1
• Reporting/metrics
• Knowledge base (“Articles”)
• New user request forms (linked from
service catalogue)
• Shared queue administration
• Customizable workflows - per queue
• Customizable email templates – per queue
New functionality/features-2
• Recurring tickets
• Escalation
• Better tools for synchronizing
accounts/groups with Nexus/LDAP
• Improved user interface (including ability
to hide quoted text)
• Improved searching/canned searches
• Supposedly significantly faster. :-)
Timeline
• Phase 1A (late Dec 2013)
– Planning, clean up user accounts in RT3
– Install and configure newest release of RT 4.2 and necessary plug-ins
• Phase 1B (Jan-Apr 2014)
–
–
–
–
–
Configuration/development
Testing
Permissions
Documentation, Training, Communication
Some new features
• Phase 2 (May-Aug+ 2014)
–
–
–
–
More new features
Migrations and continual improvement
Make recommendation for maintaining and keeping RT current
Training/documentation of changes
Questions?
• Inquiries and requests for RT
access/queues can be directed to:
– Lisa Tomalty ltomalty@uwaterloo.ca
• RT4 Project documentation Web site:
https://uwaterloo.ca/it-service-assetmanagement/request-tracker-4-rt4implementation-project