Last modified: 2014-01-03 16:17:08 UTC
«A web interface for customers is available to write new tickets, check the state and answer old tickets and search through their own tickets» http://doc.otrs.org/3.0/en/html/features-of-otrs.html ---- Rationale, quoting myself: «speaking of "accountability" and transparency the first and most important thing we need is surely an OTRS update which allows to tell users the status of their request. The main problem with our OTRS is that people writing to it are writing to a black box and don't know anything on the progress unless they get a reply; this is especially awful when (as it happens not so rarely) a ticket is sent from a queue to another and vice versa countless times». This is, for instance, the first feature I mentioned when I asked my university to revamp their e-mail support system, and in the end it was among the most important requirements we approved for the call for bids (won by a company not using OTRS). I hope we'll join the 21st century too.
Note: «Recommendations [...] Set up a feedback process [...] Comment: Many of these will mirror the outcomes of the multi-month OTRS study that Christine has been doing for the WMF. Hope to share those results soon. Philippe (WMF) 08:21, 6 August 2011 (UTC)» https://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Submissions/Volunteer_Response_Team_Workshop&oldid=16328 So there might be a WMF document/study where this is recognized as a requirement, although it's never been acted upon.
This bug can probably be closed - the customer interface is actually already set up and fully functional, but (as evident by the looks of the page) we do not use it (ref: https://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/customer.pl). There has been no discussion about the possibility of beginning to use this part of the software. That should also take place before we would begin to work out the logistics/tech anyways. There is no real added benefit to the customers nor the agents to using this add-on. It allows a customer to "log in" and view their email(s) to us, and our reply. Customers do have the ability to reply via this interface also, however I would imagine most would prefer to use their own mail provider.
Nemo: Could you comment on comment 2, and reconsider if this should really be high priority (or if this first requires consideration or consensus in the OTRS community, as it seems to me now)?
Response to comment 2 is already in comment 0 and 1: the interface in question was introduced in version 3.0, so I doubt RD is talking of the very same thing (nor he said he looked into the feature I'm referring to); and as this is the first step towards the recommendation above I don't think consensus is required, especially if RD is right and setting up the interface doesn't mean that it's automatically enabled.
So the main functionality is "allow to tell users the status of their request". Adding that to the bug summary.
No current plans to work on this, bug 22622 has higher priority.
Per my comments on comment 2. Nothing has changed with regards to my comments since we've upgraded.
