Better Ticket "Owner" Concept

At present, a ticket is associated with an "owner", who is the PTS user who created that ticket. The default view when logging in to the PTS shows the user's "own tickets". (By the way I think this is a less-than-optimal default, but that would be the subject of another enhancement request.)

Issue ownership is a useful concept, but it should not be tied to who happened to create (open) the ticket. In the original GN2 PERT operating model, all tickets were "owned" by the acting Case Manager(s) of the week. Recently (as of November-December 2005), we have started to assign individual tickets to permanently dedicated Case Managers.

Suggestion for Improvement

It should be possible to assign ownership of a ticket to a PTS User (ideally, to a set of PTS Users). The assignee(s) should always see this ticket under his/her/their "Own Tickets".

As long as ownership has not been assigned explicitly, it should follow the Case Manager(s) Of The Week, i.e. all acting Case Managers should see all open tickets under "Own Tickets", except for those that have been permanently assigned to a dedicated Case Manager.

Handling of Closed Tickets

Another question is what should happen with tickets after they have been closed. I think closed tickets should not normally be displayed, or if they are displayed, then they should be visually de-emphasized. But in the interest of backwards compatibility, we may continue to include close tickets in e.g. the "Own Tickets" view. It would be great if an owner could "abandon" ownership of a ticket (i.e. assign it to "nobody"), but only when it is closed - all active tickets should always have an owner.

-- SimonLeinen - 13 Dec 2005

Developer comments

Ticket details will contain additional field – Ownership. This will inform who is responsible for the given ticket. Ownership is assigned either automatically basing on the PERT schedule or explicitly by CMs. Each ticket will contain a button “Assign Ownership” which will assign CM when he clicks on it. When the CM is assigned, ticket's button will change to “Signout Ownership” which will do the opposite. Ownership groups can be created automatically with the following algorithm:

1. If someone explicitly assigned for the current ticket, then someone is assigned until he explicitly signouts from that ticket. No automatic assignment is being made.
2. Otherwise, take CMs (from the schedule) that are assigned for the current day and assign them to tickets.
3. When a day passes signout the automatically assigned group and take another group that is assigned for the following day.

CMs that assigned explicitly by clicking “Assign Ownership” button can be signed out by PMs or by themselves. On “Edit Ticket” form there will be a field Ownership that will display a list of explicitly assigned CMs. No automatically assigned CMs will be shown on this list. PMs can signout any of the CMs from this list. All operations on the list will be handled in Javascript to avoid unnecessary complication with storing temporary ticket state (until “Change ticket” submit button is pressed).

Ownership also implies that assigned CMs whether automatically or explicitly assigned will have those tickets in "Own tickets" group.

This feature requires database schema change to store explicitly assigned CMs – table AssignedCMs has to be created. It will consist of two attributes: USER_ID, and TICKET_ID. Also ticket presentation has to change (ticketDetails.jsp, PreTicketDetails.java). Ticket edition will change too (PreAddTicket.java, addTicket.jsp, AddTicketForm.java, AddTicket.java), so that ownership could be editable.

Closed tickets will not be displayed by default. Instead there will be a checkbox indicating whether to show closed tickets. The checkbox will be placed on the form where tickets are listed. Checking it will indicate that closed tickets will be shown. This requires the modification of the following files: ViewTickets.java, ViewTicketsForm.java, viewTickets.jsp.

Only explicitly assigned CMs will be shown in closed ticket's ownership field.

Effort 3 man/days

-- Blazej Pietrzak - 16 Feb 2006