Creating a Ticket

Creating a ticket is simple, but will feel strange if you are relatively unfamiliar with Unix. The command requires the e-mail address of the submitter and a short description: ticket-new me@example.net "I can't find my shoes" would create a ticket with John Smith as the customer and a short description of I can't find my shoes. However, you will not immediately be returned to the command prompt. Instead, you will have no prompt. Enter your long description, taking as many lines as necessary. End the long description entry process by typing Control-D on a blank line; you will be told the ticket number of the new ticket then be returned to the command prompt.

Why this odd behavior? BATTS wants to cooperate with other Unix programs, which can feed input into other programs. For example, let's say that John Smith had written up a long description of his problem in the file my-problem.txt. To enter this problem into BATTS, he need only run the command ticket-new me@example.net "I can't find my shoes" < my-problem.txt. Or perhaps his complaint is that the user joe is running too many processes. He can create his complaint by running the command ps -fu joe | ticket-new me@example.net "joe runs too much stuff". ps -fu joe is a standard Unix command that will display all of joe's processes. This list will become the long description for the ticket.

Note that if you provide an e-mail address that does not match any known user, a temporary user will be created so that the ticket can be entered into the system. It is highly recommended that you modify this customer immediately after ticket creation.