Fixed the endless Re: Re: loop

[mikenowak]

Currently when responding to messages via helpdesk the 'Re:' is appended by the following piece of code

$message['subject'] = 'Re: '.$reply['subject'];

However, it the message has been exchanged between client and helpdesk a number of times the subject line would contain Re: multiple times - i.e. 'Re: Re: Re: test'

[mikenowak]

looks like a problem with travis rather than the code.

[chilek]

looks like a problem with travis rather than the code.

Yeap. Not first time. Every day they generate at least on check fail.

[chilek]

Currently when responding to messages via helpdesk the 'Re:' is appended by the following piece of code
However, it the message has been exchanged between client and helpdesk a number of times the subject line would contain Re: multiple times - i.e. 'Re: Re: Re: test'

It depends on what you click "Reply/Answer" or "New message/note". The latter doesn't prepend subject with 'Re:'.

[chilek]

Perhaps we should limit 'Re: ' phrase count?

[mikenowak]

OK I've tested the behaviour as per your previous note, and it is indeed as you describe.

Looking through modules/rtnoteadd.php, I came across this piece of code that has been added recently:

if(ConfigHelper::checkConfig('rt.note_send_re_in_subject'))
    $params['subject'] = 'Re: '.$ticketdata['subject'];

I also believe that note notifications are only sent to users, not clients.

On the subject of New Messages, I confirm that they do not contain Re:.

Also while looking at this I noticed that while message replies utilise sprint('%06d', $id), which results in 6 digit %tid, the notifications don't use this. So, there is a discrepancy between them being 000042 and 42 respectively. I will be submitting a separate PR for this - if this is something that needs fixing, please confirm. This has been implemented at #1383.

Anyway, going back to the original subject - what would be the right course of action here?

[mikenowak]

@chilek, additionally the ticket number isn't included in the subject of notes or messages and I think this would be quite useful.

I am thinking of something among the lines of:

$ticketid = sprintf("%06d", $message['ticketid']);
$ticket_prefix = ConfigHelper::getConfig('rt.ticket_prefix', 'RT#');

Then

Reply to an existing message:

if (preg_match('/^Re: \[' . $ticket_prefix . $ticketid . '\] /i', $reply['subject']) === 1) {
	$message['subject'] = $reply['subject'];
} else {
	$message['subject'] = 'Re: [' . $ticket_prefix . $ticketid . '] ' . $reply['subject'];
}
	

New message:

$message['subject'] = 'Re: [' .$ticket_prefix . $ticketid . '] ' . $reply['subject'];

And a note

$params['subject'] = 'Re: [' .$ticket_prefix . $ticketid . '] ' . $ticketdata['subject'];

Thoughts before I go and implement this?

[interduo]

Maybe note should have other prefix?

[mikenowak]

@interduo, ok sure - I am open for suggestions - just let me know what you think the note prefix should be.

[chilek]

additionally the ticket number isn't included in the subject of notes or messages and I think this would be quite useful.

@mikenowak imo better to use helpdesk notification format configuration variable settings such as:
phpui.helpdesk_customerinfo_mail_body
phpui.helpdesk_customerinfo_sms_body
phpui.helpdesk_notification_mail_subject
phpui.helpdesk_notification_mail_body
phpui.helpdesk_notification_sms_body

Have u tried to use them?

[chilek]

Would be also nice to allow user define ticketid format by use something like printf-like format:
%02tid. What do you think about this?

[mikenowak]

OK all good feedback, thanks for that.

additionally the ticket number isn't included in the subject of notes or messages and I think this would be quite useful.

It turns out google apps (also most likely also gmail) group the email with the same reference, and I wasn't getting constant subjects during my tests even that phpui.helpdesk_notification_mail_subject was set.

So lets ignore that comment and focus on the below:

Perhaps we should limit 'Re: ' phrase count?

and

Would be also nice to allow user define ticketid format by use something like printf-like format:
%02tid. What do you think about this?

I will see what can be done about these and report back.

[mikenowak]

@chilek,

I also noticed that the ticket number is appended to the front of every user notification as per phpui.helpdesk_notification_subject.

So I am thinking of cleaning up the subject a little before we do various str_replace on it.

So while sending new note/message that is fine because the subject would look like [RT#123456] test ticket, however moving on responding to an existing message would produce [RT#123456] Re: [RT#123456] test ticket

So far I came up with this

        public function ReplaceNotificationSymbols($text, array $params) {
+               // strip everything up to the ticket number 
+               if (preg_match('/^(?:[^\]]+)\]\s(.*)/i', $params['subject'], $match))
+                      $params['subject'] = $match[1];
                $text = str_replace('%tid', sprintf("%06d", $params['id']), $text);

This would strip everything up to the first ] inclusive, plus a space.

i.e. Re: [RT#123456] test ticket would become test ticket.

This however depends on the %tid in the phpui.helpdesk_notification_subject being wrapped in [].

Can you point at a better way of doing this if you can think of one?

[chilek]

@mikenowak very good question hard to answer for now. Maybe we should introduce some new configuration setting which would describe format of ticket prefix.
i.e. if phpui.helpdesk_notification_ticketid_format (temporary name) has value of [RT#%06tid] and already existing phpui.helpdesk_notification_subject has value of %tid %subject substitution process would produce the following result:
[RT#000345] some ticket subject
The one challenge which it would trigger, we'll have to find a way to convert phpui.helpdesk_notification_ticketid_format to corresponding regular expression.

So we would have 2-level %tid substitution:

1. phpui.helpdesk_notification_ticketid_format (replaces [RT#%06tid] by [RT#000345]).
2. phpui.helpdesk_notification_subject (replaces %tid %subject by [RT#000345] some ticket subject).

By default phpui.helpdesk_notification_ticketid_format would have %tid value so it wouldn't break existing configurations.

[chilek]

I've fixed a liitle bit my above comment.

[chilek]

The one challenge which it would trigger, we'll have to find a way to convert phpui.helpdesk_notification_ticketid_format to corresponding regular expression.

Maybe regular expression generation would not be so difficult, because %tid the most complex format could be [RT#%06tid]
so regular expression will always be \[RT#[0-9]*\] when prefix have format [RT#%06tid]. How I calculated this regexp? By escaping special symbols and replacing %06tid by [0-9]*.

What do you think of this?