Alerts as tickets

New in the next release

This is on the dev builds now, and in the next release.

Every PSA and help desk can turn email into tickets. Point Collimo's email channel at that mailbox, set SMTP_TICKETS, and each alert becomes one ticket: ConnectWise PSA, Autotask, HaloPSA, Jira Service Management, Freshservice, Zendesk, Zammad, GLPI, or anything else that reads a mailbox.

Turn it on

Set the usual email variables, with the help desk's mailbox as SMTP_TO, and add SMTP_TICKETS:

SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
[email protected]
[email protected]
SMTP_TICKETS=open

SMTP_TICKETS	What's sent for each alert
open	One email, when it's raised. Nothing when it escalates or clears. For help desks that can't add an email to an existing ticket
all	When it's raised, when it escalates or eases, and when it clears, all with the same tag. For help desks with a mail rule that adds an email to the ticket with that tag
unset	Ordinary alert email

Settings → Notifications shows the email channel as sending tickets.

What changes in ticket mode

• One tag for the alert's whole life. Every email about an alert carries the same tag, F- and eight characters, in its subject and in an X-Collimo-Ticket header:

[Collimo F-0633d387] Warning: pve1 /dev/nvme0n1

A warning that becomes critical keeps its tag, so it stays one ticket. The sender is part of the tag, so two sites sending to one help desk never share one. - No reminders. A critical alert never repeats (NOTIFY_REPEAT). - No waiting for quiet hours. A ticket wakes nobody, so warnings go at once, and there's no morning summary. Phone channels still wait. - A clear never closes the wrong ticket. With all, an alert that escalated isn't reported as resolved; only its final clear is. - The same rules as every channel otherwise: nothing goes before NOTIFY_DELAY, nothing already active when Collimo starts, and NOTIFY_RULES decides which alerts count.

The body starts with fixed lines, for a help desk's parser rules to set priority, board or queue from:

Collimo-Ticket: F-0633d387
Event: opened
Status: Warning
Subject: pve1 /dev/nvme0n1
Alert: Drive wearing out or failing (disk_wear)
Tab: Capacity
Dashboard: https://collimo.example/#capacity

Event is opened, changed or resolved. Status is Critical, Warning or Resolved. When a device is offline because something further up its path is, a Behind: line names it.

Which client a ticket belongs to

Help desks that serve several clients match an email to a client by the sender's domain. Each client site runs its own Collimo, so give each its own sender in that client's domain ([email protected]), and add that address or domain to the client in your help desk. Your mail server must be allowed to send as each one.

Setting up your help desk

Each one is set up in its own admin pages, which change between versions; these are what to look for.

Help desk	Mode	What to set up
HaloPSA	all	A mailbox for incoming email, and an email rule that matches the subject on \[Collimo (F-[0-9a-f]{8})\] and adds the email to the open ticket with the same tag. Its Status: line can set the status, so Resolved closes it
ConnectWise PSA	open	The Email Connector, on a board for monitoring tickets. It adds an email to a ticket only when the subject has the ticket's own number, which Collimo doesn't know, so all would open a ticket for every email
Autotask	open	Incoming Email Processing, into a monitoring queue. As with ConnectWise, replies thread only on Autotask's own ticket number
Jira Service Management	open, or all with automation	The project's email channel. With all, an automation rule on new issues can look for an open issue whose summary has the same tag, comment on it and drop the new one
Freshservice, Zendesk	open	The support mailbox, and a rule on [Collimo in the subject to set the group
Zammad	open	An email channel, and a postmaster filter on the X-Collimo-Ticket header to set the group
GLPI	open	A mail collector, and a rule on the subject to set the category

Limits

• Collimo doesn't learn the ticket's number, so it can't tell whether a ticket was made or closed, and a help desk that threads only by its own number gets one ticket per email. Use open there.
• If the mail server is down, Collimo retries on the next poll, as it does for every channel.