An emailbased issuetracking workflow system

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An email-based issue-tracking/ workflow system
Zukhanye Kwinana Department of Computer
Science Rhodes University
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Introduction (1)

• Tasks often involve multiple agents some inside
  and some outside ones organization
• They are often not carried to completion
• A system is needed to help keep track of what
  tasks have been requested or assigned

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Introduction (2)

• Traditional issue-tracking systems (or ticketing
  systems) have problems
• Exclusion if not registered within the system
• Restriction to just ones organisation
• Emails are useful but lack initiative of issue
  tracking systems
• Everyone checks emails regularly
• You are not excluded
• Have no organisational boundaries

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Aim of investigation

• Implementing email-based issue-tracking system,
  take the best of both worlds
• See to what extent the idea is viable

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Current issue tracking systems

• Are instances of Groupware
• Keep track of requested tasks within a group of
  people
• Are often web-based systems for communicating,
  sharing of files and other resources as well as
  issue-tracking

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Our solution (1)

• We tag emails that we want to be tracked with a
  special tag e.g.
• Something on the subject line
• A special marker in a header field
• In the body
• An attachment
• We intercept tagged emails
• Either at the mail server, or at the mail client
• We create a new issue (with a unique identifier)
  in the back-end tracker system

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Our solution (2)

• We add links to the bottom of the emails so that
  the recipient can mark the task as done, or add
  extra detail or remarks to the issue
• Reminders, escalation, completion etc. are
  handled by the tracker system, which can send
  follow up emails
• The user can get status reports of unresolved
  issues

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Current architecture
System architecture
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Achievements so far (1)

• Functioning system catering for single step,
  single recipient workflows.
• Installed MailEnable mail server
• Used Mail Transfer Agent to access emails before
  they are delivered to individual mailboxes thus
  edit the body- if marked to be tracked!

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Tagged email gets links added to its body
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Achievements so far (2)

• Links are mapped to one not easy to guess
• Links in the email navigate to a URL based on a
  unique identifier
• Links are somewhat secure because they are almost
  impossible to guess
• Links ensure access to the system and issue even
  though you are not registered

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Achievements so far (3)

• Functioning plug-in module for Outlook, migrating
  this function to the mail client.
• A group of Honours students have built a Web
  Service interface and library to allow us to
  automate against one specific public-domain
  Issue-Tracking Engine

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Way forward

• Complete the current functions we are building
• Refine the add-in for Outlook, Outlook Express
  and Pegasus Mail
• Complete link to the back end issue tracker
• Start testing user acceptance by deploying a
  trial system
• Longer term consider multi-step workflows, and
  multi-party tasks

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Conclusion

• Email based issue tracking system that can cross
  organizational boundaries seem promising
• More tests and experience will give a clearer
  picture

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An email based issue- tracking/ workflow system
Zukhanye Kwinana Department of Computer
Science Rhodes University