Removing the Request Tracker (RT) Subject Prefix

I have an installation of Request Tracker that I use at work to manage helpdesk tickets, assets, projects, and other things. I recently added a support queue for the customer services people. They're using another program to actually manage the cases, but want to use RT for the auto responder.

That's not a big deal, of course. The problem was the RT subject header. You can modify the template subject as you wish, but you can never get rid of the RT name prefix:

[So and So's support queue #233] Autoreply: I need help on this problem

Since the support people are using another program to manage the cases, they didn't want to confuse users with an RT ticket number. Once the user sends in his or her email and the support team creates a case in the other package, the ticket will be closed. The requestor will receive only the autoreply from RT, and the rest of the correspondence will be through the other system.

I could not figure a way to leave off the prefix without affecting all the queue. I searched through the code and found the least invasive hack:


In the Interface::Email::SendEmail method... here's a diff:

diff -ru Email.pm /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/RT/Interface/Email.pm
--- Email.pm 2009-10-19 15:55:31.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/RT/Interface/Email.pm 2010-04-29 17:34:52.000000000 -0400
@@ -308,6 +308,7 @@
=cut

sub SendEmail {
+
my (%args) = (
Entity => undef,
Bounce => 0,
@@ -315,6 +316,7 @@
Transaction => undef,
@_,
);
+
foreach my $arg( qw(Entity Bounce) ) {
next unless defined $args{ lc $arg };

@@ -329,6 +331,13 @@

my $msgid = $args{'Entity'}->head->get('Message-ID') || '';
chomp $msgid;
+#### 4.29.2010 - custom hack to skip ticket number on support queue
+my $tSub = $args{'Entity'}->head->get('Subject');
+if ($tSub =~ m/^\[MyCompany's Customer Support queue #[0-9]+\] (AutoReply:.*)$/) {
+ $args{'Entity'}->head->set('Subject' => "[MyCompany's Customer Support queue] $1");
+}
+#### end custom hack
+

# If we don't have any recipients to send to, don't send a message;
unless ( $args{'Entity'}->head->get('To')

Notice that it only affects messages sent out as Autoreply (i.e., responding to a Scrip creation event.) I could have been more sophisticated and added a custom field to the queues, and modified the actual Autoreply routine to look up the value... but I consider this to be a one off, and this was the simplest modification. I suppose I didn't absolutely need a temp variable, but I put one in anyway.