Calendars | OTRS Academy

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When working with customers, resource planning and scheduling can be a complex task. Appointments enable you to meet your customers where and whenever needed.

OTRS supports this requirement with calendars. Calendars allow management of appointments and resources inside the ticket system. You can connect your tickets to scheduled tasks and make them available to all users to see. This feature adds transparency to show your teams workload and prevent users from promising resources which are not available.

Use this screen to manage calendars in the system. A fresh OTRS installation contains no calendars by default. The calendar management screen is available in the Calendars module of the Administration group.

Manage Calendars

To add a new calendar:

Click on the Add Calendar button in the left sidebar.
Fill in the required fields.
Click on the Save button.

Warning

Calendars can not be deleted from the system. They can only be deactivated by setting the Validity option to invalid or invalid-temporarily.

Warning

The maximum number of 50 valid calendars should not be exceeded. Exceeding this limit may affect the system performance.

To edit a calendar:

Click on a calendar in the list of calendars.
Modify the fields.
Click on the Save or Save and finish button.

To export a calendar:

Click on the export icon in the list of calendars.
Choose a location in your computer to save the Export_Calendar_CalendarName.yml file.

To import calendars:

Click on the Browse… button in the left sidebar.
Select a previously exported .yml file.
Click on the Overwrite existing entities checkbox, if you would like to overwrite the existing calendars.
Click on the Import Calendar button.

Note

If several calendars are added to the system, use the filter box to find a particular calendar by just typing the name to filter.

Calendar Settings

The following settings are available when adding or editing this resource. The fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory.

General Calendar Settings

Calendar name *

The name of this resource. Any type of characters can be entered to this field including uppercase letters and spaces. The name will be displayed in the overview table.

Color *

The calendar color that will be displayed in the calendar overview screens.

To change the calendar color, just select a new color from the color palette. You can chose from the pre-selected colors or define other colors by choosing it from the color selector or typing the hexadecimal value.

Permission group *

Select which Groups can access the calendar.

Depending on the group field, the system will allow users the access to the calendar according to their permission level.

Read only: users can see and export all appointments in the calendar.

Move into: users can modify appointments in the calendar, but without changing the calendar selection.

Create: users can create and delete appointments in the calendar.

Read/write: users can manage the calendar itself.

Validity *

Set the validity of this resource. Each resource can be used in OTRS only, if this field is set to valid. Setting this field to invalid or invalid-temporarily will disable the use of the resource.

Calendar Ticket Appointments

Define rules for creating automatic appointments in this calendar based on ticket data. To add a new rule, click on the Add Rule button.

Calendar Settings - Ticket Appointments — Calendar Settings – Ticket Appointments

Link ticket: If set to Yes, a clickable link to the ticket will be displayed in the title of the appointment and the created appointment will be linked to the ticket. If set to No, the ticket number will be displayed as plain text in the title of the appointment and the appointment will not be linked to the ticket.
Start date: Select a start date for the ticket appointment.
End date: Select the end date for the ticket appointment.
Queues *: Select one or more queues to narrow down for which tickets appointments will be automatically created.
Search attributes: Additional search attributes can be added for further filtering by selecting an attribute and clicking on the ⊞ button.

By default, these events can trigger an update of a calendar appointment:

TicketSLAUpdate
TicketQueueUpdate
TicketStateUpdate
TicketCreate
ArticleCreate
TicketPendingTimeUpdate
TicketDynamicFieldUpdate_.*

Manage Settings

Use this section to add default values to appointments.

Each appointment dynamic fields are listed in this section. This feature controls only the visibility of the dynamic fields. Possible options:

Hide

The dynamic field is hidden in the forms and in the appointments.

Show

The dynamic field is shown in the forms and in the appointments, but it can have an empty value.

Show as mandatory

The dynamic field is shown in the forms and in the appointments, and it does not allow an empty value.

Use form configuration

The display of the dynamic field will follow the current form configuration, that is defined in the following system configuration settings:

Forms###AgentFrontend::Calendar::AppointmentCreate::Properties
Forms###AgentFrontend::Calendar::AppointmentUpdate::Properties

In case the Hide, Show or Show as mandatory options are used, form configuration will be effectively ignored, and the dynamic field configuration from the calendar will be applied.

Note

This section is visible only, if Dynamic Fields for appointments are added to the system.

Title (default): Define the default title for appointments using this calendar.
Description (default): Define the default description for appointments using this calendar.
Location (default): Define the default location for appointments using this calendar.
Additional description: Define the additional text which is shown on each appointment in Timeline Custom view to display more information in the overview screens. It is possible to show attributes of the appointments, as well as stored dynamic fields. Even the access to linked ticket data is possible.

It is possible to use OTRS smart tags related to the appointment, e.g. <OTRS_APPOINTMENT_X>, <OTRS_APPOINTMENT_DYNAMICFIELD_X>. You can even access data of linked tickets using <OTRS_APPOINTMENT_TICKET_X>. If more than one ticket is linked, you can use <OTRS_APPOINTMENT_TICKET_1_X>. Tickets are sorted by ticket ID.

Note

The appointment is not created at this time and not all values are there (e.g. no dynamic field values can be used). The defined texts are only used during appointment creation (no update functionality), therefore not all OTRS smart tags are usable.

The default values are populated whenever the calendar is chosen and the title, description or location is empty.

Behind the input fields for title, description and location, there is a refresh button if default values are specified. This refresh button could be used to re-apply the stored default values if for example dynamic fields are entered in the screen.

Warning

The already entered data will be overwritten using the refresh buttons.

Import Appointments

If at least one calendar have been added to the system, it is possible to import some appointments into the calendar.

To import some appointments:

Click on the Import Appointments button in the left sidebar.
Upload an iCal file and select a calendar.
Click on the Import appointments button.

Upload *: Click on the Browse… button, and select a valid iCal (.ics) file to upload.
Calendar *: Select an available calendar.

Note

If desired calendar is not listed here, please make sure that you have at least create permissions.
Update existing appointments?: If checked, all existing appointments in the calendar with same UniqueID will be overwritten.

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