It's important to always set the Owner on a ticket since if no one owns it, it won't get done. Some RT’s users take tickets as they come in or someone might be responsible for assigning tickets. But for a busy RT, wouldn't it be great to assign tickets automatically?
The AutomaticAssignment extension allows you to do exactly that. As you can see in the video below, this RT extension automatically sets the ticket Owner based on rules you configure. You can set a filter to define the list of possible owners and then a chooser which determines the method to use when assigning users from the pool of users. Get the extension today: (https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::AutomaticAssignment)
One default filter option allows you to set the list of potential owners to an RT group, making it easy to manage membership. The "Work Schedule" filter is a little more interesting. It allows users (or, perhaps, only their manager) to select which business hours they are available. Only users currently working when the ticket comes in are then considered for assignment.
One method for assigning tickets is the "Active Tickets" chooser, which sets the owner of the ticket to the user from the filter who has the least number of currently active tickets. The "Round Robin" chooser cycles through the available users list in sequence, giving each user a ticket as their turn comes up.
Automatic assignment is triggered by RT's scrips system, so you can activate rules per queue and select default conditions like "On Create" or define custom conditions like "On Correspond from Requestor."
As with many things in RT, the filters and choosers are designed to be extended in the future and we look forward to hearing new ideas for both.