Request Tracker 4.2 (released in October of 2013) and Request Tracker for Incident Response 3.2 (released in December 2014) will reach end of life on February 1, 2021. After this date, Best Practical will no longer support these series or publish any new releases with security updates, bug fixes, or new features. We recommend all RT 4.2 / RTIR 3.2 users upgrade to a supported release.
Best Practical continues to support RT 4.4 / RTIR 4.0 as a maintenance release and RT / RTIR 5.0 as the current stable release. Current supported releases and EOL dates are always available in our release page.
If you are upgrading, be sure to read all of the upgrade notes for RT and, if applicable, RTIR. If you would like assistance with your upgrade, are interested in exploring our on premise or hosted RT solutions, or would like to see a demo of what’s new in RT 5, drop us a line.
We hope you'll take this opportunity to upgrade and take advantage of all of the new features in our latest releases.
Thanks for using RT!
Intro to RT 5 Training
It’s an exciting time for us over here at Best Practical, as we have just released the next major version of Request Tracker, RT 5.0!
We couldn’t be happier to introduce the new features so we are offering a free Intro to RT 5 remote training session on July 30th at 10AM US Eastern time.
We’ll do a brief intro on what RT is and how different organizations use it, but the bulk of the session will be aimed at unveiling RT 5’s new features. This session will be useful for folks already using the software, as well as those who are looking for a ticketing solution. We would love for you to join us - reserve your seat!
In case you want a preview of what to expect for RT 5, check out our most recent announcement post, that goes into detail about the biggest changes.
Or, if you’re looking to get your feet wet with RT 5 today, we have a public demo site available, you can request a private demo instance, or, as always, RT is freely available to download.
RT 5.0.0 and RTIR 5.0.0 Released
We are very excited to announce that Request Tracker (RT) 5.0.0 is now available for download! We have been running the new version since late last year and it’s been great using the new theme and new features. As mentioned in our earlier alpha and beta releases, here are some of the new features you can look forward to:
New light and dark themes based on Bootstrap
Inline editing of ticket information
New Chart.js charting engine
Query builder support for transactions and assets
Graphical lifecycle editor
New interface for managing dashboard content
REST 2.0 API and token authentication
These and many more features and updates are listed in the full release notes.
Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR) 5.0.0 is also available. The theme has been updated to be compatible with RT and here are some new features we added:
New tool to read and easily create incidents from security feeds
Deeper integration with RT's core search and charts for improved reporting
Automatic domain parsing from email similar to existing IP parsing
You can see the full list of changes in the RTIR release notes.
We’ll be hosting a free, live session July 30th at 10AM US Eastern time to show off some of the new features. Reserve your spot today.
If you are upgrading, be sure to read all of the upgrade notes for RT and, if applicable, RTIR. If you would like assistance with your upgrade, are interested in exploring our on premise or hosted RT solutions, or would like to see a demo of what’s new in RT 5, drop us a line.
We'll have much more information on RT 5 in the weeks and months to come, so continue to watch our blog for details. In the meantime, enjoy the shiny new RT 5, we certainly have been!
RT 5.0.0 Beta 1 Now Available
Learn More about Request Tracker in our Free Webinar!
If you don’t have a ticketing system already, now might be the perfect time to get one set up for your business. With all the uncertainty in the world, eliminating the “who’s doing what” or “who’s responding to client x” questions in your day-to-day will alleviate major stress and give you more time to focus on growing and maintaining your business. Enter Request Tracker.
Request Tracker is an open-source ticketing system that helps you track items you can’t afford to forget. And now, we are offering a FREE webinar on Wednesday, April 1st at 1pm US Eastern Time, that will dive a bit deeper into how RT (Request Tracker) benefits businesses of all types. RT is and always will be free to deploy on your own, but we also offer managed hosting, product support and professional services options. In other words, we’ve got your back!
The topics we will cover on our webinar are:
What is Request Tracker?
How can RT help your organization?
How does Request Tracker improve your team’s ability to work remotely?
What is a workflow and how do they work in RT?
How to generate reports in RT to help manage your business and team’s productivity.
How does RT’s knowledgebase work? How it benefits your business.
How you can get RT for your business - whether you want to go it alone or are looking for some guidance, we will cover all the bases.
Are you ready to learn more about how RT can improve your business? Sign up for the FREE webinar here! We can’t wait for you to join us on Wednesday, April 1.
How We Work Remotely with Request Tracker
Many thousands of people are working fully remote for the first time as employers look for ways to keep their people safe from COVID-19. Best Practical has been a fully remote company for several years and we use a variety of tools, including RT, to work and communicate, allowing us to function as if we were all in the same office. As people adjust to remote work we wanted to share how we do it.
RT 5.0 Alpha 1 Demo Site Available
As we wrote last week, a pre-release alpha version of the upcoming RT 5.0 release is now available. We know not everyone has the time or extra servers to install the new code, so we spun up a new demo site for people who want to take a look. Right now this demo is mostly to allow people to preview RT 5.0 and the guest account is somewhat limited. We’ll continue to update it as we add more features and fixes.
If you find bugs or have feedback for us, you can open a ticket in our public RT system. You can sign in with a Google account, post as a guest, or just send email to rt-bugs@bestpractical.com which will automatically create a public ticket. If you’re interested in RT in general, either as a new user or upgrading from an older version of RT, you can email us at sales@bestpractical.com to get a personal demo site or to ask questions.
RT 5.0.0 Alpha 1 Now Available
As we announced near the end of December, RT 5.0 is coming and today we're happy to make available an alpha release for you to start to test with. Alpha means not yet ready for production, so at this phase we're asking for testing only.
Why Test Early?
We know testing takes time, so you might ask how it might help you in addition to helping us. One of the main advantages for you is you’ll get to see how the new RT will run with your configurations, customizations, and database. The earlier you report bugs and issues that surface in your environment, the better the chance that we'll be able to address them before the official 5.0 release.
This release brings a ton of new features and a great new look that we think people will want to upgrade to. Testing early allows you to be ready for when the official release comes out.
More New Features
We highlighted a few new features previously so check those out if you missed them. Today we'll mention a couple more, including one that’s had a big impact on us as we have been using it (yes, we have been running the new code for a while now). That new feature is inline edit and it provides a couple of new ways to update ticket data.
Edit Values in Ticket Listings
Right on your homepage, you'll see inline edit now available for fields in ticket listings. These include saved searches on your homepage, in dashboards, or searches you build in the Query Builder.
When you first load the page, you won't see it right away. But as you mouse over fields, you'll see a pencil icon appear which means you can edit that field right on the page.
When you click, you can edit the value right there.
Now you can easily go down a list of tickets and update subjects, reset priority, change status, and even update custom fields. For users who often need to check on and update many tickets at a time, we think this will be a huge time-saver. We provide a checkmark to confirm the change, but for most fields you just select the new value or type and hit Enter, making updates feel quick and natural.
Ticket Updates
Inline edit is also available on the ticket display page. Each portlet now has a button with the same pencil icon. You can click that button and edit ticket metadata right on the same page.
User Entry Display
We have also updated the look and behavior of users when you add them as Requestors on new tickets or One-time Ccs on updates. Values will still auto-complete as before and suggestions from the ticket are shown, but now as you add users they are displayed in a colored box so it's easier to work with each user as you add and remove them. You can even drag a user from one box to another. This makes RT look more like modern email clients and should be easier and more comfortable for new users.
Send Us Feedback
Ready to get started? You can find all of the details for downloading the alpha release on our forum.
We hope you find some time to test and try out these and many more new features. If you find bugs or have feedback for us, you can open a ticket in our public RT system . You can sign in with a Google account, post as a guest, or just send email to rt-bugs@bestpractical.com which will automatically create a public ticket. Note that we can’t notify you of updates on guest posts, but you can come back and check the ticket later.
Our next milestone will be a beta release that will be much closer to what will be version 5.0.0. We're still adding new features and fixing bugs as we work toward that. In the meantime, you can watch us on GitHub and watch here for information on more new features!
20 Years of Request Tracker and What's Next with RT 5
In October of this year, RT turned 20 years old, at least if you look at the commit for the official 1.0 release and the date of the 1.0 tarball on our download site. If you look all the way back to the beginning, you'll see RT is actually two years older than that, and even older if you look at dates in some of the notes in the initial commit.
Whichever day you want to pick to celebrate RT's birthday, we're proud to still be going strong after 20+ years and 700 releases of RT. And believe it or not, there are people out there still running RT 1!
RT 5 in 2020
As we prepare for another decade of RT, we're very excited to announce that RT 5, the next major version of RT, will be released in 2020. One of the biggest changes to RT is a complete update of the web front-end. We re-wrote the web interface in Bootstrap, one of the most popular and widely used front-end component libraries on the web today.
For many users, this means a modern new theme and a responsive design. For developers familiar with Bootstrap, it means it will now be much easier to customize RT's UI or even create your own new themes using the Bootstrap toolkit as a base.
Bootstrap-based RT 5 home page
We have also integrated Fontawesome and added sharp, clean, SVG icons throughout the user interface.
The front-end rewrite isn't all we have been working on. RT 5 will have a ton of new features to make RT easier and more efficient than ever. As a short preview, here are a few of the features we're working on:
A new Javascript charting engine using Chart.js
New chart engine
RT configuration accessible from the web administrative interface
SuperUsers will now be able to take advantage of RT's hundreds of configuration options by making changes right in the browser, no ssh required.
Configuration in RT admin interface
Transaction Query Builder
You can now search for individual transactions and get transaction information in search results. This allows you to do searches like "show me all the replies I sent this week" or "show me all of the changes to this custom field on this ticket" or even "show me how many replies were sent by everyone on the Support queue last week".
Transaction query builder
Watch Us Work and Work with US
As an open source company, we develop in the open, so if you're interested in experimenting along with us, the future release is on the RT master branch, accessible on GitHub. If you have feedback, feature requests, or bug reports, you’ll see the new RT 5 version as an option in our public RT system. You can sign in with a Google account or post as a guest. Note that we can’t notify you of updates on guest posts. Coming soon, we'll have a demo site with the pre-release code so you can see it without building your own.
We're very excited about this new release and we think you will be too. We'll have more information in the new year and possibly some pre-releases that will allow us to get some testing out in the field. Happy (a bit late) birthday to RT and happy (a bit early) new year!
Sponsoring New Features in RT
We are always thinking about new ways for our customers to be involved with the future of Request Tracker. Since RT is open source, many of the features you see today are because of users just like you.
We get a lot of feedback from our customers about features they'd like to see added to RT, and while we'd love to work on each request, the majority of our time is focused on providing product support to our on-premise and hosting customers, or working on new features that other users have sponsored.
To help share future product ideas we’ve created a Sponsored Features Page. If you’re interested in adding a potential feature to the list, would like to help fund the development of a feature, or are interested in shared sponsorship opportunities please get in touch with us.
We'll be updating this list as we receive feedback, so check back in often to see what great features may be in store for RT!