Chapter 3. Getting Started

In this chapter, we'll give you a basic overview of how to use RT's web interface. This is the primary interface to RT for both users and administrators you can access all of RT's features and configuration options through it. Once you've read this chapter you should be able to log into RT and find, modify, and resolve tickets. We'll also touch on what you can use email for and how it integrates with RT. The RT command-line tool, covered in Chapter 4, also performs many of the same tasks you'll learn in this chapter.

This chapter assumes that you are running your own RT installation. If you are using an existing installation to learn about RT, be careful about creating new tickets. You don't want to broadcast your test tickets inadvertently to the entire user base. For experimenting, you might be interested in the standalone server that ships with RT. The standalone server is a small web server written in Perl. Because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent web clients, it is not really suitable for anything other than testing. However, it is very useful for that, because it requires no other web server to be installed. See the sidebar "Standalone Server Mode" in Chapter 2 for instructions on how to start the standalone server.