=encoding utf8

=head1 Articles

Articles are a way of managing stock answers or frequently asked
questions.  Articles are one or more custom fields whose values can
be easily inserted into ticket replies or searched and browsed within
RT.  They are organized into classes and topics.

=head2 UI

The user interface to Articles is available from the Articles menu.  Admin
functionality can be found under Admin -> Articles.  Once configured, articles
will become available for searching on the Reply/Comment page on tickets.
There are L</"Configuration Options"> to make Articles available on ticket
creation.

For the Articles menu to be visible to your Privileged users, you must grant
Privileged the ShowArticlesMenu right globally (Admin -> Global -> Group
Rights).  You may grant the right as selectively as you wish if, for example,
you only want a certain group of your users to use articles.

=head2 Basics

You will need to make some decisions about how to organize your
articles.  Articles will be organized into one Class and multiple
Topics.  They will use Custom Fields to store their article data.
These Custom Fields can be configured on a Class by Class basis.
Classes can be made available globally or on a per-Queue basis.

=head2 Organization

=head3 Classes

Classes for articles are similar to RT's queues for tickets.  They can
be created by going to Admin -> Articles -> Classes -> New Class.  Articles
are assigned to one Class.  When you create Custom Fields for use with
Articles, they will be applied Globally or to a Class, like Custom
Fields are applied to a Queue in RT.

A common use for Articles is to store frequently
used replies for requestors, like troubleshooting steps or how to sign
up for a new account. When you insert Article text, you may or may not
want to include the Article name and summary, in addition to the content,
when inserting the Article in a reply. You can control this behavior on
the Class configuration page.

Classes need to be Applied, just like a Custom Field, by using the
Applies To link on the Modify Class page (Admin ->
Articles -> Classes, select the class to modify).  You can apply
them globally or on a queue-by-queue basis.

=head3 Topics

You can also use Topics to organize your Articles.  While editing a
Class, there is a Topics tab for Class-specific Topics.  You can create
global Topics from the Global tab under Admin.

When editing Topics, type the name (and optionally description) of the
Topic, and then click the button at the appropriate location in the
Topic hierarchy. This should allow you to build a tree of Topics. This
tree of Topics should show up when creating or modifying articles in
the class. These can be arbitrarily nested.

Global Topics will be available for all Articles, regardless of their
Class.  Articles can belong to both global and Class-specific Topics.

Article topics can be set from the Modify screen for the article --
simply select as many topics as you desire from the list at the bottom
of the screen.

=head2 Custom Fields

Articles don't have a single "body" section for each
article. Everything is a custom field (except for name, summary and
some other basic metadata). So to put information on an
Article, you need to create a custom field to hold the Article
body and other data.  When you create these new Custom Fields, set
the Applies To field to Articles.

Once you've created your Custom Fields, go into your Classes, click
on Custom Fields, and add the Custom Fields you want to each Class.
Alternatively, use the Applies To link from each Custom Field.

=head2 Creating Articles

You can create an Article from scratch by going to Articles ->
Create and then picking which Class to create the Article under.
The Summary, Description and Custom Fields will all be searchable when
including an Article and you can control which Custom Fields end up in
your Ticket from the Class configuration page.

=head3 Extracting an Article

Sometimes activity on a ticket will generate information that would be
very useful as an article. RT provides an easy way to extract this ticket
content into an article.

On the ticket display page, the Actions menu contains an "Extract to article"
option. When you select that action, RT will ask you which Class to create
your new Article in. Once you select a Class name, the Ticket's transactions
will be displayed, along with a set of select boxes. For each transaction, you
can pick which Custom Field that content should be extracted to.

=head2 Including an Article

When replying to or commenting on tickets or creating tickets, there
is a UI widget that lets you search for and include Articles in
your reply. When you select an article, the content is inserted into
the current comment or reply box, but you remain in edit mode so you
can refine the response before sending.

The Include Article dropdown contains articles from any classes that
are applied to the queue the ticket is in. When the list of articles
exceeds the configured L<RT_Config/DropdownMenuLimit>, it
automatically turns into a search box which allows you to type an
article name. The search box will help you by auto-completing to
matching articles as you type.

=head3 Disabling Escaped HTML

By default, when an article is inserted into the ticket message box,
as a security measure, HTML tags are escaped and only text is displayed.
For example, RT will display "Me You Greeting Hello world!" from the
following XML:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <note>
    <to>Me</to>
    <from>You</from>
    <heading>Greeting</heading>
    <body>Hello world!</body>
  </note>

In cases as above, where the content is harmless and displaying it on the
ticket might be necessary, there is an option to disable escaping these
tags per article class. This can be done by unchecking the "Escape HTML"
box on the Modify Class page. Please note this is potentially unsafe and
its use should be limited to trusted users.

=head3 Disabling Ticket Linking

When an article is included in a ticket's comment or reply, the article
is automatically added as a link to the ticket. This means that the article
will be listed under the Links portlet on ticket display page, and also on
the article display page. If you use an article many times, it can result
in a very long list of links on the article page.

To avoid this, you can disable automatic linking globally (via
L<RT_Config/LinkArticlesOnInclude>) or by class. To disable it on the class
level, uncheck the "Link article to ticket" option under "When inserting
articles in this class into emails" on class modify page. Note that
disabling this feature will only affect future comments/replies on tickets.
Existing links to articles will remain linked.

=head2 Queue-Specific List of Articles 

You can use Topics to organize a set of Queue-specific Articles.
Simply create a global Topic called 'Queues' and then create Topics
under Queues named after each of your Queues.  Within each Queue-named
Topic, create some Topics and then assign Articles to those
sub-topics.  This creates a hierarchy like this:

Queues
\-> General
    \-> Topic 1
    \-> Topic 2

If you are replying to a Ticket in the General Queue you will be
offered a choice of Topic 1 and Topic 2 along with the searching.
After choosing Topic 1 or Topic 2, you will be given a list of
relevant articles to choose.

You can also organize articles into separate classes and selectively
apply classes to the queues they should be used for.

=head2 SelfService Interface

If you want unprivileged users to be able to search for articles
using the self-service interface, first grant them rights on the
classes and articles they should see. Then set
L<$SelfServiceShowArticleSearch|RT_Config/SelfServiceShowArticleSearch>
to C<1> to enable an article search box at the top of the page
in self service.

=head2 Article Links Type

RT supports two types of articles: the default Content and Links. Links type
articles provide a specialized interface for managing collections of URLs
that can be displayed as formatted link lists on dashboards.

=head3 Prerequisites

Before creating Links type articles, ensure your article class has a
custom field named "Content" of type "Text" or "HTML". This field stores
the formatted link data.

=head3 Creating Links Articles

To create a links type article:

=over 4

=item 1.

Navigate to Articles -> Create

=item 2.

Set Type to "Links" which will change the editing interface

=item 3.

Enter links using the dynamic form:

=over 4

=item *

Title: Display text for the link

=item *

Link: URL (can be external or internal RT URLs)

=item *

Description: Optional explanatory text

=back

=back

The interface automatically adds new rows as you focus on the last row,
allowing entry of unlimited links.

=head3 Dashboard Integration

Links type articles can be added to dashboards:

=over 4

=item 1.

Edit a dashboard and go to the Content tab

=item 2.

Under Available Widgets look for the "Articles" section

=item 3.

Look for "Links: [Article Name]" entries

=item 4.

Add to dashboard - links display as a formatted list

=back

=head3 Example Use Cases

=over 4

=item *

Help desk resource links (knowledge base, vendor sites)

=item *

Project-specific external tools and documentation

=item *

Quick access menus for frequently used RT reports

=item *

Department-specific link collections for staff dashboards

=back

=head3 Technical Notes

Links are stored as HTML in the Content custom field and parsed for editing.
The Title and Link fields are required; Description is optional.

=head1 Process Articles

Some work managed on tickets in RT will have a defined process or
set of steps to take when handling the ticket. Articles are a
convenient place to capture this process and you can then display
these steps right on the ticket to make it easy for users to follow.

A queue typically can accept multiple types of tickets, and each
of these might have a different process. For example, you might have
a queue called "Product Backlog" that tracks work on some software.
This queue could receive tickets from multiple sources, some
new feature requests and some bug reports.

You might have a different process to handle these two types
of tickets. To start, you might categorize these using a custom field
on the queue called "Ticket Type". Working from this custom field,
RT provides a way to display a different article for each of the
options you add for these types.

For example, if the type is set to "Feature Request", the article
"Feature Request Process" would be displayed for the ticket. If the
type is changed to "Bug Report", the article "Bug Report Process"
would be displayed. The next section describes how to configure
RT to show these process articles.

=head2 Configuring Process Articles

To enable process articles on a queue, first you need to decide which
field on that queue to use to drive which article is shown. Create a
new custom field with ticket types or categories if you don't already
have one.

Next create a new class to contain your process articles. Putting them in
their own class allows you to manage them separate from other FAQ type
articles you might have for email replies.

Once you have these two created, set L<%ProcessArticleFields|RT_Config/%ProcessArticleFields>
with the custom field, and class to use for your queue.

In the class you created, you can now create a new article for each
entry in your custom field. Once you have them created, you will
configure the mapping from custom field value to article name using
the configuration L<%ProcessArticleMapping|RT_Config/%ProcessArticleMapping>.

Article content can then be updated at any time by modifying the source
article. If you add a new option to your custom field, update the
configuration to map it to a new article with the corresponding
process details.

=head1 Article Templates

If you want to be able to add dynamic content to your articles, like showing
the ticket ID in a response, you can enable the article template feature with
the L<$EnableArticleTemplates|RT_Config/$EnableArticleTemplates> feature.

Once enabled, you can include code blocks in your article content following
the same rules as RT's email templates. You can access the current C<$Article>
and C<$Ticket> objects to automatically include information from the article
or ticket in the content inserted into the response. For example, to include
the ticket id, you could include content like this:

    Regarding ticket number { $Ticket->Id }

=head2 Article Templates on Ticket Create

If you use articles on the ticket create page, include a check to make sure
the ticket object is available. On "create" the ticket doesn't exist yet,
so you'll want adjust your article content:

    { if ( $Ticket && $Ticket->Id ) {
        $OUT .= "Regarding ticket number " . $Ticket->Id;
      }
    }
    Below is updated information.

In the above, the C<$Ticket> section will only run on reply or comment for
an existing ticket. The C<$OUT> variable provides a way to add strings to
the output inside a code block. See the template documentation for details.

=head2 Templates with HTML Content

You might save an article template with some code and see it changed to
something like this:

    { if ( $Ticket &amp;&amp; $Ticket-&gt;Id ) {

In that case, first try disabling "scrubbing" for article custom fields.
This is a security feature in RT that parses HTML content and removes
content like C<script> tags to prevent compromises from outside content
like email. You can disable this for just article custom fields with this
configuration:

    Set(
        %ScrubCustomFieldOnSave,
        Default           => 1,
        'RT::Article'     => 0,
    );

When doing this, make sure to grant modify permission on articles only to
trusted users.

=head2 Coding in HTML Article Templates

The HTML editor is very helpful for creating nicely formatted HTML article
content. However, it can sometimes cause some issues when you include Perl
code in your templates. If you click the "Source" button in the editor, you
might see your C<$Ticket-E<gt>Id> appear like this:

    { if ( $Ticket &amp;&amp; $Ticket-&gt;Id ) {

RT will try to convert these automatically and make the code run.

Some special characters can be a challenge because the editor might
turn them into Unicode. To avoid this issue, CKEditor's automatic text
transformation feature is disabled in RT by default. If you do want that
feature on, you will need to be careful when wring Perl code and "undo" the
automatic change by hitting C<Backspace> or C<Cmd+Z>/C<Ctrl+Z> if needed,
e.g. when C<-E<gt>> is replaced with C<→>.

For quotation marks, You can also use a Perl feature that allows you to
use alternate syntax instead. One option is the C<qq> operator with any
delimiter. The following two statements are identical:

        $OUT .= "Regarding ticket number " . $Ticket->Id;

        $OUT .= qq|Regarding ticket number | . $Ticket->Id;

The latter version uses a "pipe" or vertical line after C<qq> as the start
and end because it's unlikely to clash with HTML or other Perl code.

=head1 Configuration Options

See the L<Articles section|RT_Config/Articles> on the RT Configuration page
for configuration options related to Articles features.

=cut
