[rt-users] Workflow problem; approval process problem.

[wac]

Hello again,

I am fairly new to RT (so please be gentle). On the other hand I do  
have a pretty good idea what I want it to accomplish. :-)

Currently we have to following situation:
There are 3 groups (Staff, Sys-admins, Management). A member of the  
staff opens a Ticket. Normally the ticket will be assigned to a member  
of the sysadmin-group. Unfortunately they cannot make all the  
decisions by them self. Especially when a ticket will exceed a certain  
amount of time a member of the management-group should give his/her  
approval first.
Every time a ticket is closed the requestor needs to sign the ticket  
to make sure the work has been done.


So the workflow should somehow look like the following:

NEW TICKET (Status: new) -> ASIGN TO SYSADMIN-MEMBER (Status: open) ->  
SYSADMIN CALCULATES TIME; IF "Time Estimated" > X -> GO INTO APPROVAL  
PROCESS ELSE -> WORK UNTIL DONE (Status: resolved)-> STAFF-MEMBER  
(Status: closed or re-open)


To accomplish this, I first added the statuses: "Needs approval",  
"approved", "closed".

<RT_SiteConfig.pm>
Set(@ActiveStatus, ('new', 'open', 'stalled', 'needs approval'));
Set(@InactiveStatus, ('approved', 'closed', 'resolved', 'rejected',  
'deleted'));

Then I tried to add the approval process (see:  
http://requesttracker.wikia.com/wiki/ApprovalCreation). The problem is  
that there are a lot of different queues and many different  
“managements-groups” they shouldn’t be able to see each other’s  
approvals.
The other problem I am facing is that I only want to start the  
approval process in some cases so I would have to trigger it with a  
“On Status Change” script, this isn’t working, though.
Can I manually add a condition? Something like “on closed”?
It would be very helpful if someone could tell me if I am following  
the wrong lead here, or if I am on the right track.
Has anyone ever done a setup like this? If so, maybe he/she could give  
me some starting point.

Thank you,
Chris