==== Redmine for Course Email Support ====

Redmine is a trouble-ticket/problem reporting system that provides a nice way
for a course's instructional team (instructor and teaching assistants) to manage responses to students.

The **student** interface is through email.  Students email the course
account, ie
	cis9999@socs.uoguelph.ca
and this will open a ticket.  Students get all responses through email and
interact only through email.

The **instructional team** interface is a web interface at the following url:
	https://redmine.socs.uoguelph.ca/

Staff use this interface to access open issues:
  * select your project first to get to the right course
  * the **Issues** screen indicates tickets students have sent ("open" tickets are displayed by default)
  * clicking on the subject line opens the ticket

To reply to an open issue:
  * click on the subject line of the ticket
  * use the "reply" tool to open a reply pane and ***click on the "Send note" checkbox to make the reply go to the student***

Caveats:
  * **don't** let TAs reply to the update messages they may receive by email directly.  This will mean that their reply doesn't go into the ticket log
  * **do** use the "closed" status to get rid of tickets about conversations that are solved
  * **do** use the "private notes" check box instead of the "send note" check box if information not to be sent to the student should be added to the ticket chain
  * **don't forget** to use the "send note" check box to cause the student to get a reply.  If this is forgotten "reply" again, copy the text from the earlier reply and use "send note"
  * Instructors and TAs must first log in to Redmine before being added to a course project