OTRS allows you to create Response templates, predefined messages that are linked to specific queues, which can be easily selected by agents when delivering a response to a customer. Response templates can significantly increase the speed of service delivered by your help desk agents. 

If you're using OTRS and you haven't yet configured Response templates, here are a few questions in order to determine if they will be helpful in your help desk environment:

• Do your help desk agents regularly send the same type of message to different customers?
• Do your help desk agents regularly send the same attachments to different customers?
• Does your help desk generate enough requests to make Response templates helpful?

Response templates are very easy to configure in OTRS; continue reading for step by step directions. 

Directions

Create your Response templates:  

Navigate to the Admin /  Responses dialog:

Click "Add response"

This will take you to the Add Response screen, where you define the name and body text of your Response template.

The Response template "Name" field is required, and will appear to your agents in the Ticket view "Reply" dropdown. It will not be visible to your customers. The body text, or "Response" field can be left blank to create an empty reply, or populated with your desired message. 

When defining the body text of your Response template, you can use OTRS notification tags to insert information into the ticket. This reference is also available if you scroll to the bottom of the Add Response screen:

<OTRS_OWNER_*>
Ticket owner options (e. g. <OTRS_OWNER_UserFirstname>).

<OTRS_RESPONSIBLE_*>
Ticket responsible options (e. g. <OTRS_RESPONSIBLE_UserFirstname>).

<OTRS_CURRENT_*>
Options of the current user who requested this action (e. g. <OTRS_CURRENT_UserFirstname>).

<OTRS_TICKET_*>
Options of the ticket data (e. g. <OTRS_TICKET_TicketNumber>, <OTRS_TICKET_TicketID>, <OTRS_TICKET_Queue>, <OTRS_TICKET_State>).

<OTRS_CUSTOMER_DATA_*>
Options of the current customer user data (e. g. <OTRS_CUSTOMER_DATA_UserFirstname>).

<OTRS_CONFIG_*>
Config options (e. g. <OTRS_CONFIG_HttpType>).

For more information about OTRS Notification tags, see this article.

Connect your Response templates to Queues:

Navigate to the Admin / Responses <-> Queues dialog:

From the Response <-> Queues overview screen, select one of your created responses from the list:

Select the Queues that you want this Response to be available in:

Result:

Now when you navigate to an existing ticket in one of the Queues selected for the your new Response template, you will see the template in the "Reply" dropdown:

Note that you must have an external type article selected for the "Reply" dropdown to appear - Response templates cannot be used with internal type articles.

The next Tips and Tricks article will focus on creating pre-defined attachements for your Response templates.