Employees are creating tickets where there are non-osTicket-IDs appearing in the body and subjects of tickets and threads.

When a search is performed for one of these ids sometimes osTicket will return results and sometimes not.

I've noticed that if the number occurs at the very beginning of the subject line, osTicket will return that ticket in a search, but if the number occurs midway it will not.

Sometimes it will return results that are in the body and some times not.

I need to find these sql queries (related to search) in the osTicket files and modify them, but I'm not sure exactly where they are.

PHP Admin has no problem finding these results, and it offers clues as to how these sql queries need to be. Look at this query, generanted by php admin:

SELECT * FROM `account1_osticket`.`ost_ticket` WHERE (CONVERT(`ticket_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`ticketID` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`dept_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`sla_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`priority_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`topic_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`staff_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`team_id` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`email` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR

CONVERT(`name` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`subject` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR

CONVERT(`phone` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`phone_ext` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR

CONVERT(`ip_address` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`status` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR

CONVERT(`source` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`isoverdue` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR

CONVERT(`isanswered` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`duedate` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`reopened` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`closed` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%'

OR CONVERT(`lastmessage` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`lastresponse` USING utf8) LIKE

'%50499%' OR CONVERT(`created` USING utf8) LIKE '%50499%' OR CONVERT(`updated` USING utf8) LIKE

'%50499%')

Notice in the query above, I'm searching for the number 50499. Notice how phpadmin converts each field to utf8, before performing a "like" encapsulated in %.

Perhaps I need to modify the queries in osTicket, so that they do similar techniques, and so that the employees will definitely find the ids they are searching for (no matter where the string occur: beginning, middle, or end of a subject or thread-body).

If you'd like to see a screen shot of this example not working, look at this:

http://neartalk.com/ss/2013-05-21_05.png(http://neartalk.com/ss/2013-05-21_05.png)

Notice that the very first ticket has 50499 in its subject, and that I'm searching for 50499. However, after clicking the search button, it returns zero results.

Additionally, if I do an advanced search, with the same query, it says there are results, but it won't show them:

http://neartalk.com/ss/2013-05-21_05.png(http://neartalk.com/ss/2013-05-21_05.png)

In the screenshot above, if I click the "view" link, it doesn't show any tickets, despite the fact that it says there is one ticket to view!

I just found this, which discusses an issue osTicket has with finding numbers in text:

http://osticket.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-6741.html(http://osticket.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-6741.html)

I've commented out the code that makes osTicket assume you are searching for an osTicketID if your search query is numeric. At our company, the osTicketID may as well be hidden, no one ever searches for something by that id. I realize, that in a database, each entity must have a unique id, but to assume (by default), that if a user's query is numeric, they want to limit their search to only results where the osTicketID matches their query is rather presumptuous.

None the less, thanks for all the hard work that has gone into osTicket.