June 18, 2009

RTFM 2.4.2 Now Available!

We are happy to announce that RTFM 2.4.2 is now ready for download!

It includes a number of bugfixes and an important compatibility fix
which you need to use RTFM with RT 3.8.3 or greater.

You can download it from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/RTFM-2.4.2.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/RTFM-2.4.2.tar.gz.sig

SHA1 sums

d96b0cd58d983098e4543143aef06b351fdd4a84  RTFM-2.4.2.tar.gz
bbdf23e5da00e6b464f15d72adfe16f43e70837b  RTFM-2.4.2.tar.gz.sig

A changelog can be found after the cut:

Continue reading "RTFM 2.4.2 Now Available!" »

RT 3.8.4 Now Available!

We are happy to announce that RT 3.8.4 is now available. You can
download it from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.4.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.4.tar.gz.sig

SHA1 sums
c786eb78dd6c8374da3bc0dd10414e040d69864f  rt-3.8.4.tar.gz
7af1be26513b2b26390a456a3360e5cda7d63008  rt-3.8.4.tar.gz.sig

This is primarily a bugfix and security release of RT.

The most important fix is that RT now requires the SuperUser right to edit global RT at a Glance.  In all previous 3.8 releases, the "ShowConfigTab" right unintentionally enabled this. If you have not granted this right to any non-administrative user, then this issue should not affect you.

Alternatively, you can download and install the patch that resolves this issue without requiring an upgrade to 3.8.4.

A more complete list of bugs and features can be found after the cut.
Please note that there is a change to database content in this release; see UPGRADING for more.

Continue reading "RT 3.8.4 Now Available!" »

RT 3.6.8 Now Available!

We are happy to announce that RT 3.6.8 is now available. You can
download it from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.6.8.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.6.8.tar.gz.sig

SHA1 sums
c7b4fac30b5b91a1c7f64bc05ecf63f40aaec50d  rt-3.6.8.tar.gz
cb80cca50254127362a8ff8d9af71ff66881f300  rt-3.6.8.tar.gz.sig

This is a bugfix and security release of RT.

The most important fix is that RT now requires the SuperUser right to edit global RT at a Glance.  In all versions since 3.6.2, the "ShowConfigTab" right unintentionally enabled this. If you have not granted this right to any non-administrative user, then this issue should not affect you.

Please download and install the patch that resolves this issue without requiring an upgrade to 3.6.8.

A more complete list of fixes can be found below.

Fixes & Cleanups

  • Updated italian translation (Thanks to Nicola Murino)
  • validate CFs in SelfService
  • Fix: On comment/correspond, attached files are not recorded if comment/response content is empty.
  • Add HasAttribute and HasNoAttribute to the tisql
  • Allow only SuperUser to edit RT at a Glance
  • Copyright updates

June 03, 2009

Use Hiveminder on your iPhone with iMinder!

A while back, we released a web services API for Hiveminder.  The Hiveminder API powers todo.pl as well as a host of other small tools.

Kris Arnold, a Hiveminder user and  software developer has created iMinder, a nifty (and free) Hiveminder client for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If you're an iPhone or iPod Touch user, you can download iMinder 1.0.1 the App Store. Built on the Hiveminder API, iMinder lets you access your tasks using an intuitive iPhone interface and transparently keeps your iPhone in sync with Hiveminder. (It does a bunch of other cool stuff too.) 

When you start up iMinder, you'll see something like this:

Main screen


iMinder lets you make changes to a task via your phone:
Quick changes

Read more at iMinder's website, or follow iMinder development on Twitter.

Thanks, Kris!

(More screenshots after the cut)

Continue reading "Use Hiveminder on your iPhone with iMinder!" »

May 28, 2009

RT 3.8.3 Now Available!

Best Practical Solutions is happy to announce that RT 3.8.3 is now available.

You can download it from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.3.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.3.tar.gz.sig

SHA1 sums

6fe0187408104e9a5a9f0832f1f11ed24b6df10a  rt-3.8.3.tar.gz
e87623b4a958b13d5ce1474ca6d8d4024fa13920  rt-3.8.3.tar.gz.sig

Some highlighted changes include:

  • Bug fixes for IE support with the RichText editor.
  • Improvements in parsing and validating gpg-signed messages.
  • Improved config loading, errors, and improved messages about where Config overrides originated.
  • Fix for rewriting Ticket subjects when using Queue Subject tags.
  • Fixes to searching for NULL Custom Fields and improved searching performance.
  • New User level config options for HomePage and Search Result Refresh.
  • Multiple new callbacks.
  • Updated Scrip descriptions to mention that a Notify All includes the Owner.
  • Dashboard improvements, including the ability to nest Dashboards, new access links for dashboards, callbacks, and a new Mon-Fri subscription.

A complete changelog for the RT 3.8.3 release is available from the mailing list archive.

The Future of SVK

First things first, to answer the subject of this very article, I'd like to announce that we at Best Practical will no longer be actively developing SVK.  We won't be implementing new features or working to improve performance.  Rest assured, however, that for at least the next 18 months, we're committed to making sure that SVK will continue to work with the current release of Subversion.  (Changes to support Subversion 1.6 have landed in trunk and will be released within the next week.)

When I started to develop SVK during my sabbatical year in 2003, the best practical option was to reuse the versioned filesystem from Subversion.  However using Subversion's filesystem as SVK's backend has become one of SVK's primary technical issues, as we found it to be inadequate as a storage backend for more complicated merges, which require a lot of traversal.

If we take SVK as something that brought decentralized development to Subversion, which itself focused on being "CVS Done Right", we can mark SVK "mission complete".  The open source community has moved on from the Subversion model a lot sooner than many people thought, to a variety of version control systems designed from scratch with distributed development in mind. These have the advantages of a lot of recent innovation, and aren't burdened by the design of an existing system.  SVK (and Subversion, too) filled in the gap between CVS and the new world of distributed version control systems in a way I'm quite proud of.

I'm grateful to all the members of the Subversion and SVK communities for their support, patches, bug reports, encouragement, discussions, and of course, complaints and flames as well.  The greatly improved productivity brought by the tools have contributed to countless open source projects.  If there is something called the version control "geist", we are all definitely part of it.  Thank you all!

As much as this marks the end of SVK's 6 year life as a standalone development tool, We at Best Practical are committed to help scale Subversion in large and distributed environments.  SVK's core technology will live on as part of Pushmi, our enterprise read/write replication system for Subversion.

I first built SVK so that I could contribute to open source projects while offline or traveling.  I'd like to thank the Lofoten Islands, the place where I was most productive hacking around, for helping to make that dream a reality.

Thank you all again.

Cheers,
CLK

March 20, 2009

RT 4 - status report

It should come as no suprise to folks that we've been hard at work on what will become RT 4.0.

We've been working hard to overhaul the entire codebase. The current version of the web interface is only 10,000 lines of HTML shorter (118kloc down from 128kloc), but the core libraries have shrunk from 68kloc of code to 54kloc.

At the same time, we've moved RT from its own homegrown application framework to Jifty, Best Practical's next-generation web application platform. Jifty brings with it all sorts of new features which make it easier to build out web services and web applications with less code and easier support for modern Web 2.0 features.

If you download the RT 3.999 development branch today, you'll find a few major new features. The most visible of those is "Status schemas." In RT 4, you can define directed graphs of ticket states and valid transitions between those states. You can associate one or more queue with any status schema. At its simplest, this means that you can now freely add or remove statuses from your RT instance through the web interface. If you want to get a bit fancier, you can specify that "new" tickets can move only to "open" or "rejected" and that "open" tickets can only move to the "testing" or "rejected" states. This makes it easier than ever to adapt RT to your existing process and workflow.

Under the hood, we've begun to generalize other parts of RT. While role groups are still limited to "Requestor", "Cc" and "AdminCc", we've mostly completed work that will allow you to define custom role groups. (Exposing that functionality isn't currently slated for RT 4.0)

There are a few fairly major projects in progress which we're currently planning for RT 4.0:

  • Most application configuration will move into the database, making it easier for RT administrators to fully manage RT using the web interface.
  • TicketSQL has been extended as 'tisql', a new, more powerful query language which will be available internally for all objects in RT, not just tickets.
  • Scrips are being replaced with a new workflow engine codenamed 'Lorzy'. Lorzy makes it possible to build out much more complex rules than Scrips' simple "If __ Then __" conditionals. Under the hood, Lorzy is a fully sandboxable lisp-like functional minilanguage with named, typed arguments and the ability to detect runaway rules and limit individual rules by actor. In the future, we hope to also expose Lorzy as a user-level scripting engine for RT.
  • Date and Time rationalization - We've been ripping out RT's old and fairly adhoc implementations of various bits of date and time and replacing them with a shiny, new implementation based around Perl's DateTime suite.

There are a dozen other projects we want to undertake - We're going to try to hold out so we have something cool to show for 4.2, 4.4 and beyond.

We have a few additional bits of backward-compatibility we want to break before declaring something as a 4.0 "beta" that we'd actually like folks to test in production. We're not there yet. I'll tell you as soon as we get there.

4.0 is a major new release of RT. Like the transition from RT 2.0 to 3.0, 4.0 represents a major break in backwards compatibility with older versions of RT. When you look under the hood in RT 4, you'll see that the entire API has been overhauled to match more common Perl style guidelines. The most obvious change is that the API has been rationalized to lower_case_style from the previous CamelCaseStyle, but there are numerous other changes throughout the product's internals. We've written more RT extensions than anyone out there (as far as I know) and we're very, very aware of just how painful a major API change is. We have the beginnings of tools and guidelines to help you make the transition with as little pain as possible.

It should come as no surprise to you that I'm not announcing a release date for RT 4.0.0 today, nor will I be doing so in the immediate future. We have a _long_ way to go before RT 4 will be the recommended version of RT for a production or evaluation deployment. Even once that happens, Rest assured that we'll continue to support RT 3.x for a good long time. Best Practical's business is built on helping our users make good use of RT and our other products -- We're not about to cut off those of you using RT 3 in production.

Best,

Jesse

RT4 Release MicroFAQ

Q: How can I help?

A: I'm glad you asked. http://wiki.bestpractical.com/view/RT4 has a pointer to the RT4 source code. Check out the source. Then do any of the following:
  • Clean up code that you think needs cleanup.
  • Add or improve documentation. Find bugs.
  • Fix bugs.
Mail patches or bug reports to rt4@bestpractical.com.

Q: When will RT 4.0 be released?

A: How much money do you have?

Q: Why doesn't RT 4.0 have feature XXX?

A: Please send patches to rt4@bestpractical.com. Please send RFPs to sales@bestpractical.com.

February 25, 2009

RT Training Announcement - April 27 & 28, 2009

Best Practical Solutions provides unparalleled instruction in how to get the most out of RT. We've been teaching users and administrators how to get the most out of RT since 2001. Since 2003, we've offered intensive one-day RT administrator training sessions to the general public.

In response to your requests, we've extended our RT training program to cover additional material targeted at beginning to advanced RT users.  We've split training across two days.  The first day starts off with a tour of RT's web interface and continues with a detailed exploration and explanation of RT's functionality, workflows and configurability. We'll touch on basic administration, but concentrate largely on helping you and your team get the most out of your RT instance.

The second day of training picks up with basic RT administration and covers everything from point-and-click configuration to installation of RT, development best practices and database tuning.

It goes without saying that you'll get the most out of training if you attend both days of the course, but we've designed the material so that you can step out after the first day with a dramatically improved understanding of how to use RT or show up on the second day and get quickly up to speed on how to make RT do your bidding.

A spot at either day costs $995 USD. You can save 25% if you attend both days of training. That's just $1495.

If you reserve your seat before March 15th, you can save an additional 20% by mentioning the discount code BLOG09.

Each class includes breakfast, coffee/tea, and an afternoon snack, as well as all training materials.

Day 1 - RT User Training - April 27th 2009
This intensive day-long tutorial about RT starts with basic day-to-day use and continues with detailed training about advanced RT features including saved searches, dashboards, data analysis and options for automating your workflow.

This session will cover:

  • The purpose and general use of RT
  • New features in RT 3.8
  • Saved Searches and customizing searches
  • RT's Dashboards feature
  • Customizing RT's workflow to match your own, with examples of workflow optimization
  • Automating common procedures
  • How to make simple custom reports based on RT's data
  • A short intro to RTFM, the RT FAQ Manager
  • General Q&A Session


Day 2 - RT Administration and Development – April 28th 2009

 This intensive day-long session aimed at RT administrators and developers covers everything from installation to backups, interface and backend customizations. You'll learn how to customize RT to meet your organization's unique needs and how to make sure that RT stays fast, reliable and flexible.

This session will cover:

  • New features in RT 3.8 RT's system architecture
  • A guided tour of the RT source code
  • Extension mechanisms you can use to customize RT
  • RT Installation, including the basics of Tarballs, and Configuration
  • Examples of how to optimize RT for your organization
  • How to tie RT into your existing authentication infrastructure
  • Building your own tools that talk to the RT backend
  • Customizing RT's workflow to match your own
  • Automating common procedures
  • How to write custom reports based on RT's data
  • Custom coding, modifications, and callback creation
  • A brief preview of RT4
  • General Q&A Session

This spring, these sessions will be only be offered in Boston, MA. If you can't make it to Boston this April, please drop us a line to request a public training in your area. We haven't yet scheduled training for Summer/Fall 2009 yet – your feedback will help us decide where to offer additional sessions.

RT User Training – Monday April 27th 2009
RT Administrator/Developer Training – Tuesday April 28th 2009

When you register, please tell us whether you'd like to register for the whole training session or only for a single day.

To reserve your seat, please email training@bestpractical.com.  We like to keep class sizes relatively intimate. Please register soon or we may not be able to guarantee you a seat.

Private Training
Additionally, we offer private training sessions for organizations. If you would like to schedule a private training session, please drop us a line at training@bestpractical.com.

Reservations
To reserve your seat, please send mail to training@bestpractical.com with the names and email addresses of all attendees.

In the case of credit card payments, a receipt from the credit card payment constitutes your reservation.

A copy of our payment and cancellation policies will be emailed to you upon receipt of a reservation. 

Payment Policy
The cost of training includes all necessary materials. We accept payments by check or wire transfer. Discounts may be available for organizations sending more than one participant and for academic institutions.

If you wish to pay via check or wire transfer, we will email you an invoice upon receipt of your reservation. If your company requires a printed invoice, please provide us with your accounts-payable contact and address.

If payment is not received two weeks prior to the class date, we may be forced to release your reserved seat. Unless you notify us that you will not be attending the session at least two weeks in advance,  you will still be responsible for some or all of the cost of the session. For more information, please see the cancellation policy below.

Cancellation Policy
To cancel your reservation, please send mail to training@bestpractical.com with the names and email addresses of those who wish to cancel.

If you notify us that you will not be attending training at least two weeks prior to the class date, the entire class fee will be refunded.

If you notify us that you will not be attending training less than two weeks before the class date, Best Practical will charge a $250 USD cancellation fee.

If you notify us that you will not be attending training less than 72 hours prior to the start time of the class, the entire fee is non-refundable.

Hotel Information
There will be a limited number of discounted hotel rooms available at the training venue for attendees. More information regarding transportation options and parking will be provided when you register for a class.

February 23, 2009

RT 3.8 Tutorial: Dashboards

    If you have ever wanted to be notified of something in RT, and share it with others—to followup on a set of tickets monthly, for instance, track the status of a queue, or group a set of different saved searches all related to the same project—you can set up notifications with dashboards: named, shared collections of saved searches.

    "Dashboard Notifications - a Quick Introduction," a PDF tutorial by our own Ruslan, shows you how to use this new feature in RT 3.8.

Download "Dashboard Notifications – a Quick Introduction"

January 09, 2009

RT 3.8.2 Now Available

We're pleased to announce the release of RT 3.8.2. You can download it from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.2.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.2.tar.gz.sig

SHA1 sums

e5e17464849ec040b7b1d6d14f456a2e64871848  rt-3.8.2.tar.gz
b6c1d165af056d21b2ddfb7ac018a1812f928e87  rt-3.8.2.tar.gz.sig

A changelog follows after the jump.

Highlights

  • Approvals System Overhaul
  • Dashboards Overhaul, including the ability to include more types of portlets and a new subscription type
  • Upgrades to the mysql schema upgrade script, now named upgrade-mysql-schema.pl  If you're planning an upgrade from a version of RT prior to 3.8, please read UPGRADING.mysql
  • Many localization cleanups
  • Fixes to HTML mail generation and the handling of mixed/alternative messages.  The WYSIWYG editor was also upgraded.  See docs/templates.pod for more about generating HTML mail.
  • Complete reimplementation of sbin/rt-validator for checking integrity of the DB

If you are using RT::Authen::ExternalAuth with RT 3.8.1, please be sure to upgrade to RT-Authen-ExternalAuth-0.07_02 (available on CPAN) with 3.8.2.

Continue reading "RT 3.8.2 Now Available" »