Requests for Features and Issues with RT

• Items that CSCF deems important enough to work on should have RT numbers recorded here- as either: children of RT#593860 (wish list items) or dependencies of the Spring Project item, RT#593858.
• Once we have sufficient consensus about CSCF priorities, items we have requested of Lisa and Jeff will be (*) starred and copied from here to STToRTInvestigationChangeRequests

List, by Date

• 2016-08-30: emailing RT: if you have email aliases / reply-to which is different from your regular userid, RT will create the item with the wrong user.
  • 2017-01-27: Daniel: this is in-process to be fixed by Jeff/Lisa after April 2017. In the meantime we can manually update tickets to change the requester/workers in our queues. (unknown ticket) *
• 2016-08-30: can RT create dependencies via email?
  • 2017-01-27: Daniel: we could request having an extension installed for this ( https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::CommandByMail ) however:
  • 2017-05-18: Daniel: instead of via email, there is a "command-line" tool that works under the API. I'm investigating this as part of /RT#593919 for batch dependency creation.
• 2016-11-14: if we're working on an item that is handed off to an IST queue, is our viewing access limited to those *CF people who are workers/CCd on the item?
  • 2016-11-22: Yes, for some queues such as security. For other queues including all of IST Client Services, we have full access. For other queues such as Network Services, they plan to expand visibility; yet to happen.
    • we've requested access to networking queues /RT#602660 *
  • 2017-04-20: Could we get access to the subject lines of tickets even if we can't see the ticket? Daniel: yes, we have access to this via SQL; let me know about particular use-cases. Also, for any ticket you can't see, you CAN see who is Owner, CC, and Admin-CC by choosing "Action" -> "Reply"; and you could directly ask them about the ticket.
• 2017-01-27: (ldpaniak) want unambiguous instructions for getting emails into an existing RT, possibly even on item's page like ST has.
  • 2017-04-20: Workaround: STToRT Documentation
  • 2017-04-20 (lfolland): In ST, you could click on the Handy Links to get the appropriate email address. It would be handy if there was an easy way to grab the appropriately formatted subject heading for use in email. Currently it displays the subject as, eg: #369702: Computer Science Computing Facility (CSCF) - WCMS migration but we'd want to see: [UW-RT #369702]: Computer Science Computing Facility (CSCF) - WCMS migration
    • We could construct a "bookmarklet" to turn the current RT page into a mailto: with a properly formatted subject-line. ref: http://jsfiddle.net/onigetoc/W6DkX/ /RT#594123
• 2017-01-27: want ability to edit history, or at least scrub a correspondence transaction to recover from inadvertent password paste without having to bother Jeff.
  • Not feasible given the permissions model.
  • Workaround: ask Jeff Voskamp to scrub the transaction.
• 2017-04-20: Can we get some administrative rights delegated to us? (Details might depend on what things we are asking Lisa/Jennifer/Jeff for most frequently/time-consumingly. Currently, adding co-op users each term will be a manual process). Will record what we're repeatedly asking Lisa/Jennifer/Jeff in /#RT593927
• 2017-04-20: v4.4 has a limited number of keyboard shortcuts. It would be nice to have a more useful set. /#RT604054
• 2017-04-20: (ijmorlan) editing "People" requires an extra click to go back to the ticket's main page. It would be nice to have a "return automatically" option. /RT#604056
• 2017-04-20: saving attachments that are larger than 3MB: how do we want to handle them? Do we need/want an automated process to store them elsewhere in our webspace?
  • (lfolland) it might take some getting used to, but I think we could just have a space where we put such stuff and then just include a link. Maybe in our current eDocs folder? Just setup a folder for RT, and then create numbered subfolders based on the RT# and put stuff in it. /RT#604057
  • (drallen) javoskamp has boosted attachment max to 25MB. *
• 2017-04-20: Recording time as hours or as minutes is less graceful than recording hours and minutes together via ":"
  • One solution could be a bit of javascript that, on leaving the text-box, would convert nn:mm into minutes (since the default display is minutes).
  • Another solution would be a user preference for time-format for displaying and entering time; and everywhere the time gets displayed, it would match your preferred format. (hours; days; minutes; hh:mm) /RT#604058
• 2017-04-20: (ldpaniac) RT can export due-dates as .ics files. Could we export due-dates as emails that you can confirm to add to your calendar? /RT#591440
• 2017-04-20: re-implementing the interface for bulk ticket creation with dependencies - /RT#593919
  • Broadly requested as "Important"
• 2017-04-20: re-implementing the run-on sentence
  • 2017-05-23: (drallen) I didn't note anybody actually asking that we do this, just that it might be helpful. I will wait to see if someone actually makes this request, with a use-case, before making a ticket for it.
    • 2017-05-24 (lfolland) I think the built-in searching is good for now. Let's get used to it and see if there is any feature gap we really need/want
• 2017-04-20: (fhgunn) RT doesn't preserve whitespace/indentation by default. Solution: User Preferences -> Display plain-text attachments in fixed-width font
• 2017-04-20: (fhgunn) external links to ST don't display RT titles.
  • (drallen): I've seen web applications that would handle this by, on saving the external link URL, it accesses the page in question and displays the page title (instead of or in addition to the URL). There could be a widget that, when any external URL is recorded as a link, it does the above. This would be useful outside just CSCF. /RT#604059
• 2017-04-21: (lfolland) "My Day" Does not show me the tickets I worked on - only the ones I own (and worked on). It should show me every ticket I touched as implied by "What I did today". Also, it shows me things I did not work on today. That's quite different from what I expected.
  • (drallen): We will ask about installing RT-Extension-TimeTracking, a prospective fix for this. /RT#604062
    • weekly view includes time spent on each item.
    • Add to time worked: date (to log time for yesterday)
    • "Users:" see total time worked per person
• 2017-04-21: (lfolland) terminology used in the history for when Owners are changed very negative for clients to read: "Stolen from ..." and "Owner forcibly changed from ..." - RT#593923
• 2017-04-21: (lfolland) When you Reply and look at the headers – It doesn’t actually show you the To: or CC:. It shows who was “Squelched” but not to whom it was actually sent. "Download (with headers)" and "Show full headers" do not display the "To:" field for a requester receiving a reply. You can see who is a current requester, but it might have changed in the interim.
  • 2017-05-09: (dmerner & omnafees) When RT sends an email notification to a list of people, it would be handy if there was an easy way to see that list of people on that action (comment.etc). It can be hard to track email notifications if a requestor changes mid-ticket.
  • ltomalty says: This is standard RT but we can add this info to replies/comments for your queues if you like (Just submit an RT for this to be done). /RT#602403 *
• 2017-04-21: (lfolland) When I tried to “Forward” a Correspondence – everything was blank. This seems to happen in RT 4.2 in Firefox, so I don’t think it is an IE bug. Further testing shows that the message is forwarded. Again, just seems odd. I’d expect it to act more like the “Comment” or “Reply” option that shows you the quoted text.
• 2017-04-21: (omnafees) Is there a way to move the menu at the top (the "Display History Basics ... Actions") to the left for left-handed mousers ?
  • (drallen) Not as an app preference. You could do it in your own browser (staying persistently over reloads) with User CSS on: Firefox and Chrome. /RT#604063
• 2017-04-26: "Time worked" - by user - what's that line for? /RT#604064
• 2017-04-26: (ronaldo) could comment be a button on the main ticket page?
• 2017-04-26: (lfolland) reminder area: could it be hidden? could it instead be an area for the actual due-date?
  • (drallen) You can hide the reminder area by clicking on the header, which appears to be persistent / stored for you. Is this sufficient?
• 2017-04-25: (ldpaniak) Could reminders be repeating? /RT#593771
• 2017-04-26: (lfolland) any way to hide the merged user notes?
  • (drallen) You can hide the contents of "More about the requesters" by clicking on the header, as above for the reminder area. Is this sufficient?
    • 2017-05-24 (lfolland) Yes
    • 2017-06-23 (ijmorlan) Could we get an option to have the "more about the requestors" start out hidden? Nobody is going to click the header every time, but as far as I can tell the information that would be hidden is hardly ever useful so having it start out hidden and be available to view when needed would make more sense.
• 2017-04-26: (lfolland) could we get on-page help?
  • (drallen) is it sufficient to have a link to the help document at the top of the page?
  • 2017-05-24 (lfolland) Let's say that the "Help for RT" in the menu bar is sufficient for now. Maybe later we could consider "hover" tool-tips for fields, but this would be low priority
• 2017-04-26: (dlgawley) what networking tasks are outstanding? "what jobs with CSCF people as requester are in other queues?" - we can't do this in web interface because we can't see the networking queue.
  • we've requested access to their queues /RT#602660 *
  • As a practice, should we add manager to CC? Yes.
• 2017-04-26: (magore) could we automatically add manager to CC on foreign tickets?
  • This could be implemented if we decided we wanted it: on queue change, add the queue-CC value to the ticket's CC. Do we want something like this?
• 2017-04-26: (rgarcia) when making a new ticket, could the owner: default to the user making the ticket? or dropdown doesn't show everyone in MFCF by default, only the group default for the queue? /RT#604065
  • (drallen) There would need to be discussion of whether we want the owner to default to the user making the ticket. The above ticket can consider that.
  • (drallen) The dropdown includes everyone with access to the queue. As far as I can tell, our only option to remove them from the list would be removing queue access.
• 2017-04-26: (dlgawley) Wednesday morning emails sometimes include reports with no tickets. /RT#602420 *
• 2017-04-28: (fhgunn) RT wastes screen real estate with too much whitespace. E.g. /RT#595008#txn-9927498 contains crontab lines that get folded partly because the left and right margin are so large. On my screen, RT has 45mm of left+right margin, while ST has only 5. /RT#604066
• 2017-05-09: (drallen) It would be nice to know if an item was created as a dependency/child/see-also of another item. The creation doesn't say, and if there are multiple connections, you'd have to check all of them for the link info. /RT#604067
• 2017-05-16: (fhgunn) Saved Searches need a change-management process. We see that any RT user can delete or modify any visible saved search.
  • How about: we need to announce a saved-search change to the group it affects. Eg., "CSCF Saved Searches" to all CSCF and MFCF, because both groups have access. A search titled "RSG tickets worked on today" should involve notification of RSG.
• 2017-05-17: (omnafees) Can I sort a search output by a person's most recent update to that item? (Similar to the output of the ST-time-tracking tool). Sorting by "LastUpdatedBy" sorts by the name of the person who last updated. Sorting by "LastUpdated" sorts by the time of the last update. /RT#604068
• 2017-05-18: (ijmorlan)
  • would like to have "required" custom fields which would always appear even if they're blank to encourage filling them in. I believe we want sponsor, summary, and subscription code on every item.
    • (drallen) Is this what we would like?
    • 2017-05-24 (lfolland) I'm not a fan of "required" since they sometimes *don't make sense to fill-in.
      • 2017-06-23 (ijmorlan) I don't mean actually required, I just mean they appear even if blank. This would be fields that "should" "usually" be filled in.
  • "(Create)" links copy too much. In particular, the summary and referred-to items definitely should not be copied.
• 2017-05-18: (dmerner) Being able to see the title of a dependency ticket that isn't from any CSCF queue requires you to be a part (owner/admincc.etc) of that dependency. It's annoying looking at a ticket and only seeing ticket numbers as dependency and not even knowing whether you should ask to be added to it since you don't know if it's even relevant to you. Being able to at least see the title of dependency tickets that you aren't a part of would be helpful for those who want to keep an eye on a project but aren't necessarily a worker on it.
  • See above for remark on 2017-04-20...
• 2017-05-18: (fhgunn) RT is very slow, much slower than ST. Sometimes RT takes minutes to return a page. That may be a browser problem, but multiple people have seen it.
  • (drallen) Chat with Jeff about what's the hardware behind RT: it's a VM with 16gb RAM; he knows that it needs more memory, and he will create a ticket to improve this. *
    • Jeff says they boosted memory and I observe the ST-time-tracking tool to take 35 seconds instead of 45 seconds (for 5 big queries) - so perhaps a speedup of 20%.
• 2017-05-23: (dmerner) Can the "outgoing email recorded" actions be collapsible and closed by default under the transaction that they pertain to?
  • (drallen) A perl extension could be written to do this; or the div-type (with a grey left-hand link) could be hidden via javascript - although the div is also used by Custom Fields, so it would need to be clever. Wish-list item /RT#616232
• 2017-06-23 (ijmorlan) history display is way too chatty. Items about sending email contain no useful information, except for the "Show" link. Can this link be moved to the preceding real transaction?
• 2017-06-23 (ijmorlan) adding a one-time CC results in two emails being sent - one "to" the requesters, and another "cc" the one-time CC. See RT#615106 for an example of this causing confusion. This makes one-time CC essentially useless as far as I can tell - it's not safe to use since the CC recipients will "reply" and silently not actually reply to the requester.
• 2017-06-23 (ijmorlan) email is too chatty. Emails which just say "this transaction has no content" should not be sent, nor should emails that are empty other than just reiterating the title etc. of the item.
  • wait, it's a bit more complicated than that. Sometimes an email says "no content" but also reports on a status change, which could be useful. Other times though I get two emails, both reporting on something e.g. a status change, with one of them additionally saying "no content".
  • 2017-06-27 (drallen) - Jeff has squashed a set of misconfigurations that led to unnecessary "no content" emails, and also unnecessary inclusions of 'nobody@uwaterloo.ca'. I think that email has gotten a lot less chatty as a result (though there are still duplicate emails sent if you are on the ticket with multiple roles...)
• 2017-06-29 (lfolland) - do we need keywords, in order to, e.g., filter research expenses from CSCF expenses?
  • (drallen) - lots of existing queues use keywords, including MFCF's new queue. /RT#617128
• 2018-10-31 (fhgunn) - how can we easily track client requests vs projects vs uncommitted? /RT#917491

-- DanielAllen - 2017-04-20