RT 4.0.19 released

We are pleased to announce RT4.0.19 is now available. This release is primarily a bugfix release; of particular note is that it contains schema changes for MySQL, the first notable such in the 4.0 series. Though the changes are limited, it is especially important to take, and verify you can recover from, a database backup prior to upgrading.

Other changes of note:

Documentation

• Add documentation for rt-crontool
• Clean up examples in Lifecycles documentation
• Document additional indexes that increase performance of Shredder
• Replace a suggested GnuPG option with one which is not deprecated
• Note that errors reported from the GnuPG infrastructure may be caused by GnuPG not being configured, but having been automatically enabled.

Database

• On MySQL, alter the character set of all columns used to store email addresses to UTF-8
• Ensure that invalid byte sequences that may have snuck into the database previously (on earlier versions on MySQL, for instance) are not blindly interpreted as UTF-8 when retrieved from the database. As a result, invalid bytes will be returned from the API as the four characters "\xHH", where HH is the hexadecimal encoding of the byte.
• Ensure that all data containing non-ASCII is quoted-printable encoded for PostgreSQL, instead of merely all data not claiming to be text/plain
• Additional warnings prevention on Oracle; tests now pass cleanly
• Allow fully-automated database upgrades using --upgrade-from and --upgrade-to options to rt-setup-database
• Clean out any remaining traces of RTFM that lingered in custom fields and custom field values that were disabled at the time of the previous upgrade step.
• Bullet-proof a 3.8 → 4.0 upgrade step for Scrips with no Condition

Email

• Set a transfer encoding on outgoing dashboards; this resolves issues with long lines when using the Sendmail MTA.
• Cope with mangled and overly-quoted recipient headers occasionally generated by Outlook.

General user UI

• When using the back button to return to a reply page with the rich text editor, contents will no longer be doubly HTML-encoded
• Improve rendering on Internet Explorer 6
• Fix cascaded custom fields on Internet Explorer 8 and below.
• Support cascaded selects for all Select render types (dropdown, select box, radio buttons, checkboxes)
• Minor rendering bugs with Charts placed on homepages and dashboards
• Add "mark as seen" functionality to SelfService ticket display pages
• Link the ModifyPeople page when the user has Watch or WatchAsAdminCc
• Whitelist "show outgoing email" and chart results from CSRF protection
• RT 4.0.7 introduced a performance regression when building ticket searches that query Links; switch back to a much better-indexed query.
• Fix "Clone ticket" functionality with Select-multiple custom fields.
• Show the queue ID for the current queue in the ticket edit page, even if the user does not have SeeQueue; this prevents the user from accidentally changing the queue.

Query Builder

• Support CF.Foo in addition to CF.{Foo} and '__CF.{Foo}__' in format strings. This follows the trend of allowing brace-less forms whenever possible.
• Ensure that format strings from the Query Builder escape quotes correctly, and correctly parse existing formats with quotes.
• Autocomplete CF values for custom fields of type "Autocomplete" in the Query Builder.
• Warnings avoidance for searches with more than 1000 results.

Admin

• Fix real-time updating of Theme CSS on Internet Explorer 8 and below
• Fix a minor display bug in the CF Admin pages, where the queue number instead of queue name would be displayed in requests shortly after server startup.
• Add "Extra Info" as a possible field for "More About Requestor"

iCal

• Ensure that iCal dates are formatted with a leading space on the first nine days of each month, for correctness.
• Show iCal dates (when omitting times) in the user's timezone, not UTC

REST

• Prevent a server error when attempting to guess content-type in the REST interface.

Development

• Custom Action and Condition packages (as supplied by extensions; these are not the text entry boxes in the UI) are now loaded at server startup time, to catch compile-time errors in such classes early as well as reducing RT's memory footprint on mod_perl. Previously, these errors would have logged errors only when their Scrip failed to fire. This restores the behavior found in RT 3.8, which was mistakenly removed in RT 4.0.0.
• rt-dump-metadata has slightly more documentation and options
• Additional callbacks, including in charts, and on ticket reply pages
• Show customized rights under their appropriate categories
• Remove an unused Makefile target
• Ensure that RT::Template->Create returns (result,message) and not simply result

A complete changelog is available from git.

RT 4.2.0 released

We're incredibly pleased to announce the availability of RT 4.2.0 - thefirst release for the next major version of RT. This release adds exciting new functionality, as well as streamlining and generalizing the internals.

When upgrading, please be sure to review the upgrading documentation available in docs/UPGRADING-4.2, as there are a number of backward-incompatible changes that come along with the new version number.

A partial list of the new features in RT 4.2.0 is included below, and on our website. Many of the new features will also be described and demoed in a series of blog posts on this blog in the coming weeks.

If you have questions as you upgrade, please don't hesitate to write to rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com for community support. If you'd rather have professional support from the folks who built RT, drop us a line at contact@bestpractical.com.

• Much improved reporting via search result charting
  • Multiple group by and statistic calculations in a table
  • Time statistics such as average, minimum, and maximum durations between Created and Resolved, Created and Started, Started and Resolved, and more.
  • More robust layout of charts
• Increased performance for searches and ticket pages
  • Faster searches on all databases (especially Pg)
  • Ticket pages load quicker
  • Menus load before the rest of the page is loaded
  • History is loaded asynchronously
  • Faster serving of static assets
• Scrips per queue
  • Apply scrips globally or ad-hoc to individual queues, á la custom fields
  • Less duplication of scrips and/or need for empty templates
• Custom field groupings
  • Display CFs in configurable groupings (boxes) on the ticket display/edit pages
  • Includes arbitrary grouping names as well as standard ticket groupings (Basics, Dates, People, Links, etc.)
• User summary pages
  • Display information about users such as tickets, history, groups, etc.
  • An extended "More about requestors" page for any user
  • Easy to get to via links and user search
• HTML templates enabled by default for new installs, available for upgrades too
• Ticket display improvements
  • Rich text/HTML messages are preferred for display by default
  • Images are inlined with text in ticket history display instead of presented at bottom
  • Clickable users, tickets, articles, and other items
• Many interface improvements, such as:
  • Improved menu layout
  • Per-user preferences for the dashboards which appear in the Home menu
  • Floating page menu for quicker access to ticket actions, subpages, etc.
  • Autocomplete for ticket links, including when merging
  • Autocomplete available to self service users
  • Improved CF and links display in search results
  • Sticky simple search for quick search refinements
  • Attachments on reply can no longer be mixed up when replying to multiple tickets at once
  • ReassignTicket right to assign tickets without stealing first; useful for managers
• S/MIME support integrated with GnuPG support
  • Decrypt and verify incoming GPG and SMIME messages
  • Send all outgoing messages as either GPG or SMIME
• Migration tools
  • Migrate from one database type to another (MySQL, Pg, Oracle)
  • Merge multiple RT instances together
• Thousands of bug fixes; nearly 2000 commits totalling more than 250,000 lines of code changed.

RT 4.2.0rc5 Released; Assets extension

We're pleased to announce the availability of RT 4.2.0rc5 - the fifthrelease candidate for the next major version of RT. This release corrects encoding errors with new versions of the Encode module and rendering of fonts in pie charts.

We look forward to hearing your experiences installing or upgrading to this release; the more feedback we get, the sooner the official release of RT 4.2.0 can occur. Bear in mind that reports of successful installs and upgrades are just as important as reports of issues.

Please be sure to review the upgrading documentation available in docs/UPGRADING-4.2, as there are a number of backward-incompatible changes that come along with the new version number.

---

We are also pleased to announce we have made public our development branch of Assets for RT. This extension requires RT 4.2.0rc5 or above; while no official release has been made, we welcome your testing and comments. We expect to make an official release candidate for Assets 1.0 within the next several weeks.

RT 4.2.0rc3 Released

We're elated to announce the availability of RT 4.2.0rc3 - the third release candidate for the next major version of RT. Barring any surprises, we expect 4.2.0 to ship early next week.

We would be thrilled to hear your experiences installing or upgrading to this release candidate; the more feedback we get, the sooner the official release of RT 4.2.0 can occur. Bear in mind that reports of successful installs and upgrades are just as important as reports of issues.

As always, please review the upgrading documentation available in docs/UPGRADING-4.2, as there are a number of backward-incompatible changes that come along with the new version number. If you are upgrading from 4.2.0rc2, the differences are merely cosmetic.

We have also begun scheduling our services for upgrades in anticipation of the final RT 4.2.0 release. If you have questions about upgrading or other aspects of RT 4.2.0 you can get in touch with us at contact@bestpractical.com.

RT 4.2.0rc2 Released

We're pleased to announce the availability of RT 4.2.0rc2 - the second release candidate for the next major version of RT.

This release fixes a number of errors found in testing the first release candidate:

• Fix minor formatting errors in POD documentation
• Switch away from use of methods which are now deprecated
• Accept S/MIME certificates with CRLF newlines
• Allow S/MIME encryption to untrusted certificates
• Fix index manipulation on case-sensitive MySQL installations
• Correct upgrade history for extensions

We would be thrilled to hear your experiences installing or upgrading to this release; the more feedback we get, the sooner the official release of RT 4.2.0 can occur. Bear in mind that reports of successful installs and upgrades are just as important as reports of issues.

Please be sure to review the upgrading documentation available in docs/UPGRADING-4.2, as there are a number of backward-incompatible changes that come along with the new version number.

In anticipation of the final RT 4.2.0 release, we're also starting to schedule upgrades. If you have questions about upgrading or other aspects of RT 4.2.0 you can get in touch with us at contact@bestpractical.com.

Request Tracker training in New York City, October 8th and 9th

Our third training for 2013 will be held in New York, NY on October 8th and
9th. As we like to keep class sizes relatively intimate, register soon or we
may not be able to guarantee you a seat. If you can't make it to this training
session, feel free to drop us a line to suggest locations for the future.

This training will introduce you to the new features in RT 4.2 as part of a
comprehensive overview of RT. Whether you're an old hand at RT or a recent
convert, you'll have a good understanding of all of RT's features and
functionality by the end of the session.

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, aimed at
non-programmer RT administrators. We'll walk through setting up a common
helpdesk configuration, from rights management, constructing workflows and
notifications, and the basics of Lifecycles.

The second day of training picks up with server-side RT administration and
dives into what you need to safely customize and extend RT. We'll cover
upgrading and deploying RT, database tuning, advanced Lifecycle configurations,
writing tools with RT's API, building an extension, and demonstrate how to
extensibly alter the web UI and internal functions.

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.

Each class includes training materials, a continental breakfast, and an
afternoon snack (lunch is not provided).

If you'd like to pay with Visa, MasterCard or Discover, please visit Best Practical's online store.
Unfortunately we are unable to accept American Express or PayPal. If you'd
prefer to pay with a purchase order, please email us at
training@bestpractical.com. Be sure to include:

• If you want to attend both days or a single day
• Full names and email addresses of attendees

Please also contact us at training@bestpractical.com for discounted pricing if
you are from an academic institution or if you'd like to send more than 3
people.

RT 4.2.0rc1 Released

We're extremely excited to announce the availability of RT 4.2.0rc1 -- the first release candidate for the next major version of RT.

We would be thrilled to hear your experiences installing or upgrading to this release; the more feedback we get, the sooner the official release of RT 4.2.0 can occur. Please be sure to review the upgrading documentation available in the distribution in docs/UPGRADING-4.2, as there are a number of backward-incompatible changes that come along with the new version number. Upgrading documentation is also available on the Best Practical website along with the rest of the RT 4.2 documentation.

A partial list of the new features in RT 4.2.0 was posted previously. In the coming weeks we'll continue with more posts to describe and demonstrate new features.

In anticipation of the final RT 4.2.0 release, we're also starting to schedule upgrades. If you have questions about upgrading or other aspects of RT 4.2.0 you can get in touch with us at contact@bestpractical.com.

RT Training at Ohio LinuxFest 2013

Best Practical is happy to announce we're doing RT training this year at the Ohio LinuxFest in Columbus. Ohio LinuxFest Institute, the training portion of the conference, runs all day on Friday, September 13. We'll be presenting RT Basics in the morning and a more in-depth RT Customization class in the afternoon. Registration entitles you to one morning and one afternoon class, so you could even attend both! We'll also be around during the conference on Saturday to answer questions and talk about RT and RTIR.

RT 4.0.16 released

RT 4.0.16 is now available.

This release fixes an important regression in the Shredder tool included in 4.0.14 and 4.0.15. Attempting to run the Shredder tool from the command line would fail with a compile-time error.

A complete changelog is available.

Applying patches from rt.cpan.org tickets

Ever try to apply patches from a bug report in rt.cpan.org? Up until a few days ago, it was a bit of a pain because curl and wget didn't work without supplying your username and password. This prevented simple patch application like so:

curl -sL https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Attachment/.../.../foo.patch \
| git am -s

As of earlier this week, that's fixed! Now you can apply patches quite easily by copying the link in RT directly to your terminal and it will just work.