NAME

RT::Extension::MergeUsers - Merges two users into the same effective user

RT VERSION

Works with RT 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 5.0.

DESCRIPTION

This RT extension adds a "Merge Users" box to the User Administration page, which allows you to merge the user you are currently viewing with another user on your RT instance.

It also adds "MergeInto" and "UnMerge" functions to the RT::User class, which allow you to programmatically accomplish the same thing from your code.

It also provides a version of CanonicalizeEmailAddress, which means that all e-mail sent from secondary users is displayed as coming from the primary user.

INSTALLATION

Be sure to also read "UPGRADING" if you are upgrading.

perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

May need root permissions

Edit your /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm

If you are using RT 4.2 or greater, add this line:

Plugin('RT::Extension::MergeUsers');

For RT 4.0, add this line:

Set(@Plugins, qw(RT::Extension::MergeUsers));

or add RT::Extension::MergeUsers to your existing @Plugins line.

Clear your mason cache
rm -rf /opt/rt5/var/mason_data/obj
Restart your webserver

UPGRADING

If you are upgrading from 0.03_01 or earlier, you must run bin/rt-update-merged-users. This script will create MergedUsers Attributes so RT can know when you're looking at a user that other users have been merged into. If you don't run this script, you'll have issues unmerging users. It can be safely run multiple times, it will only create Attributes as needed.

UTILITIES

rt-clean-merged-users

When a user with another user merged into it is shredded, the attributes on that user are also shredded, but the merged user will remain, along with attributes that may point to the now missing user id. This script cleans up attributes if the merged-into user record is now gone. These users will then be converted back to regular unmerged users.

rt-merge-users

A command-line tool to merge one user into another

CAVEATS

RT::Shredder and Merged Users

Merging a user effectively makes it impossible to load the merged user directly. Attempting to access the old user resolves to the merged-into user. Because of this, MergeUsers has some extra code to help RT::Shredder clean up these merged records to avoid leaving merged user records in the DB while removing the user they were merged into.

When running RT::Shredder on a user record with other users merged into it, the merged users are Unmerged before the initial user record is shredded. There are two options to handle these newly unmerged users:

  1. Re-run your shredder command with the same or similar options. The unmerged user records will now be accessible and, depending on your shredder options, they will likely be shredded on the second run. If you have multiple layers of merged users, you may need to run shredder multiple times.

  2. MergeUsers will log the unmerged users at the info level so you can pull the user ids from the log and shred them manually. This is most likely to be useful if you are shredding one specific user (and all merged accounts).

AUTHOR

Best Practical Solutions, LLC <modules@bestpractical.com>

BUGS

All bugs should be reported via email to

L<bug-RT-Extension-MergeUsers@rt.cpan.org|mailto:bug-RT-Extension-MergeUsers@rt.cpan.org>

or via the web at

L<rt.cpan.org|http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=RT-Extension-MergeUsers>.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

This software is Copyright (c) 2014-2023 by Best Practical Solutions

This is free software, licensed under:

The GNU General Public License, Version 2, June 1991