/ 
RT-Extension-Announce-1.04
River stage zero No dependents
/ RT::Extension::Announce

NAME

RT-Extension-Announce - Display announcements as a banner on RT pages.

RT VERSION

Works with RT 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 5.0.

INSTALLATION

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::Announce');

For RT 4.0, add this line:

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

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

And add the following:

Set(@CustomFieldValuesSources, (qw(RT::CustomFieldValues::AnnounceGroups)));

See "CONFIGURATION" for more options.

make initdb

Only run this the first time you install this module.

If you run this twice, you may end up with duplicate data in your database.

If you are upgrading this module, check for upgrading instructions in case changes need to be made to your database.

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

DESCRIPTION

The Announce extension gives you an easy way to insert announcements on the RT homepage so all users can see the message. You may want to display a banner during maintenance or an unscheduled outage to make sure the people fielding customer tickets know that something is going on.

RT Announcement on Homepage

DETAILS

When you install the extension, a new queue is created called RTAnnounce. To post an announcement, create a ticket in that queue. The extension displays on the RT homepage the subject and most recent correspondence on active tickets in the RTAnnounce queue. As the incident or maintenance progresses, just reply to the ticket and the announcement will be updated with the latest information.

When multiple announcements are active, they are ordered by the last update time with the announcement with the most recent update coming first.

When the incident is over, resolve the ticket and the announcement will be removed.

Comments on announce tickets are not shown in the announcement. However, comments are visible on the ticket for users who have permission to view the full ticket. If you have multiple announcements, a new comment updates the last updated time and will move the announcement to the top of the list.

ANNOUNCEMENT GROUPS

The RTAnnounce queue has a custom field called 'Announcement Groups' which you can use to manage who will see an announcement. If you set no value, all users will see the announcement. If you set one or more RT groups, only memebers of those groups will see it.

PERMISSIONS

By default, the announements are static text. If you give users the ShowTicket right on the RTAnnounce queue, the announcements will have links to the source tickets. This will allow users to see the history of an announcement or see longer messages that might be truncated on the homepage.

The RTAnnounce queue is a regular queue, so you can control access to creating announcements the same way you manage permissions on other queues.

In addition to setting permissions, you may not want to send the typical 'ticket create' email messages, so you could change or customize the scrips that run or create new templates. If you send announcement messages to an email list, you could create a list user in RT and add it as a CC to the announcement queue. Then messages posted for announcement in RT will also be sent to the notification list.

CONFIGURATION

$RTAnnounceQueue

Use this to change the name of the queue used for announcements. First edit the RTAnnounce queue in RT and change its name to your new name. Then a line to your RT_SiteConfig.pm to set that new value:

Set($RTAnnounceQueue, 'Custom Announce Name');

@AnnounceGroups

By default, all user defined groups will be listed in "Announcement Groups". If you have a large number of groups in your RT, this can make for a long list, so you can customize the group list by setting @AnnounceGroups in your RT_SiteConfig.pm:

Set(@AnnounceGroups, 'foo', 'bar', 'baz');

$ShowAnnouncementsInSelfService

Set this to true to show announcements on the self service page as well as the regular privileged RT page.

$RTAnnounceAllowHTML

If set to true, the banner content will be set to 'text/html' and allow HTML rendering.

If the content of the message is large there is an option to wrap the content in overflow divs. In the source HTML of the message, wrap the bottom part of the message in the following: <div class="RTAnnounceBannerOverflow"></div>. The top part of the message will be shown with a scrollbar and the part contained in the div will be hidden. Users can view the bottom section by scrolling without taking up too much room at the top of the page.

AUTHOR

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

BUGS

All bugs should be reported via email to

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

or via the web at

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

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

This software is Copyright (c) 2012-2020 by Best Practical Solutions, LLC

This is free software, licensed under:

The GNU General Public License, Version 2, June 1991