NCEAS / datamgmt

Data management utilities for curating, documenting, and publishing data.
https://nceas.github.io/datamgmt/
Apache License 2.0
15 stars 13 forks source link

Look into RT alternatives/supplements #53

Closed isteves closed 6 years ago

isteves commented 6 years ago

An alternative to RT would need to meet the following requirements:

So far, we've discussed:

isteves commented 6 years ago

I found some possibly useful RT extensions:

@amoeba did you configure RT originally? or do you know how these extensions work?

amoeba commented 6 years ago

Hey @isteves: No, but I was around when we chose it. I'm curious if you're thinking of alternatives because RT isn't doing something you need it to do or another reason?

Those, and other, RT extensions should be easy to set up. We can also write a totally custom dashboard if you just need alternate displays. The real feature we make use of RT for is the automated email management.

Re: ticket statuses: RT is already set up to support totally custom ticket statuses but we've stuck with the defaults. Though we'd be happy to change them!

isteves commented 6 years ago

@amoeba I think RT as it is now is annoying for us on several fronts:

Good to hear that it's easy!!!

I think @jagoldstein likes the statuses as they are now, but being able add an extra "intern" or "fellow" tag (or "easy," "medium," "hard") to a new ticket might help automate the process of interns/fellows starting on tickets.

@jagoldstein probably has a load of other opinions though! maybe also @maier-m and @dmullen17 ?

isteves commented 6 years ago

Btw, @amoeba context: this issue started as a summary of what we discussed with Matt when we brought up our RT complaints with him a while back

amoeba commented 6 years ago

complicated tickets are difficult to catch up on

I'm curious to hear more about this. I think I might know what you mean from personal experience. RT doesn't keep a tidy log, even though it could, so a lot of the content in each comment/reply is hidden around quoted email text and other garbage.

Btw, @amoeba context

Ah thanks!

isteves commented 6 years ago

Re: complicated tickets Yeah, I think a lot of the frustration is all the junk that's included in the thread (new submission, merge, outgoing email and other notices). It's particularly confusing when a ticket has been partially completed - as it is now, it's not always obvious what has been done/still needs to be done since the comments are interspersed among all the other stuff. (but memo would probably solve this)

If there's a way to separate emails out from everything else, that would be another great improvement!

jagoldstein commented 6 years ago

I do find the chronology of events helpful. For example, I often want to know who merged when and/or who owned a ticket at a certain point in time.

But in addition to retaining that chronology, it would be helpful to be able to list key points and TO DOs at the top of a ticket for quick and easy reference. I like how GH labels seem to jump out with their color-coding, a feature I doubt RT supports

Per Matt's recommendation, I am going to contact GH to see if it's possible for users to interact with us here even if they do not have a GH account.

amoeba commented 6 years ago

a feature I doubt RT supports

I don't think RT has this type of technical limitation, so the limiting factor in adding a feature like this would be the time to implement it. I haven't looked into RT plugins but, considering there are so many, RT seems pretty extensible. I think RT's built in email gateway feature is valuable enough for us to consider customizing RT for our needs to be worthwhile.

For the TODOs (RT::Memo), it sounds like the group could definitely look into that, and other plugins.

jagoldstein commented 6 years ago

If RT can meet our increasingly picky needs/desires, I'm all for sticking with it and adding plugins to customize. That certainly sounds easier that migrating to a whole new ticketing system. We can investigate deeper, maybe even contact Best Practical Solutions LLC.

Are we currently paying for this service or is RT free to use?

amoeba commented 6 years ago

Free AFAIK

mbjones commented 6 years ago

As I've mentioned before, if we can find an alternative system with the key feature of acting as an email gateway then I don't think it would be that hard to switch. I think the new system has to 1) accept new requests via email without the user creating a new account, and 2) track the back and forth between the support team and user via email alone. There are a bunch of tools in this space, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are others that might do what we want. Certainly worth a little poking around. I spent an hour a month or so ago looking at FreshDesk, which seemed to have many of the features, albeit in the form of a cloud service not a hosted solution. They seem to support email gateways. If you want to take a peek: https://arcticdatacenter.freshdesk.com I just sent Jesse an account and he can make more.

amoeba commented 6 years ago

Cool, nice find with FreshDesk. Looks pretty good by comparison to RT. They have a pre-canned Slack integration which looks good enough for our use case.

jagoldstein commented 6 years ago

I am logged into FreshDesk, thanks Matt.

This does look pretty sleek! I will poke around more in here.

jagoldstein commented 6 years ago

Reply sent to me from Shawna Jean at GitHub:

All actions on GitHub are associated a GitHub user, so in order for someone to email a reply to an issue or be a member of an organization or private repo they would need to have a GitHub account. This applies to GitHub Enterprise as well.

amoeba commented 6 years ago

Thanks for asking @jagoldstein. If you want to tinker with FreshDesk and Slack integration this week let me know and we can turn it on and test it a bit.

isteves commented 6 years ago

Working on this by developing out the RT package: https://github.com/nceas/rt