[rt-users] Feature suggestion: Tree view of tickets

[Richard Hartmann]

Hi all,

I would like to bounce an idea to this list:

A tree view mode for search results. Obviously, this would be a large
change, especially if it is done in a generic way. A generic framework
would be able to create structures on any combination of
inter-relations, but the main use case I can see is to make dependent
tickets more manageable.

Consider this example

#1 Buy beer
#3 [+] Go camping (0/5)
#2 Buy junk food

Now, I click on the plus in front of #2:

#1 Buy beer
#3 [-] Go camping (0/5)
 #4 Pack tent
 #5 Pack sleeping bag
 #6 [+] Call friends (0/2)
#2 Buy junk food

#6 would have a 2 sub-tickets of its own, Alice & Bob. After calling
Alice and packing my tent, I would see this:

#1 Buy beer
#3 [-] Go camping (2/5)
 #5 Pack sleeping bag
 #6 [+] Call friends (1/2)
#2 Buy junk food


The obvious benefit is that you are a _lot_ more aware of what is going
on with nested ticket dependencies.


There are a few considerations which relate to this:

1) How to handle circular dependencies? How to break them?

2) Should finished tickets in this structure be shown or hidden?
Ideally, this would be an option, with the shown tickets using RT's
ticket-inactive CSS style.

3) Should clicking a [+] expand all or just the current sub-tree? Or
should it remember the open/closed status of all tree nodes and restore
to whatever was there before?

4) Should the n in the (n/m) display show open or finished ticket count?
Again, this would ideally be an option or, even better, all data would
be accessible via Display Columns of Search.html .


The largest problem I see is 1); RT supports graphs whereas my suggested
scheme is a tree. The trade-off between usability, displayability (made
up a word, yay!) and coding effort on the one hand and data handling
capabilities on the other hand is, imo, a good one in this case, though.


If this feature suggesion is deemed worthy, what would be the
approximate time-frame of this seeing the light of day?


Thanks,
Richard