[rt-devel] Asset Tracking within RT?

[Patrick J. Hennessey]

I am currently using RT 1.0.1 in a mid-sized (125 user) fast growing
business environment.  RT has done well for the trouble-ticket facet of my
workspace, but where it is really lacking (especially when one considers
commercial products) is an integration of asset management tools.

I suggested to Jesses that perhaps some form of asset managment could be
integrated with RT.  I would certainly voluteer my time to coordinate (and
write some code) for such a project. I have a moderately strong grasp of
database design and API abstraction, it is getting all that code written
that costs me... of course, having asset tracking would free up so much of
my time :)

In any event, I am voluteering myself to be the contact person for this
effort.  I would like to get a group of interested folks together to
collectively come up with possible ways to tackle this.  Perhaps we can
even get so far as to have a basic design in mind.

I think that the best scheme would be to coordinate the integration with
RT, but have the asset management 'seperate' enough that it could be
developed and extended as a psuedo-independant entity.  Probably the
biggest challenge would be to define the interface between the two
'programs' -- deciding what they need to 'know' and 'get' from each other,
and putting in the proper hooks.  Another big brainstorm would be coming
up with an asset system that is flexible enough to work in a wide range of
environments (as it RT) with maximum of portability.

I'm just tossing out the idea tonight... I have deeper ideas on the
subject, but am too beat to search for them. Please do contact me if you
want to converse on this more.  I'm sure I am not the only one who wishes
they had a web-based asset tracking/managment system right there alongside
RT on an internal webserver!

Patrick


--------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Hennessey               Manager, Information Solutions
spectre at sigmatel.com                            SigmaTel, Inc.

defination of active imagination by C.G. Jung:
"a sequence of fantacies produced by deliberate concentration"