[Rt-devel] Dashboards and other new features

[Shawn M Moore]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 01:20:23PM +0100, Drew Taylor wrote:

Hi Drew,

> There is zero documentation about the dashboard feature on the wiki.
> Can someone summarize what it does? How would I add custom queries to
> be run?

Since I added the feature, I'll happily braindump what dashboards are.

Todd's one-line summary is exactly right. A dashboard is a named, shared
collection of saved searches that RT can email you whenever you want.

You can create, modify, and subscribe to dashboards by going to
Preferences then Dashboards.

A dashboard can be shared between a group and the entire system. For
example, in RT's own RT, we have a dashboard for the 3.8 release, shared
across the RT Hackers group. This dashboard displays each upcoming RT
release ticket, tickets that are blocking the 3.8.0 release, and some
other useful searches.

There's also a dashboard portlet that shows you each dashboard so no
dashboard is more than a click away. Even better is that you can just
bookmark the link to the dashboard and have that be your new home page.

In a version beyond 3.8.0 (probably 3.8.1 but I haven't coded it yet so
I can't say for sure), dashboards will contain any portlet, not just searches.
Ideally "RT at a Glance" will end up being just a dashboard, since
there's a fair amount of code and concept duplication.

> And in the same vein, how can I create a custom component(?) which
> would be available for displaying on the At A Glance screen?

It's just two steps. First, create a template in /Elements/Foo. Then add
Foo to the @HomepageComponents variable in your RT_SiteConfig.pm.

> I've been very excited digging around the new features, but sometimes
> I'm still a bit bewildered about how to configure somethings
> (dashboards being one). Will the wiki be updated once 3.8 goes gold?
> And for the record, I clarified the page on CustomFields this week so
> I'm willing to eat my own dog food. :-)

People are very much encouraged to try out the 3.8 release candidates
and update the wiki. Feel free to ask questions on the mailing list,
I'll be more than happy to answer anything about dashboards. It's a cool
feature and I hope people enjoy it.

I'm currently focusing on making dashboards shinier and shinier, so
documentation may lag behind. :)

> Thanks,
> Drew

Hope this helps,
Shawn