[rt-devel] RT-Extension-Assets, 1.0rc1

[Alex Vandiver]

We are very happy to announce the first release candidate of
RT::Extension::Assets, an asset tracking extension for RT.  The
extension leverages RT's custom field architecture, making it a very
flexible platform for tracking whatever type of asset data you need to
record. It also comes with some roles and rights to allow you to assign
assets and manage access permissions.

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/devel/RT-Extension-Assets-1.0rc1.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/devel/RT-Extension-Assets-1.0rc1.tar.gz.asc

SHA1 sums

cd5fcb8191ee1f5038167868e3219c49fc20e4da  RT-Extension-Assets-1.0rc1.tar.gz
b9cca327d64f394eb5c0afbee00416dc8ca18364  RT-Extension-Assets-1.0rc1.tar.gz.asc


As you might expect, the extension integrates with RT to allow you to
easily link RT tickets to the assets they refer to. Is a user submitting
a ticket for a laptop problem? Go to the user's User Summary page, find
the laptop assigned to them, and create a ticket. Now you can see all
the information you need about the laptop while troubleshooting the
issue.

Tracking a service request for a server with a vendor? Locate the server
to find out if it's still under warranty and find the details to provide
to support. Then you can open a ticket in RT to track the service
request from your side.

To help make it easier to try things out, we've put together a tutorial,
http://bestpractical.com/docs/assets/latest/RT/Extension/Assets/Tutorial.html
that walks through a few use cases. This should get you something up
and running quickly so you can experiment. We've included a few custom
fields with the tutorial to demonstrate how it might work. You can then
add on as many as you need to track your asset data.

If you decide it's a good fit, we've built a CSV importer,
RT::Extension::Assets::Import::CSV, as a general purpose helper to pull
in data from other systems. Whether you're tracking things in a
spreadsheet or can export from some other tool, it's a quick way to get
your data into RT.

We'd like to acknowledge Reed College, who collaborated with us on this
extension and funded the development. They are currently running the
extension in their production environment, so they were not only the
major contributor, but they are also the currently the primary testers.

And that's where you come in. This is the first RC and we'd like to get
to an official release as soon as possible. If you've been eagerly
waiting for this extension or are pleasantly surprised to learn about
it, we need you to try it out and let us know if you run into any
issues. Note that it requires RT 4.2.1 or later to run. We know you'll
likely have feature requests as you start to use it, but right now we'd
like to focus on bugs and issues. You can report them at
assets-bugs at bestpractical.com or even send pull requests via
github, https://github.com/bestpractical/rt-extension-assets/tree/1.0-trunk

 - Alex