[rt-users] Fun with custom fields

[David Z Maze]

Two questions on custom fields:

(1) The Administrator Question: I've created a "enter multiple values"
    field on a queue.  When I visit Ticket/Modify.html for a
    particular ticket, there's an edit box prompting me to "enter
    multiple values".  How do I do that?  "One value to a line" isn't
    it; I just get one big value with multiple lines to it.

(2) The Hacker Question: I have some HTML::Mason code that gets the
    list of possible values, then displays them, along with any
    tickets that have that value.  The code looks like:

<tr class=<%$Class%>><td><b><%$Name%></b><br>
% foreach my $value (@$Values) {
   <%$value%>
<%PERL>
$Tickets->ClearRestrictions;
$Tickets->LimitStatus(VALUE => "new");
$Tickets->LimitStatus(VALUE => "open");
$Tickets->LimitQueue(VALUE => "Bugs", OPERATOR => "=");
$Tickets->LimitCustomField(CUSTOMFIELD => 3, OPERATOR => "=",
			   VALUE => "$Name $value");
while (my $Ticket = $Tickets->Next) {
</%PERL>
<a href="<%$RT::WebPath%>/Ticket/Display.html?id=<%$Ticket->Id%>"><%$Ticket->id%>
(<%$Ticket->OwnerObj->Name%>) <%$Ticket->Subject%></a>
% }
<br>
% }
</td></tr>
<%INIT>
my $Tickets = RT::Tickets->new($session{'CurrentUser'});
</%INIT>
<%ARGS>
$Class => 'oddline'
$Name => undef
$Values => []
</%ARGS>

   Is this, in fact, the best way to do it?  It feels vaguely
   sluggish, though I haven't looked into it more; I assume throwing
   an index at the values of the custom field would help.

I'm also open to UI suggestions.  The listing looks sort of like this:

Name 1, which is potentially quite long
   Case 1: 1 (Nobody) Case 1 is broken, 2 (dmaze) Cases 1-3 need help
   Case 2: 2 (dmaze) Cases 1-3 need help
Name 2, also potentially quite long
   Case 3: 2 (dmaze) Cases 1-3 need help
   Case 4

Right now "Name 1", "Name 2", "Name 3", etc. are in alternating colors
(evenrow, oddrow); I have no good way of dealing if the list of
tickets associated with a particular case overflow.  I'd also like a
more convenient way of associating a case with a ticket, rather than
forcing users to type out the full name of the name and case possibly
mult8iple times.

-- 
David Z. Maze                                      dmaze at cag.lcs.mit.edu
Research Scientist                            http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
MIT LCS Computer Architecture Group   http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/commit/