[rt-users] Request for comments: Configurable Status

[Matt Disney]

Jesse wrote:
> Would a simple editable per-queue ordered list of possible statuses
> (stati?) be sufficient for your needs?  

That would definitely a great first step and would probably be good 
enough for most people.

> Do you need to control which status transitions are allowed?  Do you
> need to be able to lock down certain statuses such that they're only
> selectable by specific users?

These things both sound great to me and I would prefer them over the 
former option. They would allow much more advanced workflows in RT 
(relative to 3.0, I haven't tried 3.1/3.2).  Those are both great from a 
quality assurance perspective and might make RT attractive to new 
audiences that are also interested in workflow or that would otherwise 
choose a commercial package with similar functionality. More 
specifically, I can see right now how both of these features would fit 
in at my organization and I am certain I would use them.

I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea, over the long-term, to continue 
rolling more advanced capabilities into custom fields and simply make 
Status a custom field that is configured a certain way by default. Of 
course, this would involve a lot of work, even figuring out what to do 
about indexing Status if it's just a custom field.

On the other hand, more and more advanced functionality and flexibility 
serves to complicate RT and perhaps discourage users that don't need 
such features. I suppose the compromise between flexibility and 
user-friendliness lies in pursuing advanced features but having a good 
set of common default settings. The most common complaint about RT may 
be that setup is complicated (though things seem to be getting better in 
this respect all the time); if push comes to shove, it's probably better 
to make RT easier to setup rather than have certain advanced 
functionality that a minority of users will leverage.

Just my two cents.

MD