[rt-users] RT at a glance user preferences

[Jim Meyer]

On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 09:45 -0800, Chaim Rieger wrote:
> On Feb 6, 2006, at 9:06 AM, Stewart Tranter wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm using RT 3.5.5 and I was wondering if is anyway to change the  
> > standard RT at a glance page for all users?
> >
> > I want to remove the Quick Create tab at the bottom, but to go  
> > through each user's preferences would be a bit tedious, can I  
> > change the default setup somewhere?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> 
> 
> yes you can,
> 
> in the archives is all the info you need,
> in brief you can modify the code and comment out what you do want to  
> show up via http

That's a very bad idea for 3.5.x as these are now user-modifiable
preferences and the default is stored in the database. You can see it
with this query:

  select * from attributes where name='HomepageSettings';

#####################################################################
WARNING: IF YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND A DATABASE, STOP HERE. 
It may sound harsh, but you can bugger your RT database with a
slightly wrong command and, unless you've backed it up, you're
hosed, hosed, hosed.
#####################################################################

The way I changed the default user setup was:

1. Run this query and copy/paste the results into a text file.
   This is your emergency backup just in case:

   select * from attributes where name='HomepageSettings';

2. Create a test user and use /Prefs/MyRT.html to set that 
   user's prefs to be your new default. NOTE: You shouldn't
   use any user-owned saved searches or they'll break for
   everyone else.

3. Get the test user's user ID. You can get this from the
   web interface by choosing Configuration->Users->testuser
   and noting the "id=..." part of the URL or you can query
   it from the database:

   select id,name,realname from users where name=testuser;

4. Get the content field of testuser's preferences:

   select content from attributes where 
     name='Pref-HomepageSettings' and objectid=600;

   The content is just a serialized hash ref; if you want to
   see what's inside it, look at the code in _SerializeContent
   and/or _DeserializeContent in /lib/RT/Attribute_Overlay.pm
   and adapt accordingly.

5. Copy-and-paste the content you got above into this query.
   It's okay that the content is multi-line; just be sure to
   paste it immediately after a single-quote and to type a single
   quote immediately after the content (no spaces before or after).

   NOTE: If you goof this you'll potentially hose the default 
   view of RT for your users and you'll need the backup from
   step 1 to recover. Be very, very careful.

   update attributes set content='COPY-AND-PASTE-GOES-HERE' where
     name='HomepageSettings';

...and that should do it.

Cheers!

--j
-- 
Jim Meyer, Geek at Large                                    purp at acm.org