[rt-users] devel list AssetTracker

[Bill Cole]

Natxo Asenjo wrote, On 7/4/09 7:51 AM:
> hi,
>
> My apologies for posting here, but I in the assettracker some things
> remain unanswered (see
> http://code.google.com/p/asset-tracker-4rt/wiki/FeatureRequestPage )
> Is there a devel mailing list for asset tracker?

There is no mailing list dedicated to Asset Tracker that has significant 
membership or traffic. A few months ago, someone posted here about starting 
a list for it, but he made 2 mistakes: (1) he created the list on 
yahoogroups.de, making signup confusing for people who don't speak German, 
and (2) he made no real effort at evangelizing it.

However, the author of AT (Todd Chapman) can sometimes be seen posting to 
this list and to the rt-devel list regarding AT. Apparently he pays more 
attention to these lists than to the Google Code site.

> Are there enough
> people with an interest in such a list?

Probably not. There don't seem to be a lot of people using AT. In its 
current state it does not have a lot of appeal, and I say that as someone 
currently deploying it. Having worked with Todd at the company where he 
created AT, I could but probably should not dissect how AT was built to be 
attractive to a small pathological niche of organizations... Beyond that, I 
think AT is a victim of being a minimalist tool that is implemented very 
well and is dependent upon and constrained by a larger framework. People who 
are not daunted by the amount and type of work required to implement a 
working asset tracking system using AT are likely to have enough Perl skill 
to handle a lot of their own customizations and AT itself isn't big enough 
or sloppy enough to provide much to work on. There's not enough to it to 
base a community of user/developers on which would be distinct from RT.

I should also add that in my experience working with AT at its birthplace 
and seeing how it evolved there and now trying to get it deployed in a very 
different environment, the most common *user* problem with AT is 
understanding how to model their assets as very simple data objects with 
links to assets of other simple types rather than having internal complexity 
in the asset records themselves.

> RT is the best helpdesk software out there, but I see lots of places
> where the lack of some feautures (like tracking assets)  get RT out
> the door. This is a shame. At work I am now stuck with topdesk because
> of this, and every time I have to use that piece of sh*t I nearly cry
> when I think at how good and fast RT is. That is why I would like to
> change this, I am no perl guru (far from that) but am willing to learn
> and contribute in my own time. Are there any other people interested
> in further improving assettracker?

I'm one, but I'm only a Perl hacker to the degree that I need to be. I don't 
have enough spare cycles to make anything like a commitment to advancing a 
piece of freeware.