[rt-users] A few small changes I'd like to make to our RT....

[Gustavo Campos]

I've been messing around with RT for some time at my company and I
have some sort of advice for you: you can change absolutely everything
in RT, you just have to know how.

RT creates on it's folder a subfolder called local, that is pretty
much a mirror of RT directory tree. For what I've seem, you can
override almost any RT file with that, without messing up your
installation.

How does it affect you?

Well, my mission is, as yours, to adapt RT to our company needs, and
that includes hiding information from the user and changing the themes
and templates. Some of our changes could not be done only with
permissions, for example: I need to hide the 'SLA' custom field on
ticket creation, but need the staff to be able to see it's auto-set
value after the ticket is already created - but I don't want staff to
be able to modify it. How did I do it? Simply override the create
ticket template with one that supress that custom field.

You can change the way things are presented, like the menu's and so,
you can create your own css theme, adapt HTML code to that theme,
include and exclude information. You just have to find from which file
it comes from, copy it "in place" from it's original folder to the
corresponding folder under 'local' and be happy.

It's not easy stuff, specially if you don't know perl (as I don't) but
it's worth a try.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Gary Greene
<ggreene at minervanetworks.com> wrote:
> On 10/22/09 3:04 PM, "Jerrad Pierce" <jpierce at cambridgeenergyalliance.org>
> wrote:
>>> The thing here is that the interface is presenting far too much information
>>> for my users (both admin and self service UIs), thus why I'm trying to
>> I'd recommend just getting used to it.
>
> If I had to "just get used to it" as you put it, we'd never move over to
> using RT. The corporate culture here is very non-forgiving of IT if we don't
> give them exactly what they want. Thankfully, I've managed to do everything
> I want with only a couple of small items left on my plate for testing with
> more users here.
>
>>> streamline it as best I can. Would you know which modules these links are
>>> generated by? At least then I can hack them out in the local override
>>> directory.
>> Not modules, Mason file sin share/html
>
> Yup. This worked beautifully. I've successfully hacked up local overrides to
> these that do exactly what I wanted.
>
>> Alternatively, you might create a custom CSS theme that display:none's the
>> icky classes like downloadattachment. While you're still sending the bytes,
>> your modifications are more future proof this way.
>>
>> Another advantage of doing it with CSS is that you can set the default CSS
>> to the custom theme, but this would still allow power users the ability to
>> revert to RT "as it ought to be."
>
> The "as it aught to be" line there is highly subjective. ;) Thankfully, I've
> managed to get everything short of the Priorities changes that I want done,
> which looks like I have to upgrade to 3.8.4 or higher to use the extension I
> need for that (PriorityAsString), plus add a CF for Severity. So far, so
> good. :)
>
> --
> Gary L. Greene, Jr.
> IT Operations
> Minerva Networks, Inc.
> Cell:  (650) 704-6633
> Phone: (408) 240-1239
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://lists.bestpractical.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rt-users
>
> Community help: http://wiki.bestpractical.com
> Commercial support: sales at bestpractical.com
>
>
> Discover RT's hidden secrets with RT Essentials from O'Reilly Media.
> Buy a copy at http://rtbook.bestpractical.com
>



-- 
Gustavo Campos
Sistemas de Informação - UFMG