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Yoyodyne's software developers use RT to track defects and tasks related to their rocket control software. RT makes it easy for developers to track open issues and to dig for historical information about issues that were resolved ages ago. Any developer can open a ticket for a bug or task that needs to be handled. Development managers generally are responsible for assigning tickets to individual developers, but developers are encouraged to take responsibility for issues themselves when they have a bit of time on their hands and see something that they know how to handle. Yoyodyne's RT administrators have hooked RT to their software version control system to let programmers update tickets as they check source code into the version control system. If you use Subversion, you can do the same thing using the RT-Integration-SVN package, which is available from your neighborhood CPAN mirror. 7.3.1. Custom FieldsThe Software Engineering department uses custom fields more heavily than any other department within Yoyodyne. Custom fields make it easy for them to mark which product a given ticket applies to and what versions of the product are affected. When Yoyodyne's tech writers are preparing errata and release notes, the additional categorization provided by the custom fields makes it easy to find out what changed between two releases.
7.3.2. GroupsThe Software Engineering team has a single group, Software Engineering, to define both the access control for their queue and the list of people who should get mail when someone updates a ticket. Everyone on the team is a member of this group. Yoyodyne's RT administrators added this group as an AdminCc for the Software Engineering queue, so that everyone can get mail about every ticket update using only standard scrips. 7.3.3. ScripsYoyodyne's developers are all email junkies. Most of their interaction with RT is via the email gateway. When a manager assigns a bug to a given developer, the developer usually does a bit of exploratory work to figure out what it will take to fix the bug and updates the ticket by email. Then RT automatically will distribute that mail to the entire development team for comment. When a developer checks in new code, the version control system integration sends out a ticket update to the entire development team with details of the check-in. The scrips for the Software Engineering queue shown in Table 7-3 are designed to make this process as simple and transparent as possible.
The first scrip ensures that when someone enters a new bug or task into the Software Engineering queue, they get an acknowledgement by email. The second and third scrips make sure that all the mail about a particular issue gets sent to all of the queue's AdminCcs. Yoyodyne's engineers don't use comments much inside RT, but the fourth scrip makes sure that everyone gets notified when someone accidentally enters one. The last scrip makes sure that the developer knows that he's been assigned a bug or task. 7.3.4. ACLsAll software engineers have the same rights within the Software Engineering queue. Yoyodyne's RT administrators have granted the Software Engineering group the following rights for this queue: ShowTicket ShowTicketComments ShowOutgoingEmail Watch WatchAsAdminCc CreateTicket CommentOnTicket OwnTicket ModifyTicket DeleteTicket TakeTicket StealTicket |
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