[whups] Workflow (was Re: [cvs] commit: ...)

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting "Robert E. Coyle" <robertecoyle@hotmail.com>:

> Yes, I'm using it currently to track implementation progress and bugs of
> a couple of projects.  It's looking pretty sharp these days - I like the
> admin and reports pages a lot.

Great! Nice to get a bit of feedback there. The admin interface could get a
lot better, but it'll get there.

> As for the current direction - Workflow is the logical extension of
> Whups.

I agree.

> This is fairly straighforward to represent:
> 
>   CREATE TABLE whups_state_transitions (
>       transition_id    INT NOT NULL,     -- for permissions
>       type_id          INT NOT NULL,
>       state_from       INT NOT NULL,
>       state_to         INT NOT NULL,
>       actions          some datatype);
> 
> There are a couple of ways to represent the actions - you could keep it
> simple and define a few types of action ('Mail Someone', 'Escalate Ticket' 
> etc), you could define some sort of language (I think that's what Gary 
> Weinreb meant with Nag / Whups integration in his mail 'new to whups', 4th 
> november).  The most flexibly way would be to serialise php objects into 
> the database and run them when when the transition is used.

Or something similar, yes.

> The serialised object would only need a simple interface:
> 
>     class WhupsAction { /* abc - the actual actions inherit this */
>         function  performAction($ticket_id, $state_from, $state_to);
>         function &getConfigForm($vars);
>     }
> 
> Then installations could code whatever actions they need.

Right - sounds like a pretty good way to go.

> For automatic escalation of tickets (Gary Weinreb also mentioned this),
> you'd need a cron job running.  This would be fairly simple to implement.

Yup. I also still plan on creating a Horde job-scheduling daemon/system at
some point.

> Anyway - this is just an idea for implementing it.  There are more
> pressing things that need to be done to make it work as a bug tracking 
> system first.

Anything in particular on your radar?

-chuck

--
Charles Hagenbuch, <chuck@horde.org>
"People ask me all the time what it will be like living without otters."
 - Google, thanks to Harpers