[Vtigercrm-developers] Tickets, mail converter and workflows

Thu Mar 20 05:00:10 GMT 2014

Max,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. First, let me share the process for
sharing code with core dev team.

1. Create an issue on trac.vtiger.com (if it is already not reported)
2. Attach the code to the trac ticket.

Our team is reviewing trac submissions, and pulling them into the main
trunk. Periodically (atleast once in 15 days), we deploy the changesets to
the main SVN branch on sourceforge.

*Issues you found*

1. some of the conditions in default workflows are bogus.

We didn't get the attachment. Please resend it.

2. text in default email notifications isn't upto the mark.

We'll review this.

3. the mail converter will only convert emails to tickets once per day

Infact, the mail converter goes back by 1 day to ensure all emails from
today are fetched. The condition for All | Unread might not be working
properly. We'll review this.

4. the mail converter assigns everything to administrator.

You can assign to any user, either to administrator or another user. If you
want to assign converted tickets to different users based on ticket
properties, then the right place to do this is through workflows. After the
ticket is created, the workflow will execute to transfer the ticket to the
right user.

5. you need to set up a cron job to get workflows working.

The other alternative to CRON would be to have a background java/c/..
daemon that wakes up and runs periodically. We didn't want to take that
route. We welcome any suggestions that could make this easier.

6. it looks like the community can't update the wiki from the page. Is this
> allowed, and if so how do I submit?

We disabled community edits, since we didn't get a good setup to review
them. For now, If you can send an email to us with the text, we'll gladly
update it, and include credit at the bottom of the page.

Regards,
Sreenivas

--
Sreenivas Kanumuru
vtiger Team

Direct: +91 96323-55656
Skype: skanumuru

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On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:00 AM, Max Clarke <max at smarte.com.au> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This isn't a question per se, but more of a general comment. Please let me
> know if this isn't welcome on this list.
>
> I figure since the developers monitor this list they may find this
> feedback useful.
>
> I've basically been setting up the Tickets module, utilising 2 built in
> functions: a mailbox for email ticket creation through Mail Converter, and
> the built in Workflows for emailing contacts when tickets are updated etc.
> Seeing as how these 2 things are built in and have built in options for
> these needs, I would assume this is a pretty standard setup.
>
> The number of things I've had to fiddle with and fix to get this working
> is crazy. I'm just going to list them here in case anyone else tries to get
> this going or the developers want to fix this for future versions. In no
> particular order:
>
> * most of the standard ticket workflows have bogus rules in the "match
> all" condition list that you have to delete to get them working. See 2nd
> condition in the attached screenshot. This condition is in most of the
> ticket workflows. Once I've deleted the bogus rules the workflows work.
>
> * the built in emails need work.
>     - There are sentences that don't make sense - "The Ticket is replied
> the details are : <ticket details>".
>     - In the subject there are 2 different ticket ID's - the ticket number
> (TT01) and the ticket_id. Confusing.
>     - The comments list in the email has no date or time for each comment,
> nor who made the comment. Just the comment text. Again, very confusing.
>     - All the ticket emails are the same. They always say "the ticket is
> replied the details are" even on the ticket created one.
>
> * the mail converter will only convert emails to tickets once per day,
> because the last run date is just a date, not a datetime column. So even
> though the cron runs every 15 mins and the scheduler says the mail
> converter will run every 15 mins (and defaults to this), it will only
> convert once per day. To get it to work as you'd expect (every 15 mins and
> convert new emails since the last run), you have to replace the condition
> in the core code of mail converter with "UNSEEN". This is documented
> nowhere except an old forum post:
> https://discussions.vtiger.com/index.php?p=/discussion/26140/cant-get-mail-scanner-to-work-after-new-release/p1
>
> * the mail converter assigns everything to administrator. Even ticket
> comments. So you have no way of knowing who's commenting on a ticket, and
> no way of automatically assigning a ticket to a user. I've had to modify
> core code to get this to be usable.
>
> * you need to set up a cron job to get workflows working. And there are
> many conflicting reports of how to set this up all over the documentation,
> so this was a bit of a trial and error process.
>
> There's more, this is just off the top of my head, but you get the idea.
>
> I get that this is open source and so things won't work the way you might
> expect. I'm happy to submit fixes for these, but I'm not sure what the
> submission process is (the wiki only details how to submit new modules,
> though no email or link is provided). Normally you can do a
>
> Also, judging by the documentation it looks like this is all working in
> the On Demand version, so I don't know if me submitting fixes will get
> ignored until you guys are allowed to filter these working bits down from
> the on demand release or what. How does that work anyway? Can we expect on
> demand bug fixes and features in future or is it totally separate?
>
> And finally, happy to submit a page for the wiki with steps to fix these
> in the current 6.0.0 version, but it looks like the community can't update
> the wiki from the page. Is this allowed, and if so how do I submit?
>
> If the tone of this email is a little abraisive I apologise. It was just a
> frustrating process to get this working as it's outlined in the
> documentation.
>
> Max
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.vtiger.com/
>
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