Case Tracker - Port to Drupal 7

You can always try different approach:

1. install CCK, Comment CCK, Date and Views modules
2. create new content type (Case)
3. create new fields - due date (date field), assignee (user link field), case description (text field) and so on
4. allow changing these fields in comments
5. create several views to represent different case lists, "My cases" list, "Outdated cases" and so on. Maybe some custom blocks/whatever
6. if you want to sort cases by different projects, use taxonomy vocabulary to organise your projects
7. if you want e-mail notifications, use Notifications module

If you think that will be enough for you to use, stick to this plan, because CCK and Views will be in D7 and these cover 90% of all functionality you may need.

I do plan on maintaining Case Tracker for Drupal 7. Additionally I am working on a complete rewrite of the module, which sadly is very slow going at the moment due to time constraints. I'm not certain if the rewrite will be complete before D7 is released, in which case I'll make a straight upgrade of the D6 version available within a reasonable amount of time.

On my part the primary driving force behind my work on Case Tracker is Open Atium, subsequently you can expect a few things from the rewrite:

* A mush more flexible case state system, which supports per group customization via the spaces module. (This is the primary difference between the CCK based solution Azol describes above and Case Tracker. Work on this branch is currently happening on github http://github.com/miccolis/casetracker)
* Complete support for exportable via the ctools module
* Improved translatability
* Removal of CT mail (which is already deprecated) in favor of Notifications module.

Cheers,

Jeff

Just need to keep track of this thread....

Subscribing

I am curious what the status of this project is for Drupal 7 since it was mentioned that this would be done in a reasonable time. I am very interested in getting this working in Drupal 7 and would like to get in touch with you so I can consider how much might be needed to be done to make this happen.

Thank you.

please update project page with a link to this issue

+1

I also created a project of Case Tracker for Drupal 7 here http://code.google.com/p/casetracker-for-drupal-7.
It's not a rewrite but just a update to work with Drupal 7, so people could simply continue using Case Tracker if they update to Drupal 7.

By now the module works, but there are some bugs that must be solved.

We needed a CT for D7, so I took a step back and decided what I really needed... basically I need to be able to edit a node with comments. So what I did was write a module to allow any field to be "editable" by the comments form of a node.

Simple, ended up being about 70 lines of code. You can check it out here: http://drupal.org/sandbox/jrowny/1281972

directions for use:

1. Download and install module
2. create "case" content type
3. Make sure the case has commenting turned on
4. add the fields you need, for example: status, priority, project (noderef), assignedTo(userref)
5. check the "editable by comments" box for each field
6. create a view to show the cases

Workflow has D7 version now, so maybe states system could be re-used

to change node properties take a look at Comment driven & Driven API

sure but they are used here for issues

I had never seen the comment driven modules before, that will be a good reference for me if I ever decide to add taxonomy editing to my sandbox project. At this point, I don't really plan on turning it into a full solution, but I wanted throw the code out there in case others are struggling with creating the tracker for D7 without this module having a D7 version.

So basically with #1 instructions and the module in #11 we could create a feature + module combo and have a good case tracker alternative for D7 ?

@JamesOakley: If I understand correctly, #1 and #10 are alternatives:

Summary of activity on this issue so far:

• #1 is a do-it-yourself solution requiring something like http://drupal.org/sandbox/jrowny/1281972 or http://drupal.org/project/comment_driven (which awaits Drupal 7 port: http://drupal.org/node/1007082) or http://drupal.org/project/comment_cck (which awaits Drupal 7 port: http://drupal.org/node/715356)
• #10 (http://code.google.com/p/casetracker-for-drupal-7), on the other hand, is a start on porting http://drupal.org/project/casetracker to Drupal 7.

Who's going to make this happen?

The current list of committers for casetracker.module includes: jmiccolis, Zoltán Balogh, yhahn, zero2one, Morbus Iff, killes@www.drop.org, sanjeev. Do any of the existing committers plan to continue maintenance of this module? Or does anyone else want to set up and become a maintainer?

For what I read, we should wait until Project is ported to d7,
a project API that will unify the issue/case tracking seems to be under works

read more here: http://drupal.org/node/834252

If you download this Google Code project #10, I would recommend applying my patch to it. Some of the table names have changed, and comments are now objects instead of arrays, and so on. This patch fixes a lot of the issues in the core casetracker code (from the Google Code project).

@pitxels, the goal of Case Tracker module is not the same from Project module. Case Tracker, as said on the project page:

"Case Tracker enables teams to track outstanding cases which need resolution. This module was inspired by the issue handling in project module, but unlike Project module, which is specific to software development, Case Tracker was designed to be a generic issue tracker."

I think that CT should be ported to Drupal 7, but i`m not seeing any movement forward it. I guess the Google Code project is a good start point to make it happen.

I`m going to start to work on it this week, so i'm wanting to have feedback from everyone and see the best approach.

If i don't have any feedback, i'll see if this Google Code project is in a good shape to use, or i'll start to port from the Drupal 6 version itself.

This module is great! It needs to be ported.

p.s: i'm renaming the issue, because the actual name seems to be related to create the migration path from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 version

yes both modules started with different goals, but they have overlapping functionality.

It seems some people suggested to have a project api that could be extended for case tracking like uses.

however for one can read, this idea doesn't seem to be supported in the project roadmap, and neither case tracker maintainers have posted anything about it.

If you look at it carefully you see it makes sense, but any of this port seems to be a tremendous effort to make.

I hope the maintainer can make this clear.

@Pitxels, i tend to agree with you by the Drupal developer point of view, because we tend to always think that we need to create something extremely generic(and many times i do this way to, creating an API and the UI apart). But with my experience with Drupal, both as a developer and working closely with clients, i think that sometimes we spend more time undoing things that a generic module gave us than solving our real problem itself.

If someone wants to use 1, 2, 3, 5 modules to accomplish a task, ok, and i agree that sometimes is the best way, but specifically this one, Project Management, i think that the whole community would benefit from a monolithic approach to solve the case tracking, without Project, Project Issues, Project Etc, etc. Open Atrium showed us that many people like to simply install and start to using, without the need to many setup pages and modules.

But, as always, both modules could coexist. The users would decide each one to use and everyone will be productive.

Well, if someone wants to use Case Tracker in Drupal 7, i tested the code from Google Code, applied the patch and made some minor fixes, and now the module is fully functional.

Both Case Tracker and Case Tracker Basic(that create the Case and Project content types) are working, providing the main functionality. Unfortunatelly, i don't use neither CT Actions and CT Notifications, and as they aren't dependencies for the other two, i didn't touched them.

For the ones who wants to use, the module is attached here.

I talked to Jeff, the last one to commit something here, and he told me to talk to Febbraro or Hyrcan(http://drupal.org/user/26618), that they could tell me more about what is the current situation of Case Tracker(they are from Phase2Technology, the company that runs the Open Atrium project).

I tried to talk to Hyrcan, but yet without response. I'll try to talk to febbraro too.

I'm working on a much more improved module inpired in Case Tracker, using Entities for Project and Tasks(it's getting cool to be able to create many types os Tasks and/or Projects), and this could be the Case Tracker 2.x, but for this, i need to talk to them. I'm considering create a new module too, but it's the worst option, i think.

Well, i started a new issue in the webmasters issue queue:
Case Tracker module seems to be abandoned - http://drupal.org/node/1653126

Hope to be able to contribute to this great module asap.

@pedrorocha thanks for the work, I gave you commit access to get the 7.x-1.x branch going.

I also like the ideas you are suggesting for the 2.x version too, are you planning for Cases to be Entities as well (instead of Nodes)?

I should also thank liberatr, JamesOakley and Anthony Gaudino

Great febbraro! And for sure, they deserve kudos, because what i did was consolidate and polish the code that was almost done.

About the 2.x version, i explained better in other issue:

Case Tracker 7.x-2.x - a new approach, with entities - http://drupal.org/node/1653184

I'm cleaning the issue list

@febbraro and @pedrorocha

I and my colleague Jerenus has started fixing bugs for 7.x-1.x. Could you also give us commit access? At the moment, we don't have any plan to add new features, but just fix bugs to make this project work for D7.

Is there a stable release for D7 planned? I'm having issues with Support Ticketing System and just looking to see if Case Tracker is a viable option, though it's releases and numerous issues are warning me to stay away. Maybe skyredwang and Jerenus can breathe some much needed life into the Drupal 7 version and give D7 users a good project/ticket management system. :)

@skyredwang You now have commit access. Please proceed with the work on the patches for the D7 branch.

Can I use this in live site?