finally{}

After few posts on functionalities that Y-A-T-S-Y will support and following on the ‘release early, release often’, philosophy, here comes a first working model of the tool.

What works? Well, not a lot; but one can create a ticket, admin can assign, and the agents can view those assigned tickets; users can view their open tickets.

(Django rocks; I started working from Friday and by noon Sunday I’ve a working version! Most of the time spent was for understanding the new-forms admin. All others were relatively easy. And there is a whole lot of plug-ins available for the features that I’m looking into.)

I’ve borrowed the layout and css from Django Admin.

Login Screen:

Once logged in, add form is shown by default.

Once a case is added, it will take to the case list. If the logged in user is also an agent, then the assigned tickets are displayed.

There is a little bit of navigation links on the top-right.

All the models from admin screen:

Not a lot; but I’m proud of what I’ve done in the relatively short time. I am going to keep working on it until all the features are done.

Unfortunately I’m not able to create a windows executable(I was able to build the windows executable. Read at the end) So in case you want to try it out, follow these steps:

• If you don’t have Django then download it and install. If you are on Windows, you can also use Instant Django.
• Checkout Y-A-T-S-Y source code from google.
• By default it uses sqlite db. For testing purposes this is sufficient enough. Otherwise you need to connect to whatever db that you want to connect.
• Syncdb to create the database.
• Login as admin (ex: http://localhost/admin)
• Create a user and an agent
• Create master data values
• Logoff as admin and login as a user (ex: http://localhost/)
• Create a case
• Logoff as user
• Login as an admin and assign to the agent
• Logoff as admin
• Login as an agent
• You should see the cases assigned to the agent

If you’re wondering about ‘RFH’ on the title it stands for Request For Help . If you are generous, you can help in so many ways (I promise to acknowledge your contribution):

• I’m relatively new to Python/Django. So I would be grateful if you can review the code and suggest ‘better’ ways – ‘Better’ in terms of performance and elegance.
• Design a good layout scheme. I’m currently using the default Django admin layout and css. While it is great, it is not fair.
• Translate into different languages (while it is too early to translate, you can read about Django i18n and plan about it).
• Design a good favicon.
• Test, test, test. Though I’ll do my round of testing. Testing by others will help to improve the tool in many aspects. Of course before testing, you need to understand the helpdesk functionality.
• Spread the word in whatever way possible.

Note: I was able to build windows executables. You can download from Google Code. Unzip the file into a folder. Once unziped, double click on demo.exe. It will open the browser with /login. Provide agent/agent (username = password = agent). You should be able to create a case and see the list of cases too. For admin login, go to /admin. Provide admin/admin. Play around.

Related Posts:

Announcing Y-A-T-S-Y
An overview of Helpdesk functionality
Y-A-T-S-Y 0.1 – DB and Reports