ANN & RFH: Y-A-T-S-Y 0.1

By Joseph Jude on July 27, 2008
Posted Under: Programming

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.

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; alternatively execute this SQL
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.

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

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