Freeside 2.1 was released this week without much fanfare. The fanfare will be coming, but with the trade show coming up, I’ve been focused on getting ready for that. I’m going to take a minute though and point out a new feature in 2.1… Calendars.
Calendars
Freeside, through the integration with RT from Best Practical, now has support for iCal as well as a calendar report so that you can see the time line on a group of tickets. For iCal integration, you will need calendaring software that supports the iCal feed. There is a reasonably large list of iCal compatible software on Wikipedia.
To use calendaring, the first step is to create a search. For example you could search for all tickets that belong to you, or belong to a specific group of customers that you manage. To get reminders too, you may want to add the following snippet (click the advanced link):
    AND ( Type = 'ticket' OR Type = 'reminder' )
Go ahead and run the search, and you should have a list of tickets and optionally reminders. Now to do something with the dates…
First, for iCal, look at the upper right and there are a number of links for exporting the data. You can download it via a spreadsheet, or get a feed from RSS or iCal. Right-click on the iCal link and copy the link. Then open your iCal software and past the link in the field for your iCal feed. The system will export all of your due dates so that they will now show up on your calendar. This is awesome for planning installation schedules. Many applications will allow you to show multiple feeds ona single calendar, color coded – which is great for managers to ensure that they aren’t creating problems for the team.
The second thing that you can do with a list is get a calendar report. if you look to the upper left, there is a calendar link. This will show the start, end and due dates for all of the items in the current search. This is really good for seeing how projects are progressing for a customer, or what the team has been working on. To get a good picture for completed work, be sure to include all tickets, not just open tickets.
Being able to see what is coming up has been really helpful for me, and I hope that it will help you too.
-Peter