NAME
    RT-Extension-Announce - Display announcements as a banner on RT pages.

RT VERSION
    Works with RT 4.0, 4.2 and 4.4.

INSTALLATION
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make install
        May need root permissions

    Edit your /opt/rt4/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm
        If you are using RT 4.2 or greater, add this line:

            Plugin('RT::Extension::Announce');

        For RT 4.0, add this line:

            Set(@Plugins, qw(RT::Extension::Announce));

        or add RT::Extension::Announce to your existing @Plugins line.

        And add the following:

            Set(@CustomFieldValuesSources, (qw(RT::CustomFieldValues::AnnounceGroups)));

        See "CONFIGURATION" for more options.

    make initdb
        Only run this the first time you install this module.

        If you run this twice, you may end up with duplicate data in your
        database.

        If you are upgrading this module, check for upgrading instructions
        in case changes need to be made to your database.

    Clear your mason cache
            rm -rf /opt/rt4/var/mason_data/obj

    Restart your webserver

DESCRIPTION
    The Announce extension gives you an easy way to insert announcements on
    the RT homepage so all users can see the message. You may want to
    display a banner during maintenance or an unscheduled outage to make
    sure the people fielding customer tickets know that something is going
    on.

DETAILS
    When you install the extension, a new queue is created called
    RTAnnounce. To post an announcement, create a ticket in that queue. The
    extension displays on the RT homepage the subject and most recent
    correspondence on active tickets in the RTAnnounce queue. As the
    incident or maintenance progresses, just reply to the ticket and the
    announcement will be updated with the latest information.

    When multiple announcements are active, they are ordered by the last
    update time with the announcement with the most recent update coming
    first.

    When the incident is over, resolve the ticket and the announcement will
    be removed.

    Comments on announce tickets are not shown in the announcement. However,
    comments are visible on the ticket for users who have permission to view
    the full ticket. If you have multiple announcements, a new comment
    updates the last updated time and will move the announcement to the top
    of the list.

ANNOUNCEMENT GROUPS
    The RTAnnounce queue has a custom field called 'Announcement Groups'
    which you can use to manage who will see an announcement. If you set no
    value, all users will see the announcement. If you set one or more RT
    groups, only memebers of those groups will see it.

PERMISSIONS
    By default, the announements are static text. If you give users the
    ShowTicket right on the RTAnnounce queue, the announcements will have
    links to the source tickets. This will allow users to see the history of
    an announcement or see longer messages that might be truncated on the
    homepage.

    The RTAnnounce queue is a regular queue, so you can control access to
    creating announcements the same way you manage permissions on other
    queues.

    In addition to setting permissions, you may not want to send the typical
    'ticket create' email messages, so you could change or customize the
    scrips that run or create new templates. If you send announcement
    messages to an email list, you could create a list user in RT and add it
    as a CC to the announcement queue. Then messages posted for announcement
    in RT will also be sent to the notification list.

CONFIGURATION
  $RTAnnounceQueue
    Use this to change the name of the queue used for announcements. First
    edit the RTAnnounce queue in RT and change its name to your new name.
    Then a line to your RT_SiteConfig.pm to set that new value:

        Set($RTAnnounceQueue, 'Custom Announce Name');

  @AnnounceGroups
    By default, all user defined groups will be listed in "Announcement
    Groups". If you have a large number of groups in your RT, this can make
    for a long list, so you can customize the group list by setting
    @AnnounceGroups in your RT_SiteConfig.pm:

        Set(@AnnounceGroups, 'foo', 'bar', 'baz');

  $ShowAnnouncementsInSelfService
    Set this to true to show announcements on the self service page as well
    as the regular privileged RT page.

AUTHOR
    Best Practical Solutions, LLC <modules@bestpractical.com>

BUGS
    All bugs should be reported via email to

        L<bug-RT-Extension-Announce@rt.cpan.org|mailto:bug-RT-Extension-Announce@rt.cpan.org>

    or via the web at

        L<rt.cpan.org|http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=RT-Extension-Announce>.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
    This software is Copyright (c) 2012-2014 by Best Practical Solutions,
    LLC

    This is free software, licensed under:

      The GNU General Public License, Version 2, June 1991