What is Toluu?
Toluu is a free service for sharing the feeds you read and discovering new ones.		 Get Invite

Best Practical

The best ideas, worst ideas and idle musings of Jesse, CL and the rest of the gang at Best Practical Solutions.


Unscheduled Downtime (Edit: we're back)September 16 2008

At about 8:30 AM (US/Eastern) today, diesel.bestpractical.com, which handles Best Practical's mail and web presence, experienced a RAID Controller failure. We initially restored service at about 11 AM, but discovered some minor disk corruption around 1:30PM and brought the server down to recover the affected partition.

We're working to restore service as quickly as possible.

If you need to contact us while we're restoring service, please mail us at bps.emergency@gmail.com.

I'm sorry for any trouble this disruption may have caused you.

EDIT: As of approximately 6pm, all services should be fully restored.  Most everything was sorted out by about 3pm, though recovering the database backing the wikis took a few extra hours. We kept the mailing lists turned off while we finished recovery to ease disk contention as we let the RAID finish verifying.

RTFM 2.4.0 AnnouncedAugust 29 2008

Following the release of RT 3.8.1, Best Practical is happy to announce a new version of RTFM.  This version of RTFM is compatible with RT 3.4, 3.6 and 3.8.1 and higher.  It contains a number of integration fixes for 3.8.   

You can download the release from:

http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/RTFM-2.4.0.tar.gz
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/RTFM-2.4.0.tar.gz.siz

Please note that RTFM 2.4 is not compatible with RT 3.8.0. If you are using RT 3.8.0, please upgrade to RT 3.8.1.

Updated Translation Templates

  • This release includes newly updated translation templates.
  • Patches are welcome to fill these in and update the existing translation for future releases.
  • There are directions in po/README.

New Features and Changes

  •   SelfService users can search for Articles
  •   Global Topics
    • Queue specific article lists using Topics
  •   Integration with 3.8
  •   RTFM UI is now available during Ticket Creation (in 3.8.1 or higher only)

Corrected Bugs

  •   Fixed cases where "Refers To" links were not correctly created when using an Article while Replying to Tickets
  •   Better error handling in the display and creation of Lin



RT Training Announcement - November 24, 2008August 21 2008

Due to popular demand, we're holding a second European RT training session in 2008! Come and join us!

2008 RT Fall Training

We provide unparalleled instruction in how to get the most out of RT.   On November 24, we will be offering an intensive one-day developer and administrator training session taught by the developers who built RT. This is the first European training session where we will present new features and changes in RT 3.8.

This comprehensive session will cover:

  •     New features in RT 3.8
  •     RT's system architecture
  •     A guided tour of the RT source code
  •     Extension mechanisms you can use to customize RT
  •     How to tie RT into your existing authentication infrastructure
  •     Building your own tools that talk to the RT backend
  •     Automating common procedures
  •     Customizing RT's workflow to match your own
  •     How to write custom reports based on RT's data

This session will be offered in:

Madrid, Spain on Monday, November 24th, 2008

Register now to reserve your seat!  Space is limited.

Reservations

To reserve your seat, please send mail to training@bestpractical.com with the names and email addresses of all attendees.

Private Tr

3.8.1 now Available!August 20 2008

RT 3.8.1 now available

We're pleased to announce RT 3.8.1, a recommended update to the current RT 3.8 release series.

This update contains several important bugfixes and some minor functionality improvements.

You can download this release from:
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.1.tar.gz

This release of RT has been digitally signed with PGP. You can download the signature file at:
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.1.tar.gz.sig

Important changes and updates include:

  • [SECURITY] Fixed a potential HTML injection attck via user's properties.
  • Better support for installation on Solaris and FreeBSD (non-GNU make).
  • Updates to documentation and scripts for upgrading from MySQL 4.0
  • Updated upgrade documentation for the new Queue Tag and bookmarks features.
  • Multiple bugs in iCal support fixed.
  • Backwards compatibility fixes for extensions developed against 3.6

New features include:

  • Added support for external links in tabs and targets.
  • Addition of a new callback before ticket creation so you can implement custom validation or stop creation for anothe


Hiveminder is waiting for your callAugust 13 2008

One of my favorite things about Hiveminder is the number and variety of systems it can talk to. Since we launched, we've wanted a way for you to be able to talk to Hiveminder.

We've just integrated Jott.com with Hiveminder. Jott is the "missing link" service that lets you dictate notes from your mobile phone. You can send email, add items to your calendar, and now you can put items on your Hiveminder todo list.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, Hiveminder is now just a phone call away:

  1. Call 1-866-JOTT-123
  2. Say "Hiveminder"
  3. Then say your task. "Take out the garbage tomorrow"

Jott will transcribe your note, send it along to Hiveminder, and we'll create the task for you. You'll be able to listen to a recording of your note, so you don't need to worry about hard to understand words.

If you want, you can give all Jott tasks from your office phone the [work] tag. Just link your Jott account to a specific Hiveminder tasks by email address to automatically set tags, due dates and everything else we support in those [square brackets].

Setting up Hiveminder to work with Jott only takes a moment. Try it out today.