= Flexible notifications for Trac = == Description == The AnnouncerPlugin is meant to provide an extensible, user-customizable notification system that can be used to completely replace Trac's default notifications. At the very least, it will allow users to receive notices about attachments, and to opt-out from receiving messages due to the always_notify_(owner|reporter|updater) options. The full system (in the not-too-distant-future) will allow users to 'subscribe' to certain events by specifying simple yet powerful rules, such as asking to receive an announcement for any change that involves a ticket with a priority greater then 'high'. Later, a 'watch' feature is intended to replace CC usage, and allow watching of wiki-pages, and then to enable other plug-ins to provide new means for registering messages that users can subscribe to. The AnnouncerPlugin is meant to be agnostic to what is being watched; where you should send something (email, IRC, jabber, ...), and what format it should look at. All in good time. === Modules === The plugin itself is very modular, and exactly what features you have will depend on which modules you enable. ==== Legacy Modules ==== These mimic the standard trac notification that has been in Trac for awhile. In all cases, they are configured via the [announcer] section of the trac.ini. In most cases, the options are identical to what was previously in the [notification] section. In fact its recommended that you simply rename [notification] to [announcer] if you are going to be using any of these compatibility modules. * ''!StaticTicketSubscriber'': If enabled, this module will obey the ''smtp_always_bcc'' option to deliver a copy of every announcement sent out to a single address. * ''!LegacyTicketSubscriber'': If enabled, this module will obey the ''always_notify_owner'', ''always_notify_reporter'' and ''always_notify_updater'' option, except that individual users may choose to opt-out of this on a per-option basis. So if you don't want to receive messages just because you are the reporter, you can uncheck that. * ''!CarbonCopySubscriber'': If enabled, any name (or address) put into the CC field of a ticket will receive a notification. ''Note'': I recommend you turn this off and instead use the CC field for groups and the Watch This feature for CC's! See below. [[Image(AnnouncerPlugin:Legacy-Prefs.png)]] ==== Groups ==== With the ''joinable_groups'' option in the [announcer] section, the Trac Admins can create any number of joinable groups. Any users may then in their preferences choose to join them by simply clicking to opt-into the membership. This feature is provided by ''!JoinableGroupSubscriber'', and is meant to create targeted groups of people that should be notified about certain important issues. One example might be 'security' that security-related bugs should notify everyone about. Another might be 'sitedown' that represents a critical failure at a customer's site where you want to be sure to notify certain high level management in your company. In any case, by prepending the group with an @ and adding it into the CC box, everyone who has opted into that group will receive notification of changes to that ticket. E.g., adding '@security' to the CC field will send the security team a message whenever someone alters it. The !CarbonCopySubscriber ignores any such entries (if its enabled at all) [[Image(AnnouncerPlugin:Groups-Prefs.jpg)]] ==== Watches ==== If ''!WatchSubscriber'' is enabled, then in the context-sensitive navigation portion of each ticket and wiki page, a 'Watch This' link will be provided. Clicking on it will add you to the watch list for the resource-- any changes to it will be sent to you. This can be in addition to the CC field if you have !CarbonCopySubscriber enabled, or you can use it to replace the functionality. When a page is already watched, the link changes to 'Unwatch This' [[Image(AnnouncerPlugin:WatchThis.png)]] ==== Formatters ==== For tickets, both a plain text and HTML formatter are currently supplied, and you may choose which you wish to receive in your preferences. For wiki pages, only a plain text notice is currently available. The HTML formatter also sends out a plain text alternative for those email clients that may not support HTML email. [[Image(AnnouncerPlugin:HtmlEmail.jpg)]] ==== Distributors ==== Although the goal is to allow many kinds of distribution, at this point we're only delivering to email addresses. The ''!EmailDistributor'' uses the same options as the old trac notification, just (as above) in the ''announcer'' section and not the ''notification'' section. Some options it doesn't quite use yet but will in the future. There are a few additional ones: * use_threaded_delivery: If Python is built with threads, this option will speed up actual delivery by a second or two-- that's not a long time, but it's time not spent delying a request from going through. * default_email_format: This should be either 'text/plain' or 'text/html' and represents the default format that it sends email as. Users may override this in their preferences. * email_address_resolvers: An ordered list of resolvers (see below) that the distributor uses to map usernames to email addresses. The first one that returns an address, wins. ==== Resolvers ==== Currently, the following resolvers can be configured to map usernames to email addresses: * ''!DefaultDomainResolver'': This will simply blindly append the domain specified in [announcer] smtp_default_domain onto the end of the username. * ''!SpecifiedEmailResolver'': This will allow the user to override the email address in Trac (or anywhere else) to demand all email be sent to a certain address specified in their user preferences (and separate from Trac's normal address) * ''!SessionEmailResolver'': This will retrieve the email address associated with the username's Trac session. The order is important: if you specify resolvers as {{{ [announcer] email_address_resolvers = DefaultDomainResolver, SpecifiedEmailResolver, SessionEmailResolver }}} Then the only resolver that will ever be checked would be DefaultDomainResolver-- it blindly appends a domain name, after all. Its best for last. The recommended setting is: {{{ [announcer] email_address_resolvers = SpecifiedEmailResolver, SessionEmailResolver }}} Unless you're in an intranet setup and DefaultDomainResolver is appropriate at the end. == Bugs/Feature Requests == Existing bugs and feature requests for AnnouncerPlugin are [report:9?COMPONENT=AnnouncerPlugin here]. If you have any issues, create a [http://trac-hacks.org/newticket?component=AnnouncerPlugin&owner=ixokai new ticket]. == Download == Download the zipped source from [download:announcerplugin here]. '''Note''': Announcer isn't quite available yet-- re-factoring a bit then I'll post the alpha version up. == Source == You can check out AnnouncerPlugin from [http://trac-hacks.org/svn/announcerplugin here] using Subversion, or [source:announcerplugin browse the source] with Trac. '''Note''': Announcer isn't quite available yet-- re-factoring a bit then I'll post the alpha version up. == Example == Initially(very soon now), it'll simply be a drop-in replacement for the default notifications, extending them to include attachment additions and deletions, and allowing users to opt-out from receiving notices normally sent because of the always_notify_* options. == Recent Changes == [[ChangeLog(announcerplugin, 3)]] == Author/Contributors == '''Author:''' [wiki:ixokai] [[BR]] '''Contributors:'''