Object copier

This extensions aims at improving the end-users productivity. It adds a menu to create an item prefilled with information coming from an existing item.

Amongst the possible usages, you can:

• Provide a mean to quickly clone CIs (clone all the attributes but still force the user to enter a new name)
• Provide a shortcut to create a ticket from a Contact that will be the caller of the ticket
• Provide a shortcut to create a parent ticket (and record the information into the child ticket)
• Provide a shortcut to create a ticket from a CI (and record the information into the child ticket)
• Provide a shortcut to create a change ticket from a user request (and record the information into the user request)

Let's use the last example to illustrate the possibilities of the module:

Users have a menu in the Other Actions drop-down menu of a User Request:

Clicking on the menu, opens the standard creation form with prepopulated data:

The user can adjust the values, then create the item. In addition to the standard report, a message indicates that something has been retrofitted back to the source item.

A shortcut is governed by a rule definition.

The menu is visible if a series of conditions are met:

• The item being visited is in the scope of the rule (given by an OQL). For instance, you may want to propose the shortcut only for user request being assigned or pending: SELECT UserRequest WHERE status IN ('assigned', 'pending')
• The current user has a profile allowed for the rule (can be anybody)

Several rules can coexist for a single source object: there will be as many menus as there are rules that match the conditions.

A rule defines which kind of object to create:

• Either a given class (can be an abstract class, the user will have to select a subclass)
• Or the exact same class as the source object

A rule specifies what has to be done to preset or prepopulate the form. This is done by the mean of actions. The following kind of actions are available:

• Set the value of an attribute depending on the value of one or several attributes from the source object.
• Copy the N-N links
• Add an N-N link to the source object or to an external key of the source object.

Additionaly, the rule specifies what has to be done to retrofit some information from the created object to the source object.

The following types of attributes are currently not handled and therefore cannot be preset (and no error message is given):

• 1-N links (e.g. Server Interfaces)
• Attachments
• Blobs
• Stop watches

Using apply_stimulus() on the created object does not work. If used in preset, the form is shown with the object id and the relevant buttons depending on the new state but then it fails to “create” the object because it was created already during the stimuli processing

n/a

Copy the folder itop-object-copier into the extensions folder of iTop and launch the setup again.

When prompted to select the extensions to install, check “Object copier” in the list of available extensions.

An action is specified as a string having formatted as “verb(arg1[,arg2[…]])”

The following verbs are available:

'itop-object-copier' => array(
        'rules' => array(
                array(
                        'source_scope' => 'SELECT UserRequest WHERE status IN ("assigned", "pending")',
                        'allowed_profiles' => 'Administrator,Support Agent',
                        'menu_label' => 'Issue a change ticket...',
                        'form_label' => 'Issue a change from request %1$s. Please review the description before create the change ticket. After creation of the change ticket, the request ticket will be automatically updated.',
                        'report_label' => 'Issued from the request %1$s. The request has been updated.',
                        'dest_class' => 'Change',
                        'preset' => array(
                                'clone(contacts_list,functionalcis_list,org_id,title,caller_id)',
                                'set(description,Original description:\n\$this->description\$)',
                        ),
                        'retrofit' => array(
                                'copy(id, parent_change_id)',
                                'set(private_log,Issued change $this->ref$)',
                        ),
                ),
                array(
                        'source_scope' => 'SELECT FunctionalCI',
                        'allowed_profiles' => '',
                        'dest_class' => '',
                        'preset' => array(
                                'clone_scalars(*)',
                                'reset(name)',
                        ),
                        'retrofit' => array(
                        ),
                ),
        ),
),

All errors are logged to the file log/error.log

The behavior from the end-user perspective is:

• When the parameters source_scope is wrong, the rule is ignored
• When dest_class is not a valid class, the rule is ignored
• When source_scope/dest_class/allowed_profiles/preset/retrofit are missing, the rule is ignored
• When the list of profiles contain wrong names, those names are simply ignored, and if all the names in the list are wrong then no one will have the menu to clone the object.
• When a preset action is wrong (syntaxically or grammatically), the preset is stopped at that point, the form is displayed with a message explaining the issue: “An error has been encountered while presetting the object to create: <error message>. Please contact your administrator.” The user can proceed with the object creation.
• When a retrofit action is wrong, the retrofit is stopped at that point, the operation completes (object created as expected) and the report contains: “An error has been encountered while retrofitting some information back to the source object: <error message>. Please contact your administrator.”