Install-remove plugins via web admin GUI + plugin catalog

RT Developers
1

Dear RT Community,

We work with RT since 2004, and we love it, and we think it is a very stable very sophisticated product. That’s why we are sad to see how the user base decreased (RT5.0 alpha release topic has 714 views now :frowning: ), while other solutions (OTRS, Jira) gained popularity. We were trying figure out the reasons and we think we found two reasons:

  1. It is very hard for a newcomer to make RT work (the learning curve is a problem). So we have to make RT more user friendly, that’s why the newcomers need an easy deployable RT image, a plugin catalog + GUI for plugin install for the custom solutions the user needs.

  2. If there would be any prize - even price - for some development, then some extra RT features would developed - developed faster, or just simple would get developed.

So we started to work.

DOCCA is proud to present a new version of the PluginManager Plugin (PMP) that allows RT administrators to download and install plugins without using a CLI. As I wrote we want RT to become more popular with the masses, this is the purpose of the PMP. (That was our last announcement: Web based plugin installation )

How it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9xBpIDfZ88

You can find the install guide here: #3447997 DOCCA Marketplace, Pluginmanager installaton - Google Docs

Furthermore we created (just v0.1) a web catalog for different service desk software, at this moment: ServiceNow, Jira, RT. In this web catalog we would like to make more and more RT plugins accessable for easy install.
This is the catalog site: https://servicedesk-marketplace.com/products/
Its name is “marketplace”, at the moment this is just a catalog, later we would like to turn the catalog into a real marketplace for the proprietary software plugins (ServiceNow, Atlassian products - if it is legally okay). If any new RT plugin’s author wants to ask money for her-his plugin (even it shuold be GPL as well as far as I know), it could be real marketplace for those new RT plugins as well. Maybe it helps to vitalize the development of RT plugins, thereby helps RT to get more popular.

If anyone think this is problematic or not compatible with GPL or it violates the intentions of free and open source development, let us know, please. We would like to make RT more useful for the audience, we don’t want to make tensions. We don’t think this is a big business (again: RT 5.0.0 Alpha 1 Now Available topic has 714 views, so I think a plugin will be sold 0-50 times, cca $20/sales=0-$1000), but this is more than nothing, so we think this could be a motivation anyway.

For now: the catalog site provides links to plugins of CPAN repositories, and the catalog site also has some downloadable plugins itself. The latter can be used by PMP, so these plugins can be installed with few clicks by the RT admin.

Also PMP can import initaldata files from etc folder of plugin.

Current features:

  • installs some of our small plugins from the catalog site.
  • scans and displays plugins installed manually
  • it works on Debian based systems and Apache only
  • deactivate installed plugins
  • install extensions from cpan
  • configure plugins with immediate activation
  • or scheduled plugin activation and deactivation with Apache restart
  • command-line install from catalogue

If anyone has any suggestion or questions or any comment, let us know, please!

Regards,

AT @ DOCCA

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