Roundup Tracker

Confidential Email Replies
==========================

This is a part of a set of modifications to use Roundup as
CRM (customer relationship management) software in a small
software development company.  This HowTo assumes the Roundup tracker instance is based on the classic template.

Use case and motivation
-----------------------

After a customer has submitted an issue, sometimes a rather
technical discussion thread amongst developers starts.
Within these threads there are often technical details
mentioned.  Developers didn't want to have these messages
go out to the customers, because they contain either
confidential technical details or the wording is not
appropriate for official company emails or the company
internal personal email addresses of certain staff members
shouldn't go out to customers.

So by default Email replies shouldn't go to all users on
the nosy list but only to those users, which are members
of the company staff.

How to do this
--------------

Changes to schema.py
....................

To distinguish the company staff users from ordinary
(say external) users a new role is added to ``schema.py``::

  db.security.addRole(name='OurCompany',
                      description='A person working @ OurCompany')

This role has to be assigned to all users, which are members
of the "OurCompany" staff.

Next also in ``schema.py`` the message class is extended with
a new boolean property called ``company_extern``::

  msg = FileClass(db, "msg",
                author=Link("user", do_journal='no'),
  ...
                company_extern=Boolean(),)

Changes to html/issue.item.html
...............................

First a checkbox above the Change note enter box (look for the textarea
in ``html/issue.item.html``) is needed by the customer support staff
to send out official messages out to users on nosy list which are
not employees of the company::

 <tr tal:condition="context/is_edit_ok">
  <th i18n:translate="">Official</th>
  <td colspan=3>
    <input type="checkbox" name="msg-1@company_extern" value="yes">
    <span i18n:translate="">(Should this change also be mailed to external people?)</span>
  </td>
 </tr>

Whether some change note message was a company official email in
the message thread should be displayed.  So at the very bottom of
``html/issue.item.html`` there are the following two table rows
to be inserted just above the row containing the
``<tr><td colspan="4" class="content">``::

  <tr tal:condition="msg/company_extern">
    <th class="msgexternal" colspan="3" i18n:translate="">
       This was also send out to external members of the nosy list.
    </th>
  </tr>
  <tr tal:condition="not:msg/company_extern">
    <th class="msginternal" colspan="3" i18n:translate="">
       This messge was only send to Company internal members of the nosy list.
    </th>
  </tr>

Changes to html/style.css
.........................
The following could be added to the file ``html/style.css``::

 table.messages th.msgexternal {
   font-weight: normal;
   color: red;
   border-top: 0;
 }

 table.messages th.msginternal {
   font-weight: normal;
   border-top: 0;
 }

The most difficult change: detectors/nosyreaction.py
....................................................

This subsection describes, where the real action takes place.
Unfortunately this requires a rather heavy change.  In the
default classic template there is a file ``detectors/nosyreaction.py``
which used to contain the following function::

  def nosyreaction(db, cl, nodeid, oldvalues):
  ...
      # send a copy of all new messages to the nosy list
      for msgid in determineNewMessages(cl, nodeid, oldvalues):
          try:
              cl.nosymessage(nodeid, msgid, oldvalues)
          except roundupdb.MessageSendError, message:
              raise roundupdb.DetectorError, message

Remove this for loop containing the call to ``cl.nosymessage()``
and a replace it with copy of the code taken from the Roundup
source code method ``nosymessage()`` from the IssueClass in
``roundup/roundupdb.py``.  In this code find the following section::

        # If we have new recipients, update the message's recipients
        # and send the mail.
        if sendto or bcc_sendto:
            if msgid is not None:
                self.db.msg.set(msgid, recipients=recipients)
            self.send_message(nodeid, msgid, note, sendto, from_address,
                bcc_sendto)

and change it as follows (**note**: at the time of this writing
this was only tested with Roundup 0.8.  The patches are now, January 2016,
still working fine with Roundup 1.5.1) ::

   ...
        # If we have new recipients, update the message's recipients
        # and send the mail.
        if sendto or bcc_sendto:
            if not messages.get(msgid, 'company_extern'):
                # filter out the people not having the OurCompany role:
                sendto = [i for i in sendto
                             if "OurCompany" in users.get(i,
                                            'roles', "").split(',')]

            # Now (see above) we know the new recepients, that will
            # really receive the message:
            recipients = recipients + sendto

            # map userids to addresses
            sendto = [users.get(i, 'address') for i in sendto]

            # still someone to send this to?
            if sendto or bcc_sendto:
                # update the message's recipients list
                messages.set(msgid, recipients=recipients)

                # send the message
                cl.send_message(nodeid, msgid, note, sendto)

   ...

CategorySchema CategoryDetectors