issue_recurring

Redmine plugin: schedule Redmine issue recurrence based on multiple conditions.

Issue tracker: https://it.michalczyk.pro/ (don't be afraid, you can register/login there with your Github account).

Screenshots: https://it.michalczyk.pro/projects/issue-recurring/wiki/Screenshots

Motivation

This plugin has been inspired and based on nutso's plugin redmine-plugin-recurring-tasks. Thank you nutso! The code though was rewritten from scratch. It was due to amount of changes would make it impossible to fit into original codebase.

Purpose

Plugin for Redmine to configure issue recurring according to a schedule. The plugin creates a new issue or reopens closed issue in Redmine for each new recurrence. Because some boring things have to be done on-time after all.

Features

The most notable features of this plugin include:

• recurrence creation/deletion directly from form on issue page (no separate page, no page reloading when creating/deleting recurrences),
• multiple recurrence schedules per issue possible (except for in-place modification),
• specification of recurrence frequency by means of:
  • days,
  • working days (according to non-working week days specified in Redmine settings),
  • weeks,
  • months with dates keeping fixed distance from the beginning or to the end of the month (e.g. 2nd to last day of month),
  • months with dates keeping the same day of week from the beginning or to the end of the month (e.g. 2nd Tuesday of month or 1st to last Friday of month),
  • months with dates keeping the same working day (according to non-working week days specified in Redmine settings) from the beginning or to the end of the month (e.g. 2nd working day of month or 1st to last working day of month),
  • years,
• creation of next issue recurrence as a copy of: first issue; last recurrence; without copying, by in-place modification,
• next recurrence scheduling based on: original issue dates; last recurrence dates; close date of last recurrence; last recurrence dates if closed on time or close date otherwise,
• ability to specify recurrence based on start or due date; for recurrence based on close date: ability to specify which of these dates is inferred from close date,
• updating both start and due dates according to schedule (if specified),
• ability to recur with or without subtasks,
• ability to delay recurrence against base date to create multiple recurrences of the same frequency with different time offset (e.g. monthly recurrence on 10th, 20th and 30th day of month),
• ability to limit recurrence by final date or recurrence count,
• showing dates of last/next recurrence and history of recurrences,
• logging errors as an issue note when unable to renew issue recurrences (instead of logging into web-inaccessible log file),
• permissions to view/manage recurrences managed by Redmine roles,
• per project enabling of issue recurring plugin,
• specification of user account under which issue recurrences will be created: any Redmine user or last recurrence author,
• specification of recurrence issue assignment: assignee can be kept unchanged from previous recurrence or set to Redmine's default.

Changelog

1.2

• plugin is now compatible with Redmine 4.0/Rails 5.2,
• it is now disallowed to create multiple in-place recurrence schedules for single issue. No real world scenario could justify such configuration and it might cause problems for the unwary.

1.1

• from now on it is possible to explicitly specify if recurrence will be based on start or due date, for every recurrence type. Previously it was only possible for monthly recurrences. All other recurrences were treated automatically, depending on start/due date availability. You can use this feature to e.g. decide how recurrences based on close date will be treated: you can have either start or due date of next recurrence based on close date of the previous one. Upon upgrading all existing recurrences will be migrated according to previous rules, which were as follows:
  • for monthly recurrences things will be kept unchanged (monthly recurrences already had distinct start/due options),
  • for all of the rest: if start date is available and due date is empty for reference issue - recurrence will be based on start date; otherwise recurrence will be based on due date (that is also true for recurrences based on close date, which may have both start and due dates missing; such recurrence will be based on due date as well).

Installation

1. Check prerequisites. To use this plugin you need to have:

   • Redmine (https://www.redmine.org) installed. Check that your Redmine version is compatible with plugin. Currently supported are following versions of software:

     Redmine	Compatible plugin versions	Tested with
     3.4.x	1.0 - current	Redmine 3.4.5, Ruby 2.3.8p459, Rails 4.2.11
     4.0.x	1.2 - current	Redmine 4.0.4, Ruby 2.4.6p354, Rails 5.2.3

     You may try and find this plugin working on other versions too, but be prepared to get error messages. In case it works let everyone know that through issue tracker (send support issue). If it doesn't work, you are welcome to send feature request to make plugin compatible with other version. Keep in mind though, that for more exotic versions there will be more vote power needed to complete such feature request.

2. Login to shell, change to redmine user, clone plugin to your plugins directory, list and choose which plugin version to install, install gemfiles and migrate database:

   su - redmine
   cd /var/lib/redmine/plugins/
   git clone https://github.com/cryptogopher/issue_recurring.git
   
   # Following 2 steps allow you to run particular version of plugin. Generally it is advised to go with the highest
   # available version, as it is most stable. But you can omit those 2 commands ang go with latest code as well.
   git -C issue_recurring/ tag
   # Doing checkout this way you can get "You are in 'detached HEAD' state." warning; it's ok to ignore it
   git -C issue_recurring/ checkout tags/1.1
   
   cd /var/lib/redmine
   bundle install
   RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:plugins:migrate
   

3. Restart Redmine. Exact steps depend on your installation of Redmine. You may need to restart Apache (when using Passenger) or just Redmine daemon/service.

4. Update Redmine settings.

   • enable Issue recurring module per project (choose project -> Settings -> Modules -> check Issue recurring)
   • (optional) create separate Redmine user as an author of issue recurrences (Administration -> Users -> New user)
   • grant issue recurring permissions to roles (Administration -> Roles and permissions -> Permissions report). Issue recurring permissions are inside Issue recurring group. There are 2 types of permissions:
     • View issue recurrences - should be granted to everybody who needs to view recurrence information
     • Manage issue recurrences - should be granted for roles responsible for creating/deleting issue recurrences

5. Update plugin settings. (Administration -> Plugins -> Issue recurring plugin -> Configure)

6. Add cron task to enable recurrence creation at least once a day.

   12 6 * * * cd /var/lib/redmine && RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:issue_recurring:renew_all >> log/cron-issue_recurring.log
   

7. Go to Redmine, create/open issue, add issue recurrence.

8. Have fun!

Upgrade

1. Read Changelog section in this file to know what to expect from upgrade. Sometimes upgrade may require additional steps to be taken. Exact information will be given there.

2. Create backup of current plugin installation. Upgrade process should be reversible in case you only do it between released versions (as opposed to upgrading to some particular git commit). But it's better to be safe than sorry, so make a copy of plugin directory and database. It should go like that (but the exact steps can vary depending on your installation, e.g. database backup step is given for MySQL only):

   cd /var/lib/redmine
   # stop Redmine instance before continuing
   tar czvf /backup/issue_recurring-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz -C plugins/issue_recurring/ .
   mysqldump --host <DB hostname> --user <DB username> -p <DB name> > /backup/issue_recurring-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql
   # start Redmine instance before continuing
   
   

3. Using redmine user update plugin code to desired version (version number is at the end of git checkout command) , check gem requirements and migrate database:

   su - redmine
   cd /var/lib/redmine/plugins/issue_recurring/
   git fetch --prune --prune-tags
   # choose version from this list
   git tag
   # doing checkout this way you can get "You are in 'detached HEAD' state." warning; it's ok to ignore it
   git checkout tags/1.1
   bundle update
   RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:plugins:migrate
   

4. Restart Redmine. Exact steps depend on your installation of Redmine.

5. Check for new plugin settings and set if necessary. (Administration -> Plugins -> Issue recurring plugin -> Configure)

Downgrade

Upgrade steps should work for downgrade also, given that you do them in reverse - except for backup, which should be done first ;) (e.g. backup, downgrade database, then pull older plugin code version). Keep in mind though, that downgrading database might cause some information to be lost irreversibly. This is because some downgrades may require deletion of tables/columns that were introduced in higher version. Also structure of the data may not be compatible between versions, so the automatic conversion can be lossy.