Question

We are looking to use Fogbugz for our support helpline. We have a rota of L1 support personal. There is an asp.net web page we use for L1 support personnel to pick the days they will be providing support. What I would like to be able to do is have Fogbugz assign incoming support emails to the correct person based on the day. Is it possible to do this using the API and a bit of code? Any thoughts on the best method?

Answer 1

It sure is, and it's achievable either via the XML API or with a FogBugz plugin.

With either method, I would probably create a virtual user called 'Waiting for Assignment', and make that user the default user for the mailbox to assign.

Then, If I were doing this via the XML API, I would make a little daemon that polled for all cases assigned to the 'Waiting for Assignment' user using "cmd=search" and the "assignedto:" search axis. Then I'd iterate over those cases and use cmd=assign to assign it to the on-duty person.

If I were doing this with a FogBugz Plugin, I would create a tiny plugin that implements FogCreek.FogBugz.Plugins.Interfaces.IPluginBugCommit, and uses BugCommitBefore to check to see if the ixPersonAssignedTo is the 'Waiting For Assignment' user, and sets it to the ixPerson of the on-duty QA in that case. Then your only problem is figuring out who the on-duty QA person is, and it sounds like you could hit your asp.net page with a .Net http request to figure that out.

It might also be fun to just port the on-duty support calendar page to run entirely as a FogBugz plugin, and have BugCommitBefore just use the plugin's database tables; then, if you were so inclined, you could post this plugin on the FogBugz Plugin Gallery for others to use!