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

Greatest emphasis in development is put on reliability. Scheduling algorithms are tested for accuracy. Unusual situations are reported to user in a visible manner during use. Avoiding regressions and eliminating bugs is valued over new functionalities.

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 recurrences not based on fixed date),
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; last recurrence dates but only after it has been closed; fixed date after last recurrence has been closed,
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),
properly handling issue attributes, including keeping: parent, custom fields, priority and resetting: done ratio, time entries and status,
ability to recur with or without subtasks,
ability to have recurrence schemes copied regardless of whether individual issues or whole projects are copied,
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 last recurrence and dates next/predicted 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

1.6

released on: 2020-04-11
upgraded wording of anchor modes in recurrence form,
added new value for option specifying whether to add journal for new recurrence; now journal can not only be enabled/diabled, but also enabled selectively for in-place recurrences; if you use this option, you can eliminate email notifications on (less important) journal updates on reference issues with copy recurrences, while still getting notifications on: a) new issues created from copy recurrences and b) journal updates on issues with in-place recurrences (#24)

issue recurrence schemes are now copied along with issue, regardless of whether you copy individual issues or projects; this behavior can be controlled by plugin setting (#21); if recurrence copy fails on project copy (e.g. because issue recurring module is not enabled for project) it is silently ignored; if recurrence copy fails on issue (e.g. because required issue date has been removed) - issue copy is aborted and error reported

1.5

released on: 2019-11-29,
properly handling parent attribute of recurred issue,
reporting in-place recurrence without subtasks as invalid if issue dates are derived from children (previously it was possible to create such recurrence, though it wouldn't recur properly).

1.4

released on: 2019-08-19,
added Spanish translation, thanks to lupa18!,
introduced order independent recurrence scheduling when there is more than 1 recurrence schedule assigned to issue; this is rare configuration and situations where order does really matter are even more rare (e.g. when there is non-inplace and inplace schedule or when there are multiple inplace schedules),
fixed display of Next recurrence dates; Next dates show what recurrences will be created if the renewal process is executed now,
added display of Predicted recurrence dates; Predicted dates show what recurrences will be created in future given that no issue dates will change and assuming that non-closed issues will be closed today; this is to give you overview how your schedule(s) work(s) and in future may be extended to show more than 1 future date at a time.

1.3

released on: 2019-07-14
added 2 new scheduling algorithms:
- based on last recurrence dates, but recurs only after last recurrence has been closed (i.e. after its close date),
- based on fixed date configured separately from issue's own start/due dates; recurs only after last recurrence close date; this is the only recurrence scheme that allows multiple in-place recurrence schemes for one issue (and has been introduced exactly to allow that),
changed input form for recurrence creation:
- recurrence limit input has been changed from radio buttons to drop-down list; it makes form more compact/consistent,
- wording and order of some options has been changed to create (hopefully) more natural reading experience,
- for readability inactive form inputs now fade out and hide instead of being visible but disabled.

1.2

released on: 2019-07-03
plugin is now compatible with Redmine 4.0/Rails 5.2, (2019-07-14: well, actually it is compatible with Redmine 4.0, but due to mistake migrations don't work with Redmine 3.4; either update to v1.3 or copy migration files from there),
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 (2020-01-17: this has actually changed in v1.3 and there is new scheduling algorithm introduced to allow multiple in-place recurrences).

1.1

released on: 2019-05-04
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

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 - 1.4	Redmine 3.4.5, Ruby 2.3.8p459, Rails 4.2.11
	1.5 - current	Redmine 3.4.5, Ruby 2.4.7p357, Rails 4.2.11.1
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.

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/1.4

cd /var/lib/redmine
bundle install
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:plugins:migrate NAME=issue_recurring

Restart Redmine. Exact steps depend on your installation of Redmine. You may need to restart Apache (when using Passenger) or just Redmine daemon/service.
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
Update plugin settings. (Administration -> Plugins -> Issue recurring plugin -> Configure)

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

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

Go to Redmine, create/open issue, add issue recurrence.
Have fun!

Upgrade

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.
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
```

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/1.4

cd /var/lib/redmine
bundle update
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:plugins:migrate NAME=issue_recurring

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

Database downgrade (VERSION number <NNN> is a number taken from migration file name in issue_recurring/db/migrate):

ca /var/lib/redmine
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:plugins:migrate VERSION=<NNN> NAME=issue_recurring

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.

igloonet/issue_recurring