Question

I'm not thinking wiki-enough. This plugin is baffling me in its execution. Can someone give me a quick overview of what (coding) needs to be where for this to work. For example, I'm trying to get the MeetingMinutes to make sense to me and show some results running the QueryActionItems to sort through the ActionItems in the minutes. Or am I delusional and misunderstanding the functionality of this plugin?

Environment

-- JoeDeal - 28 Feb 2006

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

There isn't much sense you can make from the examples in the Sandbox web simply because the ActionTrackerPlugin isn't installed at twiki.org.

You don't need any coding. All I have found convenient to remember for day-to-day life is how to type in an %ACTION{}% field.

The basic procedure (at least, what I'm doing with the plugin) is:

1. Write your minutes in whatever style you like. What you are seeing in the Sandbox web's minutes, is an example of how to create a new topic from a template, but that's not related to the action tracker.
2. Whereever you see fit, write a line with an action item:
   %ACTION{ who="SantaClaus" due="24 Dec 2006"}% Deliver Christmas presents
   I never bother to supply more than the "due" and "who" fields when taking the notes, all the rest can be added later on when editing the actions.
3. Create a topic OpenActions in every web where you want actions to be tracked which consists of basically one single content line: %ACTIONSEARCH{ state="open" }%
4. In my personal topic, I have a line %ACTIONSEARCH { web=".*" who="me" state="open" }% to see all my actions from all projects.

If you have the ActionTrackerPlugin installed in your TWiki, it is easiest to just try it out in your own Sandbox web with the default settings. While the number of actions increases, you'll find enough time to play with the settings.

-- HaraldJoerg - 01 Mar 2006

This is a concise example, should be taken into the action tracker docs. I find the current doc somewhat overwhelming for new users.

-- PeterThoeny - 01 Mar 2006

OH! THANKS Harald. That makes some sense to the non-twiki initiated. However, I've gone to configure and checked the actiontrackerplugin. I've created several MeetingMinutes with various tasks (all in the sandbox) and I've created the OpenActions, also in the Sandbox, as described above. However, running the lone statement in OpenActions of %ACTIONSEARCH{ state="open" }% I just get the typed out line of code. Is there something else that I'm overlooking? Formatting, additional code somewhere? ?

-- JoeDeal - 01 Mar 2006

That means that the Plugin is not working properly. See the "Listing Active Plugins" section in the TWiki04.TWikiPlugins documentation.

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Mar 2006

ActionTrackerPlugin is shown in the %ACTIVATEDPLUGINS% list.

-- JoeDeal - 02 Mar 2006

Re-opening, someone might have the answer...

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Mar 2006

Just some things to check....

• Are your %ACTION{}% tags formatted properly? In "view" mode you should see a table for each action.
• Do you have any entries in Apache's error log or twiki's warning log (should be a file called warn200603.txt in your data directory)?
• I recall that for a short time the plugin you could download from ActionTrackerPlugin did not work on TWikiRelease04x00x00, but forgot the symptoms. It has been fixed about two weeks ago. Check the dates of the source files in your plugin lib/TWiki/Plugins/ActionTracker.pm - they should be dated december 2005 or newer.
• As another option, you could attach your OpenActions.txt and one of the meeting minutes from your Sandbox web here. Maybe we find something which confuses the TWiki parser in these files.

-- HaraldJoerg - 03 Mar 2006

Action tags are viewed in tables ActionTracker.pm is date 2/28/2006

I've attached the warn200603.txt file. WoW, what would one look for in this file to figure out what was going on?

-- JoeDeal - 03 Mar 2006

The warning file should be almost empty in normal circumstances, so for a start yours is a clear indication that there is something going wrong.

Something very strange. I'm not familiar enough with Mandrake to know whether there have been any issues with File::Spec, or with opening STDERR to /dev/null, or with RcsLite.

Strange it is insofar as the same perl statement isn't used for action searches only, but for all commands that TWiki pipes to the shell. Normal topic saves, for example. %SEARCH{}% tags. Etc.

Please replace line 316 in lib/TWiki/Sandbox.pm by the following:

            open (STDERR, '>'.File::Spec->devnull()) || die "Can't kill STDERR: '$!'";

...and then view the topic containing the %ACTIONSEARCH{}% tag again. If you then find 'kill' in your warn200603.txt, either post what you get or upload your warning file again. Hopefully we learn at least what the system complains about.

And I think I'll file a bug report to get that "Oh dear" replaced in the source.

-- HaraldJoerg - 03 Mar 2006

I've attached the OpenMeetingActions and a sample MeetingMinutes########

I've made the adjustment to the Sandbox.pm and now working with the Openactions doesn't generate any errors. It just doesn't do anything.

-- JoeDeal - 06 Mar 2006

Hardly to believe that it could be that simple. Lose the blank between the closing paren and the percent sign and retry. For comparison:

%ACTIONSEARCH { state="open" } % <- your line, wrong
%ACTIONSEARCH { state="open" }%  <- correct

Bottom line: It pays off to deliver real life data when asking a question.

And BTW: you can claim to have raised the bug to get rid of "Oh dear" in the error logs

-- HaraldJoerg - 06 Mar 2006

Oh dear!

However, the removal of the space doesn't make a difference.

-- JoeDeal - 06 Mar 2006

I don't get the 'Oh Dear' msg. I get the Can't kill STDERR:"Permission denied' See log entry below.

| 07 Mar 2006 - 08:50 | Can't kill STDERR: 'Permission denied' at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/Sandbox.pm line 317. TWiki::Sandbox::sysCommand('TWiki::Sandbox=HASH(0x818ce68)','/bin/egrep -i -l -H -- %TOKEN|U% %FILES|F%','TOKEN','.*','FILES','ARRAY(0x86f7974)') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/Store/RcsFile.pm line 347 TWiki::Store::RcsFile::searchInWebContent('TWiki::Store::RcsLite=HASH(0x8dc7094)','.*','ARRAY(0x85194e0)','HASH(0x8dc70a0)') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/Store.pm line 1890 TWiki::Store::searchInWebContent('TWiki::Store=HASH(0x867855c)','.*','Sandbox','ARRAY(0x85194e0)','HASH(0x8dc70a0)') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/Search.pm line 293 TWiki::Search::_searchTopicsInWeb('TWiki::Search=HASH(0x86785bc)','Sandbox','','','regex',0,'.*') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/Search.pm line 602 TWiki::Search::searchWeb('TWiki::Search=HASH(0x86785bc)','inline',1,'search','.*','basetopic','WebHome','reverse','on',...) called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2875 TWiki::_SEARCH('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','TWiki::Attrs=HASH(0x8dc7304)','WebHome','Sandbox') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2228 TWiki::_expandTagOnTopicRendering('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','SEARCH',' ".*" regex="on" nosearch="on" nototal="on" order="modified" ...','WebHome','Sandbox') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2147 TWiki::_processTags('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','---+!! %MAKETEXT{"Welcome to the [_1] web" args="Support"}...','CODE(0x860b450)',16,'WebHome','Sandbox') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2073 TWiki::_expandAllTags('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','SCALAR(0x86131a0)','WebHome','Sandbox') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2416 TWiki::handleCommonTags('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','---+!! %MAKETEXT{"Welcome to the [_1] web" args="Support"}...','Sandbox','WebHome') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/View.pm line 320 TWiki::UI::View::_prepare('---+!! %MAKETEXT{"Welcome to the [_1] web" args="Support"}...','TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)','Sandbox','WebHome','TWiki::Meta=HASH(0x8b55f00)',0) called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/View.pm line 304 TWiki::UI::View::view('TWiki=HASH(0x804c340)') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI.pm line 97 TWiki::UI::__ANON__() called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib///Error.pm line 387 eval {...} called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib///Error.pm line 379 Error::subs::try('CODE(0x8bb8ff8)','HASH(0x8b71450)') called at /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI.pm line 146 TWiki::UI::run('CODE(0x8064114)') called

-- JoeDeal - 07 Mar 2006

After further review, I do not think the above noted error is caused by the %ACTIONSEARCH% issue... sorry about that.

However, the $ACTIONSEARCH% is still not responding though.

-- JoeDeal - 07 Mar 2006

First I have to apologize: I've missed another blank which you need to remove:

%ACTIONSEARCH { state="open" } % <- your line, wrong
%ACTIONSEARCH{ state="open" }%   <- correct

Second - the "permission denied" is really strange and may be unrelated to the action search, since the trace doesn't show the plugin's modules. I've no idea what is causing that.

There have been reports with such errors in a chroot environment where /dev isn't actually a /dev. Do you happen to live chrooted?

You could check the actual permissions of /dev/null - they should be crw-rw-rw-. However, if they are different, then the error would appear even on most view actions.

-- HaraldJoerg - 07 Mar 2006

I removed the space. No, we are not chrooted. It is working as planned. /dev/null is rwxrw-rw-.

Thanks a ton for your assistance.

-- JoeDeal - 08 Mar 2006

A lot of things are now working, this is great!

-- JoeDeal - 08 Mar 2006