Pull in Viget posts

content/elsewhere/unfuddle-user-feedback/index.md

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+---
+title: "Unfuddle User Feedback"
+date: 2009-06-02T00:00:00+00:00
+draft: false
+needs_review: true
+canonical_url: https://www.viget.com/articles/unfuddle-user-feedback/
+---
+
+Recently, we wanted a better system for managing feedback from
+[SpeakerRate](http://speakerrate.com/) users. While we do receive some
+general site suggestions, most of the feedback we get involves discrete
+corrections to data (a speaker who has been entered into the system
+twice, for example). We started to create a simple admin interface for
+managing these requests, when we realized that the ticket tracking
+system we use internally, [Unfuddle](http://unfuddle.com/), already has
+all the features we need.
+
+Fortunately, Unfuddle has a full-featured
+[API](http://unfuddle.com/docs/api), so programatically creating tickets
+is simply a matter of adding
+[HTTParty](http://railstips.org/2008/7/29/it-s-an-httparty-and-everyone-is-invited)
+to our `Feedback` model:
+
+``` {#code .ruby}
+class Feedback < ActiveRecord::Base include HTTParty base_uri "viget.unfuddle.com/projects/#{UNFUDDLE[:project]} validates_presence_of :description after_create :post_to_unfuddle, :if => proc { Rails.env == "production" } def post_to_unfuddle self.class.post("/tickets.xml", :basic_auth => UNFUDDLE[:auth], :query => { :ticket => ticket }) end private def ticket returning(Hash.new) do |ticket| ticket[:summary] = "#{self.topic}" ticket[:description] = "#{self.name} (#{self.email}) - #{self.created_at}:\n\n#{self.description}" ticket[:milestone_id] = UNFUDDLE[:milestone] ticket[:priority] = 3 end end end 
+```
+
+We store our Unfuddle configuration in
+`config/initializers/unfuddle.rb`:
+
+``` {#code .ruby}
+UNFUDDLE = { :project => 12345, :milestone => 12345, # the 'feedback' milestone :auth => { :username => "username", :password => "password" } } 
+```
+
+Put your user feedback into Unfuddle, and you get all of its features:
+email notification, bulk ticket updates, commenting, file attachments,
+etc. This technique isn't meant to replace customer-service oriented
+software like [Get Satisfaction](http://getsatisfaction.com/) (we're
+using both on SpeakerRate), and if you're not already using a ticketing
+system to manage your project, this is probably overkill; something like
+[Lighthouse](http://lighthouseapp.com/) or [GitHub
+Issues](https://github.com/blog/411-github-issue-tracker) would better
+suit your needs, and both have APIs if you want to set up a similar
+system. But for us here at Viget, who manage all aspects of our projects
+through a ticketing system, seeing actionable user feedback in the same
+place as the rest of our tasks has been extremely convenient.