ITSSTOOLS/readme.txt

iTop - version 1.0.0 - 16-Sep-2010
Readme file

1.   ABOUT THIS RELEASE
2.   INSTALLATION
2.1. Requirements
2.2. Install procedure
2.3. Migration from previous version
3.   FEATURES
3.1. Changes since 0.9.1
3.2. Known limitations
3.3. Known issues

1. ABOUT THIS RELEASE
   ==================
Thank you for downloading the seventh packaged release of iTop. This version is
the first complete version of iTop: it aims at being really used professionaly.

Additional documentation can be dowloaded from http://www.combodo.com/itop, in the topic 'support':
 - User guide
 - Administrator guide
 - How to upgrade from previous versions

iTop is released under the GPL (v3) license. (Check license.txt in this directory).
The source code of iTop can be found on SourceForge: http://itop.sourceforge.net

1.1 Special Thanks To:
    -----------------
Bruno Bonfils for his guidance about LDAP and authentication.
Randall Badilla Castro, for the Spanish translation.
Jonathan Lucas and David Gumbel from ITOMIG BmBh, for the german translation.
Christian Lempereur, for his feedbacks.
Olivier Fouquet, for his feedbacks.



2. INSTALLATION
   ============

2.1. Requirements
     ------------
iTop is based on the AMP (Apache / MySQL / PHP) platform and requires PHP 5.2 and
MySQL 5. The installation of iTop does not require any command line access to the
server. The only operations required to install iTop are: copying the files to the
server and browsing some web pages.
Although iTop should work with most modern web browsers the application has been
tested mostly on Firefox 3 and IE7/IE8.

2.2. Install procedure
     -----------------
1) Make sure that you have a properly configured instance of Apache/PHP running
2) Unpack the files contained in the zipped package in a directory served by your
web server.
3) Point your web browser to the URL corresponding to the directory were the files
have been unpackaged and follow the indications on the screen.

Note:
iTop uses MySQL with the InnoDB engine. If you are running on Linux and if the setup is
very slow with the hard drive spinning a lot, try to set the following value in the my.cnf
configuration file (usually located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf):

innodb_flush_method = O_DSYNC

On some systems you'll see a 5 to 10 times performance improvement for writing data into
the MySQL database !

2.3. Migrating from a previous version
     ---------------------------------
Please refer to the migration guide available at http://www.combodo.com/itop.


3. FEATURES
   ========

3.1. Changes since 0.9.1
     -------------------

Version 1.0 is a major release.

Localization
------------
iTop is localized: English, French, Spanish and German are available.

User portal
-----------
Customers may submit their request directly into a dedicated page.
The same page shows a report of ongoing requests.

SLA Management
--------------
SLAs can be defined in the service management module.
An escalation deadline is automatically computed upon ticket creation.
In the tickets dashboard, tickets close to reach the deadline are highlighted.
When the deadline is reached, the ticket automatically switches to an "escalation"
state. An acknowledgement is required before returning to normal operations on
that ticket.

Modular setup
-------------
It is now possible to select ITIL modules you would like to use.
For instance, you might want to install only the configuration management 
along with incident management.


Major changes
-------------
- A brand new data model has been designed to make iTop more compliant to ITIL.
- Graphical views have been developed to represent the relations between CIS.
  Two views are available today.
  * "impact" defines the CIs that are impacted by a given CI.
  * "depends on" defines the CIs that are a threat to a given CI.  
  When creating an incident ticket, the impacted CIs and contacts to notify are
  automatically computed, and attached to the ticket.
- The UI has been reviewed to make the application more professional.
- The CSV import tool has been improved to make it easier to use.
- A Web service has been developed to allow tickets to be created automatically
  from emails. This feature simplifies ticket creation for end-users.
- User management: Finalized the UI to create new users and manage their profiles
- Authentication: Added the possibility to rely on an LDAP authentication, or
  and external authentication (e.g. Web Server single sign-on, relying on a .htaccess file)


Minor changes
-------------
- User welcome splash screen: message displayed to new users, the first time
  they logon to iTop
- Implemented validation of attributes entered in forms
- import.php has been finalized, and is the preferred way to load/synchronize
  data in a non-interactive way
- New menu to edit the Audit Category and Rules


Security improvements
---------------------
- Data Administration menu is now restricted to administrators and
  configuration managers
- Administration menu restricted to administrators
- The same restrictions apply whenever a user attempts to access the pages directly
- New setting to enforce HTTPS
- Strong encryption of passwords
- Prevent users from listing the application directories


Bugs fixed
----------
The complete list can be reviewed on http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/itop/report/1

#182  Setup fails with mysql error 1046 or 1146
#144  Could not create a workgroup
#97   Issue when removing an organization
#105  Issue in exporting a given class of object
#106  Importing data using import CSV
#116  When modifying a user, the link with the profile(s) is lost.
#98   Computation of free IPs in a subnet is wrong
#126  'magic_quotes_gpc' test issue during setup
#128  Issue when using AttributeBlob not mandatory
#136  Context menus
#102  Allow users to change their password.
#210  Error message when trying to uploading a big file
#139  mysSQL error: "truncated column", or truncated string
#223  Trim spaces in CSV imports
#215  Support several characters encoding for the CSV imports
#239  Issue with character set (impacting searches with accents)
#234  PHP Strict Standards warnings
#140  Check that user logins are unique

3.2. Known limitations
     -----------------
#71   The same MySQL credentials are used for setup and the application. They have to
      be changed manually into the configuration file to achieve maximum security
#246  Massive data load requiring to setup specific HTTP sessions with higher
      timeouts and memory limits
#257  Could not delete more than 997 items when SUHOSIN is installed with its
      default settings (See TRAC)
#265  Add reconciliations keys into CSV template


3.3. Known issues
     ------------
#259  Not instantaneously logged off when the administrator deletes a user entry
#245  Search form gets too specialized
#175  When moving backward in the CSV import wizard, some settings may be lost
      (e.g column selection)
#174  CSV import not displaying the labels of enums
#258	Context automatically selected when searching on organization