Support

ATS was never designed to allow (or even support) guests to file tickets. Every ticket is linked to a user ID. The guest has a user ID of 0 which is the standard PHP empty value for integer fields. This means that saving the record with a user ID 0 triggers the Table's code which tries to auto-assign the user ID to the ticket. If we remove that code then all tickets will be owned by user ID 0 which is a gigantic bug.

Moreover, a lot of features depend on ATS knowing the non-zero user ID. For example, a user can see all tickets owned by his own user ID no matter if they are public or private. By allowing guests to file tickets it means that anyone can see anyone else's tickets as long as they know the ticket number. Since ticket numbers are sequential it's not that hard. You understand that this is a major privacy issue, hence us not supporting guest tickets.

Another feature tied to the user ID are attachments. Again, if someone knows the ticket ID or the attachment ID they can download all guests' attachments. Same thing with sequential IDs applies.

You should require all users to go through Joomla!'s user registration before submitting a ticket. We NEED a non-zero user ID to protect the privacy of users filing tickets in ATS.

We want to refactor ATS at some point. Right now we can't prevent guests filing tickets without screwing up other aspects of the software. But refactoring ATS requires having a good support for database object relations. Which requires me to write FOF 3 first. Which required Davide to complete the Unit Tests for AWF which will be the basis of the FOF 3 code and me to write UT for the code I've already started refactoring from FOF 2. It's day 3 of me writing UT for the refactored code. At this rate ATS refactor will be complete in a year or so...