Add custom field to tickets and email in osTicket 1.6

I recently installed osTicket 1.6 for our property management group to use and have need to make some customizations. One of those customizations was how to create a custom field and add it to the tickets so more data could be captured. While the instructions to do this are out there, they seem to be located in different spots, so I'm going to try to consolidate a few useful links here for you.

How to add the custom field to the form

Making a custom field usable within the email templates (this is my own posted solution)

Listing a custom field in the Open Ticket table on the staff page (this doesn't explain exactly how to show a custom field, but does list the steps needed to add a field to the staff Open Tickets view)

Show the custom field in the ticket info on the staff side
I don't remember where I found the instructions for how to do this, but it's pretty simple. Edit the /include/staff/viewtickets.php file and insert the following where you want the custom field to be displayed

fieldName
getFieldName()?>

Remove orphaned Windows installer files to free up space

Using Microsoft's msizap.exe utility, found in the Windows Standard Development Kit (Windows SDK), you can clean up orphaned installer files from your C:\Windows\Installers directory. I recently found 10GB of orphaned installers using this method on an XP Pro machine, and it was nice to free up that space for other uses. Here's how you check to see if you have any orphaned installers taking up unnecessary space on your machine. If you're not sure what is taking up the unnecessary space, check out my previous post which should help you track it down.

1. Download the Windows SDK from Microsoft
2. Install the Windows SDK
3. Go to Start->All Programs->Microsoft Windows SDK->CMD Shell
4. Type "msizap.exe G!" and press enter. This will search for and remove orphaned installer files without the need for you to enter anything else
5. Once it finishes, close the command prompt window and go back to what you were doing