Trouble Ticket management software/service?

[ddrueding]

I'm looking for a way to manage the issues at a client. 3 offices, about 30 employees, and me stopping by occasionally to fix stuff.

Things seem to end up forgotten or ignored for a long time, and I want something that lets the boss monitor how many issues there are, how long I've known about it, and why(if) it isn't fixed.

I'm open to all kinds of solutions, and could probably get them to pay <$200 if necessary. I have IIS servers on site, and could throw together a LAMP in a VM if a product was appealing enough. The web services seem pretty appealing at the moment, one less thing for me to admin.

I'm currently testing out Cerebus Helpdesk.

Does anyone else have experience with this stuff?

 

[blakerwry]

I'm currently re-writing a trouble ticket/account provisioning script for my employer... Every solution that I've seen out there is pretty poor for what we do (Internet helpdesk, ISP account provisioning) so we've always written our own.

Most of the stuff available (free or commercial) that I've looked at is aimed at improving project work flow among small groups. Sounds like it might be closer to what you're after. Have a look at sourceforge to see if there's a project already made - http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=trouble+ticket

Otherwise, give me a holler if you need any design ideas on implementing your own.

 

[Howell]

What about having the users send emails to a special email box? You could forward a copy back to the mailbox with a time stamp of when you read it and when you expect to fix the issue. Give the boss rights to read the mailbox.

 

[Howell]

FWIW, I've worked with 3 different ticket and time tracking systems and they are way more complicated than you want to deal with. How many issues a day are initiated?

 

[ddrueding]

Perhaps only 5-10 items a day, but the trick is in my resolution schedule. What sometimes happens is that I will roll into an office with a single issue on my plate, and end up swamped for the rest of the day with items that I didn't even know about. Or get a call from the boss about such-and-such that has been stopping work for a week and this is the first I've heard of it. Lower severiy items might wait a week until I get to the city they are occuring in. I really am looking for something that is overkill for my workload, as long as it appears professional to the boss. The Cerebus Helpdesk is looking very promising, I just need to implement a little more.

 

[timwhit]

The company where I work uses ServiceDesk.

I asked our lead help desk guy and he says he loves it. I haven't used it personally though.

It's not cheap for the commercial version, but there is a free version you could try out.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks for the link, timwhit! That is the best looking solution I've seen so far.

 

[Gilbo]

]Trac? It's designed for software projects but there's no reason it couldn't be used for any sort of generic issue-tracking type problem.

 

[Howell]

Perhaps only 5-10 items a day, but the trick is in my resolution schedule. What sometimes happens is that I will roll into an office with a single issue on my plate, and end up swamped for the rest of the day with items that I didn't even know about. Or get a call from the boss about such-and-such that has been stopping work for a week and this is the first I've heard of it. Lower severiy items might wait a week until I get to the city they are occuring in. I really am looking for something that is overkill for my workload, as long as it appears professional to the boss. The Cerebus Helpdesk is looking very promising, I just need to implement a little more.

How often can you stop by the client? I have the same issue you have but with 25 clients.

 

[ddrueding]

I have about 20 clients total, perhaps 700 employees in all. This client in particular only has 3 offices; I visit each office about once a week, sometimes less.

 

[Howell]

If you need to balance the needs of all of your clients within a given time frame I would go with a web based solution. If you can regularly dedicate certain days or weeks to be at or working for certain clients I would go with a more local solution.

Let me clarify, we have 250-300 clients but in a months time I will work on 25 different clients. The size of our client base makes the pain of setting up and maintaining a SQL based solution worthwhile especially with the coordination of labor required. We would have a different solution otherwise.

 

[Dïscfärm]

And then there's also RT...



http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

 

[blakerwry]

This looks like a decent piece of software for tracking inventory and tickets...

http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=204920

 

[MaxBurn]

All I can say is the system we use is a pile of S and needs to go. Been around for over 15 years now, was based on a AS400 and to this day we still have to access it through a "green screen" AS400 emulator (personal communications AS400 client express anyone?) to reach all the higher functions. They used to have an ok web interface that they butchered and are slowly killing in favor of a craptastic java thing that lets you work off line and synch changes. This thing took some straight forward and easy to understand processes and spread them through hell and gone so you have to work on many different pages to get things done. Their excuse is they have to fit things on one small page, like no one heard of a scroll bar!

Funny thing is we bought a company called Alber that has a modern and very nice ticket and warranty claim system in place. Simple things like attaching a picture of a warranty claim or other supporting documentation are made easy in it. All GUI/object based and intuitive. They were directed by the parent company to ditch their superior system and integrate into ours. They took one look at it and flat out refused, good for them, we need a wake up call like this.