ticketing systems
TRANSCRIPT
Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
1. Introduction
1.1. Problem
It is required to migrate to a flexible ticketing system better than the current one, which can be easily to maintain; open source and can provide an easy way to follow and track issues through tickets.
1.2. Abstract
The following document is intended to provide an alternative choice for a helpdesk and development ticketing system for ADSCA technical support department
The document has the following sections:
1.3. Ticket systemsThis section contains the analysis of each ticket system studied. In each subsection it will contain: Summary; Software/Hardware requirements; features; screenshot; advantages and disadvantages of the ticket system been analyzed with screenshots where is needed.
1.4. Discarded systems
This section has a list of system that was not included in the analysis and the reason why.
1.5. Conclusions and recommendationsIn this section will be a result analysis of the tickets studied
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
Index 1. Introduction........................................................................................................2
1.1. Problem.....................................................................................................................21.2. Abstract.....................................................................................................................21.3. Ticket systems..........................................................................................................21.4. Discarded systems....................................................................................................21.5. Conclusions and recommendations..........................................................................2
Index......................................................................................................................32. Ticket Systems..................................................................................................4
2.1. OS Ticket..................................................................................................................42.2. OTRS (Open source Ticket Request System)..........................................................62.3. RT – Request Tracker...............................................................................................83. Discarded systems.....................................................................................................113.1. SysAid.....................................................................................................................113.2. Mantis.....................................................................................................................113.3. Bugzilla...................................................................................................................11
4. Conclusions and recommendations................................................................124.1. Conclusions.............................................................................................................124.2. Recommendations...................................................................................................12
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
2. Ticket Systems
2.1. OS Ticket
2.1.1. SummaryosTicket is a widely-used open source support ticket system. Integrates inquiries created via email and web-based forms into a simple easy to use multi-user web interface. Easily manage, organize and archive all your support requests and responses in one place while providing your clients with accountability and responsiveness they deserve.
osTicket is an attractive alternative to higher-cost and complex customer support systems; simple, lightweight, reliable, open source, and easy to setup and use.
Site: http://osticket.com/Demo page: http://www.ostickethacks.com/demo/Download code: http://osticket.com/dl/osticket_1.6.0.tar.gz
2.1.2. Software/ Hardware Requirements PHP 4.3+ MySQL 4.4+
2.1.3. Features
Inquiries created via email, phone and web-based forms into a simple easy-to-use multi-user web interface
Easy to use
Organize and archives help request
Light weight
Open Source
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
2.1.4. Screenshots
Figure Nº1: Admin interface
Figure Nº 2: Inserting a ticket
More screenshots can be found at http://osticket.com/tour/.
2.1.5. Advantages/Disadvantages
2.1.5.1 Advantages
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
Easy to use Easy to maintain Lightweight Assign tickets to a staff and/or department.
2.1.5.2. Disavantages Escalation functionality is not directly included, even if it has notifications on overdue
(http://osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1975) I didn´t find an automatic re assign ticket feature on overdue tickets.
Following up is not that simple as supposed. Check this other example too: http://www.osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13104.
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
2.2. OTRS (Open source Ticket Request System)
2.2.1 SummaryOTRS is an Open source Ticket Request System with features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries. Receive 5.000 e-mails a day and still be able to handle them
Site: http://otrs.org/index/Demo page: http://otrs.org/demo/Source code: http://otrs.org/source/
2.2.2. Software / Hardware requirements. GNU Tested on Linux, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS 10.x and Windows. Mysql Perl based.
2.2.3. Features Escalation Reports and search by different criteria’s Group’s permissions
2.2.4. Screenshots
Figure Nº3: Admin / Agent interface
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
Figure Nº 4: Customer Company tickets.
Other screenshots can be found at http://otrs.org/screenshot/.
2.2.5 Advantage/disadvantages
2.2.5.1. Advantages Easy to use Widely tested means stability.
2.2.5.2. Disavantages Depends on Perl knowledge. Still they have a good documentation on that.
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
2.3. RT – Request Tracker
2.3.1. Summary
RT is an open source issue tracking and workflow platform which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users. It is widely used as an helpdesk system.
The RT platform has been under development since 1996, and is used by systems administrators, customer support staffs, IT managers, developers and marketing departments at thousands of sites around the world.
Written in object-oriented Perl, RT is a high-level, portable, platform independent system that eases collaboration within organizations and makes it easy for them to take care of their customers.
RT manages key tasks such as the identification, prioritization, assignment, resolution and notification required by enterprise-critical applications including project management, help desk, NOC ticketing, CRM and software development.
RT is used by Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and development organizations worldwide.
Site: http://www.bestpractical.com/index.htmlDemo Page:Download code: http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.7.tar.gzSignature: http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-3.8.7.tar.gz.sig
2.3.2. Software/ Hardware Requirements
2.3.3. Features
Track critical data
o It's easy to submit, assign, prioritize, search, escalate, and report on issues.o RT keeps track of each ticket's full history and metadata to help your organization better
retain knowledge and analyze trends.o RT can track multiple projects for multiple teams within a single installation.o RT tracks critical system metadata, including time spent per action, due dates, and
estimated time to completion.o It's easy to record private comments that are not available to end-users.o RT's web interface comes complete with an intuitive "iterative" search interface that
allows end users to construct complex queries by pointing and clicking within their web browsers.
o Users can save and edit queries later, using their browser's "bookmarks" feature.
Convenient for end users. For instance, RT provides a simple, self-service interface that allows end users to view their own active and resolved tickets online
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
Easy to customize
Security
o RT has a built-in access control system that lets administrators grant user, group, and role-based rights to users.
o Users can be made members of groups for the purpose of access control. These groups are hierarchical, making it easy for administrators to manage access to the system.
o Rights can be granted globally or only to specific parts of your RT system.o Users can be allowed the right to delegate rights that they have been granted.o RT can use your web server's existing authentication system or its own internal password
database to grant or deny users' access to RT.
Easy to install
Platform Independent
2.3.4. Screenshots
Figure Nº5. RT – Agent home page
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
Figure Nº 6. RT – Ticket relationships graph
More screenshots can be found at: http://blog.bestpractical.com/2008/07/today-were-rele.html#screenshots
2.3.5. Advantages/Disadvantages
2.3.5.1. Advantages It has plugins that can be found in cpan.org: http://search.cpan.org/~ruz/RT-Extension-SLA-
0.03/lib/RT/Extension/SLA.pm Many big companies use this tracking system: http://bestpractical.com/rt/praise.html Very complete (includes all needed features).
2.3.5.1. Disadvantages A bit tricky to install the first time... It's powerful, so you'll need to spend some time learning how it works. Most distributions have
packages that make installation a bit easier(Gentoo, Debian, FreeBSD, etc.)
Check those advantages/disadvantages on http://nsrc.org/workshops/2009/apricot/netmanage/presos/ticketing-doc-rt-trac.pdf
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
3. Discarded systems
3.1. SysAidIt has everything but it is not free for more than three users, and the code is not provided.
3.2. Mantis
This system is more intended to be to bug tracking system than a helpdesk one. It does not have escalation and measure of time.
3.3. BugzillaAs mantis this system is more intended to be a bug tracking system than a helpdesk one and also does not have escalation features.
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Engineer Gustavo Ramírez Siles [email protected]
IDSCA SupportDevelopment Team
4. Conclusions and recommendations
4.1. Conclusions
It is needed to identify differences between a helpdesk ticketing system and a bug tracking system which can be confused. One is intended to resolve day to day issues and the other one is more specific to a software project tracking.
Having the previous point clear it is needed that the helpdesk ticketing system can be able to measure the time to resolve an issue or escalate it to the second level of support if is needed.
If is possible the helpdesk ticketing system must complain with the ITIL concepts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library) and best practice and standards for instance the concept of an SLA (Service Level Agreement - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement)
4.2. Recommendations
The software that meets all requirements for the company is RT:
It has escalation features for tickets. Measures time Manage ITIL concepts. Easy to integrate and maintain It is open source.
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