helpdesk software

ajs1976

does anyone have any recommendations for helpesk software. I'm looking for something open source (ie free). Only really care about knowledge management and ticket tracking. There are only six of us, so it does not have to be very powerful.

msteinhilber

Wikipedia has a fairly decent list of various open source and commercially licensed issue tracking systems here:

Comparison of issue tracking systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

vCole

Spiceworks - Free Network Monitoring Software for Network Management

Slowhand

I'm going to go with FadetoBright here and give another vote for Spiceworks. It'll do what you need, so long as your company stays small.

vCole

Also, Track-It! works for what you're looking for.

ULWiz

Have to agree with Spiceworks on this one.

Lee H

My favourite has to be Remedy, for its gui and ease of use

Spiceworks is good but it didnt find all the PC's on my network even though they were all configured the same

Silentsoul

I am currently trying out Bugzilla and OTRS for a help desk ticket system. I like the minimalist look of bugzilla but OTRS seems to be better suited since it is a help desk software.

Does anyone have any other free/OSS suggestions?

Note: I am not interested in Spiceworks, I have tried it and was not a fan.

Thanks

Forsaken_GA

Request Tracker also works well if you're willing to put some work into it, but OTRS for ticketing and mediawiki for your knowledgebase will cover the vast majority of your needs

shadown7

I'd give Slick Ticket a try.

Slick-Ticket :: Advanced Trouble Ticketing/Help Desk Solution - Open Source Asp.Net/C#

RTmarc

Not free, but give a look towards Web Help Desk (Help Desk Software by Web Help Desk). Used them in the past. Rock solid application.

Silentsoul

Well I tried OTRS, Bugzilla, and a few others. In the end I went with OsTicket
osTicket:: Open Source Support Ticket System
I was able to accomplish in 15 minutes what i tried to do in OTRS for a day. its all php, easy to edit, very versatile, and a great community. I recommend it after a few weeks of playing with them all.

It isnt perfect but after a few small tweaks you have a very usable very scalable ticket system that makes it easy for both techs, and users.

msteinhilber

Silentsoul wrote: »

Well I tried OTRS, Bugzilla, and a few others. In the end I went with OsTicket
osTicket:: Open Source Support Ticket System
I was able to accomplish in 15 minutes what i tried to do in OTRS for a day. its all php, easy to edit, very versatile, and a great community. I recommend it after a few weeks of playing with them all.

It isnt perfect but after a few small tweaks you have a very usable very scalable ticket system that makes it easy for both techs, and users.

Good choice, put this in place at our shop as we didn't have the budget to renew our existing product. Really the basic installation with some tweaking of the settings, nothing into custom editing of any php, and we were set. Very clean interface and looks professional instead of some of the others that have good features but look pretty poor in terms of appearance.

Silentsoul

msteinhilber wrote: »

Good choice, put this in place at our shop as we didn't have the budget to renew our existing product. Really the basic installation with some tweaking of the settings, nothing into custom editing of any php, and we were set. Very clean interface and looks professional instead of some of the others that have good features but look pretty poor in terms of appearance.

Absolutely. I went in and put in two new fields. Computer name, and Asset tag. They are required to submit the ticket. Makes it a lot easier when trouble shooting a problem, and especially when you have to remote in. a few php files, 2 mysql tables later i was good to go.
Cant say enough about their forums. Tomorrow i will be making a few changes to allow an email to be sent when a ticket is closed.

billybob01

I have just installed Sharepoint v3 which is free and downloaded the helpdesk template, it`s brilliant.

Silentsoul

billybob01 wrote: »

I have just installed Sharepoint v3 which is free and downloaded the helpdesk template, it`s brilliant.

That does look like a well put together product. In my case, i had an older server that was already being used for some monitoring stuff, Nagios, Cacti, etc. And being as it was Linux I wanted to stick with that. I have heard good things about share point though and I think if i had an extra windows box sitting around i would definitely give that a look.

RobertKaucher

I'm using WSS 3.0 as well witht he installed Help Desk template. My major reason for choosing it is I can customize it easliy, including adding workflows, and I wan there to be a single place where most information in the company can be accessed.

Some folks have been reluctant to access the Portal I have setup but more and more are adopting it once they see all of the tings it can do. We are using it for ISO compliance, for tracking RFQs, for help desk tracking, and for time off requests.

I just really like the fact that it is a SPOC for so much information.

Silentsoul

That is handy, I am slowly trying to link all the things i have implemented together. Monitoring, Knowledge base, and now ticket system.

Did you push for your users to start using your solution or have they just came around. I am having trouble breaking people of calling for the same questions over and over. I try to refer them to an intranet site i created but after looking at the use average it's not being used much.

RobertKaucher wrote: »

I'm using WSS 3.0 as well witht he installed Help Desk template. My major reason for choosing it is I can customize it easliy, including adding workflows, and I wan there to be a single place where most information in the company can be accessed.

Some folks have been reluctant to access the Portal I have setup but more and more are adopting it once they see all of the tings it can do. We are using it for ISO compliance, for tracking RFQs, for help desk tracking, and for time off requests.

I just really like the fact that it is a SPOC for so much information.

RobertKaucher

Some have adopted it because they see th eutility. Others call or send email about everything. I try to make people put in tickets to avoid this. If it takes a person 30 minutes to get something even looked at they might start to look on the Knowledge Base. My main concern is making sure people know it's there and understand its utility. If I cannot train it out of them, well, I've tried.With WSS, though, it's all in one spot, integrated with AD and I have made it available from off site.

arwes

What's a good solution to look at that's comparable to TrackIt? Spiceworks is okay, but our server got hung up Monday and I thought it was just another slow work day. Then Tuesday my HR director emailed me to ask why I hadn't worked on an issue she was CC'd on. Rebooted the Spiceworks machine, and sure enough there's about 10 tickets from Monday.

My boss is looking at TrackIt mainly because there's a insurance agency similar to us that is using it. I like all the stuff you can get for Kaseya but it's my understanding that it's much more expensive. We used Unicenter Service Desk for a short time at the hospital, but for whatever reason we changed over to TrackIt, which was okay I guess.

The primary thing we're needing is inventory & issue tracking (which Spiceworks handles quite well), but we're wanting something modular that we can add other things in the future (patch management & such). Not worried about remote control things, as we've got licensing for Dameware Mini Remote Control, and we're probably going to get a Bomgar B100 for working on external systems.

RTmarc

arwes wrote: »

What's a good solution to look at that's comparable to TrackIt? Spiceworks is okay, but our server got hung up Monday and I thought it was just another slow work day. Then Tuesday my HR director emailed me to ask why I hadn't worked on an issue she was CC'd on. Rebooted the Spiceworks machine, and sure enough there's about 10 tickets from Monday.

My boss is looking at TrackIt mainly because there's a insurance agency similar to us that is using it. I like all the stuff you can get for Kaseya but it's my understanding that it's much more expensive. We used Unicenter Service Desk for a short time at the hospital, but for whatever reason we changed over to TrackIt, which was okay I guess.

The primary thing we're needing is inventory & issue tracking (which Spiceworks handles quite well), but we're wanting something modular that we can add other things in the future (patch management & such). Not worried about remote control things, as we've got licensing for Dameware Mini Remote Control, and we're probably going to get a Bomgar B100 for working on external systems.

We use Web Help Desk and it ties in wonderfully with Microsoft SCCM.

Silentsoul

arwes wrote: »

What's a good solution to look at that's comparable to TrackIt? Spiceworks is okay, but our server got hung up Monday and I thought it was just another slow work day. Then Tuesday my HR director emailed me to ask why I hadn't worked on an issue she was CC'd on. Rebooted the Spiceworks machine, and sure enough there's about 10 tickets from Monday.

My boss is looking at TrackIt mainly because there's a insurance agency similar to us that is using it. I like all the stuff you can get for Kaseya but it's my understanding that it's much more expensive. We used Unicenter Service Desk for a short time at the hospital, but for whatever reason we changed over to TrackIt, which was okay I guess.

The primary thing we're needing is inventory & issue tracking (which Spiceworks handles quite well), but we're wanting something modular that we can add other things in the future (patch management & such). Not worried about remote control things, as we've got licensing for Dameware Mini Remote Control, and we're probably going to get a Bomgar B100 for working on external systems.

We use OCS for inventory and now OsTicket for issues. I found spiceworks is a great solution for under 500 machines, after that it becomes so slow it is almost not usable. I think they even state something similar to that in their documentation.