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ticket system? by Wakkow · 2003-10-06 09:42 · Score: 1 · on How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?

Wouldn't some type of ticketing system work for this? For example, RT. I help out with a certain free dns service that started using this.

Request Tracker by Uhh_Duh · 2003-10-06 09:41 · Score: 2, Informative · on How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?

After facing the same dilemma you're facing and having a VERY limited (read: no) budget, I stumbled upon Request Tracker. It's got all the features you get in the $20k packages (albeit a little rough around the edges on the GUI, as with most open-source), but it's completely free.

It's scriptable, it has plugins, it's web-based, it has full email management (submit tickets, reply to tickets, and receive ticket status via email -- even have people login to check the status of all their tickets, close tickets, etc.)

It ALSO has a full command-line suite of utilities, the system is completely object oriented (read: easily extended) and it's overall one of the best most complete perl / mod_perl projects I've ever seen. Jesse did a great job with this one.

This thing is gold.

Request Tracker by chennes · 2003-10-06 09:40 · Score: 5, Informative · on How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?

Funny you should ask: I just set up Request Tracker this afternoon. While it probably fits more into the bug-tracking genre than anything else, I use it as a TODO list, a wish list and a bug tracking system. It is very easy to use, and setting it up isn't TOO painful. It is quite powerful (I use a MySQL backend) and completely cross-platform (its main interface is web-based). It has great e-mail integration, and your customers will be able to check the status of their report as it makes its way through the system. In addition, it's free, with support available for a fee.

Request Tracker by chennes · 2003-10-06 09:40 · Score: 5, Informative · on How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?

Funny you should ask: I just set up Request Tracker this afternoon. While it probably fits more into the bug-tracking genre than anything else, I use it as a TODO list, a wish list and a bug tracking system. It is very easy to use, and setting it up isn't TOO painful. It is quite powerful (I use a MySQL backend) and completely cross-platform (its main interface is web-based). It has great e-mail integration, and your customers will be able to check the status of their report as it makes its way through the system. In addition, it's free, with support available for a fee.

RT is God by andy@petdance.com · 2003-10-06 09:40 · Score: 1 · on How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?

RT is a tremendous package. Version 3 is out, but you can see version 2 in action at rt.cpan.org. All Perl bug tracking, both in modules and the core, goes in here. In fact, submissions for various O'Reilly conferences are in RT, as well. It's very flexible.

Inefficient hours? by phamlen · 2003-09-18 04:38 · Score: 5, Interesting · on What Do You Do at Work?

Interestingly, I'm having a discussion with my boss's boss who wants to know why we don't get more work done on projects. I've tracked our time and it comes out to about:

50% of work time on "projects"
30% of work time on "interrupts" - projects/requests/issues that aren't formally planned
20% of work time on email, project planning, organization, (reading slashdot), etc.

His response, predictably, was "Only 50% of time on projects? I can't believe you are only 50% efficient."

So, as a simple solution, we've started using RequestTracker It's a simple ticketing system, and everything in the "Interrupts" list goes into the system (otherwise we don't work on it.) And then each week I give a nice list of all the "other things" we worked on. It's been very useful defending my "efficiency."

RT by ttyp0 · 2003-09-02 13:32 · Score: 2, Interesting · on How Do You Organize Your Data?

I was struggling with a similar issue myself. People in my organization would constantly email me with requests "can you do this real quick". Well 50 emails later that day it became impossible to prioritize the information. I installed a ticket system called RT which has greatly simplified my life. Runs on mod_perl and is open source, I highly recommend it.

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Request Tracker by frankie_guasch · 2003-08-27 23:10 · Score: 1 · on Learning to Say No in the Workplace?

I've read a lot of interesting answers here about what you should do. I'd say go fot it. Anyway some software could help you. I tried MS Project for this but it was not exactly what I wanted. Now I'm using: Request Tracker

It allows requests by mail and keeps customers updated of changed jobs. Separate jobs per areas, change priorities, assign jobs to people, and many other features.RT is an enterprise-grade ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users.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.

I've been using this in a small shop with 5 workers and it helped us a lot. It also is used in way big places and Fortune500s. And I think it could be used in one-man places.

A thing a like a lot is it allows the customers send you the requests by mail. If you manage to make them get used to it you have a lot of work done.

It took me a weekend to install it and test it and it was worth it.

Request-Tracker Barfing by L3WKW4RM · 2003-06-27 04:54 · Score: 1 · on W32.Sobig.E@mm Worm Spreading Rapidly

We use Request-Tracker for bug and issue tracking at my office. These bogus "Re: Your Movie" messages are causing the RT CGI to segfault when trying to view them. Solution is to edit all tickets at once and set them to 'dead' from that interface instead of individually.

Re:You don't outgrow SourceForge. by babbage · 2003-05-01 05:48 · Score: 1 · on Advanced Open Source Project Hosting?

Maybe because Bugzilla is also a real pain in the ass?

Now Request Tracker -- that is a high quality bug - slash - general-purpose issue tracker. Bugzilla is great if you happen to be Mozilla, but if your needs are at all different from those of the Mozilla project (hint: everyone's project needs are more or less unique, at least to an extent) then customizing Bugzilla is a pain in the ass. RT on the other hand is extremely flexible, adapts well to people's normal work flows, and scales very well. Check it out, you'll probably like it :)

Re:caching and diffs (Re:Having read the article.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-26 08:52 · Score: 0 · on Examining Microsoft Update

Huh? Many of the software packages I use are configured via plaintext files and perform extremely well, and are very easy to maintain in an enterprise enviroment.

Request Tracker by babbage · 2003-02-19 13:58 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Stop Breaking the Build

This is what Jesse Vincent has been using for RT: Request Tracker development for several months now, rather than CVS. Apparently it's much nicer than CVS, but it's exotic and not many people know about it or how to submit patches with it, so RT3 from what I can tell is kind of a one man project at the moment. In any case though, I've heard nothing but good things about Aegis, and it seems like a tool worth checking out if you have a software project to manage.

(And for that matter, if you need to track software bugs & other issues, RT rocks. Don't bother with Bugzilla, it's not half as good as RT is for most of the same tasks. And no, no one is paying me to endorse RT or anything, it's just great software and, in reference to Aegis, I respect the judgement of the guy developing it...)

Request Tracker by babbage · 2003-02-19 13:58 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Stop Breaking the Build

This is what Jesse Vincent has been using for RT: Request Tracker development for several months now, rather than CVS. Apparently it's much nicer than CVS, but it's exotic and not many people know about it or how to submit patches with it, so RT3 from what I can tell is kind of a one man project at the moment. In any case though, I've heard nothing but good things about Aegis, and it seems like a tool worth checking out if you have a software project to manage.

(And for that matter, if you need to track software bugs & other issues, RT rocks. Don't bother with Bugzilla, it's not half as good as RT is for most of the same tasks. And no, no one is paying me to endorse RT or anything, it's just great software and, in reference to Aegis, I respect the judgement of the guy developing it...)

Trouble Ticket System by -dsr- · 2003-01-21 08:41 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Improving Your Help Desk?

If your helpdesk doesn't consistently use a good ticket system -- like RequestTracker, plug, plug -- then it doesn't matter even if they always answer every question accurately and immediately: they can't prove it. Using a ticket system will focus the helpdesk's attention on solving and documenting the problem. It's much easier to complain that you're overworked when you have the stats to prove it; it's much easier to tell your boss that the bozo in Marketing has already asked that dumb question six times -- and has received the correct answer -- when you can show the ticket history as proof. And if the helpdesk isn't doing well, having them document what they are doing will let a reasonable person figure out what they need to change.

Re:Show some initiative by babbage · 2003-01-08 07:30 · Score: 4, Informative · on Making the Case for Better Bugtracking Tools?

No, please don't use Bugzilla -- it's reputation far exceeds its actual quality. Bugzilla is an arcane, tightly bundled colledtion of hard to extend CGI scripts sitting on top of a bizarre MySQL schema. If it doesn't exactly meet your needs (i.e. you are not the Mozilla project), extending it can be a nightmare.

May I humbly suggest that you take a look at RT: Request Tracker instead. RT is a general purpose ticketing system, suitable not only for bug tracking, for for all kinds of organized message exchange within an organization (i.e. help desk, sales force tracking, some aspects of inventory management, etc). RT allows users to collaborate via a web interface, email, or the command line. By providing multiple interaction interfaces, RT encourages users to work with the system by communicating the way they would already, rather than working against them by forcing them to adapt to a wholly new system. If you don't like the web interface, feel free to change it. If it's still not enough, people can just use email instead -- just cc: your RT account on ticket related mails, and include the ticket number in the subject line. Hey presto, people can do almost what they were doing in the first place.

RT is written in clean, OO Perl making wise use of CPAN libraries instead of implementing everything from scratch. It will run on a variety of operating systems & databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle). The system is well documented, easily extensible, and comes with a vibrant & supportive user community. It can even be integrated with things like pagers, so that the creation of critical tickets can send out a pager message to key personnel.

All in all, RT is a very nice, very well engineered system that IMO is far more suitable for most users than Bugzilla, for which the suitable scope is much more restricted. That's why RT is now being used in, among other places, Perl's bug tracker at rt.perl.org.

Disclaimer: My company uses RT, and I have met Jesse Vincent, RT maintainer, a handful of times, and even though I think it would be pretty cool if people switched to RT and bought support contracts from Jesse, I have nothing to gain if any of this happens. I just sincerely think that RT is better software than Bugzilla for almost all users, and would like to see development of the software continue to flourish and become accepted more widely. Spend a week messing around with RT and IMO you'll never want to go back to Bugzilla...