Domain: bestpractical.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bestpractical.com.
Stories · 3
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Issue Tracking Ticketing Systems?
An anonymous reader asks: "Our company has expanded to 5 employees, and we are looking at setting up and installing an Issue Tracking System for all employees to use throughout the company. It turns out there are many ticketing systems available in both commercial and open source solutions. We originally planned on using Request Tracker but we were unable to implement it due to the complexities of the system. For our company, we are looking for a simple to install Issue Ticketing system (preferably PHP and MySQL based to be hosted on our basic web hosting) to improve both the efficiency of our company, and improve our record keeping of all of our issues. How do you manage all of your tasks, and what software do you use, if any, to achieve this?" -
Best Online Examples of Workflow Patterns?
g8orade writes "In his bestselling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman lists workflow management software in the top 5 Flatteners. During my work for a shipping startup, I have analyzed our software's many UI weaknesses, particularly related to workflow management, and am currently searching for the best online examples of various UI application patterns / widgets that address managing transaction flows. What are the best examples you know of that are commonly viewable on the web?" "Our software UI is Oracle (9i) Forms compiled to run with Java, through the web. We're using RT for our internal ticket tracking and it has many of the features listed. Also, we're evaluating several commercial document management systems as bolt-ons or companions to our in-house application. Here are some patterns we'd like to improve:- Queue with count beside it. Example: 'Unshipped orders (5)'
- Screen for UI building of a search and ability to save the search as a queue
- List of queues showing all transaction counts and their various states
- Transaction list / table screen (should have an many possible features as a standard spreadsheet: pick your columns, column order, sort order, clickable column headings, export to various formats, print view, etc.)
- Detail view screen (one transaction, may include too many fields to display at once, requiring tabs, scrolling up and down, left to right, etc., should have a good printable view)
- Contact database built-in or connection to one from another system
- Auto messaging of various statuses to contacts and lists of contacts, above
- Full web accessibility and security model to allow our suppliers and clients access to their own queues for 'pull queries', in addition to what we email them.
- Ability to create a list of values for a field, then incorporate that into the query for a queue.
- Journal of a transaction
- Screen showing progression of a transaction
- Screen showing Parent / child parts of a transaction"
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Managing Router and Switch Inventories?
JabbaTheFart asks: "How does the Slashdot community deal with network equipment inventories. After searching Slashdot and seeing this post, I found a few good projects that work with computers (such as IRM, Request Tracker) but they don't cope with the specifics that you would need to work with routers and switches like: port info, firmware versions, currently running config, and so forth. I have looked into network monitoring projects like NMIS, Orion, and others but I would still need regular management information like serial numbers, contract status, price, etc. A simple database could work, but it would be nice to have web access. What do you use to keep track of all that network equipment that you are in charge of?"