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We deployed OTRS locally when we had to deploy something open-source off-the-shelf quickly, and it's proved painful. It might be possible to make it do what you want with more time and customization.

Since then, I've seen RoundUp appear, and it looks most promising, though I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

People talk a lot of smack about office Wikis. It is true that most people aren't going to edit them or keep their "assigned" parts up to date, I've realized that now. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't an invaluable tool for YOU personally. It gives managers the ability to see details what you're doing, and its a wonderful training tool.

When I came to my current job, there was no process. No specifications, no standards; 600,000 lines of spaghetti pascal code and probably 100-or-so installations with no version information or bug tracking. The code wasn't even under RCS. I can't say that I've solved all these problems 100%, but I'm well on my way. Using my experience as a guide, here's the steps from no standards to some standards:

1. Get all moving targets under revision control, and write up a simple method of version tagging. This includes software, user documentation, database scripts, etc.

2. Start a Wiki and make a short page for each project. Make rough pages outlining things like the release process and version tagging (as mentioned in #1). Include any developer instructions such as build instructions and dependency lists.

3. Use a ticket tracking system for problem resolution, both internally and externanly. I use OTRS, and that is pretty functional (and F/OSS). Bugzilla is good too but is a little more quick-and-dirty.

Get that done, and you're well on your way. About 20 years later, and you'll get ISO!

-dave

We've been using OTRS http://otrs.org/ for quite a few years and love it. It just plain works. It can use LDAP for a customer DB which can be also used with SugarCRM if a CRM is needed. We also use the LDAP directory to control the Java Messaging system for mail. We have had no down time in 4 years using this system. Its written in Perl and uses MYSQL for a DB. Yes it runs on Linux!

what about OTRS... http://otrs.org/ ?

http://www.otrs.org/

Depending on what you want, I'd suggest either Trac ( http://trac.edgewall.org/ ), or OTRS ( http://www.otrs.org/ ). Trac has a pretty basic ticket system, but that's combined with a Wiki and Subversion (don't know if you do coding), while OTRS is a quite powerful ticket system (admittedly, it looks like crap, but it does get the job done) with email piping and all the other things you would expect.

Aye, we use an email based trouble-ticket system(OTRS). Even if the end-user can't properly describe the problem they can at least open a trouble-ticket. Updates to the ticket are also done via email; so one ends up CC'ing the trouble-ticket system when replying to the end-user, this generates a nice log of what&when has been with the ticket.

... http://otrs.org/ for ticketing, http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/ for hardware tracking and http://glpi-project.org/?lang=en for software license tracking.

The ticketing and asset pieces aren't integrated and you might be able to get GLPI and OCS to work with a barcode scanner if the scanner will dump to a text field in the web page. I haven't had your specific needs but I thought I'd tout what worked for me, since I haven't seen them mentioned.

I can't help with asset tracking, but at work, we use OTRS to manage our entire IT support ticketing system. Multiple queues, complete email integration, LDAP support, and a host of other features make it one heck of a solution. Oh, and it's free :)

Take a look at http://otrs.org/.

It even has autoresponders and a webinterface for customers.
Integrates with procmail or POP3 accounts.

http://www.otrs.org/

Somebody mod the OTRS posts up! Its a really good OSS solution!

The Open Ticket Request System is used by lots of commercial entities. We're using it around here and it works well. The latest version is a pretty big improvement on an already pro quality product. Its easy to change the graphics to reflect your company's look and feel.
The price is right (free and OSS) and commercial support is available (we haven't needed it). FWIW, we have about 200 users and the OTRS stuff is running on pc class hardware along with some other applications. We're using SuSE Linux 9.3 on the OTRS box.

One post here on OTRS complained that it was hard to set up. Don't know why he found it hard to setup, unless he was trying to run it on Windows (which works but is still not completely QA'ed). OTRS ships with SuSE Linux, and I think its included in OpenSuSE. The SuSE version worked for me right out of the box. I'm not an admin, (I just write software) and it was very easy for me to install and configure. We've upgraded it once since we installed it. The upgrade required a little knowledge of MySQL (just a little). You're an admin right? You'll probably have no problems installing from scratch via tar file etc. If you use an RPM just make sure it puts things where you're distro expects them. Or just run it on SuSE/OpenSuSE.

Our users like the web interface. There's also an email interface, but we're not using it at this time (we're waiting on the guy who admins the exchange server to "get around" to setting up forwarding).

OTRS : http://www.otrs.org/

Works like a charm and is relatively simple to setup.

I was in a similar situation. If your boss is smart enough to write code, he is probably smart enough to see reason. You just have to have "proof" that you guys need to be using versioning etc. The problem lies in figuring out what consitutes "proof" for him. I suggest pointing out that he better have a damn good reason to go against industry best practices. During a previous stint (about 5 years) of consulting I found that using busswords like "Best Practices" when explaining this stuff to people really works. He probably won't understand at first but nobody wants to look like a dummy to his peers.

Another good angle: The first principle of sales is: "The fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain." Show him what he could lose if your outfit doesn't use industry standard tools. This is probably the most reliable method to sell anything. There's also lots of studies that show projects using versioning are more productive that teams that don't use it even when versioning is implemented in the middle of a project with an aggressive deadline. Steve McConnell's book _The_Software_Project_Survival_Guide
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572316217/103-20 95419-7389469?v=glance&n=283155
from M$ Press has lots of usefull strategies and factoids. He also addresses the human factor in software projects. Good stuff.

He may also just not want to go through the learning curve associated with new tools. FWIW, that was part of the problem here. Using web based tools helped with user (and boss) acceptance around these parts. We're using a help desk application to track all sorts of IT trouble tickets as well as defects:
http://www.otrs.org/
OTRS (Open Ticket Request System) is an open source web based application written in PERL. So far we've had a good experience with it.

We've also implemented Subversion and Viewcvs. Both OTRS and Subversion/Viewcvs are running on a PC class box running SuSE 9.3. We're also using Very Quick Wiki:
http://veryquickwiki.croninsolutions.com/
as a easy (and quick!) way to share the progress of out software projects with the company's users. This was one of the easiest sells of all. I just installed it (very easy to install, drag and drop, uses Tomcat as server) and started using it. I sent out some project updates with a URL instead of the full text. Just pointed my users and boss toward the wiki page for the project. Now he's using it to keep notes about changes to be implemented in our enterprise systems.

Using the SuSE distro made all of this easier as all the servers (OTRS as well) are included, but your favorite distro will work just as well. We use SuSE because the last 4 or 5 versions have been well "groomed." The uptime on the box has been fantastic! Better in fact than our HP 9000's. :-p

HTH

http://otrs.org/

I was using Google to search for this sort of thing. A pain in the friggen mouse. Much better search engine is dmoz.org. There are **many** products out there that can do what you want.

Another way to search is to go on sourceforge and look for CRM (Customer Relation Management) in the Enterprise part...

Having said all that, I'll recommend OTRS.

--LWM

You not only have to use a software for keeping track of stuff, but change the way you work. You have to issue a ticket for every request your customers make, and keep detailed info on every ticket you attend; once the ticket gets done, you have to print it out and lend it to your customer for a signature, and store those on individual expedients. That way, you keep a database-driven knowledge base of every curtomer, ticket and technical stuff related so you can make searches with many parameters, and also, you keep a paper trail that you can show to your boss or customers to resolve disputes. In the free software world there are many packages that attepmt to resolve this issue, and my favorite is OTRS, wich I reccomend a lot.

.. would it have been so hard to do a little google searching, perhaps a little mailarchive grepping, maybe come up with your own assessment of the scene, first?

*sigh*

but, to answer your question, theres' this:

OTRS .. seems like the aforementioned skils have disappeared in the modern internet, alas ...

It really depends on the sorts of tasks you are handling. If you are, for example, a builder then you will have a critical path and (hopefully ;-) strict deadlines. For something like this a calendar based task scheduler is fine. Things like KOrganizer or Plans could be used.

If there is a great number of tasks with no critical path, for example a call center, then you will want something a little more complicated. You'll need to be able to log a task quickly, give it an urgency, tie it back to a particular caller, be able to assign it, maybe even have a searchable knowledge base. For this area things like OTRS are great.

Then you could be a developer, where critical paths vary daily and tasks need to be assigned to specific modules and versions. The obvious choice here is bugzilla

Desktop or web-based is also a consideration. You may require access from multiple locations; maybe you are an off-site engineer; so that needs to be taken into consideration too.

http://www.google.com/search?q=trouble+ticket+syst em returns a number of tools suitable for this purpose, such as this open source application.

I've been (forced into) using Domino/Notes for about 5 years now, mainly because at the time we migrated, the guy in charge saw Notes as the "easy" way to move away from cc:Mail.

I've been itching for something like this to come along for a long time, so I can show the Directors what they are missing. OGo, coupled with OTRS to replace our in-house fault-tracking system, and OOo to replace MS Office, and we'd be almost set. All that is left is somce decent Open Source CRM software to replace ACT! for Notes, and I could probably drop Notes on it's head! Heck, with all that, I could probably drop Windows on it's head for half the company!

Unfortunately, I may have to go with Exchange proper anyway - the management are planning a Microsoft Project server for centralised project scheduling of many projects and resources, so unless I can get Project server running an non-IIS platform, talking to OGo, or I can find a replacement for Project Server that talks to OGo, I'll be stuck

Bah! Management - what do they know anyway! Can't wait to try OGo out...