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Mike Gallaher (UniPress Emacs Hacker Boss, aka "Evil Software Hoarder") and I were walking around a science fiction convention, and we ran into RMS.

Mike said "Richard, I heard a rumor that your house burnt down..."

RMS immediately replied: "Where you work, I thought you would have heard about it in advance!"

-Don

These work well together. This will bust your budget a bit but it is good stuff. Footprints http://www.unipress.com/products.html and Centennial Discovery http://www.centennial-software.com/ FP runs on Window$ or Linux and is perl based. Discovery is sweet in that it will do what it's name implies. It will find hardware on your network (rogue AP's are a problem where I work). Check them out...:)

Check out FootPrints Helpdesk. http://www.unipress.com/footprints

We have been using this software for ages. It's simple to use and is one of the most feature packed softwares, for the cost. Configuring doesn't require programming - you do all that via the web interface. Supports LDAP/AD/NTLM/Unix passwd authentication, links to AD for contact info, and handles network asset detection and management. They work with a number of DBs... SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgerSQL.

Not too long ago, they announced ITIL compliance or compatibility, not certain which it is though. Whichever their site says.

Good luck!

http://www.unipress.com/

Unipress Footprints has a lot of nice features: calendaring, submission by form, instant web chatting and VNC support, time tracking, built in knowledgebase, and more.

It's not free, but it's what we use at the college and it works great.

Footprints is a good place to start. It is a web-based tracking system that creates incident numbers and can be updated from anywhere on the network.

I, too, have felt the burden of post-its as a means of tracking systems.

You will also need a trouble ticket system, or at least some project management software that everyone can agree to use (they are sometimes interchangeable, but they are NOT the same product; you should look at both in making your choice..)

When this reached a breaking point in my department, I found a distinct lack of "production quality" open/free ticket systems. I looked at several, and many of them would have been enough for me, but there were too many unimplemented features/implemented bugs/horrible UI mistakes to actually ADD productivity (as the inhouse programmer, I wasn't planning on manning the newly created support line myself; our first-line support person would need something intuitive and powerful while screening calls, delegating, etc.)

We eventually settled on Footprints, a cross-platform web-based trouble ticket/project management tool. It's written in Perl, works with Apache on Linux, and has several choices for backend databases (GDBM, Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL). It has alot of features, many of which we don't even use (yet :), but some of the important ones to consider:

• The system processes (via a cron job) incoming emails on either remote or local mailboxes (I use IMAP to our regular mailserver). It can take cold submissions and process them according to various rules, and experienced agents can edit tickets via email as well. In addition, it can send email (SMS too, I think) alerts when tickets are submitted, assigned, escalated, edited, closed....
• Sophisticated reporting features. This has helped us in alot of ways: in terms of support, it lets us know what the common user problems are, who the problem users are, what we could improve across-the-board, and quantifies that in a report you can pass out at those (non-IT) management meetings. It also can tell the "others" what your turnaround time is, who your most productive staff members are, and how many requests the department fields.
• Easy and *efficient* to use. If you waste alot of time interacting with it, thats time that you aren't actually addressing any of those tickets.

Just by way of comparison, Remedy is another example of such a commercial product; it did not have a web interface when I was comparing, but I think they claim to now (as the only user in the department with several non-Windows desktops, it was at least important when I made MY recommendation :)

http://www.unipress.com/cat/emacs.html