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How Do You Manage Requests in Your Organization?
StormShadw asks: "How do you manage IT requests in your organization? There seems to be a lack of software solutions specifically designed to track requests. Most that I've been able to find are either problem tracking systems or bug tracking systems, neither of which completely fit the 'request management' model. I work for a large bank and my department supports all of the internet web presence and online banking applications for the company. We receive hundreds of requests a week (my department has 51 people in it), typically through a variety of mediums (phone, email, hallway conversations). It's impossible to manage all these efficiently when there is no centralized system. What's the solution? What do you all use?"
"There is a 'workflow' aspect to many of these requests: we do our thing, then pass it off to the UNIX admins, firewall folks, or DBAs to process another portion of the request. Ideally, I'd like to have a web based system where our customers (internal lines of business) can submit their requests, get status, etc. We would also manage a queue of work through a web interface, assigning requests internally or to other teams we work with. Email notifications could be generated when requests are completed."
That's all.
..with optional basketball hopop located just above it for an additional challenge when filing requests.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
check out http://www.bestpractical.com/
I just tell anyone who needs any work done from me to file it in our intranet bugzilla site. Tracks status, assignment, etc.
"More organs means more human." - Zim
I use a product called Applix back end of SQL - it's ok but it sucks ... switching to a broduct called Track in the near future
Originally we setup a system where users would have to fill out a support request form and drop it in a box for us. This became cumbersome for us because we were constantly having to check and users were having to wait. In the end, I removed the SOP we had in place for requesting support. I would prefer they all submit their requests in the same manner (via email). We do not have a person here that can field calls all day. We also run a pretty cool program called Assett Navigator by Alloy Software (alloy-software.com). It is one of the few reasonably priced solutions that will manage the entire enterprise. It was pretty painless to roll out and their inventory module is pretty cool. They also have a web interface for the roaming IT person where he can check his to-do list. Being that it runs on Access or SQL, you could write a few scripts that would give the users the ability to submit their own support calls. The manager or someone else could easily route calls between techs. Additionally, techs can escalate calls to other techs if needed.
My ideal solution is an automated one. The last thing I want to do is answer calls all day from my users.
alias dir='rm -rf
I use a program called goldmine to manage contacts as well as interactions with them. It stores them in a (db3) database file, and you can add custom filters, etc, to it. I find it quite helpful
We use request tracker. http://www.gnu.org/directory/rtracker.html
I just let people ask me questions in the hallway on my way to the break room and stuff. Then I use my superior intellect to forget it all anyway.
If it's really that important, they'll keep bugging me about it until I do something. If it wasn't important, I didn't need to worry about it in the first place.
We use bug tracking software for all kinds of things other than tracking bugs.
We have our own internal app which people can access via the Web or through Notes. Or, if they prefer, they can call the helldesk who will sumbit the problem for them. All submissions are routed via the helldesk anyway, who then pass them on (usually) to the (usually) correct group.
Of course, since there's a web interface, we also have several automated scripts that submit problems for us whenever something breaks, reminders of daily / weekly / monthly checks and so on...
Post-it Notes.
from: employee #680416
to: it-supplies
subject: 19" flatpanel
Hey guys, can you fix me up with one of them new 19" panels when the new pc shipments come in?
Thanks!
How do you manage IT requests in your organization?
:-(
Post-It notes left on my monitor...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I just tell anyone who needs any work done from me to file it in our intranet bugzilla site. Tracks status, assignment, etc.
My computer's down...
Easy: squeaky wheel gets the grease.
;-)
Or, to say it another way, the meaner the person making the request, the more I'm likely to get them satisfied and out of my way as quick as I possibly can. Nice people and doormats get pushed to the end of the stack.
I know, I know: Law of the jungle. But if you're half-way honest you'll admit that's the way you work, too.
My organization, a 15-person support unit for 1500 faculty and staff at a university, developed its own Help Request system. It is on a MS SQL backend with CF front. It is pretty nice, and we are finally starting to utilize it for knowledge management instead of just a functional request system.
We require all users (and outside departments) to use the web form to ask questions or request aid. No phone numbers or private emails are given. And if something gets through, we either send them to the web forms or submit a request ourselves.
But this was a custom system. I designed a similar system for my servers - a problem ticket system - in PHP and MySQL. It is fairly easy to build your own inhouse custom Help Request system. Just takes some time and design considerations.
Z
2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2
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.
A couple of years back I had need of an issue tracking system. Double Choco Latte was one of the systems I used. The source code is well laid out and easy to modify if you have special needs.
There are a lot of features, not sure if it will cover all of your requirements. It actually had more features than I needed at the time I was using it.
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
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.
We used a program called Track-It (http://www.blueocean.com/product.asp). It was accessible by any of us from any of the Windows XP machines attached to the network, and served as both the inventory system (for the audio-visual room) as well as a checkout counter (for the library), computer auditing system (occasional updates allow us to log any changes in hardware or software installed on a machine), call logging system (for technical issues reported by phone or e-mail) and even as a knowledge base for issues with common solutions. It was practically invaluable for the entire summer I used it :>
Every company I have worked for that handles this at all succesffuly has a custom dbg app written that tracks information about each request, who requested it, priority, who is working it, status, worklogs etc.
The problem is people continue to make requests outside of the system, change scope mid project etc.
You can solve some of that by saying "Everything is one big step" in the tracking system, and then solving scope change via XP-like processes or something, but you project management types usually don't like that answer
Also, in larger shops you have to worry about resource management alot, and delays to the current project affecting the time lines of other projects, thats the kind of thing you really need people to handle, but the database can keep track of whatever decision was made.
most companies develop this stuff in-house. All you need is a little mysql and php, and boom. Otherwise, there are several "solutions" you'll find and/or be told about...they are all very expensive relative to how quickly one can be put together.
Speaking as a sysadmin who's deployed such a system, I'm pretty unclear as to why support-style ticket tracking doesn't work for you. Sure, some systems aren't well featured, but most should be a perfect fit for request tracking. You get issue assignment, updates, web viewability, email notification, etc.
The main thing that's different between requests and support problems is that you can ignore a request for nearly forever and have that be the correct response (low priority etc.) but most ticket/request systems don't hardcode any logic that makes this an issue.
My personal favourite is roundup.
-josh
We use Cerberus and it's great. You can get site licenses for as little as $99 and you get access to a CVS repo for both the parser and the web front end. It's slick and easy to use; you can correspond via email or via the cerberus website.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Are you looking for OSS or commercial. The commercial spaces certainly offers many choices (CA has a product and Lotus Notes can do this).
I've never looking in the OSS space for these products. I'm sure you will get some good recommendations here.
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
RT is a web system that recieves request via e-mail. I use it to manage requests from people in my office as well for my small webhosting company.
check it out
I know server beach uses it for their support system, and I believe that Rackspace does as well.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/requesttracker/?t
daniel
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.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
We have an ASP form that takes pertintent info and logs it in a simple .mdb file. It also e-mails us when new requests are made. We even have one set up for the blokes in facilities so when a light bulb goes out they get to yell at people to put a help request in on the intranet.
Its a huge package with many many features that we will never use here, but it makes a great feature request tool -- in the form of trouble tickets. It works both with the web interface and via email.
As for phone or in-person requests, all you need is the discipline to capture the request in RT, or perhaps a policy that all requests must be entered into the system either via the web interface or by e-mail. Perhaps my only complaint with RT is that it's somewhat cumbersome to set up, but the instructions will take you step by step, just be sure to follow them closely.
'Nuff said.
If they ask me via phone, email or IM, I ignore them until they add the task to DCL. Backed by a simple, yet effective agreement between management and staff to which all people can understand that if its not in DCL its not a trackable problem.
Of course it helps to pitch the idea of what DCL can do for the organization, but past the agreement, let DCL be set in stone.
RT: FAQ Manager? Surely, this most be some kinda geek spoof...
Sol Rosenberg, is that you?
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.
Why NOT a bug tracking system?
Find one that lets you create your own problem "classes" and let one of those classes be "job request".
Then you just need a way to keep the PHB's from thinking that every open request is an unresolved bug.....
We used a customized version of Remedy where the user enters his problem via a web interface. The requests are automagically passed to the right department, and assigned to an individual tech. The tech works on the problem, making notes in the "work log" of the ticket, and finally closes it out. At this point the user receives an email stating (confirming) his problem is solved, and depending on the department they get the option to fill out a survey to ask how their experience was.
Pyrmaid scheme o
take a look at http://otrs.org/index/
they also provide an online demo.
looks very nice, very versatile and seems to be what you want/need.
http://gforge.org/
Doesn't emacs have something for this?
We use these. Someone wrote some VB inside of the forms so they can track states. Lots of drop down list boxes etc.
The next move would be for the guys in IT support to be a little more co-operative. Our support team have never heard of the phrase customer service.
Our company uses GForge and create projects based on support (internal, customer and such) and then assign and track through gforge. It also handles internal projects (coding/documents) also, its handy.
"Open Door Policy"
Although it can be draconian, these are problems that ISO-9001 quality assurance seeks to address. In the process of gettting certified for ISO-9001 your organization will have to create ways for request/complaint systems to evolve and correct themselves if they aren't working. It's a big stick, but something to consider.
I am actually looking for similar software. I had previously used track-it but found the software too much of a pain.
We use a Program called BridgeTrak, it keeps them all under wraps pretty well. http://www.helpdesksoftware.com/kemma.htm looks like they have a new program called Helpdesk (though I haven't looked into that yet)
If firefighters fight fire and crime fighters fight crime, what do Freedom fighters fight?
- Make request
- Assign request (optional)
- Resolve request
- Verify resolution
Items assigned to you or your department, items requested by you, and items assigned by you (where "you" is a particular employee) show up on the intranet home page.Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
. . . from home-grown solutions all the way up to $100k packages that run on top of pick-your-favorite-SQL DB.
We use Blue Ocean's Track-IT and have for a few years now. It has pretty much every major bell and/or whistle you could want available for it. Blue Ocean was recently purchased by Intuit and they haven't managed to mess up the package yet.
It also depends on what support model your company uses. We had a HUGE culture shift from stopping-IT-person-in-hall to call/web/e-mail-the-help-desk but it has been very successful. Of course, the bean counters in my management area outsourced the people answering the phones to Singapore and they don't speak very good English - but that's another story.
Check out Track-IT. We love it.
I work for a large county government. We support around 6000 users. We use a help desk with a product from Perigrine called ServiceCenter for requests. They then get assigned to the appropriate sections within ITS. For example, phone issues go to Telecomm, web site issues to the Web Team, etc.
Additionally, requests for updates to the website get sent through our communications department to us, or directly to us using a common email address that goes into a folder the web team shares.
The ServiceCenter works well, but the entire web request method just is horrible.
Random Musings
I'm currently using the freeware helpdesk software Liberum and am working on modifying it to track project requests (it's taking me a bit of time because I'm not a developer by trade and am an 'army of one'). It's free, web-based and it works.
www.liberum.org
Here at our company, we use bugzilla. Not only to track software bugs, but also track requests and assign tasks to people or teams.
The only bugzilla feature I miss (maybe someone already implemented it, I don't know) is the ability to add comments to tickets by just sending mail to an address that looks like bug123456@bugzilla.company.com
www.helpstar.com
I go to the IT person, I make requests, he ignores them... no problem! At the previous job, the strategy was IT people lock themselves in a room with a sign on the door that says "do not knock under any circumstances." If you wanted anything fixed, you had to have the balls to go knock on the door.
There's plenty of web-based software for tracking requests, but I've never seen any that was any good, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You may be better off rolling your own to match your own work processes.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Not too sure why I'm plugging them, it's just what my company uses... But the software seems to work pretty well, is quite featureful, and offers pretty much everything you asked about, so if the existing recommendations don't do it for you (and you don't feel like rolling your own), ask them for a sales call. All with a web interface (yeah there's a surprise.)
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
The official IT support unit can take some weight off their own shoulders by not being so anal about ownership of administration passwords and allowing some of the more tech savy non-IT employees domain admin rights or admin passwords.
You know the sort of employee I mean - the one who works in Marketing but knows more about XP than most people in IT support.
That way, they can sort out many of the problems that occur within departments and not have to bother IT support.
You're probably saying to yourself "you can't let non-IT staff have admin passwords - you never know what might happen." Like I said, stop being so anal about it.
I work for a very large company and we use Remedy. (Probably average somewhere in the neighborhood of 10k+ support calls a week spread over all of the various organizations in house) It is oookaayy, not great. I think a lot of the distaste for it here is the lack of customization. (Yes, they deployed it pretty much out of the box)
I have heard real good things from a couple of people using it at different companies. This takes quite a bit of customization as I understand it. Be prepared to pay $$ for a couple developers to suit it to your needs.
Bottom Line: Take the time to research and find something that fits your requirements. We had a roll your own ticket tracking/workflow system that was fantastic. The geniuses that call themselves managers got rid of it for something that cost a lot more and in the end, didn't do everything that we wanted it to. This makes tracking your work a big hassle. (They weren't willing to pay for the customization IOW)
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
We use RT, Request Tracker, from Best Practical. (Software here.)
It's web based, takes requests in via email, allows different people to get assigned to issues, and allows issues to be assigned to different groups (queues) and different people.
The trick to things is to remove the concept of bug or problem from your approach -- everything is an issue to address (thus a request, by RT's model), and you can build the flow you need to manage your requests.
Davae
I liked having the guy down the hall just fix stuff. But, budget cuts have hit, now we use Big web desk.
It kinda sucks from a user perspective. I guess you can have people call besides using the web interface, but you pay to have someone answer the phone.
We use it for our facilities management, too. I have not had much luck getting facilities to fix problems using it. It has helped the IT dept, because they have a faster turn around time, the users get to see the dates(opening, closing, and re-opening), messages(between IT gurus, users, and admins), and if it is closed prematurely.
It is really great when their web site goes down. I can never figure out who to call.
We have requests for software development come in via two avenues.
First, new projects are requested via a Notes database. It is the responsibility of a business liason group to prioritize the requests submitted to that database, and then we (development) just work on the requests in order of priority.
Second, enhancements to existing systems can come in a couple of ways. If a call to the help desk turns out to be something that requires a software change, the ticket (we use Peregrine Service Center) gets transferred to the development group where we copy it into our issue/bug tracking system (PVCS Tracker). If anyone notices a problem with a system under development, test, or pilot, the issue goes straight into Tracker. Tracker lets us assign the issue to different people or groups, track the change history, etc. (just typical bug tracking software). We have procedural checkpoints that make sure all open items associated with a particular project or system are addressed before moving on to the next phase/iteration of development or before elevating.
So in the end, we have one place to look for new project requests, and one place to look for enhancements to existing systems.
Basically we have different types of requests systems for different types of requests (firewall changes, sw installs, more storage on a fileshare, new desktop, new server in the datacenter, new circuit or datafeed, etc...) Some of these request types require MS excel or MS Word templates filled out and emailed to the proper department. While other request involve intranet webforms or worse yet proprietary software installed on the requestors machine. It gets really complicated when request spawn other sub-requests.
At least, that's how it looks from the outside.
So you want your mailbox qouta expanded?
sure thing
clickety clickety clickety clickety click
there it's contents have now been deleted
plenty of room now
thanks for coming out
We use a commercial customer service product from RightNow Technologies. (www.rightnow.com) People can email in requests or fill out a request using a web based form. For hallway conversations, I just ask the person to send me an incident using the product. That way all requests are documented.
I'd love to help you out with that one Slashdot, now if you'll just fill out these forms in triplicate and get the green one signed off by your line manager, I'll be able to fulfil your request...
...it is just easier for me to do everything.
(yeah, I'm really tired)
T.
My organization has been happy with a heavily modified version of dotProject (..more info available at my website. Not only does it do a great job of keeping track of "support tickets", but you can send via email and they are automatically added to the support database. There are also a couple of modules for project management which work well too.
http://www.providenames.com
Well Dan usually comes in and says, "Jason, are you having any trouble getting to email?" and I'll say "I don't think so. Let me check." and then I'll have a problem and be like "Yea, let me check it out." and I'll fix it a few minutes later.
If instead Greg says something like "Hey, we need an ecommerce site for this new project." I'll usually pull up notepad.exe and type "Write ecommerce engine for new project." and just leave it up so I don't forget.
Here is what the BOFH uses with great success.
I usually treat reqests just like all other items of insane babbling.... reply with: 1: RTFM! 2: Get over it! if they succesfully accomplish either of those, the problem is solved!
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
We get aprox 30- 70 calls a day and use my own system with a web interface.Developed in asp and ms sql- but looking at it now i could well do with a open source system like :e rus-kb/
cerberus
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerb
or:
liberum help desk
http://sourceforge.net/projects/liberum/
Help Desk software probably already exists at your company. It almost certainly has the workflow and reporting features you need to get the request up to the approval process.
I'm an engineer at a chemical plant, and we request our maint. dept. to do work using a work order system called JD Edwards. (The company that makes it was recently absorbed by PeopleSoft.) I don't know how much the type of maintenance done around a chemical plant has in common with requests for IT work, but there you go.
About six years when I started working in our IT department, we had an off-the-shelf product called Applix which managed our help desk calls. From that very simple starting point, a group of us started slowly growing and modifying the code base until the product as it began no longer really exists.
Customers call our help desk for broken items (or use a web page to record the call), then it's paged out to the appropriate rep. The reps go to a browser and works the call.
We've got a "project" request system that is also web-based, allowing customers to submit projects, managers to view them, reps to document their work, and a time tracking system to track time against the projects.
There are other related web-based systems, such as an interface to the HR system that lets us know when new users have been hired, fired, or transferred. There's an automated system for setting up users (tying into Applix, NT, Exchange, and some other miscellaneous things).
We also have a generic web-based form builder that anyone can use to create simple request forms. Some teams have very specific pieces of information they want to see their customers give them, so they direct them to the web form.
Strangely, everyone seems to take it for granted that this is all in place. I have no idea how we'd function with all this infrastructure to help us do our jobs. Go back to e-mail and sticky notes, I suppose.
We use a web-based, SQL backend, system to track bugs, projects, enhancement requests, software orders and installs, customer disconnects, just about anything really. It's very versitile, mainly because it was written in-house by the people who needed, and wanted, it and has evolved over the last 20+ years as we've evolved. Nothing beats in-house software, except perhaps really good third-party software that's given away for free.
Most places I've worked that had an actual system used either gnats (two of those places I did a lot of custom work on gnats, esp. for the web front end), or a Remedy (or similar) based solution.
Gnats is a pain to work with. The commercial solutions tend to be expensive. Bugzilla is OK, but not quite what we wanted. So we still use email here.
But I'm going to check into RT and maybe Double Chocolate Latte.
Although... "I got RT installed and working...in only about three hours" (from memory). Yikes!
this is a good web application that handles this sort of need:
http://www.jyvesoftware.com/
you know, the garbage can!
Does the job for me.
Little, yellow, different, better.
At my company they ask a contractor 2000 miles away to write the requirements for a process that has no documentation and all of the people currently involved in the process take 4 days of constant voicemails before they return phone calls. The entire requirements gathering/documentation has 1 week of alotted time.
Once I do manage to get them on the phone and get some expected functionality out of them I put it into the document spend all weekend trying to figure out conflicting requirements as stated by different people and get the final document distributed by monday morning.
Development on the project begins, you guessed it, monday morning. So with no final approval of the requirements I code the damn thing. I continue to pester the people for a sign off on the requirements and eventualy get an OK from everyone.
3/4 of the way through development we do the first demo. Of course, instead of watching the demo, they all discuss the requirements document. They decide that even though they signed off on it, it isn't really what they want.
The requirements are rewritten, this time no signoff (it doesn't matter anyway) and the contractor is laid off. The project is then tabled indefinitely.
I'm not sure what the point of this whole story was, but I'm sure there's one in there somewhere.
I didn't need all the functionality of RT, and didn't like it when I tried it (although to be fair it's been almost two years since I tried it). I ended up using oneorzero helpdesk (http://helpdesk.oneorzero.com).
I've modified it slightly to do what we need, but it seemed to me to have all the features I needed and nothing I didn't.
**************
I can't believe what nerds we are. We're looking up money laundering in the dictionary
... your insensitive clod!
the server was full so I deleted all the files.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
And released it under the GPL so that the community can improve on it and use it for Free.
Just kidding. GPL is teh suck.
Helpstar.
It includes workflow management. We setup problem types that indicate the functional area that is addressed, and the current team status (for instance, a bug in this sytem will go from Project - Defect to Project - Fixed (indicating fixed but not ready to promote) to Project - QA (indicating ready to be confirmed))
Of course it doesn't apply just to bugs. Everything from "reset my password", to "install service pack x on server y", to "Change the border of the website to green" goes through it...
users file requests either by phone (we have a small call center to log incidents and route appropriately) or by e-mail (in which case the call center representative still takes care of routing, but the incident itslef is logged automatically by the system). A new incident can be assigned to a specific person, or a queue that represents a team of people.
Project Managers, QA Testers, and Programmers can log incidents themselves and route manually, bypassing the call center stage entirely.
It has lots of nice reports and automatic time tracking by incident, as well.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
In our organization, we use Siebel to track not only bug/defects, Tech Support calls but also all IT requests. The s/w has triggers for workflow, email etc. ...
The downside is that this stuff is expensive
At NCR, for the IT Services helpdesk, we used Remedy (http://www.remedy.com/solutions/servicemgmt/css.h tml), which intergrated phone, web, and voicemail requests, problems, and questions. Takes a bit of setup to use and to create taskable teams, but it's a very comprehensive and powerful program for tracking basically all requests and problems from a help desk perspective.
It's not really hard to use either, it's a fairly low learning curve, and can tie easily into existing knowledgebases (a Lotus Notes DB, for instance)
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 know this may not be ideal answer, but my company typically uses software written inhouse.
If you use a web based app. you should be able to make it easy and accesible for anyone that you can do away with the passing-in-the-hall requests and the like.
My subtext is just a figment of your imagination.
I think that feature requests are similar enough to problem fixing requests so that you can just make that one of the choices when filling out a helpdesk ticket. Then they'd be easy to sort, and all in one place and searchable and all that good stuff.
When in doubt, use what you've got.
It's all going according to
How do you manage IT requests in your organization?
Allow each requestor to post his request on something like a bulletin board.
Allow some persons the ability to commend or denigrate a limited number of these posts, making the commended posts more visible and the denigrated posts less visible, by adding to or subtracting from, the post's "priority" points.
Occassionaly award a small number of (say, five) "priority points" to those posters who gain the most priority points from others, allowing these points to be assigned to yet other persons' requests.
Designate different types of "priority points" to distinguish types of requests, but make sure there's some ambiguous overlap: you might include points for requests that are, e.g., "Insightful", "Interesting", "Funny" as positive points, and "Overrated", "Troll", and "Flamebait" as negatives.
Make sure you patrol the request board for goatse.cx posts, and try to limit the number of posts that comapre popular requests to Natalie Portman covered with grits.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I work for a small city govt... ~500 users. We use Frontrange Software's Heat helpdesk package to track user support requests. They come in thru our Lotus Notes email interface to an auto ticket generator gateway that's part of the Heat package.
The open source web based groupware system PHProjekt includes project management, time tracking and request tracking. Reuqests can be submitted via the grouwpare web interface, via email and via forms on a separate web site. The system runs on PostgreSQL or MySQL and a few others ...
manfred
We've recently found Tririga facility management software has an IT request section. The system is kinda cool in that you can make your own workflows and edit the forms to how you'd like to see them, and add new object to the system. Plus they distribute the app with Jboss, and the ear file will deploy on Weblogic.. Bad side to tiririga, the app supports IE better than Mozilla... it is usable is the lizard, but barely.
We use a program called Remedy. It manages our IT jobs for an entire, large university setting (31,000+ student body size). It works pretty well.
Well, all very well - normally by the time you teach your dumbass sysadmins etc how too use the system the problem should be sorted out...
The Bob Avenger
Works every time!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
I work and develope for this company, but we make a program called 'Systems Panel' that pretty much fits your requirements. It also has the ability to centralize IT links, downloads, and technical article.
Requests and problem tickets are really the same thing... issues that prevent or hinder the employee from doing their job, or from doing it as well as it should or could be done.
Wanting something written/rewritten/upgraded/etc. should go to the same system that you have for broken computers. It might go to different people or groups, but the tool that you use can easily be the same.
I worked in the Network Control Center of a military base and when it came to user requests all we did was shuffle some paper. The USAF has a giant list of all authorized software; you want that you just ask us for permission and go mess with it yourself we didn't do much application support. But say you wanted to set up a system at the golf course to allow people to check availability and reserve a Tee time from off base? (Actual issue that had to be dealt with) First you contact your system administrator, he'll write up your request and e-mail it to us. We'll tell you no since that's unsecured as all hell. Then you'll complain to your squadron commander who will complain to ours and we'll have to do it. Then we have to get permission from a private firm in Hawaii who will tell us no because it's unsecure as hell. Several months of playing middleman later the private contractors will say ok and then we'll figure out how. Well now it's time for our firewall expert to write up all the changes that would have to be made to move the golf course computer outside the firewall and we'd look into setting up a second dedicated circuit so that the golf course can have both inside and outside access without touching. Then our firewall guy will walk the contractors through the process since they don't actually know the system yet. Then our firewall guy will put them on hold and swear a blue streak into his desk in an effort to prevent the lieutenant down the hall from hearing him. After that's done, we find out that a lot of the copper went bad and there are no wires for the golf course to have a second line from us out there. Then the golf course gets DSL from AT&T and doesn't need to use the military network anymore. Request complete, time: 4 months. Not sure if that answered anything, but that whole fiasco had really ticked me off.
We use a help desk, and assign calls through a Web Front end of Astea. It does a lot more then you're needing though. Including bill management, payroll, etc..
We used to use an Application called HEAT. It's basically and SQL front end, but has pretty "ok" call management. Easy enough to use. You still need someone to put all the tickets into it.
I recommend making a web page where employees can put in tickets. Then either have someone manually, or setup a script to add them into a database. If you know some sql, you could probably rig your own system.
Have a look at ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Libary). Its a best practice framework for managing your IT infrastructure and the Change Managment process has more information on this. http://www.itil.co.uk You can also have a look at the ITIL usergroup http://www.itsmf.com ...parm.
Don't show up for work. :-)
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
I just have this little shared todo manager that manages user and group todo lists. Everyone who uses it has it on their desktops, and can assign to, view and edit each other's todo lists, reassign items, etc. No user specific passwords, we just trust each other. Comments can be appended to each item. Due dates can be specified. It can pop up alerts when important items are added by others, since we often have windows obscuring our desktops. And we just remove (hide) items as we finish handling them. It took about a day to create and has helped us out a lot in managing our workload.
Cheerios!
Worrying works!! 99% of all the stuff I worry about never happens
I've used Remedy, SAP and Siebel. SAP is the very worst, it's not even designed really for a CRM application. IMO, stay as far away as possible. Siebel is decent but the only interface is through IE 6, and you can't have Sun's JVM installed. The interface has lots of click-throughs, instead of opening new windows AND you can only see 20 tickets in a view, which is very inconvenient if you're looking for a needle in a haystack. Remedy is excellent, very flexible/customizable for the end-user and you can run scripts to create massive amounts of tickets and to extract data. The downside--the native interface doesn't work very well through a WAN connection because, when you run a query, it pulls the entire ticket, not just the header as Siebel and SAP do. Hope this helps.
...was actually very efficient.
:P
There were forms in all the labs. Problem? Fill out the form, stick it in the basket outside the lab. Lab techs would collect the sheets on rounds, take 'em back to central, everything would get LOGGED and then problems would be fixed.
Oh, 3dstudio keeps crashing? You didn't fill out a trouble ticket? SUFFER.
We used the same process for print outputs, with the difference being that all output was logged in a databse (this wasn't done with tech stuff for the obvious reason that, since half of the building was NT 4, someone would be swamped with data entry for the rest of their lives). No form, no service. Everything you put on the form was entered into the database. Come back to bitch about something being printed wrong? Tough shit, idiot- you told us to do it that way.
The nice thing about the database is we knew who was putting in requests, when they were doing it, and how often. Also, what medium and formats. This made tracking people who put in a TON of requests or people who CONSTANTLY fucked things up and REFUSED TO LEARN extremely easy- our supervisor just had to check the db for the person's name, and blam.
The lab technicians, as well as the print technicians, had the dual joys of informing thousands of hopelessly brain damaged users that we are not instructors, we are not tutors, we will not show you how to run the video capturing system. Really pissed off a few people who for some reason thought that just because they couldn't pay attention in class, we should hold their hand through print procedure. Six times in a week.
Rage? Yeah. I worked customer service. In IT. Getting paid minimum wage. Wouldn't offer the job to Hitler.
I grew up knowing most people were dumb, but after a year of printing Quark, Illustrator, and Photoshop documents- and dealing with the people who submitted them- I now have incontrovertable proof.
My advice? Stay on top of hardware failures. Deal with errors of software and hardware. Make it subtly obvious that your department does not service user error.
My company uses:
http://www.liberum.org/
Great way to track request and best of all:
Liberum Help Desk is released under the GPL license and is free for anyone to use and modify.
Where I am we are implementing a formal governance process that takes requests for development and puts them through a formal approval process so that management can size and prioritise the projects before they get assigned to anyone. On the front end we have a custom web application that runs on top of a DB2 database. People can submit things, it handles notifying the chain of approvals about what they need to do, and tracks status. It's after that that we start to run into problems - giving business partners visibility into status once development has started is a real issue. Right now it looks like we are probably going to continue extending the web application we have now into the development life-cycle...
I think I fried the motherboard...and the fatherboard too
Please mod parent up. This information is indeed useful.
Lots of folks are going to suggest Request Tracker, and mind you it is GREAT stuff, but not for the kind of thing the gent in the article is looking for. Remedy (http://www.remedy.com) is a great platform for just this kind of thing.
HOWEVER: It's not cheap! Not in the least. And it does requre effort/$$$ to get it working the way you need it to. But in the long run, it is a first class ticket and workflow management system that can really grow with you.
I worked with it for many years while employed by the IT department of a large County goverment here in the states, and if I had it to do again for an organization that large and process extensive, I would do it exactly the way I did it the first time. Remedy simply rocks, and many developers can learn to use it in fairly short order. It is probably even easier and more rich in feature and ease of development than it used to be.
Now I work for a much smaller organization (read: tiny), with far fewer needs, and a highly customized version of Request Tracker does a great job.
Strong stuff. Last long time. MYSQL and PHP. Yum. http://www.stonekeep.com/keystone.html Tell'em Neimon sent you.
We use the Barracuda system. Strictly it is a COTS CRM system so it won't suit everybody, but it allows you to log a job when someone rings in, describe the problem in as much detail as you want, assign priority, schedule the request, track its current status, and log as many service entries and items used as you want per service call.
It is only for Windows however at this stage, and uses an Access database backend. They are developing an SQL backend though, and there is already an http frontend for it (through IIS of course).
If it's *really* important, they'll come to my office with an offering of fresh donuts from Winchell's.
:-)
Then I'll do it.
Like in Blazing Saddles:
l-User: Isn't is a looooooooovly morning?
BOFH: Up yours, nigger!
I use ITracker, which deploys on Tomcat, JBoss and other J2EE application servers. I made some changes to my local CVS copy to support requested completion date, est start date, est end date, actual start and actual end. With that info, I can write reports and generate gantt charts to manage my IT and web content requests at church. I hope to offer the changes to the project so that others may benefit as well.
We use a home-grown "database" in Lotus Notes to track RFCs (Requests for Change) - they are part of a larger formal CM system that tracks problems, changes, status, assigned developers, releases, files, file versions, etc for all releases of all projects in our division. It is designed to mesh with our engineering processes so that it is easy to keep everything straight with minimal effort.
Not bad, for a mixed Govt/Contractor team, eh?
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
We currently use a product called DevTrack from Tech Excel. It's pretty decent, configurable and supports workflow. That being said, they're getting greedy by calling it an "enterprise" product and jacking up the price. This puts them into the same price/space as Remedy, and in comparison they are not as good. We use Remedy for our tech support and will probably deploy it out to the development and production application support groups for tracking there. Also don't forget the products from Merant: Stuff in the PVCS suite and the new Dimensions product. I have not investigated any of these much, but Dimensions seems quite sophisticated.
I'm at my second company that uses Remedy and it's value is only as useful as the people who use it.
The first company that used it was a 5000 employee company and Rememdy was pretty good. Most people knew not to screw around with assigning tickets to someone else knowing they would assign it to the correct people. They knew not "ping pong" their tickets. The company had a Remedy management/programmer team that knew what they were doing and actually had one guy that maintained tight control of the groups, their requests, request types and subreqests. In other words, it was pretty brainless to assign a ticket to the correct person. I think it worked pretty well and it was easy to fix problems with Remedy.
The second company I'm at is a 100,000 person company and completely different story. The problem is, that it is excepted that people can just assign tickets to someone they think might know where to assign the ticket. Yep, that's right, "ping ponging" tickets like you would not believe. I have had a number of cases where someone in, say, London will assign a ticket to someone in San Jose, Calfornia, just because they might know who the correct person is on that site for their problem.
So my whole point is, your tracking problem system is only as good as the people who use it and code it.
Linux O Muerte!
My company uses a program called Footprints. It's web based helpdesk system that is customizable. We have different sections: Helpdesk (which interacts with users), internal work(for our own use so we don't forget anything), and Change Management(in case someone breaks something at 5:00pm on Friday).
they are located at www.unipress.com
**I'm not affiliated with them in any way, shape, or form. **
Rob
I support 170 some odd users for telephone and IT. We use a form based e-mail system, when something gets done, I just put it in a "Completed" folder, I also print out a hard copy and sign and date it, then put it in a file folder. No need for anything fancy.
I hate sigs.
IRM.... A really great tracker, which can be easily adjusted to your needs.
Our company spent oodles of money on a program called HEAT. It had all the features you mentioned, but was basically a Visual Basic frontend to a Microsoft SQL Server database.
Save yourself some money and either write this kind of thing in-house, or do a search on SourceForge.
We use Pivotal
http://www.pivotal.com/
check out supportclient.com
We're a small company (70 people), so we just have a helpdesk mailbox on our exchange server that we monitor for requests. When a request is done, its moved to a "closed" folder. Pretty weak, but its quick and easy and it's worked.
I dont know how suited this would be to you but we track everything in "Tracker". It allows for various levels of security to be assigned so that requests must be entered by certain levels of management. Some things are "owned" by particular groups and others may be assigned at will. It can be as detailed as you like. I barely use it and dont necessarily like it because there are too many hoops for me to jump through just to get a change initiated (I'm an office supervisor and have to get at least one approval but usually two before any IT person sees my request). Our IT department like it because they have an ongoing priority list that is dynamic. http://www.merant.com/
There's a strong governance flavor to this problem, which likely will not be solved by software alone. Who's responsible for deciding if the request is worth acting upon? Who's responsible for making sure they do it? What standards need to be followed? Documentation? Does it have dependencies? And so on. Then you have to educate your customers about the process, and enforce it. Definitely, pick a good tool. But there may be more to it than just that.
"No", and "we're too busy for that" work pretty well in my company.
-R
It's what my company uses. Quite a nice product and very customizable.
uses a system to request features. I haven't looked into it in detail but it might be a good place to start.
-Tim Louden
Nothing at the moment. My workload has been growing by about 50% each year. Now I have people under me, and I'm wholly unprepared.
I looked at some PHP and Perl web-based solutions. They don't match my needs, have poor interface design, and are spaghetti code. One of my coworkers has come up with a tidy MS Access database. Once it's done, I will "port" it over to PHP/*SQL so all the staff can submit problem reports throughout the whole WAN.
We also accept requests through voice-mail, and e-mail, but that has to stop, since everyone's inbox is becoming a mess (next project with likely be a document management system). I no longer accept verbal requests, since I usually receive them when I'm in the middle of an emergency. We had a paper-and-pencil system, but we would get requests like "my printer is broken", with no date, name, or location. And that was when they bothered to fill one out.
So, I guess the answer is: We don't, but when we do, it'll be managed by a custom system that does exactly what we want.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
We use an ASP hosted custom ticketing system called T'aira that has the following features (partial list): Multiple input methods: (email, web based, automated) Assignment directly to staff members or departments. Multiple realms (aka departments) Hierarchical tiers withing each department or even across departments (escalation). Tiers can be based on criteria you desire (skillset, dept, management level, etc). One individual can be in different 'tiers' in different departments. Email notifications outbound directly from within the system. Auditing of tickets. Changes to tickets are logged. System wide (administrator determines ) priority weighting based on various criteria. e.g. an unacknowledged ticket reporting an outage (entire floor can't print for example) would show up at the top of everyone's list. Solved ticket reporting. Assignment/Checkout/Do Not release functions for tickets. It works pretty well for us, and its pretty generic. Some of the other users are some smaller ISPs, a couple of Public Utility Districts, a some public safety groups, school districts, etc.
We use Remedy Action Request System here at Western Carolina University's IT Services. It offers multi-tier user accounts so that our Techs, Consultants, and IT Dept heads have different access levels. It includes the ability to incorporate a profile for every call, email, walk-in, even complete system re-works for faculty and staff. There is an ability to include priority levels and mark a ticket as resolved once it has been passed on to the proper department and solved. It also contains a bulletin board system that contains system wide messages so we don't have to ask around when we get calls like "Is VMS down? What about email?" It also emails us when tickets come in that pertain to our particular staff position, so that we don't have to sort through the ticket list looking for pertinent tickets.
The Raging Tech - an IT professional's take on love, life, gaming, tv, movies, technology, entrepreneurial woe, and blog
I work for an IT department of a large university. We had our programmer's create a web ticket system. Clients submit ticket requests which go into our queue. There are a bunch of added features (sort by OS, unit, name, etc), but the basic idea is that we then look through the queue and handle requests in that manner. Users are able to check the status of a ticket, and when we finish a ticket we mark it as completed and it's taken out of the queue.
:)
It's a pretty good system and has worked well, for us. The problem is finding people who are able to write and maintain it
I store it in a txt file or better yet on my post-its
We hooked up Mantis to e-mail, and it's worked pretty well for us. Yes, it's a bug-tracking system (we also use it as such, and are integrating it with CVS, too), but it as features like issue assignment which make it fairly appropriate for request tracking. It also has some great reporting tools.
E-mail me if you're interested in any details of our e-mail bridge and such.
From the website: Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Kintana or Mercury--unfortunately. I interviewed for a job there, but they...uh...decided that my peerless skills were better applied elsewhere...
There is IRM. It integrates an asset database with a trouble ticket system, which in many cases makes lots of sense.
can't beat em...
A company I used to work for used Siebel for this. It worked very well. Siebel worked better than other ticketing systems I have used such as Vantive and Peregrine.
We have a handrolled app released under the GPL and it's really sweet. Every user has a number assigned to them when hired. This number is integrated with email and automated phone agent, so every request is connected with a number. This allows us to look at their request history in case of recurrent problems, and oftentimes we can predict the request based on that history. Additionally we can set limits on the number of requests until their superior or HR is notified. The system encodes their security clearance, level of employment, gender, race etc. which works great with the manditory barcode wrist tattoo, suitable for scanning in hallway or office.
http://mantisbt.sourceforge.net
it's a bug-tracker but works quite well handling requests.
cheers.
Hmmph. Who knows what the geniuses there are using by now.
2 points to anybody who can guess the company and location.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I like ReqAdm, an open source solution. I've used both ReqAdm and Remedy in a high request-volume environment and found ReqAdm to be a vastly superior product. One of my favorite features of ReqAdm is that it offers several interfaces, including an X-based GUI (I think there's a Windows GUI client too, but I haven't used it), web, command-line, and all the essential functionality is also available through email. It's fairly easy to write extensions in C++ or perl too. While it's easy to use, the initial setup of the system isn't trivial.
I process "work requests" for new equipment, changes, and access as well as working in the Helpdesk. We have 10,000 employees and use our custom spice of Vantive (purchased by People Soft). All of the products mentioned in this thread do not meet our needs or our current implementation of Vantive. Each request consists of various activities that are assigned to various groups for completion. Currently, the requests arrive via email and are inputed by hand in Vantive. This product is on the cutting block for next year and will likely be replaced. Does anyone have any enterprise solutions that would possibly suit these needs? How ironic that I take a break from opening requests to read this on /. Thanks!
At my last job (a smallish art college), I wrote my own in php+mysql. It was pretty basic with the following fields: summary, status, user's priority (number), my priority, detailed request + names and dates, etc. It presented me with a list, ordered by my priority and allowed everybody to easily track their request.
One warning: don't put anything related to time in the user's priority field as they'll abuse it. All of my web-update requests became priority "1 - Immediate Attention Required".
This system saved me hours in phone calls and dealing with crazy artsy-types. It also went a long way with one of the president's goals of "increasing internal communication" with minimal effort on my part.
I spent about 3 months trying to find something that would cover everything I wanted, and finally gave up, and decided to tweek something that was already there.
I started with a base of Mantis - http://mantisbt.sourceforge.net - and then customized the hell out of it. Added billing, PDF generation, external monitors, multi-level requests, category specific custom fields, morning reports, tacked on mailman for multi-user assignment, and a few other odds and sods.
But you could take just about any open source bugtracker and customize it to suit your needs. The flexibility of being able to add a requested feature within a short period of time just can't be beat.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
http://twiki.org We just implemented it in our department. Really works well! You can see it in action at the site above, since the TWiki developers use it for their own "issue (idea, request, bug, fix, etc.) traking.
Some folks at MyCorp use DOORS from Telelogic for this purpose.
If your workflow is fairly predictable, then perhaps the burden of learning how to use The System would be tolerable. I sat through a short training course for it once; as a programmer I could see how everything was essentially just an object in a big system, exchanging messages as deadlines pass and responsibilities shift from one person to another.
These kinds of tools can be either a great help or fodder for Dilbert. Again, it depends on how easily your workload can be mapped into the system and, of course, corporate culture, management support, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I started to design a system like this at a previous job. Really
what you want is something you can customize, because ideally you'd
have special request screens for "standard" requests. These would
have custom workflow logic, because it might be different for each
kind of request ("set up PC for new hire", "wipe disk drives of PC
of departing employee").
After looking around, I decided to use roundup.
I had two reasons for this choice: the first is that I prefer
programming in python, which is what it's written in. The second
(but more important) is that it is designed for flexibility.
Basically, it's really a framework (database, workflow, web interface,
email interface), and on top of that framework is implemented a
fairly good bug tracker. But it's pretty easy to build your own
application on top of the framework. I started to do so, and only
the fact that I left the company when it downsized the unit for
which I was writing the code prevented it from getting finished and
deployed.
If you don't already know python, it's easy to learn.
Ideally what you will be doing is using the roundup framework to
implement your particular business logic. Since roundup isn't
perfect, you will of course have to do some non-business-logic code
to really get it to do what you want. But the framework is powerful,
so depending on your requirements you may not need that much
non-business logic.
RDM (bitdancer)
We have a system where you put in a 'ticket'... basically it's a web app you can submit a request to.. whether it is an IT request or a request to get more toilet paper, etc etc. The admins of the system appropriately redirect it to the correct department. Also, when you call tech support, they open up a ticket for you. They actually encourage us to open up a ticket instead. But admin ensures that the ticket is sent to the right person or department. If the person deems that it must go next to another department, it is reassigned. Also, it is a general system where anyone can have a ticket opened to them, including us developers. There's really no difference from when I'd receive a ticket than from when a techie would receive a ticket to fix my computer.
I and a co-worker wrote our own web based tracking software that hooks into our sql server databases, which hooks into our main database software called cmhc (which is a total joke, i mean its written in cobal and uses flat files)
Took us about 2 month's (this was kinda of a side get it done by the end of summer not real critical project or we could have had it done in 3 weeks ) to design the table structure, write the dts packages for pulling info from our main system like staff info, buildings locations, who's in what office etc.. getting it into a real realational form and coding up the web pages and some testing and bug fixing.
The result? Everyone's happy, staff can submit a ticket, check on it, to see who its been assigned to, if anyone yet, the priority (which auto increasess based on number of days gone by without action on it) the entire queue of tickets (not the details just who's ahead of them, how many total tickets), and any resolutions we add to it. They can also add updates / comments to their ticket and generate reports on themselves, management can generate reports on departments, users, type of ticket etc...
Technician's can easily see what is needed of them, what building they need to go to, e-mail address, phone numbers, since thats all pulled based on the id of the user that submitted the ticket and can easily see where their time is spent.
I still need to add some more reports and probably some search functionality to search old tickets for fixes to problems. All i used was sql server 2000/iis 5/asp and ultra edit. Yes i could have used mysql/apache/php but why set up another server just for this?
Linas Vepstas has a good overview here:
Call Center, Bug Tracking and Project Management Tools for Linux.
Also: Problem Management Tools Summary.
wreq
I searched responses and saw no mention of it. We use it. It works well.
Peregrine ServiceCenter is what we use. 100,000+ users worldwide. It's not the greatest, if you are looking for the best and most expensive, choose peregrine. Or just install RT.
I think most good change management system should be tweakable to do decent job of request management. I think someone already mentioned Bugzilla.
The company I work for makes a commercial CM solution that we use internally for IT request management (as well as bug and code feature management), though it was never explicity designed to do so. Some of our customers also use it in this manner.
The feeling I get is that not a lot of companies actually do any company-wide IT request management, so we tried to make the tool as generic as possible,
-- clvrmnky
http://www.taskperfect.com
check it out, it's free!
rt2, but it is pain in the ass
cerberus is pretty sweet (http://cerberusweb.com/)
and since i work for a bigass american corporation ran by bunch of money spending capitalists there is Remedy (http://www.remedy.com)
i
At our company with some 1500 people we use the Most Efficient(TM) system. It works like this:
At least that's as much as I can determin after several years of experience.
Eventually you may get your order delivered to you. It may be a good month and only take 3 weeks, I've also seen it take months. For stuff that I could have walked out the door and bought within 20 minutes.
I swear, next time I'm buying on my CC and expensing it.
-Malloc___________________ I want to be free()!
I looked at keystone (http://www.stonekeep.com/keystone.html) and rather liked it. We ended up using Track-It! from Blue Ocean. The basic version (what we have) is sort of limited but, the Enterprise version seems promising.
eXtraSheet is a tool which allows you to capture this kind of data. At least one very large investment bank uses it extensively for this kind of thing.
We had a similar problem. Set up a system through our call tracking software and realized that its usefulness was only to the IT department and not to users. So:
1) we created a word document to fill out...
2) people more-or-less filled out the document and sent it to one mailbox
3) one person was then responsible for going through the mailbox and entering this data into the tracking software. Before entering the data, however, this person would meet with the requester and do some basic requirements gathering to make sure the data was complete before logging it.
4) only at this point was the tracking software useful--requests could be sent to upper management for decision-making and the requestor or department head could lobby for his request. Development would then get the requests back down through management in order of importance and with some sort of target date.
Our IT department (as well as our R&D and Tech Support groups) are using the "OPT Max" version of Outreach Project Tool. Try it out at the demo site.
:)
It was specifically designed to handle workflow arising from customer requests, whether those customers are your clients, your manager or just other people in your company.
(Disclaimer: I'm currently the maintainer of OPT Max. However, since I found out about it from a previous Ask Slashdot posting last fall, it's fitting I mention again here
We developed a PHP application to handle them. Basically, that's the only way we accept requests. Geeks have access to the queue, can add notes to each request, message the user, and close the request. It also supports associating parts usage with a request and has reporting features such as number of requests completed by cost center, after foo date, between foo date and bar date, etc.
We use some canadian software called Incident Monitor. It actually works pretty good we use it for internal as well as external tracking. It has taken a litle while to get it worked into everything but it works pretty good.
I used some software called vantive about 4 years ago. It was either a piece of junk or my company did not purchase all of the correct modules. Vantive could be used for ticket tracking, inventory (with the proper module), stats, and other things with the proper modules. I REALLY didn't like the software. It was too inflexible. All of the fields were fixed sizes. When I went to 1024x768 resolution the data screen statyed at 800x600. It might have gotten better over the years. The backend was a SQL database.
Peoplesoft bought Vantive about two monthes before I left the company that used vantive. I would recommend peoplesoft as an overall solution. The university I currently work for is going to be moving all of the various campuses student information databases into peoplesoft. It will also replace over 20 different software packages used across all of the campuses. The best part is all of this is done via a web interface. No more running to each client for an update. The really best part is having one common interface for everything we do. This almost eliminates the learning curve when switching between applications.
If you are willing to replace just about every system you have with one, Peoplesoft is your choice. You will save money if you plan properly and do the installation right. If you just need ticket tracking, then the ticket tracking part of peoplesoft might too much.
Just my $.02.
I use Yellowfish Software's Revelation HelpDesk.
I love it, my users love it, the rest of the IT support staff here loves it. It does use IIS and SQL Server, which might be outside the range of visible reality for some of you, but I have no such religious issues with IIS or SQL Server.
Their website has more details.
If you're considering Remedy you should really take a look at ServiceCenter. While performing the same basic functionality, it is well established, feature rich, and integrates well with a whole host of other enterprise applications.
While used primarily in lawfirms, there is a software called TimeMatters which logs all calls, emails, meetings, etc, by contact. Or, you could also invest some serious cash (doesn't seem to be an issue working at a bank) in OMD. It manages open tickets, and thye remain open, organized by priorities, time, urgency, etc. Just my few cents.
JIRA is a fantastic, easy-to-install, user-friendly, quick, robust, and extendable app from the guys at Atlassian.
j sp
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/default.
Our firm uses Peregrine, but for our group we've found that JIRA has changed the way we work and has made bug fixes, new releases, and even inter-group communication a breeze. (Kicks the pants off Bugzilla, imho.)
Outlook has a Task feature. If your running exchange server, take advantage of it.
I've done similar applications for several organizations including banks using the Notes/Domino platform. Domino is good for doing workflow applications of this type. It's easy to do a custom application to fill your needs with your in-house developers. As an added bonus, Notes mail is free from the email viruses that we have all seen way too much of lately. I also sell an open-source toolkit for developing workflow applications in Notes called RealWorkFlow, you can sample it here.
We just rolled our own using PHP and MySQL. Users (mostly the IT people, but anyone within the department) can login and open a task describing what they want done, and then we can act on it, cancel it, put it on hold, or whatever. Comments can be posted, and there are separate task queues depending on what it's about, i.e. Linux, Windows, Networking, Web, Accounting, etc. Nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done and easily beats post-it notes and remembering things.
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Depending on your resources, the semiconductor company I work for uses Ration ClearQuest. It provides management, reporting, assigning, tracking, etc. for 3 case types: Bugs, Enhancements, and Work Requests.
I've been using for about a year now and from what I've seen, and it gets the job done pretty well.
Take a look at rational.com if it sounds interesting.
Sun ONE App Server Enterprise Pro includes a process management system that is pretty flexible for the sort of routing you are talking about. They bill it is far more useful than it really is, but for workflow ticketing, it's pretty damned cool, if insanely expensive and packaged with the usual quality documentation *cough* and caveats emptor. On the other hand, it has lots of pretty shiny buttons and Visio-style lego development widgets for selling to the megalomaniacal PHB. Make sure you have a working solution from a trial run before you write the enormous check. However, if the model works for you, you could easily argue that you would spend far more developing from scratch or shoe-horning a simpler shrink-wrapped ticketing system.
I also happen to work for a large bank. I shouldn't tell you this, but here's our system: ... ... ...
The script does validation and then e-mails it to the department handles the suggestions.
Geez.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Manage requests. I:m laughing. Big companies don:t take requests. Take for example IBM. There was a major bug in its ViaVoice software in version 7. Something stupid happens whenever a user dictates a numeral(inc. dates, days of weeks, month names!), and then a new line.
So, back in 98-99 it was reported. Then came versions 7.5, 8, 9, the same bug still there. I reported it again with every new release, and fuck all.
Even look at OSS. How about Mozilla? Go to its system and search for bugs over 3yrs old. Look how STUPID and TRIVIAL some of those bugs are. In the time it takes to tell 500users theyve duped the bug, it could have been fixed, but nope, it's too hard/boring.
eg. What I'm saying is that NS3 used to be able to 'load image' for a single pic that was not loaded correctly. What 6yrs on and Moz1.x cannot.
How about more trivial? Up to Moz 1.1 the sidebar would use the windows background color. So it should. Then from Moz 1.2 on, it was hardcoded white. Again, bug reports, etc, marked as too hard, etc. 2yrs on now and its still fucked.
What can I say? Maybe fuckups make the users wait for the new releases hoping for a fix?
We use req which is an email based request tracking system. It has several interfaces including command line, X Windows (tkReq) and emacs. While fairly easy to get up and running, we've found it is a little bit limited as our dept's needs/expectations have grown. Good for smaller organisations who want something simple and straightforward; maybe not so good for larger groups.
I also happen to work for a large bank. I shouldn't tell you this, but here's our system:
/> /> ... /> ... /> ...
<form method="post" action="php/suggestion.php">
<input name="submitter" type="text" length="30"
maxsize="50"
<input name="department" type="text" length="30"
maxsize="50"
<input name="subject" type="text" length="30"
maxsize="50"
<textarea name="suggestion" cols="30" rows="10"
<input type="submit" name="Send suggestion">
</form>
The script does validation and then e-mails it to the department handles the suggestions.
Geez.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Grade: Minion. Response: "Fuck off!"
Grade: Sales Executive. Response: "Fuck off, you greasy twat!"
Grade: Department Manager. Response: "Please provide me with a written functional description."
Grade: Director. Response: "Please get the relevant department head to talk to me."
This way, my day can be spent in blissful idleness, knowing that the department heads don't want the effort of actually finding out what their users want.
Anyone used these?
Has anyone tried Quickbase or OpenACS?
Any OptusNET engineers floating about here?
By far the best problem ticket/tracking system I've used was the internal one they designed at OptusNET.
It has all the important features... queues, prioritization of tickets, creating parent tickets and having child tickets depending on it... (good for those CMTS outages!), the functionality to assign tickets to a person and or queue... to lock tickets to yourself, and last but not least reporting functionality.
It is web based and the layout is suburb. Quick, neat, and simple. When opening up a queue you can immediately get a "feel" for what's been happening.
I believe it was originally written in Perl by the engineering manager there... it backends on to a database but I couldn't tell you which one for sure.
----------
One thing you could do if you've have the time is to design your own. I've been fairly unhappy with most of the commercial and free solutions out there at the moment so I've decided to write my own.
If you plan to do this, head on over to Freshmeat and search for "problem tracking" / "help desk", things like that. Look at what they've each done. In most cases they'll have a live demo for you to play with. Look at the features they have, they way they've done it... what works for your organization, what doesn't, and note them down.
Both our Computer Support group and my group (Astronomer Support) use the AIM Helpdesk System by Applied Innovation Management. It has its own quirks. Most of our problems have been with text length in emails we recieve to the Helpdesk from the outside world (the version of pSQL we have is so old it only allows fields to be 8 kb long). For the computer support group it works great- it's nice to be a user and check the status of my "tickets" in the system and to be able to search and see if other folks have had similar problems of procurement requests!
We created a customized web system called SMarT Tech. It's pretty much like Remedy, or other Request Tracker software, but allows for the customized flairs we wanted--handles multiple clients, allows client view, user view, administrator view, and a consultant/technician view. This allowed us to keep the interface pretty simple, any staff member of a client, logs in as themselves. They can see prior requests they made, what technology is associated with them (desktops, laptops, etc.), they can make new requests. If they're nosy or curious, they can see what's going on at the organizational level--how many current requests are there, tech projects, software licensing, etc.
The admin view is for selected staff of the client, they can adjust priorities of requests, add new users, add new sites, create reports such as service logs, assest sheets, project outlines.
The consultant/technician view allows support handlers to view requests and tasks by client or by time period. All the functionaility of the admin view is their plus more, we can organize requests into task lists, assign requests to to other staff, open, close, re-open, and or schedule follow-up on requests; send email to all staff at a client by client, or by client site, or selectively. Send email to to other technicians, by project, client, or selectively. Schedule tasks, like routine upgrades, system overhauls, etc., so the user knows when their system will be adapted.
We're still adding more reports and features as more users start using it, but currently we use it to manage support and purchase requests for 20 different nonprofits, and hundreds of users, and everyone likes it. It was well worth the effort to build it ourselves, since it just fits our client interactions, allowing both users and client admins to feel very much in control, but still allows us to ultimately manage them and their projects.
The design process went fairly quick 2 months to a beta system, while handling client support, other design projects, and more. We used PHP & MySQL, and spent the most time (about a month) making sure the database design would be suitable, and creating global functions--such as changing what data displays on a page based on user status (user, admin, staff--with staff being consultants & technicians).
After we introduced the beta, we put two of our more tech savvy clients on the system, to let them help us bang out bugs, usability, and missing features--this was very helpful, because clients/users always come up with things you didn't think of.
I just ignore them and they "fuggedaboutit."
We use an off the shelf product called Clarify. I have to honestly say that it sucks. Because it is slow, ugly, a behemoth, and hard to report against.
We shout over the cubicle walls.
But seriously.
Various projects I work with use bug trackers for feature requests, too, which seems pretty misguided.
Internally, we track tasks with a multi-column OmniOutliner file and a design document per project. One person is responsible for maintaining them both for each project and filters the requests.
Usually my boss tells us in the Monday morning meeting, or wanders in at some other time during the week. It works pretty well.
:-)
As for workflows, we have a pretty darn good workflow manager called sluice. We don't use it for change requests, but we do use it. And it's open source and everything.
My company sells an enterprise-level web-based requisition tool called eRequester, which integrates with most major accounting software. It's definitely geared towards large or mid-size companies, both in scope and price.
We actually wrote our own software to fit our needs. This has worked out rather well, and it didn't take long to create. We just type in the request, and keep working on stuff until we have a chance to work on the problems we've put into the system. When you finish one, you close the ticket. It's great.
For a low-end, simple, ticketing system, PT is ideal. Primarily because, unlike RT, it's geared as a ticketing system rather than a form of bug-tracking. Thus, it automatically generates the types of reports that you'll want -- everything from
"what tickets are still open"
"what's our MTTR for the month"
"How many tickets are going into each queue?"
For 30-50 tickets a day, you can just run it against the local database and back up that flat file...
But yeah, I know, it's windows, so it'll be the wrong answer.
Steve
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:
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 :)
This one is good. Check it out: http://www.deskpro.com
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
best issue tracking system on the market. Kills bugzilla/RT and combines both into a single system.
Very cheap, well supported, and very snappy in it's latest incarnations.
btw, its FREE FOR OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS. You heard me. No reason to run bugzilla anymore!
Folks write down the issue, typically add some small cash (not cheques!) "gift", leave it in my mailbox and I'll see what I can do. Baked goods of sufficient quality are also highly motivationial but nothin' sez lovin' like cash.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
- PhD in formfilling
- Every user to be logged in
- Lots of time
The IssueTrackerProduct has been developed from real users demands only. No cool and excessive feature overload. Plain, slick and simple. (built around Zope which you'll need to install) Of course it's Open Source.Check out the screenshots
home http://www.peterbe.com/
I have been administering multiple Service Desk installations for over 5 years now, we have a system used for CRM functions company wide (400 internal employee's/1M Customers) and IT uses Service Desk for 120 IT employee's and 6K company employees. This product does everything, hence the hefty cost. But if you want Self Service (Knowledge Base) for your customers employee's all can be searched and submitted online. The product has three main modules, Request Management, Issue Management, & Change Management, the latter two can have complex workflow tasks by category. Analysts can work in the system in the web client or via the Java client. Too many features to mention here, but we have had an excellent experience in multiple environments with this product.
we use it at the company that i work for. very flexible. check it out. www.remedy.com
The company that I work for uses this software called Track-IT. It can be organized into custom categories and subcategories. In addition, it allows for multiple people to modify a ticket. For instance, if there is a network connectivity problem, you are able to keep track of the ticket starting from the end user's rant down the line to a systems admin. Each person who adds to the ticket will be organized under their name or title or whatever. It can also produce reports based on categories that you specify including charts for technically impaired management. Other features that may come in handy would be inventory control for hardware, software, misc items, etc.
alexcorp.com
The Computer Science department at tamu has what I think is a really neat way to track IT requests. Requests go into sorted queues, and as the tasks are worked on, the status in the queues is updated and emails help track changes.
csg.cs.tamu.edu
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
We are actually developing a request management system using PHP, and supporting MySQL, Postgres, or Oracle. We'd love a little feedback, as we are still building on it. The software can be downloaded at http://athenarms.com, or from http://sourceforge.net/projects/athenarms The software is GPL.
We make and use a web-based tool called eRequester that may be worth looking into. It is intuitive and easy to use. I would be glad to discuss it in more detail if you would like. You can reach me through the eRequester web site (www.eRequester.com) or send an email to info@eRequester.com Thanks BRF
With Maniacal laughter, a snide comment, and something derisive about there mother.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I work for in IT for a bank too as it happens and we use Remedy with little pain... Of course, without users there'd be no pain but never mind ;o)
Tim Brown
Shared folders under a shared helpdesk email account. If you work in the office the request originates from, it goes in your folder. You fix it.
Your biggest problem isn't what product you use to track requests. From what you posted, your real problem is that you assume:
request = work_must_be_performed.
Where's the point where the hundreds of requests are evaluated for ROI, prioritized as to the bank's stragegic and tactical business requirements, and championed by their requestors? I know I'm sounding like a PHB here, but you need prioritzation by the business first.
Place I work now has a committee of senior-level (not executive level) managers from the business who meet every 2 weeks to review these types of "queue requests". But before it even gets to them, we make the requester pass through some gates: they have to fill out a short form that makes them explain their requirements, what parts of the business will be helped, how much saved cost or gained revenue or oppportunity cost is involved, etc.
That gets sent to a Business Projects group, still in the business, not IT, who reality-checks it. If it makes sense to them, then they send it on to our group via a shared mailbox, and we do have a spreadsheet tracking system to log it and update it. We also have one person whose part-time job is to manage this queue from our team's perspective. It gets handed off to whatever development lead person is most familiar with the business issues and/or systems involved, and then that person sets up a requirements & estimating meeting with the requesting user area.
Once we have that estimated, then we write up a standard sizing form, cost it out in real dollars, and give it back to the user and the Queue. It's the user's job to make the pitch to his own VP's and their peers at the next prioritization meeting, as to why the company's money should be spent on this. If they OK it, then and only then do we assign a developer to do it.
This may sound bureaucratic, but it works real well. We get lots of work done that actually helps the business, without doing all kinds of chaotic development that one "squeeky wheel" claimed he must have but really wasn't important. It did take a couple of years to train the business to get it, and to get our group to learn to say NO politely by saying "that sounds like an interesting idea - why don't you write it up for the queue".
It doesn't matter the actual communication/tracking product - you could use ClearQuest, Bugzilla, Notes, emails, Outlook assigned tasks, whatever. What matters is that there is a process with a built-in review/justification, rather than phone-call=work-starts.
Whereas when I used to work at a Major Bank, we had a dysfunctional process where nobody truly justified things but everybody jockeyed to get their project "added to the list" as a "Priority A" "Rank One" project. I had a ridiculously long list of projects all labeled A1, with endless nonsense meetings where suits tried to make their A1 better than someone elses A1. B and C projects and numbers beyond 1 were banished years before I got there. My job was "maintenance project leader" which lasted one month before I walked out in disgust. But they had cool tracking tools.
It's not the tool, it's how you use it.
A few months ago my boss wanted me to put up a web-based system just for the system administrators. After some searching I had found techtables. At the time, it was the only thing I could find that was postgresql friendly, and easy to set up. There are several out there that use mysql, but because we were already using postgres, that's what I focused on for my search (yeah, yeah - I could have also installed mysql, but why have two db backends when you've got a perfectly usable one already?). As time went on, I ended up modifying it specific to our needs. It now no longer resembles techtables all that much, but has evolved into something that my dept can use quite easily. So, at the risk of sounding preachy, find something that does 80-90 percent of what you want. Learn how it works and modify it to meet your needs. You'll end up learning a lot in the process.
Your comment is talking about PC support issues, which is not really Information Technology in the sense that large companies think of it. The original poster sounds like he's talking about Requests - which sounds like Development. Development is part of IT, in fact it's the important part.
Having ownership of passwords has nothing to do with managing IT development & support requests from users.
I see this confusion all the time here.
We use a highly modified version of the Liberum Helpdesk - www.liberum.org - it works out for us because we can modify it easily to keep up with organizational or process changes. I think this is definately something to keep in mind when choosing, some others are: Availability of community or paid service support Ease of use for your users (else they won't use it) Ability to turn requests into FAQs or KBs Reporting features to provide statistics to upper management (may help you to get that extra hand or better equipment, course it could get you fired too ;-p )
Another thing to consider is how much time do you have to configure and get the application setup the way you want it. Something like this can take some considerable time especially if you go Open Source and have to do modifications. So make sure you can spend the time on it learning the application's ins and outs or else make sure you get an application where you can get consultation services. Most of this is common sense, but you'd be surprised how many people just jump into these things without carefully mapping out their needs and considering the options. A request tracking application is going to change the way you and team works so it is a big deal not to be taken lightly.
Status meetings on the hour every hour....
Good package, not without it's problems (ActiveX controls can get squirrely if you have to reinstall the web client). Has a client program, or alternatively a web interface. Easily accessible in an enterprise environment where windows is the primary user interface (most enterprise environments). Have one or a couple people answering the helpdesk phone/e-mail and entering calls, while assigning the issues to individual technicians or technician groups. Has detailed tracking and logging, billing system for time spent/charged if required.
I have used Asset Navigator 3 in the past, and I think I'll be going back to it. :o)
As the name suggests, the program can also track a list of your assets. (Pretty Handy)
Well Worth a look!
I use man -k .
it works wonders.
But I find that my middle finger comes in useful from time to time. A simple, "Blow me" really helps.
Check out http://www.microoutsource.com
I have heard nothing but rave reviews.
-bob
BOFH - All web based support requests are redirected to goatse.
With a highly customized ClearQuest schema...we create a "request ticket" then gather requirements in a template and attach them to the ticket. We then have a process where by the ticket once completed gets passed through all of our checkpoints and quality control processes. Once approved it then gets rolled into production. We have a separate process path for defect tracking.
First of all, our IT requests are on old fashioned paper. The "explain reason for request" areas are way too small to actually explain, and they even have a "date needed" box. Why would you ask for anything other than "ASAP"?
Secondly, my IT department is soooooo smart . . . how smart is it?. . .it's so smart that when I put in a supervisor approved request for an OS upgrade or development enviornment, THEY determine that I don't actually need it. I made the mistake of asking how they determine what I really need and don't need. After the flurry of "who do you think you are?" and "don't question me" type statements, it came down to the fact that they didn't want to buy "non-standard software" like Borland JBuilder, and even Windows XP when it was new.
My frustrations were compunded by the fact that the purchases would not have come out of their budget and that they would not be responsible for supporting it. Our software engineering department has special budgeting seperate from the rest of the company and they figure that we are smart enough to know how to put a CD-ROM in the drive and install a piece of software.
Why were they being so difficult? It turns out that an off-the-cuff remark I made to the company's President over a bunch of beers in a bar in Hannover, Germany, eventually rolled downhill and got one or two people in IT in a little trouble. That happened years earlier, but I am still feeling the wrath of IT.
Lessons learned: (1) If you get someone from IT in trouble, make sure they aren't around long enough to get revenge. (2) If your supervisor/manager approves your request but IT rejects it, buy the software yourself and expense it. Just make sure the dollar amount doesn't require approval by the board of directors.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
OTRS handles all this well. It has a mail and web interface and agents can enter stuff while on the phone. Multiple queues with the ability to move between them (e.g. to the UNIX admins).
Weird, I just finished coding on such a system a few weeks ago.
One package I haven't seen mentioned here is Peregrine, which is what my IS group is migrating to sometime next year. Can anyone offer some insight as to how Peregrine compares???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
simply put up private auctions for support and give bidding power to all the people you support. Repairs go to the highest bidder. You could even have categories of repair...maybe dutch auctions for common repairs and upgrades.
Bottles.
For general issue tracking (or specific bug tracking or whatever) try Roundup, my implementation of the winning SC-Track design from the old Software Carpentry competition...
... no RDBMS or mass of Perl dependencies!
:)
http://roundup.sf.net/
We get a lot of people coming over from RT, Bugzilla and other trackers commenting on how easy Roundup is to setup/use/configure compared to those others.
Only requires Python to be installed (ie. you're already there with any modern Linux installation)
Oddly enough, the only press I've had so far is in NTK
[posted by Richard Jones, who is still waiting for his password reminder to come through the mail]
I also work for a large organization and we use Datawatch's QSM Server product. It works quite well, allowing ticket integration with the SDLC and SLA levels and allows you to build a problem topic tree for every application supported. Has good email notification and UI as well. Supports various enterprise level backends.
. gi f
http://www.datawatch.com/img/prod_qsmserver_lrg
Works well lets you easily define the states of requests and valid state transitions.
I like it.
As a Security Admin at B&L I developed an online request system complete with work flow and authorization tracking. Sadly however I was axed weeks before implementation.
Our department uses Remedy - bells whistles, no Web interface - and boy, it is such a pain for people who actually solve the problems. Usage of Remedy is a project in itself; good enough to keep 3 people busy. Yes, it does _lot of things_, but it is more suited for people who attend the phone and not at all for people who are assigned these tickets - like tier 2 and tier 3 people. Even in this economy, I've been brought to the verge of quitting, because of this stupid ultra-heavyweight system.
I work for the Justice cluster of Ministries in Ontario (Canada eh). We use NAI's Magic Total Service Desk solution. It is 100% web-based with zero footprint on the desktop. Currently it requires IE due to its use of DHTML (Netscape/Mozilla functionality is coming slowly). The administration capabilties are all drag and drop (like Delphi but all within a browser) and creation of forms including workflow is fairly straightforward.
Having the end solution web-based is a HUGE time saver as we develop business processes and views of the information and we don't need to redevelop a web-based version. Of course, it's just a tool, and investing in a technology without considering process and people requirements is a recipe for failure.
As for process, we are big supporters of ITIL and have implemented ITSM (IT Service Management). In a nutshell, ITIL is what thousands of organizations have documented by way of best practises for process - the ITSM processes are:
Incident Management (including the Service Desk function)
Change Management
Problem Management
Release Management
Configuration Management
Financial Management
Service Level Management
Continuity Management
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Availability Management
Security Management
It's non-proprietary and designed as a framework and not a "you must follow this or perish" set of guidelines.
I would strongly encourage looking into a best practise framework as many of your questions over the long term will be answered.
Cheers,
Mike Oas
RT - http://www.bestpractical.com/rt is by far, the most feature rich free software helpdesk management system I have come across. It has Web, Email and Command Line interfaces, provides audit trails, database backends (PG/Mysql), great extensibility and reporting. We deployed 2.0.15 about a year ago - now even our admin department ("The coffee vending machine is bust!") and developers (discarding bugzilla) are using it with great success.
If you work for a bank a have no change control software already in place you have a big problem.
*phone rings*
It's the OCC, they would like to speak to you.
I wrote one in plain-old-Perl-CGI and we've been using it for almost four years. During that time our head office has gone from using Quantum (excellent telnet-based software) to Remedy (ultra-bloaty-and-interface-diseased evilware).
This type of software is the kind that no off-the-shelf product can do 100% the way you want it to, so what's wrong with writing it yourself and being a wheel-reinventer? If the other wheels available all resemble dodecagons, then a custom-built perfect circle is a far better solution!
I've sold over 80 helpdesk systems in the past five years. I am reading a ton of misconceptions and misunderstandings. The first one is:
Software will solve the problem. Most often broken promises and forgotten requests are due to lack of attention to detail, procrastination and poor attitude. If your team views the user as stupid or as the enemy, you probably won't get far with a ticket tracker. Your software will tell you that you have service problems... it just won't fix them.
Reports, alerts and business rules rule. Before you even sit down and evaluate a package, figure out what reports you'll need, who and when people need to be notified and what automated "business rules" you'll need. A business rule is kind of like "if this is an executive and the ticket has sat for four hours, update the priority feild to urgent". If you can't get the report, alert or automation you need move to the next package.
HIRE A @#$@ing CONSULTANT There are people that have implemented trackers in many, many companies and have made their mistakes already. Implementing a ticket tracker will change the way your IT department functions. A good consultant can make that easy.
Join the Help Desk Institute If you are in a major us city, you may have a chapter near you. HDI is a great way to get to see how other companies in your area deal with problem management (that's the formal name for ticket tracking).
-- $G
Mantis is actually getting me some contract work on the side, from Free Software developers on our projects who brought the notion of Mantis to their employers, who are talking to us about doing deployments of Mantis in their enterprise for customers and internal use.
The second-runner up out of the 15 we tried was a product called "Round-Up", written in Python. The reason it didn't win out over the top was the fact that it was written in Python (no flames, just that Python is more resource-hungry than PHP itself), and that the web-based interface wasn't anywhere near as mature as the Mantis interface.
Give it a try, you will most-certainly be impressed. I was, and still continue to be, to this day.
It is designed to be a very general purpose tool, with a very simple interface. When I first joined the company I thought the interface was ridiculously simple, and I took it upon myself to demo a lot of other free issue trackers... and all of them i found quickly just irritating to work with. They are often too specific in application, often horribly complicated to set up the way you want (and then to maintain). I came to realise the simplicity of our clean interface "just works"... it doesn't get in the way.
We have used it ourselves for years, while working on it. Another moderately sized local corporation, which has in part co-ownership, (I think around 50 people) have used it for several years as well: they use it for nearly all facets of their organisation. The programming department uses it for bug and project tracking, and marketting department uses it for tracking their activities. Management uses it to keep on top of everything.
Unfortunately we don't have an live demo set up at the moment; and the following page shows just the barest basics... but for what its worth if anyone wants to have a look: NetTask Manager Overview.
The latest addition is a priority queue system for fine control over ordering one's assigned tasks.
If anyone by any chance is interested in more information you can contact us via our website. It is a bit rough, but its also relatively cheap, and the developers are very responsive. (-;
Users (or a phone answerer) enter problems (requests) into the system and the request gets fixed (implemented) or denied. If you want happy "customers" use a system where the bug isn't resolved (i.e., ticket isn't closed) until the user says so. I can't tell you how many times I've seen IT sweep through, not fix a problem, and close the ticket. It's not good until the user says so. (Unless the user is an idiot, then you need training, explainations, etc.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
We use a steering committee. Tasks are submitted to the committee (the process is kept secret and changed regularly to avoid overuse). The steering committee is composed of a lead technical architect and several managing directors from different backgrounds. The committee's deliberation and actions are highly formalized in order to insure a repeatable process.
In short, we allow all requests to die in committee and never really do anything. Several of my teammates manage an offshore casino in the morning and play MMORPGs during the afternoon. My novel is almost finished, and we've all decided to learn Lojban and use it exclusively in the office as a way to kill time and give the IT department that "outsourced" feel.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
When we get a request we either do it or we don't do it and explain why we aren't doing it. Where's the need for tracking?
Perhaps I'm too simplistic...
Check it out.
Users can use different ways to submit tickets...
Web Portal
Email
Phone (We create the ticket)
Personal Request (We Create the ticket)
I can tell you who ordered what up to about 3 years ago at our organization.
Plus - our developers for Remedy are Geniuses, they take input and constructive criticism and try to add those things to the prog to make life easier. We use a software 'push' server that can also (if the client has been installed) tell us, with 2 clicks, what PC you have, the service tag (if it's a dell) and what you have installed..... you write in requesting a hard drive and we dont have to wait for you to tell us if you have a laptop or a desktop (unless you have both).
Even the facilities people use it here...door squeaks? Send in a ticket. AC too cold? Send in a ticket. Want a Linux/XP dual boot on your secondary desktop? Send in a ticket. You get the picture.
Eventually, I'm hoping we integrate the Windows CE client, so I can get my tickets on my Ipaq.
It even has a web interface, so you can check your tickets anywhere (From any desktop, not just yours).
No, I do not own stock in remedy.
The only drawback is that you will lose a couple people to sit at Level 1 who will mostly just process and hand out tickets. Our guys happen to do both L1 and 2.
We used PHP and MySQL. We have been using it for 3 years and have thousands of request a month go through. It uses an simple e-mail as the input, converts the e-mail into a request, e-mails and autoresponse and even asks for customer feedback after the request is closed. Very powerful and pressure tested.
All I ask is a warm bed, a kind word, and UNLIMITED POWER
Keystone is nice.
we had a similar problem with our helpdesk, and we created a quick and very effective in-house solution using Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP. the basic functionality is every request goes into the database, and the user submits a form to create these. an IT staff member sees the ticket, and if its in his area he/she claims it, and does what they can, notes in in the comments field, and if necessary passes it off to somebody else. we use this for basic helpdesk stuff, programming requests, all sorts of stuff and it gives us the flexibility to see what needs to be done and sort that data any way we need to.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
http://www.liberum.org/ we even point it to our sql server db for staff names etc
Everyone has it or at least access to it. With IMAP I seperate it into folders as needed (open ticket, passed onto other dept waiting results, closed, cant(or wont) do anything about along with the reason why, investigating etc..) With a copy of all sent messages it tracks my day pretty well.
It also forces everyone to contact me in just one way. If it was fixed on my way somewhere else I still have some one send me a mail requesting it as it only takes them one minute to type up a request and I have a copy to justify my job and hours.
Logging copys of everything is the real benefit though. Do I remember what was wrong with bob's workstation? Nope but I have a record of everything he requested, what was fixed and what was turned down. Really good to figure out why the same problems always happen to the same users.
Also you have the advantage of ease of setup. On a windows box use outlook. Linux evolution, Mac use uhh.. what ever MAcv uses. None of the above? I can still check my mail with mail2web.com. Who cares if I have 200 meg of mail it's all LAN traffic anyways.
OTOH, I dont know how well it scales beyond four or five admins/techs. But with shared folders and what not it can't complain. Mail it's the only way to go.
Where I work (computer support division at a large university) we use Service Desk from Computer Associates. For all we make fun of it, it's actually quite a useful tool. You can track requests, log comments, arrange callbacks, schedule stuff, escalate calls, and tons of other Really Neat Stuff if we only took the time to learn it. Affected customers can reopen requests if things haven't been resolved to their liking.
It's not just for service requests, I guess people manage "change orders" and can manage projects like, say, rolling out servers with it.
It's a Java tool and it also has a Web interface when you're away from a machine with it installed.
I think it's a tad pricy, though.
You should look into the ITIL standards. ITIL is a library of best practices ( real best practices, not the ones contractors might make up on the fly and call it a best practice).
ITIL helps you model your business processes in a way that things just work because the library has been built over the years with experience of many companies. You avoid the complexity that always forms in IT without a guideline such as ITIL. Also, you gain highly available environments, business controlled change, avoidance of duplication, highly satisfied customers, and efficiency of resource allocation.
Also, by using ITIL processes, you can plug in tools that are ITIL complient. The tools will already be written in way that matches your business processes exactly. The ITIL libraries have lots of information on incident management ( service requests are low priority incidents which usually don't require), problem managment, change managment, configuration management, release management, and some others. It's realy worth checking out.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
Goldmine is a piece of shit. It's buggy, it is absolutely atrocious at handling multiple users retrieving files from a central database server (not really what Goldmine is intended for, but what the poster would have to do to solve his problem), and Goldmine's "support team" might be the worst I've dealt with, and I've dealt with Lexmark. Weeks on end with no answer to a simple question, and then they moved to "web only" support that doesn't even offer a live chat feature so you can talk to, you know, someone. I don't care how good your technical writers are, nothing replaces the power of instant personal communication when you really need it. I digress. From my experiences, Goldmine is an absolutely horrid program, and those involved with it should indeed be sacked.
Those responsible for sacking those who should be sacked have, thesmelves, been sacked. -New Ed.
It's not designed specifically for this purpose, but it suits our needs fairly well.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
the user could assign a to-do the customer support co-ordinator... and in turn he/she cud assign to a field guy... both the user and co-ordinator can have the status anytime ...provided the techie does update the to-do... ;)
.. ... History of a particular machine/customer... warranty status ... spares used ... reports on total number of calls... parts usage summary ... ALMOST EVERYTHING ...
.exe with 4 digit dates on it..
i used to manage a IBM service center earlier
we used a Complaint mgmt. software (foxpro 2.6).. pretty dated stuff... but believe me it covered everything u need for tracking complaint status
then we ran into this problem of Y2K (does anyone remember the BIGGEST bug of the century ?) well it affected US !!!
can we have somebody here to recompile the
You have entered the world known in the IT inductry as IT Service Management. There is quite a lot of information available for you here. An entire library in fact. Many resources.
I sugject starting here:
http://en.itsmportal.net/
or here http://www.itil-itsm-world.com/support.htm
and for appropriate tools: http://tools.itsmportal.net/serv_mgt.php
or for the open standard library source: http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=2261
IT is a new world.
We use Liberum Help Desk because it is simple, easy to customize and dependable. None of our users use it yet because we do not trust them yet.
Liberum Help Desk is the complete help desk solution for small to medium sized businesses and organizations. This software provides a simple, easy to use web interface for managing and tracking technical support problems.
Liberum Help Desk is open sourced under the GPL license and free for use. The help desk software is written in HTML and ASP and is easily modified and customized. All that is required to run Liberum Help Desk is Windows NT/2000/XP running IIS.
Key features of Liberum Help Desk:
Download Version 0.97.3 Here
It looks like you need some sort of ITIL Change Management / Incident Managament tool.
Several mature examples must exist but where I work we're pretty fond of TOPdesk. It fits all our needs and is completely web-enabled so it can be opened up to our customers.
-- Alper
before looking for software.
The software solution you need depends on the process you want to implement. For instance, do you just want any bozo to be able to assign work to you "because Bob said you were the person who does this kinda thing" ? Or do you want your PHB to have power of life and death over your to-do list ? Do you really want to tell the chief executive to use some web-based system to get his requests acknowledged ? Do you really want to mix major projects in with requests for a new network cable ?
The reason you are finding it difficult to find the software you are looking for is because none of the packages can address all your concerns. So, do what you would (presumably) do for any software project - get a couple of stakeholders together (from the business as well as IT), work out what you want, and then see how to address the need. If you start off with "from now on, we will use SuperRequestTracker Pro and all you plebs must learn it's intuitive interface to get your stuff done", you're pretty much doomed.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
We've got an IT Tasks folder on the exchange server. Anybody who wants something doing is supposed to post a task to it, and it gets emailed to me.
Probably wouldn't scale up very well, but it works alright in our office of 60 people.
As a matter of fact I work for a company creating helpdesk software, called TOPdesk. You can register requests through a webinterface, through a windows client, on your palm pilot, or through email. It's not free, but it is the best, although I might a bit biased:) There are many more applications of this kind, you can have a look here to see some technically inferior and more expensive alternatives...
Wrote this: NetUSE workflow Manager.
Kristian
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
www.requeste.com :).
It is quite useful, at least if you happen to live in Finland. Not sure about their english skills though
I'm using Roundup for customers issues, it's the implementation of the Software Carpentry Contest design winner. It has a great customization model, it's written in python, I'm using the MySQL backend, some others are available, the main developper is active and responsive.
I use WREQ. I like the fact that it can generate statistics, which allows you to evaluate your productivity. It's highly customizable.
We have IBM for 'tech support'. You lose your password (login 3 times wrong) and ring them up and, seriously, the first couple of times they nicely change it, and tell you to EMAIL THEM. Lots of people ask 'how can I email you to have my password changed when I can't login?'. Their response: 'Use someone elses computer's. This is the time that I say 'It's against company security policies to use someone elses computer while they are logged in.'. Their response? 'Get the person to login to send the request to have your password reset'.
I could go on all day about how funny it would be to go up to a random person's machine which they have left unlocked and randomly ask for people's passwords to be reset.. but I won't. Thanks IBM.
Most of the responses here aren't extremely helpful. I work for a small startup company named newScale. We're currently selling a product called RequestCenter. RequestCenter is an enterprise level software product that specializes in automating the ordering and delivery of repeatable IT service requests. Remedy is only helpful for emergency and trouble ticket type requests, while RequestCenter manages the day to day things that your IT deparment delivers like "Change my password" requests. For more information see NewScale. NewScale
http://reqadm.sourceforge.net/
REQADM is an open source helpdesk ticket tracking system. It started out as an internal tool created by a system support group, and has evolved to meet their needs as they grew to support a user base which grew from a few hundred to a few thousand users.
I used top work in that group (Intel's DPG/PMD/MD6/etc.) and watched REQADM grow from nothing into a hell of a system. Steve and company have done a bang up job and it's a damned fine system. You can submit, note, assign, close, etc. tickets via email, gui, web or command line. There's a Perl API, there's... oh hell just go look. It rules!
- I am made of meat.
.. yes, we use "Infoman" a product from IBM. Yes, we cry, we laugh.. we'd die if we could.. feel free to send donations to HIC.GOV.AU to aid our cause in getting rid of the blasted piece of atiqucated hemmoraging "software"
If you're in a banking infrastructure, you hopefully have Lotus Notes as your email/groupware installation. If so, do like my dept did, and throw out a fairly simple database that asks the requestor for basic info regarding the request, time needed, requirements, etc. (we were especially having problems with users changing requirements after delivery).
Anyway, it turned out to be a really good thing because we also added some fields in there where the assignee could log time to the request, upload attachments, and chart dates/progress (making it easier for us teamleads to track status when the customer calls and the assignee isn't around to answer.
We also created some admin views so that the teamleads could see who had what work assigned (how busy our folks were when the new requests came in), how many hours were being consumed by certain projects, and other interesting "teamlead-y" type things.
If the Notes infrastructure is available, check it out (we built ours from scratch, but I think Notes comes with a standard request template).
www.wonderdesk.com
I know that Remedy is mostly known for it's Helpdesk software (you might know it from the Asset Management, if your company does manage it's assets). But this is merely one specific type of workflow oriented application. BTW, you can download it for free...
Mike
Where I used to work, I implimented a helpdesk using Liberum helpdesk:
http://www.liberum.org/
with some hacking around in ASP/SQL you can add bits you need...
Have you taken a look at Kintana. The organization that I work at faces the same issues and has successfully solved the problem using Kintana
A small segment of the working white collar world is not comfortable putting things in writing. They don't want documentation of their cluelessness. They will tell you things via voice but you should always a demand an email. If they complain their request has been ignored, remind them of the email requirement. Eventually, they will find someone else to annoy.
Another segment hates email. Face it, they hate ANY technology. I call these the 12 O Clock crowd because that is what is blinking on their VCR and microwave all the time. These are the people who call Tech Support to change their background once a month when their son sends them a new baby picture. They would never dream of simply doing what they were instructed last time they called. And if you send them written instructions, you are wasting your time. When you mention that an email is required, they will get the Stunned Bunny look and simply decide their request is foolish anyway.
Also, make sure the requestor signs off on test results. That shakes a WHOLE lot of people. You will eventually be reduced to working on truly important matters rather than time fillers.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
We have a 3 part form. They fill out their name, date, extension, etc, and fill the problem in and give me the form. I keep one copy, they keep a copy, and someone else gets the other.
This way when they bitch because I haven't re-installed their RealPlayer and it's been 3 weeks, they've got paperwork to back it up.
Have a look at the Request Tracker Open Source software solution. Sounds like a perfect match for your needs. My company provides services and support around this product in South Africa.
we just wrote a tracking system in perl. requests come in from a webform, and sit on the tracker until an IT clicks the 'I've got it' button. Then it sits there with thier name on it until they Close it out. When they close it out, there is the option to add a note saying what they did to fix the problem, and it is added to a web browsable archive, divided by month. Also, when the request comes in, we get email notification. All of this was really easy to do in perl.
I had the same problem a couple of years ago and after searching and trying out a lot of products my department ended up writing one ourselves. It's web based, each person (requestor and assignee) have their own accounts, each project gets its own unique ID and we can attached files (documentation, diagrams, etc) and comments to the report. We just couldn't find anything appropriate 'out of the box' and it actually took longer to figure that out than it took to develop. When you have your own special requirements, do it yourself.
It works well, and we have a seperate reporting servlet that will pull up any kind of customized report the IT department or Senior leadership wants.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
We use this one where I work. http://issue-tracker.sourceforge.net/ We just started using it a week back. It's GPL, it runs on PHP and PostgreSQL. It fits our needs here.
we use a small perl script on our internal web server that creatyes a page where users can make their requests, assign a priority, describe whether it is hardware or software based, and fill in an appropriate response time. (The priority and response times can be easily abused, but usually aren't.) The script then saves the request in a database and emails it to my department.
If the person's computer is not working at all, they can still use the phone, or come and see us, and we fill in the form for them. Things like this are obviously considered emergencies which we treat differently than a normal request. We consider a normal request to be something like a new feature in software, a new report for the databases or an upgrade to their computers.
Unfortunately, getting people to use the request form (or any of the other resources we give them) is another matter completely. Most people don't really like computers and would rather use a pen and paper or word processor than a database, and would rather use the phone or ask in person when they have a request for IT.
At a recent management meeting, I had to get quite firm with the department heads that if there was an IT request that was made that was not put through the proper system, it was not official, and would not be given any priority. (That worked for a while.)
Because with time all your problems disappear.
With things moving as fast as they to in the IT biz. most requests are forgotten by the issuer within a couple of weeks anyway.
Our IS department uses an excellent web based help desk by: http://helpdesk.oneorzero.com/
"You do this now, without any whining, and we might consider - for about ten seconds - not outsourcing your job to Bangalore."
You mentioned your department gets hundreds of requests a week. At the gathering (huge LAN party held in Hamar, Norway, lasts 4-5 days?) gathering.org, they use a php/mysql (as far as i know) system to manage all the requests. And we are talking of a LAN with 4000-5000 attendants needing help for all kinds of stuff.. The crew at the gathering are splitted into: Tech, tech linux, electricity, vision, scene, logistics, medic, security, PR and Admin (there may have been additions to this since i worked there).. and each crew can assign reported tasks to different parts of the whole crew... The system takes arguments as: seat, row, description, assign to what crew and the status of each case can be: solved, pending, closed or open. Crewleaders can assign different tasks to different people in their crew..
I'm not shure if this is what you're looking for, but it works like a charm at TG
You might want to look into Integrity Manager from MKS. Sure it's commercial, but our shop uses it here and it does a pretty good job. Fully workflow handling, completely customizable, etc. Good stuff all round!
Who is John Galt?
It may be a little overpowered for what you want, but Changepoint has great request tracking, including customized workflow, and different request types (bug, work, change, IT, etc.)
I hesitate to confess that I currently use Outlook's Task Manager...
As the intranet I am putting in place is currently a "Low Priority" task - it seems that I will be stuck with this for a while.
It does work despite making me feel like middle management... What happened to the days when I was a lowly Tech and didn't need lists because I could remember EVERYTHING?
It's funny this came up just now. Bob Lewis just added a blog entry about help desk issue tracking that seems apt: http://weblog.infoworld.com/lewis/2003/10/06.html# a66
I understand the need of tracking requests, but very often I've seen horrible implementations of ticket tracking that are far more detrimental than helpful for problem resolution.
-At least, that's how it looks from the outside.
No, that pretty much covers how it was handled at the first place I worked. Trust me, your response rate from IT is a LOT better when you ask nicely (and have a nice rack) than when you are rude (and frumpy.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
We have Pergrine's Service centre for all the problems/incidents/change requests that we work on or that are assigned to us. This serves our purpose very well. Although we do not use a web based system I am sure they have some web based logging feature. for some queries/requests which come to me directly by mail/phone i sometimes use the MS-Outlook's task request/reminders or the older method - PostIt notes. ;)
I work for $HUGEFINANCIALORGANIZATION, and we are currently implementing Oblix as a request tracking system. It's an interesting system in which you create a workflow for requests to include authorization and processing abilities for different groups of users. The whole thing (from a marketing standpoint at least) is a really slick package that emails the request initiator (and anyone else you configure it for, like the manager of the group to do work for a request) and is web front-ended. I don't know what platform it supports, but it runs on solaris for sure. We have had quite a bit of trouble getting it implemented, but then again, we would probabbly have trouble implementing the wheel, so that's probabbly not a good indicator. It is expensive, though, as is the support (I guess... I'm not the bean counter). You might want to look into it, you might want to avoid it like the plague. I can tell you without reservation that it is a more elegant solution for REQUESTS (not problems or bug tracking) than our custom Remedy stuff could ever dream of being. Hope this helps.
-q
You should checkout RequestCenter from newscale (http://www.newscale.com) I work at a large insurance company in the east, and we have 400 people providing services to many divisions. This software allows for ordering services, tracking, workflow, and metrics. YMMV, but for us, it has worked well. We had tried creating our own, using a help desk, but all were both too expensive and didn't do what we wanted.
I am gonna pimp my own company. We are a workflow software provider that has created a cool product that uses a web based interface. The website is Express Dynamics btw I know it is cheesy to promote your own company and product but if you dont who will
"There seems to be a lack of software solutions specifically designed to
track requests."
Umm....call me confused but just about every major Helpdesk already has these programs. I was say there was a lack of reseach on the 'lack of software solutions' here.
Ok, so Rememdy isn't exactly the greatest but it works for us.
The problems I see with a lot of such packages out there include:
They're targeted specifically at "bugs". New work is then supposed to be managed somewhere else (typically in the dreaded MS Project). Why? Bugs, feature requests, new projects - isn't it all the same, really? A "task" or "issue" or "gummi bear" or whatever you want to call it - it's a request made by Alice, that Bob is assigned to satisfy. You can tack onto that whatever else you want - deadline, notes, hours worked, whatever.
Some issues are large enough in scope that they end up having sub-issues. One needs to be able to specify this relationship, and for instance to be able to track that all sub-issues of a given issue have been completed.
Most of these systems that I've seen assume that your organization works on some number of completely unrelated software products, and that an issue in one product will have no bearing on any other product. My organization develops a family of products that are all a little similar to each other, and with a high degree of reuse across products. When there's a problem with a low-level component, it may initially appear in one particular product, but it's going to end up affecting a number of of them (at the very least, we will have to test the other products with the new version of the component to make sure we haven't broken anything).
The above applies to new development as well as bugfixes. We often develop new code, knowing in advance that it is going to be used in more than one product. We would like to be able to record the work effort as belonging to (and billable to) both products.
What I think we need is a database of issues, where each issue can be categorized and/or tied to other issues like so:
An issue can have one or more parents, and/or one or more children (i.e. an issue can have sub-issues, and an issue can be a sub-issue to one or more higher-level issues)
An issue can be categorized as belonging to one or more product or billing categories
Additionally, of course, an issue would have the usual data - unique ID, requested-by, assigned-to, date needed, date completed, priority/severity, etc., etc.
So does anyone know of such a beast?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
We've been using Request Tracker since it came about, both for ourselves for tech support and for a number of clients, including a car dealer who use it both in their sales department, and their services department.
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Using One or Zero (helpdesk.oneorzero.com) for a company with ~1500 folks in it. It's really a helpdesk, but we've adapted to using it as a request tracker as well.
php front end, mysql back end.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I work for a school district and the IT staff here developed our own web based system to do requests. It's based on Filemaker Pro, which isn't the most feature rich database out there, but it gets the job done. We don't have a way for non-IT staff to check the status of a request sent to IT but an IT manager can check the status of requests in the list of a given IT techie. The system also emails an abbreviated form of the request to the email address and pager of the appropriate person. My 2
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Heya, Well, many in the webhosting world use Perldesk (www.perldesk.com). It's proprietry, but it's Perl based, runs on MySQL and is easy to modify to your needs. Just my 2c, Stuart
I'm realizing that Change Management may be the product that is really being looked for, but that adds dollars. When you're already crunched for money, and have a critical project that is tanking - now is not the time to ask for lots of money to install an issue-tracking system (or the time for staff to install, learn and use effectively)
g .html
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t udioEnter priseSA-JRE-2.7.6.zip,
I've found one that I didn't see recommended in the logs called TrackStudio. Made by a company in Russia and is inexpensive. We've been unsuccessful downloading their demo for the current product and the demo of their upgrade is defintely BETA. Below is their reply to my request for information.
It quite inexpensive for most international customers, Global License
allows you unlimited servers/users, includes full Java source and annual support/upgrades - $1000. Additional year of support/upgrades - $500. For more information please check out:
http://www.trackstudio.com/products-epricin
Its cross-platform and supports several commercial and open source
applications servers and DBMSs, please check out for more information:
http://www.trackstudio.com/products
I suggest you download standalone version
http://www.trackstudio.com/tse-27/TrackS
it can be installed in 5 minutes and require no third-party software to download and install.
PS. We plan to release TrackStudio 2.8 this month, some new features are:
User Interface
- Link-friendly URLs - easy link to TrackStudio page from e-mail, etc
- All forms are printer-friendly
- Per-user default (available after login) project.
- Support copy operation for workflows, filters, user groups.
- On-line help
- Quick task search by keyword
Task Management
- Numeric Task Numbers
- Calculated custom fields based on Java-like scripting language,
allows to define very complex filters, reports and e-mail notification
rules.
- Support bulk edit for task budget, deadline and priority
- Longtext task description and message
- Start of task description has been added to task header
- More easy to fill "Edit Category" and "Transition" pages
- "Expire date" has been added for users
- Allows enter color hex in "States" page
Filters
- Filter by submitter or handler group (search all bugs that submit
customers).
- "Last x messages" feature in message filter
- Editable filter names and descriptions
- Full text search
- Sort by multiple columns
- Allows to delete used filters
Email submission
- Per-project email submission rules
- Import emails as new tasks or messages
Email notification
- HTML and plain text email notifications
- Manager can edit subordinate filters and email notification rules.
Integration
- LDAP integration
- User self-registration rules
Other
- Based on Hibernate 2.0, JasperReports 0.5.0
- Check database integrity at startup
- Support transfer data between DBMSs via XML import/export
- Significant perfomance improvements on large (10000+ tasks)
databases.