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Software for Technical Support Tracking?
Wehesheit asks: "I work at a large department store which sells computers. As the *sole* technician I have to handle all the customer techwork (virus scanning, spyware, upgrades etc..), and for the most part I get along just fine but recently my co-workers have expressed a difficulty in 'knowing whats going on' in the techroom. I am wondering if the Slashdot community knows of any software which will enable me to track work I am doing for each customer and allow myself, and other employees, to pull it up easily while add notes such as 'bob called and said put in 512mb RAM'. Currently we use sticky notes which I'm sure everyone can imagine is not very trackable or reliable. Having incident numbers I can print off and put on machines would be excellent, so if a machine is marked done in the software my co-workers can match the number, print off the worknotes and give the customer the machine. Also, I have to be able to do this for $0 which means freeware. Any ideas?"
http://www.stackworks.net/view.php/irm/index.html
Well, it can be ugly at times and there are certainly some rough edges, but Request Tracker will probably do the trick.
Mind you, you'll probably need a Linux or BSD server running Apache, PHP, and an SQL engine (MySQL or PostgreSQL, we use Postgres).
Look at http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Footprints is a good place to start. It is a web-based tracking system that creates incident numbers and can be updated from anywhere on the network.
I, too, have felt the burden of post-its as a means of tracking systems.
Unless your boss is a complete idiot, you should be able to buy what is a basic necessity for carrying out your job repsonsibilities. Admittedly, your boss may well be a complete idiot.
Ghetto style, I'd use a spreadsheet.
But it might be worthwhile to do a database, perhaps Access, something small and light that can be used to look at customer histories. (eventually)
You could probably use bugzilla (http://www.bugzilla.org/). It was originally meant for tracking bugs, but it is flexible enough to do what you want. Assign each computer a bug which gets a unique number and lets you add timestamped comments and attachments at will.
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
I've heard decent things about RT. Actually, I'd probably be using it right now, except we needed more of a CALL-tracking system rather than a work-ticket tracker.
*sigh*
but, to answer your question, theres' this:
OTRS
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
See: Subject. Will usually cost about $0.
a spreadsheet or database program
a barcode generator (there's a bunch online, just use the almighty google)
a cue cat (see ebay)
your own system of numbering
...and that's all there is to it.
Fogbugz (by Fog Creek Software) (at http://fogbugz.com/) is Excellent! We use it for our 5 person development team.
I know it's not free, but it is absolutely a wonderful product. It handles bug tracking in all its complexity with as much or as little info as you want to provide, and displays status quickly and easily.
It is $99 per user, though, so I'm not sure this is your cup of tea. If you want to have your management pony up for the ability to see your status better, this is one option.
Of course, open source means cheaper, but it may not mean better; I'm open to all those who disagree if they'd like to point out another competing open source product that has similar or better functionality... ?
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
You're one overworked guy, so forget about a proper trouble-tracking system -- you don't have time to take care of it. You just need a set of web pages that you and the people you support can browse and edit without a lot of hassle. In other words, a Wiki
There are quite a few projects to do ticketing, but what I'd really like to see is something that can handle both ad hoc kinds of calls to bug tracking and project releases. Something that was like xplanner and bugzilla and CRM combined.
In a small business, people tend to wear multiple hats, and this would be really helpful. Most of what I've seen out there tends to focus on one small area or another.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This is what I do. All telephone messages I take for other people become email messages.
If it's something that other people need to know about, I email them.
If it's something I need to know about, I send myself an email. When it is done, I mark it as read, so the unread count acts as the Todo count.
Cheers,
Ben
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT
From the page: Eventum is a user-friendly and flexible issue tracking system that can be used by a support department to track incoming technical support requests, or by a software development team to quickly organize tasks and bugs. Eventum is used by the MySQL AB Technical Support team, and has allowed us to dramatically improve our response times.
Is Remedy. It allows call tracking, call histroy (on a per system, per user, and per location basis), classification of calls, etc. It takes a bit of work to optimize the setup, but once it's up it's great. I've dealt with bad setups and good, and when done correctly, it's great. When done poorly, it's a bit painful to enter calls, but a good form layout will really fix that.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Very easy to find something free.
just go to Freshmeat and search for stuff like tracking system or ticket tracking, go thru the list, and try out the one that seems to fit your needs the best.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
torpor (458)
You must be new h....oh, wait.
Unless your boss is a complete idiot, you should be able to buy what is a basic necessity for carrying out your job repsonsibilities. Admittedly, your boss may well be a complete idiot.
His boss isn't an idiot, he's a God-damned slave owner wannabee.
You're not a slave, and don't let him treat you like one.
PS: Installing an inventory/services management system is a MASSIVE undertaking. Even small- to mid-sized businesses can take upwards of a year or more to get something like that functioning smoothly.
And if you undertake the project, be sure your boss's boss's boss is aware of it, because getting credit for something like that is precisely the sort of thing that can give you an inside track into upper management.
I.e. if you pull it off, make damned sure that your slimy, good for nothing, slave owner-wannabee of a "boss" [or his boss, etc.] doesn't try to take credit for it.
With 2000+ and an Exchange server, you can assign tasks to other people.
You not only have to use a software for keeping track of stuff, but change the way you work. You have to issue a ticket for every request your customers make, and keep detailed info on every ticket you attend; once the ticket gets done, you have to print it out and lend it to your customer for a signature, and store those on individual expedients. That way, you keep a database-driven knowledge base of every curtomer, ticket and technical stuff related so you can make searches with many parameters, and also, you keep a paper trail that you can show to your boss or customers to resolve disputes. In the free software world there are many packages that attepmt to resolve this issue, and my favorite is OTRS, wich I reccomend a lot.
Carlos Niebla
I originally rewrote it in Access (single user app - worked fine) and have since rewrote in PHP with a PostgreSQL backend.
Pretty slick and does what I need it to do.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
While it's really meant to be a frontend to a subversion repository, Trac may just do all the things you want. It is a combined Wiki and request tracker (and subversion repository viewer). The nice part is you can use wiki markup everywhere. I use the wiki part to document random things about the IT infrastructure (like, how the backups are performed, where certain files are stored, what all the star-codes for the phone system are, etc). You can also write a page saying "this was added while fixing bug #23" and it will make a link to that ticket.
It also has milestones, which can be handy. You can assign tickets to a milestone, and it will give you a visual progress bar of how many open vs closed tickets you have for that milestone. It's good for tracking the progress on subtasks within projects (just file a ticket for everything you need to do -- you get an itemized todo list with priorities that you can add notes/ideas to as you work through it, and can always link back to wiki documents).
Of course, if you absolutely hate Wiki's, you probably won't like it. I'm so-so on wikis in general, but Trac is an incredibly useful tool.
Speak before you think
Great inventory and support software. http://www.stackworks.net/view.php/irm/
Use it at previous work places.
I was using Google to search for this sort of thing. A pain in the friggen mouse. Much better search engine is dmoz.org. There are **many** products out there that can do what you want.
Another way to search is to go on sourceforge and look for CRM (Customer Relation Management) in the Enterprise part...
Having said all that, I'll recommend OTRS.
--LWM
Very simple to deploy, simple enough so that even non-technical users feel confortable, somewhat customizable... I've deployed it twice and all users have always loved it :
http://www.mantisbt.org/
It's a simple web-based logging system (single stand-alone executable availabile for *nix or windoze) that you can get running in just a few minutes. We use it for tracking issues with vendors, entering changes to machines, etc.
It's free and the opportunity cost is only an hour or so. It won't do everything but it will probably meet your needs and you can impress your coworkers by having it up and running by the end of the day.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
A program we decided to use in a 6-person shop was the HelpDesk Issue Management (also known as helpmeict). Simple to set up.
The best would be an open, web-based solution that let third-party hardware and software repair technicians add their own notes to it--sort of like a medical record that follows the computer through its life.
http://www.bugzilla.org/ may work for you, depending on the complexity and requirements of features you need.
I would say try making a php script that connects to a database. I could whip one up for you in a few hours easily.
Use a weblog or simple file for the "what did I do today", and add links into some wiki or other, per-case/customer files for tracking the actual changes.
Before I'd go and test a bazillion of complicated systems, I'd try the file-based approach first.
You can do the linking in HTML.
- Hubert
it's free, available here: http://bugzilla.org/ it's not exactly designed for your specific task (it's primarily aimed at quality control / bug tracking) but shouldn't be hard to adopt for your purposes.
eGroupWare has a trouble ticket system that you can adapt to suit your exact need fairly readily.
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Try DCL http://dcl.sourceforge.net/ out. It's in use by a large group of people, is very stable. Unlike most of it's competitors it's extremely easy and fast to get setup and yet provides a very featureful interface.
..is what i suggest.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
You can add each customer as an account and mannage their "cases" (service calls) track tasks associated with the services calls, schedule customers and things like that. Check it out. :)
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
Uhhh, that was a test?
:)
Oops, my bad Perl.
Being a Python programmer, I misremembered it as "one of those other P-languages that gives me maintenance headaches".
That being said, again, RT can be quite functional. I've found it runs better under PostgreSQL, but never tested it with Mod_Perl (didn't know it did that).
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
I would of course recommend the http://www.issuetrackerproduct.com/ which is Open Source and thus free. The advantage with the IssueTrackerProduct is that it's written with focus on usability and simiplicity. If it's too complicated, like many of the above mentioned are, people stop using it and go back to making spreadsheets or todo lists in Word.
The IssueTrackerProduct requires a simple installation of the Zope server which you can run either on it's own or fronted by an apache.
One tremendous advantage is that it's written in Python (unlike VBScript like for Fogbugs) with storage in a object database that is really easy to work with in your custom applications/reports.
My company runs 48 instances of the IssueTrackerProduct for about 30 people.
home http://www.peterbe.com/
OCS Inventory
No what you asked for dirrectly but this is what we've been using to do something similar. This will tell you everything that's installed on the machine. What hardware it has, BOIS, free space etc. All in about 10 sseconds. After that is has sections for fixes, comments, changes etc.
We looked at getting just ticket tracking (which is basically what your wanting) and realised we wanted inventory tracking more.
What we are looking forward to is OCS Inventory is planning to work with the GLPI project so you want use the OCS Inventory backend and use and extended OCS Inventory + GLPI front end.
If your mainly wanting ticket tracking about hardware you may be more interested in GLPI which I talked about before.
Lastly here more products that do issue tracking.
I'm sure there are a bunch of fully-developed options available, and probably even some nifty free-as-in-free ones. But every x years I get hired somewhere as "the tech guy" and before long I just build a simple database app to do this. In the past I've used M*cr*s*ft Acc*ss, but next time I'll probably do it with MySQL and a PHP-based browser interface. Using a home-grown system makes it easy to include just the functionality you need and to adapt as your needs change.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If your a one man shop Access should be good enough set up some simple tables and forms and be done with it. You don't have time to putz around with something more complicated you don't need something real robust to track one persons work.
Something my company uses (probably too much, really) is an application called QuickBase.
You can find it at www.QuickBase.com. It's a customizeable database.
*Anyone* can create a username and password for free. You can even start a database without paying anything. I think you get up to 3 databases for free. If they get past a certain size, you'll be asked to pay.
You start by creating your database. You can do this by importing a spreadsheet, choosing one of their pre-made setups or starting from scratch.
All you need is internet access and a browser. It seems to prefer IE, but will run in other browsers. I've not had any problems except on an old linux box, but I didn't expect it to work there.
Once your database (I think they call them applications now) is created, you then invite people to have access to it. The database keeps track of who owns the record and who last modified it. I think you can set it up to remember every modification to each record as well.
I think it can do everything you're looking to do. It can be accessed by multiple people at the same time (as long as they're not trying to change the same record, but it warns you if that's happening).
dotproject.net
I am a computer tech for a local bank and we use a ticket generator that is somewhat what you are looking for... http://www.serversys.com/heat/heat.html