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?"

Comments

IRM

[WetCat]

http://www.stackworks.net/view.php/irm/index.html

Request Tracker

[KagatoLNX]

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/.

Re:Request Tracker

[jgaynor]

Bahhh ya beat me to it. My vote goes for request tracker. We replaced Remedy (read: $15,000/yr in support costs) with RT (read: free with a good geek) and have had relatively few issues.

Re:Request Tracker

[babbage]

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).

*Ahem*. RT does not use PHP; it's a mod_perl (and specifically, a Mason) application.

Quoting from RT's feature list page:

• RT runs great on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and most other flavors of Unix. End users have contributed a port to Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
• RT stores all its data inside an SQL database, so you can use Crystal Reports and similar tools to generate precise reports. Right now, you can deploy on MySQL 4, PostgreSQL 7.3 or Oracle 9i. Best Practical is working to bring support for Sybase and Informix to RT as well.
• RT uses Apache's mod_perl interpreter or the FastCGI protocol, so you get blazing fast performance no matter what web server you choose.

That said, RT is a fantastic tool. I've used it at the last two jobs I've worked at, and if it's not there next time I switch jobs, I expect to introduce it. It can be a bit fiddly to get installed, as it depends on a couple of dozen CPAN modules, but the Wiki documentations's generic and specific installation guides try to make this as painless as possible, and if you get stuck there's always the mailing lists and paid support. And once RT is up and running, it's stable, versatile, flexible, adaptable, and just all around a great tool for managing a collection of on-going tasks.

If it's good enough for NASA, Merrill Lynch, DynDNS, Perl (it's the bug tracker for the Perl language), and others, then chances are it's probably good enough for you too. :-)

Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I have to be able to do this for $0 which means freeware.

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.

Fogbugz - Not Free But Good

[justanyone]

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... ?

Keep it simple

[fm6]

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

Email. Seriously

[benhaha]

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

Eventum

[mdaitc]

Have a look at Eventum http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/featu res.html/. It's made by MySQL and can be used for support ticketing, software development. I use it in my small IT department for myself and the other tech/admin for support ticketing and it works well. I've used keystone quite a bit in the past, and much prefer this!

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.

Freshmeat

[Sandman1971]

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.

Better way to search

[lilmouse]

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

Simple, works : Mantis

[BigJim.fr]

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/

Re:The standard (from what I've seen)

[aidoneus]

Are you trying to troll? If so, fine, I'll bite. Remedy doesn't have to be expensive. They have solutions for small businesses, it's not necessarily a $15,000/year. And really, their small business solution costs (IIRC) about $800, which may seem like a lot but when meausred against the cost of lost productivity (like a lost post-it note, losing track of what computer needed the RAM upgrade, etc) it really balances out.

Still, RT looks very good, as do some of the other options. I'm just used to dealing with bosses that are very Open Source averse (I have no idea why). So an out-of-box solution may be more useful.

Re:...Or the Task Tool in Outlook

[Godeke]

Your best option depends on the resources you have available. If you have a PHP/MySQL capable web server Mantis can be a lifesaver. Simpler to set up than Buzilla, more structured than a Wiki. I don't recommend the 1.XX releases yet, get the latest of the downlevel (0.19.2 as I write this). Although there will be some nice features in the next release, it is still in Alpha.

If it probably a hair more than a single person needs, but it allows all of the things you described to be done. The other idea (using a wiki) also requires PHP (or some scripting language) and a database anyway: if you are going there, go for a complete solution. On the other hand, we also use a wiki for static documentation purposes. Nothing beats a wiki for hammering out "how to" and "FAQ" type documents.

If you can't do a web based solution, I suggest simply following the recommendations of another here: use your mail client's "todo" system. It won't be shared (unless you have Outlook+Exchange, in which case, share your todo list) but it keeps things nicely organized: better than post-it notes.

Re:I've got one that I wrote myself

[Fade_to_Blah]

How does this help the poster?