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Support Desk Software for ITIL-Based IT Department
Wasteofspace asks: "At my current workplace (local government, 250 user site) we are currently working towards achieving a more structured IT department using guidelines set by ITIL. Currently we are using a very poor call logging system running on a Lotus Domino Server, that has no tracking, incident management, problem management etc, and does not integrate into our current directory services (Novell NDS, soon to be migrating to Microsoft AD). Does anyone have any suggestions on a provider of an ITIL compliant support desk application, that is reasonably easy to use, has integration into an LDAP compliant directory service, and has self service functionality for users?"
Our company uses ServiceCenter. It's a UNIX-based app, runs off of Solaris where I work. We have 25000 employees across 3 countries, and multiple support departments (not just IT), and although ServiceCenter has its strengths and weaknesses like most s/w applications, IMHO it does its job like a charm. I keep my eyes on freshmeat.net and I haven't seen anything come out even remotely close.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Eh, I've used a lot of different ones. They all suck and you'll hate them all. Again, that's mostly in the (Half assed) way they are implemented at most organizations.
Where I work (local government, 250 user site, Parramatta, NSW in Australia) we had the same request for an ITIL-compliant helpdesk system. We chose RT because it was a) free b) fit into our system c) we could buy the O'Reilly book and d) there was a support community for it.
ITIL-compliant involves more than being being able to open tickets and use them to track issues. It should have asset-tracking, user management (ie when Joe calls to open a ticket, entering his name should immediately populate the ticket with all of his information), change management (tracking what changes were made to hardware/software when), in addition to incident and problem management (Joe can't get his email). To build a truly enterprise-ready solution on top of a wiki would take a ton of work, I'm sure.
So here we go again. People always complain loudly when someone posts a stupid question, but here I see about 95% stupid answers:
- First: there's no such thing as a ITIL compliant software package. ITIL is not a standard it's a collection of best practices.
- Second: The FQ (f**cking question) says 250 users and local government. That scream we're broke from the beginning.
And all I see here are proposal for some crappy $50k packages (Openview, remedy), requiring at least the same in consulting to get up and running.
It's completely possible to tailor your usage of nearly any worth its salt task tracking / helpdesk software package to your interpretation of the ITIL guidelines...
There are plenty of software packages filling your requirements: request tracker (OSS) and JIRA (proprietary) are the two first examples coming to my mind. But please not Openview,remedy or other "fill the resellers pockets" crapware....
Sorry for the rant, ha!
Q.