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IT Asset Tracking and Helpdesk Software?
MJanofsky asks: "I am the IT guy for a new, smallish non-profit organization. I won't always be able to be in my office to access information about our a users machine or to get the word that there is an issue somewhere. What I am looking for is something similar to the likes of Numara Track-It!, but it is very cost-prohibitive despite having all of the features needed. What it needs to include is integration of the HelpDesk and Asset Tracking parts (i.e. a user submits a ticket with equipment associated to it via a web interface and when I view it, I get the option to view the profile of the equipment), it has to be able to use bar-codes, be web-based, and ideally under $300. It would also be nice to have auditing via the network, and remote-control features but those are in the 'if it has it, great' category. Do Slashdot readers have any suggestions in their endless wisdom?"
OneOrZero is what the college I worked at last year uses, and I was quite impressed with it. FOSS too.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I built a simple asset/inventory tracker and trouble ticket combo in FileMaker. It works fine in small environments. It's nice to be able to pull up a serial number and see the history of a piece of equipment, who used it, what problems it has had, etc.
Recently someone got fired and refused to return their laptop. I hopped on the system pulled up the serial number, date of purchase, date it was transferred to the employee, etc. Should make the lawyers happy.
Help Desk Reloaded (www.helpdeskreloaded.com) has trouble ticket, and basic asset managment. Its a free PHP MySQL app. It does not have remote control of end users desktop built in however.
Perhaps you have done this already: check with your CEO and grant writers about asking Numera to donate a license and service agreement to Track-It as a charitable contribution.
Check out IRM, a free application that does everything you asked for and more.
From the website: "IRM, the Information Resource Manager, is a powerful web-based asset tracking and trouble ticket system built for IT departments and HelpDesks. It keeps detailed information about each computer, as well as providing a trouble ticket system, an FAQ system, and a Knowledgebase. All elements are interwoven into a seamless web application."
This can be used to track machines, port switches, software on the machine and tickets. You can create custom fields and make them pull down or allow people to enter their own txt. It's good stuff, and 100% free.
Demo: http://budgester.homeip.net/~irm/irm/
User: Tech
Pass: tech
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
You can check out SysAid. They have a free version if you wish. And it has a remote control feature.
Seconded.
My boss and I worked on getting it set up for the upcoming school year. We were on phone with tech support about every 30 minutes because we didn't know about mundane minutae for turning on option X or why module Y wouldn't work. The manual is written in clear English, but it doesn't really say how to do much.
If only it was free software, we could fix it, but it isn't, so it will continue to have bugs such as the UTC bug, and the "i don't feel like saving what you type if you tab to a field, rather than use the mouse" bug.
I can't help with asset tracking, but at work, we use OTRS to manage our entire IT support ticketing system. Multiple queues, complete email integration, LDAP support, and a host of other features make it one heck of a solution. Oh, and it's free :)
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Where I work we use RMS ServiceDesk in conjunction with Centennial Discovery. The best feature of Discovery, when it works, is that it is able to discover network port attachments. You can create a hierarchy to represent buildings, floors, rooms, or whatever, and see at a glance what devices are where, as well as be alerted when a device has moved.
Yep ... same here. I'm on the 'management' side. My lead windows admin kept saying, the next release blah blah blah will be better. I finally said enough, throw it away. We just ended up writing our own scripts for Linux,OS/X and Windows to populate a mySQL db with all the info (name,owner,cpu,mem,age,arch,os,patch level, sofware packages etc). The scripts run by the clock or at boot, dump to files and then the db snarfs them in. Simple and functional.
For helpdesk we just use wreq. I'm one of those management wonks that thinks tools like these should make your job easier not 'be' the bloody job (remedy anyone).
Belthize
I just put in one of these ServiceDesk Plus installations. If you pay up front for an indefinite license, you get each additional license for $300, and with the first year, you pay a mandatory support fee for $60. Additional years are $60 ea.
It's not a bad product, but tries to do too much well. It does do asset tracking, but cannot tie any new items of inventory you get as part of the PO process into your existing asset tracking database. It also requires you to drop any firewalls you may have up on internal machines, and for that I find unacceptable. They have an agent software piece that comes with another product, so SOMEONE knows how to do it, but despite my many complaints to them about this, they seem unwilling to integrate an agent onto each desktop.
The ticketing system is not too bad. It needs to be firmed up a bit, but is workable. There are occasional problems with images attached to submitted tickets. And I wouldn't suggest using the onboard spam filtering option. It's rudimentary at best.
For a low cost helpdesk, I think it's pretty good. But don't expect the power and flexibility of Remedy. For a small shop, Remedy is an overkill. ServiceDesk Plus is a good product, but needs (and is undergoing) additional enhancement.
These work well together. This will bust your budget a bit but it is good stuff. Footprints http://www.unipress.com/products.html and Centennial Discovery http://www.centennial-software.com/ FP runs on Window$ or Linux and is perl based. Discovery is sweet in that it will do what it's name implies. It will find hardware on your network (rogue AP's are a problem where I work). Check them out...:)
Manageengine Servicedesk Plus. Reasonable licensing (and the free version might work for your company). Support is good, and asset discovery is automatic on your network (and easily linkable to users, who are also automatically discovered). So far, it's been an excellent program.
... http://otrs.org/ for ticketing, http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/ for hardware tracking and http://glpi-project.org/?lang=en for software license tracking.
The ticketing and asset pieces aren't integrated and you might be able to get GLPI and OCS to work with a barcode scanner if the scanner will dump to a text field in the web page. I haven't had your specific needs but I thought I'd tout what worked for me, since I haven't seen them mentioned.
Just because you are not paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.