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Issue Tracking Ticketing Systems?
An anonymous reader asks: "Our company has expanded to 5 employees, and we are looking at setting up and installing an Issue Tracking System for all employees to use throughout the company. It turns out there are many ticketing systems available in both commercial and open source solutions. We originally planned on using Request Tracker but we were unable to implement it due to the complexities of the system. For our company, we are looking for a simple to install Issue Ticketing system (preferably PHP and MySQL based to be hosted on our basic web hosting) to improve both the efficiency of our company, and improve our record keeping of all of our issues. How do you manage all of your tasks, and what software do you use, if any, to achieve this?"
http://www.mantisbt.org/
We use this and it works pretty well.
Cheers,
Colin
We use Jira, it's equally as crappy as any other ticket tracking system out there.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
BBH
On the enterprise level there's of course the infamous TestDirector from Mercury Interactive, and the equally infamous ClearQuest from Rational/IBM, but these are probably not adequate for a 5-person organisation (more for organisations with thousands of developers, dozens of projects). I too would be interested in finding out what solution can be implemented simply and reliably outside of the corporate world, for smaller companies.
Extra bonus points go to a system that is clear enough that it is possible to integrate it into a customer support system (e.g. easily tie into it programmatically to insert new issues when they're raised by users...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
We had a problem with people harassing the sysadmin (me) to do stuff and I was having trouble with time management and documenting my workload. We already had a trac system (http://trac.edgewall.org/) in place for other reasons and we used this to implement a sysadmin request system where people could enter their problem in trac and their request would be sent to the sysadmin (or a list of people in our case) who would then resolve the issue and report it as such. This produced a nice audit trail showing requests and their resolutions as well as any outstanding issues. Of course, it is all open source and free which is also nice.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
if you ever come close to a program called Caft, run like hell
It is the most retarded piece of shit I've ever seen, and "proud to be IE only"
how long until
Get yourself a (good, expandable) Wiki solution. You can easily lern & tell how to introduce new tickets als WikiPages, then you have a really flexible solution. And you have something Intranet-like as well. TWiki offers flexibility and lots of features with the integrated WikiForms. Add to that the RSS/E-Mail notification of Topics, and you are set.
Hire a neighbour's kid to do it for you.
OK, I agree RT takes some investment to get going. As an RT administrator myself, I think it's well worth it. And once it's there, it runs itself.
But if that's really too hard for you, use mantis.
Or M-x todo-mode
Iain.Depending on what you want, I'd suggest either Trac ( http://trac.edgewall.org/ ), or OTRS ( http://www.otrs.org/ ). Trac has a pretty basic ticket system, but that's combined with a Wiki and Subversion (don't know if you do coding), while OTRS is a quite powerful ticket system (admittedly, it looks like crap, but it does get the job done) with email piping and all the other things you would expect.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Mantis and MediaWiki. Works pretty well. We transferred from the .NET demo version of their IssueTracker which came as example code from some Microsoft site, our team installed it on a box in the corner. Then the sysadmin guy noticed it and then used the same software for his job tracking, then the marketing department liked it and they got a version. They loved the .NET thing, we hated it although it did the job. So now we're on mantis and they're using the old one still, until maybe they see what ours does now.
Same thing with the MediaWiki, we installed it, filled it in with all our doco, then someone else got wind of it and like the way that anyone could contribute to the doco project. Now we have a few wiki's around the place.
Task Mangler
Why don't you use a whiteboard?
All I can say is don't use Helpstar. We are moving to Altiris now, though I don't actually think it will be any better.
I will be monitoring this discussion closely. I want to know what other people like.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ticket- tracking_systems
Hint : Mantis (GPL) and Cerberus Helpdesk (proprietary) are both php/Mysql based.
I don't mean to sound negative, but at 5 employees there couldn't be too many issues to track, really?
Perhaps just implement a policy that says all requests for change/work/whatever must be formally made by email. Prefix it with [TASK] or something equally dumb and you have a nice way of filtering it into a folder.
It's nice to want to spend the time and implement a flexible, sizeable solution but think of the time to maintain it down the track. For 5 employees is it really worth it? We have about 20 people doing coding/testing (and a handful of other managerial types) on site and we have 1 full time person to manage the issue tracker and source control. That's pretty much all he does (and the occasional IT fill-in when the IT guys take leave).
I drink to make other people interesting!
Gemini by countersoft. Free for internal use only with les than 10 users.
Cheap ($275'ish) if you want internet facing or more than 10 users.
http://www.countersoft.com/
When we started to grow and get more customers, we needed a new system to handle everything from bugs, support requests and personal TODO lists. We searched and evaluated allot of these systems, we finaly settled for Fogbugz, the combination of features/price was right.
http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/
Its not an PHP/MySQL solution, but that was not an important parameter for us.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
I started using Bugzilla, but then switched to Mantis which I think is much better and prettier. Have been using it for more than a year now, no complaints.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
http://www.bugzilla.org/
-=Maggie Leber=-
But what about SharePoint (it's free on any Windows box) with the Help Desk template.
It's easy to install and is extendable.
No, it's not open source. But it's free as in it don't cost nothing (beyond the server license, that is.)
The opposite of progress is congress
I know you said you want to host it yourself, but why bother, especially if you didn't have the spare resources to install Request Tracker? With a hosted solution, installation and administration of the system is done for you.
We've had excellent experience with TeamDesk hosted databases. The applications' response time's are lightening fast (eliminating our biggest concern about hosted web-based db's), it's highly customizable, and support has been superb. They will custom create an app for you if you want, they respond quickly to difficult technical questions, and they have implemented several RFE's for us. Cost is only ~$9/month/user, which is less than the cost of the labor of installing and operating your own db. Everything is done over SSL, which addresses many security concerns.
(I have no affiliation with TeamDesk, other than being a happy customer.)
My team just finished evaluating issue trackers, and the final three that we came up with were Bugzilla, Trac and Mantis for both technical and political reasons (Mantis is used elsewhere in the company but that's not saying much since we're so big).
We ended up deciding on Trac because of its wonderful integration with SVN, we are using a lot of python in other areas of our team and it is pretty well documented, there is a great wealth of easy to install (but not always well written) plugins and other than some quirks with the ClearSiler package it is no harder to install than any of the other packages we evaluated. If you use the subversion repository (which can be used for more than code), it is really easy to make links to other tickets, specific documents inside the repository and specific revisions.
However, Trac requires Python (you'll probably want 2.5 as the next release will require it) and either mod_python or fastCGI with a compatible webserver in addition to a subversion repository. Depending on what database you choose (SQLite3 is the default but you can also use Postgre and MySQL but the MySQL support isn't perfect yet) you will have to install the appropriate Python bindings for it and if you install the current stable release you will also need ClearSilver (but make sure you check the Trac Wiki before you install as people seem to have trouble unless they use specific versions of ClearSilver).
If you are serious about using only MySQL and PHP, I would suggest Mantis. It certainly isn't the prettiest thing out there but it does work and does meet your required dependancies. However, if you can swing the extra dependancies I would suggest Trac. Good luck!I really like trac as well, I don't know if it's the excellent integration with subversion or the integrated wiki, but it's really a great piece of software.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I'm becoming a fan of Roundup (roundup.sourceforge.net) for this sort of thing. It's a bit complex, mostly because it's incredibly flexible (you can change almost everything about the database schema with just a few config file changes). It's also DB-agnostic, so if you prefer MySQL over Postgres (or vice versa), Roundup doesn't care, as long as it can log in & make its schema.
Both at home for my own personal usage and at work are we using axosofts OnTime. It works really well and a new version is just around the corner. For a single user it's completely free and it has both a web, windows client and a visual studio integration. For the small notes I keep for myself I then use TodoList
I like servicedesk from AdventNet. It seems to work pretty well, it's very easy to configure. I have only 2 complaints.. It's perpetually 95% there. They release features, but don't add the next logical step to the feature. For example, they have a nice reporting module, but you have to be a full administrator to access it. Secondly, don't pay attention to any of their release dates for updates. They always miss their own deadlines by a couple months, and tend to promise more new features than they actually deliver. I think they're just overly optimistic.
For those suggesting simple solutions like a white board or a Wiki: these are good ideas, but it is possible the users are required to use a formal, controlled issue tracking system. For example, the FAA requires controlled issue tracking with many many controls and procedures in place.
A whiteboard or a wiki would encounter a large amount of scrutiny while trying to explain to a DER (designated engineering representative) how the highest priority issue on the whiteboard got replaced by your five year old who likes to draw purple kitties...
Military projects are in a similar situation, although I am not as familiar with the specifics.
If you're a small team you may want to keep it simple, CVSTrac is simple, it's written in that unsafe language we call C. Despite a recent DOS/SQL injection vuln, I'd still be more comfortable running this than Mantis (A glimpse at a few files in CVS was enough for me to avoid running Mantis any time soon).
The company I work for, as a sysadmin, has put Mantis in place in order to keep track of just about everything, from bug fixes to feature request to system, network and software management. It works very well, and allows the system group to be on top of users requests. Highly recommended.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
This might be a little bit of overkill if you just have a handful of employees, but we use TrackIt. I believe it is SQL based, its fairly simple to customize views, and there are a bunch of reports that you can run based on what is currently open/has been closed. I wouldn't know too much about those, though, me being just a lowly tech ;-)
There are several other modules that you can install that can help keep track of purchasing, software, etc. Therefore my earlier concern that this would be too much for a company of your size. Still, thought I'd throw it out there.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
My company is in the process of getting a proper helpdesk tracking system with all the bells and whistles in place, but while we are doing that we needed something quick-n-dirty to tide us over until the real system is in place.
Basically, a bit of thought showed that the absolute basics we needed were not that fancy. A way to add a ticket. A way to see that there were new tickets. A way to mark yourself as dealing with a ticket. A way for the manager to see all the tickets.
So I knocked something together in PHP. Very simple, I have a page where you fill in a form to add a new ticket to a MySQL database table, then a bunch of pages that query the database and print out various views ("my open tickets" "all closed tickets" "unassigned tickets"). I've not used PHP before but it's not too hard to pick up and because you can rapidly change stuff it's easy to start small and add features.
There's really no security in there because we don't need it, so you just say who you are the first time you visit the system and it drops a cookie with your name in it.
There are all sorts of tricks you can do to get something like this looking fancier than it is. For example, the users wanted a way to notify a user that you had taken over her ticket. Rather than add a "mail sending" routine, for example, I have one of the pages generate a link that says "click here to notify of an escalation" where the here is a long mailto: with the user's address and subject line defined.
Once this worked, I added a seperate perl script to the mix that looks in a helpdesk mailbox every 5 minutes, opens any mail it finds there, and copies it into the database. Lots of fun there writing routines to strip out all the insane HTML that Outlook puts in even the simplest of messages.
All in all, it's crude and buggy (the way I handle due dates is horrific!) but about 1000% better than not having anything.
Is this a valid solution for the submitter? Maybe, maybe not. I reckon though that you could get something working in a couple of days, and use that while you're finding something better.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I'm in a similar situation (albeit we have about 30 employees) and I'm trying to convince everybody that we should use Trac. Its Python-based and can use SQLite, PostgreSQL or (experimental) MySQL. It also integrates nicely with a Version Control System (with Subversion preferred), has a built in Wiki system, reporting (with custom queries), timeline, roadmap of releases and search functions for when it starts getting a bit bigger.
At the moment we have an in-house solution which I'm responsible for maintaining, but it cant even touch anything thats available out there already
Only problem with Trac is thats its a touch difficult to install (if you know little about python and webservers). You have to install a webserver (though it does have a very limited one included), the python bindings for the server (as well as python bindings for other things such as the preferred database and VCS) and configure it all but once you get it up and running, its very customisable and there are loads of plugins available to help tailor to your needs.
Now if only management would give me the go-ahead...
Where I currently work, we use FrontRange (used to be Bendata) HEAT. We're actually using v5 for right now and will be upgrading to v8 over the weekend. We're severely behind. It's been in place for almost 6 years now and we've logged over 113k calls in the software. We're not using it to it's optimum performance though. The software is pretty decent though. It allows you to break down trouble calls to go to different groups (say hardware, desktop support, developers, etc.) and allows the help desk to set priorities on trouble calls (say, a pri 1 for a downed server, but pri 3 for just a regular trouble call). Also allows users to keep track of their time that they spend on a call. It may not be the best software, but it's been getting the job done for us. I'm pretty happy with it.
Just don't touch peregrine's service center. It's horrible. It's slow, doens't work well and it's forever being fixed. We previously used an older version and we upgraded to the newer version with the mentality of "well it can't be that bad".. It still is horrible just not as horrible... It's not configurable and if you have processes to implement it has to be done by an outside company.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
My only experience has been with Service Center, and all I can say is DON'T USE IT!!!
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
RT used to be hard to install - I did a few of them back then. Since the advent of yum it's darn near trivial - a few hours' work if you've done it before, and that's mostly configuration, not installation. Granted, it's not entirely obvious how to do it the first time. I've done several via yum, and even have my own managed via yum now (1 rev back on FC5). RT is a good product - drop me a line if you want some help installing it. Follow the link in my profile and send to the address listed there and you'll get a response from my RT.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I've found RMTrack, http://www.rmtrack.com/ pretty useful. The workflow and integrated screen capture really helps. Unfortunately it only supports MS Sql Server and IIS (works fine using Firefox... just the server stuff has to be Microsoft).
We use a system called FACETS. It's been written internally for a very large client and user base. I've been told it is available for licensing.
Aside from saying that I like it, I'm not sure how I could show you anything. If you're interested in seeing some of it, I could dig into the FACETS Development team and ask if there is a public version.
harryk
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
- Auto-creation of new issues from email
- Email integration - With proper setup, once an issue is created you can use issue-1234@yourdomain.example.com to send email to everyone on the issues notification list. This can be helpful since it allows the issue tracking system to keep track of all communication on an issue without being intrusive.
- Command line interface - You can view details, change assignment, status, record time, etc from the command line instead of logging into the web interface.
- Flexibility - Eventum can be extended / customized using the workflow API (Basically you can add custom code to be called when a certain event happens). Eventum also can be integrated with a CRM system.
- Custom fields - You can define new fields from the web interface if you need a field Eventum doesn't provide out of the box.
The documentation is rather sparse, but there is an IRC channel and a mailing list where you can get any questions answered.</shameless plug>
We have roughly the same setup, except that we're a small outsourced IT company. After messing with craptastic CRM systems for about a year, I eventually settled on one called VTiger. It's easy to setup, very straightforward to use. Customizing is kind of a pain; it's written very well but it's a steep learning curve for the design. But it is PHP/MySQL, and we've been very happy with it.
We recently brought up a tracking system... after going through several. We wound up with Mantis, which wound up having only one minor, if aggravating issue (MySQL password lengths). Trac, we tried to install for *weeks*, and there kept being problems at getting it going. Mantis went up within a couple of days, and that included back-and-forth.
mark
I use Jira at work, and like it, but Jira is a bit expensive for a one man personal project.
So after looking around a bit on the net, I chose Trac and installed it on my home system to try it out.
Trac looked good. Had an interesting UI. The buzz on the net was favourable.
Took a little bit of effort to install, but then so did most other issue tracking systems.
So far so good.
I entered a few test issues. Still so far so good.
Then I tried to correct those issues. Change the issue type.
Even delete an issue.
All of these failed with the usual vague error messages and python stack traces.
So fine. I reported it.
Trac obviously wasn't ready to be used in a real situation.
No response to my issue for weeks.
In fact, several releases were made without my issue adressed.
Hmm, must have bigger fish to fry; time to look at their changelog.
Wow, lots of bugs in the changelog relating to stability.
In fact, they changed some of the underlying libraries and
according to their roadmap, were still scheduled to change even more.
Ok. So Trac really isn't ready for prime time,
they're still tinkering with architecture.
It's OK for people to play with, but not OK to rely on.
So I gave up on it and tried Mantis.
It installed reasonably well, and so far it handles most of the basics.
Not as pretty as Trac, but it gets the job done.
So far so good.
We use CVSTrac, and it serves our purposes very well. It's not PHP/MySQL, it's SQLite-based, and is written in C, but to me, that just makes it easier to support -- there is one native process, so just one point of failure, no DB servers to monitor (yet, the data is available in a SQL DB), no web servers to configure (though you can set it up with an external webserver if you wish).
It is free, well-documented and is actively developed. It was written by the same guy who wrote SQLite.
It is also self-hosting, which means that the CVSTrac project uses CVSTrac for issue tracking, so you can go to http://www.cvstrac.org/cvstrac/ and get a good idea of how the system works without ever installing it.
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
It's hard to say what issue tracking system you'll need without knowing what you'll be using it for.
If you're looking at using it for tech/customer support and sales issues, take a look at Cerberus Helpdesk. It's a commercial offering, but at work we decided on it because it has a number of features that we found convenient (great e-mail integration, bayesian spam filtering, built-in knowledgebase management, etc.) which I was unable to find matched in any [fF]ree offerings. A 3-seat commercial license is free, a 5-seat license is $400, so it doesn't have to save us too much time to pay for itself.
If you're looking for bug tracking, there are about a million decent offerings. I personally like Flyspray. It's not as feature-rich as some other systems like Bugzilla or Trac, but I found that half the candy in those doesn't really become useful until you're dealing with lots of developers and issues. I was using Flyspray to coordinate just a couple developers and 5 or 6 testers, and it was more than up to the task.
We have 5 developers and 1 support/IT person. We use AgileTrack to do our issue reporting. We also use agile track to help with our iterations and project planning - it's versatile enough to be pretty good at all of them.
I just got One or Zero installed last night. You don't say exactly what sort of issues you are tracking, but you may find that it works for you. It isn't the best written thing in the world, but some of the other stuff I looked at seems worse. One bug I discovered (with help from another guy -- can't take credit for the discovery) is that it fails horribly if you install it in a directory named admin. I'm going to have to submit a bug report and a post to thedailywtf.com about that.
Anyhoo... http://www.oneorzero.com/
Give Ilient's SysAid a try. A small, somewhat obscure company, but the software works excellent, is very customizable, and very affordable for smaller organizations. Fairly feature rich as well. Oh, and you can try it for free. Not trying to sell anything... just relaying my experience with it.
Last place I worked we used SupportTrio for a support ticket system. It's a commercial product but was fairly simple and met our needs well. Also the tech support was always fast and responsive whenever we needed to use it.
I'm the primary TechSupport guy for a small appliance startup. At prior companies, I've used RT, Keystone, Jitterbug, Remedy, Clarify and a handful of home-grown systems. I haven't had many kind words for any of these systems, and installed Cerberus Helpdesk 2.5 instead. I've been using it for two years of Support operations (20-30 new tickets per day).
Pros: Excellent email integration (even does the Right Thing with In-Reply-To and References headers!). Significantly easier to install and manage than RT. Fairly customizable with themes and custom data entry screens.
Cons: Included reporting tools are abysmal. (I ended having to roll my own in frustration.) Search results could be inconsistent. Disappointing support from vendor -- bug reports and feature requests were frequently ignored.
Ultimately, we made the decision to migrate to SalesForce for the enhanced reporting, contact integration with our sales team, and the inventory management piece.
-I have used RT which is awesome but indeed somewhat difficult. Hire a consultant (like me) if necessary.
-I also have used and implemented BugZilla, it's somewhat pointed at the developers, but good enough for anything else.
-Sharepoint does have an issue tracker implemented, but DON'T USE IT. It's awful, I am currently building a custom issue tracker through Sharepoint and I have to modify just about everything from fields to forms.
-I also used OCS-NG in combination with GLPI. It's pretty simple and has a lot of features.
Either way you'll probably want to modify stuff and thus I recommend you learn the language the Request Tracker you're using is talking or get a consultant to do it for you.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I admit, the documentation for RT leaves quite a lot to be desired, but at least there's a O'Reilly book, and once you've figured out the permissions system, it's all good. I'm sure I'm not the only consultant in the world that's figured out how to set up RT, so I would think you wouldn't have any problem locating one.
The great thing about RT, in my opinion, is its flexibility. Unfortunately, that leads to a certain amount of complexity, but you really can do just about anything with it.
The classic is GNATS.
Or roll your own. We needed to be able to integrate ours with our bespoke messaging system, and it didn't take long to knock out something from scratch in PHP and PostgreSQL. We're about the same size as your group.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Hi everyone,
I asked this question. Sorry for not being able to write to the thread but it was posted up on Slashdot throughout the night. I tried to get to the point in my summary but I can see that it wasn't really enough info.
Some history: My job is to do all of the computer work for our company. This ranges from a 40 page catalog I designed from scratch, online buying website, computer and network tech support, computer training, artwork, and a whole bunch of other things. Before I came here 4 years ago, they had basically noone with any real idea about computers, and I've worked very hard to try and bring them upto speed with the limited resources I have. When I came, they didn't even have a networked printer. When something needed printing, they would take the file to the computer with the printer by hand and use that persons computer just to print something.
Since coming, I've significantly upgraded their computers (to MACOS10.4 with G5 iMacs), reworked their network, setup a website with online buying, made them a catalog etc. Within the past week I have also setup a wiki, but we haven't had time to fill it in yet. Not surprisingly my task list can be enomous, just a quick count of tasks that haven't been started sits at 35, which is spred over 5 pages. At my previus company, we used RT which I thought was quite brilliant. For the past 4 years, I've been trying to get the issue tracking system idea onto everyone that it would be a great idea, and in the past 9 months I finally got the go ahead (althought since it was priorities so low, I never really got to work on it much). It would really improve our effeciency a lot, but it's hard to change people sometimes...
Anyway, I had no real training in a lot of the work I do. I've had to learn on the job a lot of what I do just from researching online. I've done a few units at University on computer science but that's about it, the rest self taught. Now when it came to RT, I purchased a linux box (the first non mac computer in the companies history), and spent 3 days installing several versions of linux, and trying to get RT installed. I received quite a bit of help on the RT mailing list (of which I am still a member and read Jesse's emails and some others), but after all this trying I just couldn't get it to work. The other problem I could see was getting the email working correctly with RT (but I never got to that stage). I did purchase the RT Essentials book as well. In the end after 3 days work, the boss told me to give up and consider something else.
This is why I asked for a simple to use program, and one that could be used from anywhere on the web when someone is out of the office travelling. I even asked my host (who provides the hosting with cPanel) if they could install RT for me, but no go. I'm really now just looking for something that can be easily installed like osCommercerce on our existing hosting, so the hosting would not cost any more.
So it was put on the back burner for the next 7-8 months and now I finally have some spare time to get this going again. The main idea for using the software would be 2 fold
a) Monitor personal tasks, and be able to add info when things come into my mind (like a website link I may come across) at any time, and have a record of it.
b) An example I'll use: Customer service takes a customer request and logs a ticket. Ticket gets transferred to Art department for work (me), gets done, gets transferred to purchasing (also does the accounting) who can purchase the neccessary materials for the job, when that's completed the ticket is transferred to production (same person does shipping) then they run the job, it gets shipped, and the ticket is completed.
After I gave up on RT, I had to look for another source. But after spending 6 hours at home on a weekend just taking a preliminary look at some of the programs available, it was just so overwhelming that I decided to look for help from the Slashdot community. Lastly, I happened to stumble across a program
Why is it that so many have horrible experiences with so many issue trackers? What makes this particular area so difficult to implement?
Seriously, apart from the initial install requiring a bunch of perl modules to be installed, it's rather easy to setup and configure.
There's even a book for it.
However it is complex to administrate, what with lots of undocumented rights and abilities, and a complex users and groups system, and multiple request queues. So it might mean that 1 person has to spend say 1 man month a year to operate. Which is nothing for a decent sized team of people. I'd estimate it would be more like 1 man week a year. Unless they're inept. Maybe that is the issue!
Otherwise all issue tracking systems will suffer from inevitable feature bloat. What was a simple bug tracker now has 50 fields per bug request that can be set, and they don't make sense to a newcomer.
I was under contract for ABN Amro Mortgage for a couple of years some time ago and, among other jobs, was tasked with identifying and implementing exactly what you are requesting. After assessing all the needs of my client, their timetable for completion and examining what was available I came to the conclusion that nothing out there would serve their needs. Due to the urgency of the situation (thousands of loan refi deals) I decided to build one using Filemaker Pro to use as a stopgap and eventually to serve as a structure model for a final system. This was 4 years ago and the "final system" was never written because my stop gap ended up serving their needs completely. I know there will be many "its a toy" nay sayers out there not to mention all the PHP and MySQL acolytes warming the tar and plucking the chickens. But the facts is the facts. The only real limitation the system has is its 250 concurrent user limit which in a department of 650 has rarely reared it's ugly head. Once they decide to spend the big bucks to rebuild the system in another platform/environment they have a working model with 4 years real world testing under it's belt.
"This message was sent from an Apple
I too have been evaluating issue tracking systems recently. I'm wondering if people know of a system that supports replication between two different sites. Consider the use case of an ISP's customer support system for an ISP that has more than one site. If the site that hosts the tracking system is down, customers should still be able to file tickets. When the a site comes back online, changes should be synchronized. Anyone seen a system that does this?
Ideally it would also be integrable with other CRM type stuff.
SSL Certificate
You'll notice there are ton of packages listed above, and about 90% of them say "Avoid x! It's terrible!"
This is because ticketing systems are really easy in concept - user calls, take down issue, follow up with it - but very hard in practice. For instance, how do you handle taking down which user this issue affects? Drop-down box? (that's usually guess #1 for most packages). Bzzzzt. Try that with more than 50 users. Text field? Bzzzzzzzt. One day you'll have an incident for William Clinton, one day another incident for Bill Clinton, and you'll never correlate the two. We spent several revisions trying to figure out how to do just the name selection part correctly. And of course there are another 100 pitfalls after that one.
The problem is that this software is something that helpdesk techs sit in front of all day. And on-site techs have to interact with off-and-on all day. And if the software starts to get in anyone's way, there's nothing (aside from management decree) that can prevent people from just sending emails back and forth, instead. So you're basically competing with email, in terms of ease of use and people's comfort zones.
We spent a long time developing Max (plug, plug...), and it wasn't easy. Most packages suck, and are very expensive, and only get used because your boss tells you to. Ours, helpesk techs begged their bosses to use because they were afraid of being made to use the others (brag, brag).
Ultimately, if the software is too hard to use you won't use it. So I recommend keeping that requirement high in your list - higher than you might normally put it. It's especially hard for Slashdotters because we can pretty much use anything. Just because you can use a thing, doesn't mean you should. It's better to spend your time helping your users, not wrestling with crappy software.
If you are looking for a product that is easy to set-up and use, you may want to consider Squish ( http://www.squishlist.com/ ). It is an online tracking system that offers a four month free trial period. You don't need any special hardware or software and Squish can be accessed from any computer with an internet browser. Squish is flexible in that you can set up fields to collect the data you need. The pricing ($600/year for unlimited users, unlimited projects, and storage of 2,500 issues) makes Squish an affordable solution for small companies as well as large companies.
We were in a similar situation a couple of years ago and developed Menturio (http://www.menturio.com/) for our internal use. Since we wanted to share it with our clients we prettied it up somewhat. It is PHP/MySQL based. It grew incrementally and now has a lot of features our partners needed (e.g. email based tracking and adding, meeting planning, etc.) but in the last couple of years it did not change much (being perfect:-) -- indeed we are contemplating a 2.0 with a complete re-write to take advantage of all the current AJAX trends.
Most importantly what started us rolling our own was the idea of all other solutions that usability (==efficiency of use) is not to be considered. For example, when I test software I typically find tens of issues and/or ideas and it is simply a pain to go through the Add New Bug form ten times to fill out the same meta info again and again. Why don't we have the option of entering multiple items in one run? Or, after a meeting, when we went through the list of open issues, why should I enter the Modify Issue form for the hundred or so items one by one? Questions like that...
If anyone is interested, let me know.
The original post didn't truly define several of the key points that are required to make this decision. I think that you need to define whether you are simply looking at a ticket management system or something that is more geared towards tracking actual source code and changes, or something in between. I think that the long term needs play a huge issue in selecting the proper tool for this as well. If you are going to be routing user-base information later, or adding 20 more developers, it might make sense to go for a more robust professional solution now. On top of that, you also need to factor in how much extra time 5 people are going to have to set up, customize, and maintain a system that will require more initial customization than a larger, more professinoal tool that has more functionality out of the box. My guess is that if it is a 5 person company, they need to be taking care of business rather than spending days or weeks customizing a lower-end package.
If the emphasis is more on the ticket-tracking side of things, there are many programs out there available to do this, from the absolute low end (such as the Sharepoint solution mentioned above) to the high-end tools such as Peregrine, Remedy, or CA Service Desk.
My company uses CA's Service Desk internally for IT tracking, and we also provide our clients with Help Desk Services. Service Desk has a ton of functionality out of the box, generally requires little or no fooling around with to get running for issues-tracking, and also has some great functionality in terms of scripting calls to other applications. It also has a complete Workflow process built into that allows Visio-like creation of workflows, which can streamline any number of processes.
What you said, just replace Craft with ServiceCenter.
Not only is it expensive as hell, but it's also an utter turd of a program that looks and works like it was designed by retarded monkeys on crack.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
MySQL's trouble-ticket system Eventum was developed for internal/customer-facing use, and GPL'd.
http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Anyone tried it?
A fellow SC sufferer! I feel your pain man!
I figured we were one of the last companies in the world with that piece of shit software.
The biggest problem with SC is that it's so obviously bad that it's impossible to describe how badly it sucks because you are automatically calling everybody who had anything with buying it complete idiots.
Just to give outsiders an idea of how bad SC is on the scale of things sorted by suckage:
Websphere PHP open leg fracture Windows Staffware Exchange SC
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I'll grant you that trac isn't the easiest package to install, but "tried for weeks"???
Just find the installation instructions and start working, it took me about half a day, including other tasks and lunch to get trac going the first time.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Part of my responsibility in IT for a midsize startup is to manage the sourcecontrol and ticketing systems (the latter of which I also use for IT tickets)...we use CVS and BugZilla, which are a lot more work to maintain than say SVN/Trac, and it takes maybe an hour every other month of my time....
I hope this helps you find what you're looking for... Another source and forum that talks about tracking systems is http://www.qalinks.com/Tools/Defect_Tracking/more7 .html
The forum for tracking systems can be found at http://www.sqaforums.com/postlist.php?Cat=0&Board= UBB21
Woodpecker Issue Tracker http://www.woodpecker-it.com/ is a very good tool, also for small teams.
I was going to suggest Hiveminder. I've recently started using it for tracking issues at work as well as home. It has lots of features that can be used to support GTD methodologies. It's also usable via e-mail, although I haven't really taken the time to see how useful the e-mail interface is.
Hiveminder also supports tagging, multiple groups (with different sets of people), and the creation of unassigned tasks for a group (which can be claimed by a member) or assigning tasks at creation. Tasks can have priorities, due dates, and don't-show-until dates.
You can also add notes to tasks, which are e-mailed to the owner (creator) of the task.
Tasks can be shared/tracked through Google Calendar, as iCal shared calendars, or as RSS feeds.
One of my favorite features is the ability to link tasks so that some tasks have and thens or but firsts, which allows you to specify a series of steps that have to be completed in order. The linkage also affects the order that tasks appear, so that later tasks won't show up until after you've completed the prerequisite(s).
There's also a review tasks function, which shows you each task in order and gives you a limited number of choices for dealing with them (check them as done, get rid of them, or stop showing them for a period of time (a week, a month, next Monday, I think), which seems very GTD oriented. I haven't started using that feature myself, though I really should.
We are a small shop with about 15 active engineers and testers and tech support folks and we have been using FogBugz by Fog Creek Software (www.fogcreek.com). It's web-based (perfect for distributed teams, as ours is, incl. a couple of people in Russia), very flexible, very fast and not too expensive. Great support. I have no connection with FogCreek other than being a satisfied user.
Our group evaluated a handful of workgroup tools: issue tracking, revision control, documentation. Trac was in the list, but it fell short on a number of points after we tried it for a simple project. We wanted SVN integration and liked Mantis, so we hooked in scmbug. It took a little tweaking to setup the 'products' in scmbug to meet our Mantis usage pattern, but it does the trick. Throw on your favorite wiki (mediawiki, twiki, moinmoin, etc.), and you are covered.
Trac is the best free issue tracker one i've used - a lot more powerful than Mantis, Bugzilla. It has an integrated wiki - which is very useful. It also quite an active developer community and a lot of plugins and macros to do that extend the functionality. Trac now has a lot of the functionality of the commercial issue trackers - configurable workflows, SVN/CVS integration and so forth.
JIRA is a very slick commercial issue tracker. Everything is configurable, including tickets workflows - so you can use it to track every business process in your organisation. It has a companion product called Confluence which is a very nice Wiki.
Neither of them are PHP (Trac is Python and JIRA is java).
... if you're willing to run Debian. The RT packages are decent, if a little old, and work fine.
You apt-get install and set up your MTA to send mail to it, and you're basically done.
+++OK ATH