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Issue Tracking Ticketing Systems?

Posted by Cliff on from the follow-the-problem dept.

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?"

9 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. We use Jira by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 2, Informative

    We use Jira, it's equally as crappy as any other ticket tracking system out there.

    http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/

    BBH

  2. Wikipedia article has a LOT of links by tobozo · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ticket- tracking_systems

    Hint : Mantis (GPL) and Cerberus Helpdesk (proprietary) are both php/Mysql based.

  3. Mantis by ericlondaits · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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  4. Re:trac by Tumbarumba · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'll throw in another vote for Trac as well. For me it hit a sweet spot of not being too complex, yet had the features I needed. I could indicate issue and priority to give an order list of things to do. The timeline and roadmap views were really useful planning tools. Also, the Subversion integration gave fantastic traceability regarding what changes were made to resolve an issue.

    Compare this to JIRA, which is a much more full featured tool, yet somehow misses some of the features above that I cared most about (mainly the seamless integration with Subversion and the Wiki)

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  5. I know I'm asking for it... by baldass_newbie · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.)

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    1. Re:I know I'm asking for it... by CaymanIslandCarpedie · · Score: 2, Informative

      We went the same route. By default it does the job good enough for a small shop at least and we've been able to extend it to do much more. There are many systems with much more specialized functionality out of the box for help-desk type needs, but for us we were already using SharePoint. If you are already using SharePoint and just need a basic system or don't mind a bit of customization, its a pretty good choice. Mainly because as a small shop we are already all overworked. We do NOT want to add to our work by having to learn yet another system from end-user and admin side. Since we already use SharePoint, our users already know how to use it and our admins already know how to do admin tasks. No extra learning about backup/restore, etc, etc. That was our main selling (OK not selling since its free but you know what I mean) point.

      --
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  6. Tracking Systems by coffee_bouzu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
  7. Re:Mantis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I've implemented Mantis in the company I work for. We use it for support ticketing, development issue tracking (which it's more designed for than support ticketing but we can move issues between departments with this one system) and because it's written in PHP it's been easy to integrate it with third party and in-house software to automate previously mundane, manual tasks.

  8. Re:trac, or otrs by krack · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'll second the OTRS recommend (http://www.otrs.org).

    I turned OTRS on where I work (250+ employees, 4 FT IT staff) and couldn't be happier with it. The reporting leaves a bit to be desired, as does the "prettyness" of the web-based UI, but the underlying workflow support is pretty solid. There is a lot of customization that can be done just from the web-UI-based configuration. As for the mail piping, we currently have it pulling from several Exchange mailboxes into specific queuees via POP3. The reporting limitations can be mitigated somewhat, we do it by installing a MySQL datasource on Windows and then piping the results of a SQL query into Excel.

    The two major wins for us were the ability to poll an exchange mailbox for incoming tickets (any POP3 will work) and the ability to use an AD LDAP server for a customer database. It also implements a customer-facing interface, that, with the AD LDAP customer source, allows the users to either log in to our system to create tickets using their Windows u/p or send us email. In both cases, they get a tracking number that they and we can use to uniquely reference the issue.

    It has been so well received that several other departments are actively figuring out how to wrap OTRS around their workflow and vice-versa.

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