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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?"
We use Jira, it's equally as crappy as any other ticket tracking system out there.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
BBH
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.
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.
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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
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!
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.
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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
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!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.