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Ticket Tracking and Customer Management?
An anonymous reader writes "Like many Slashdot readers, I'm sure, I run a small side business doing IT consulting in addition to my day job. I'm looking for a good open-source ticket tracking system that I can run under Linux, preferably one that also has some customer management features. I'd like to be able to maintain a separate record for each job, along with time tracking, work logs, and information about the customer. Much of what I see on Sourceforge is, as usual, pre-pre-pre-alpha with no actual code. Does anyone have any suggestions for a project that might fit my needs?"
at least, that's what Merrill Lynch uses.
but it does look pretty good.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Been using RT as a ticket tracker at a few places I've worked at. Works well.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
I'm looking for the same thing, only I need it to run under windows.
I'm looking for something web-based, allowing clients to enter tickets, and programmers to respond to them.
Any ideas?
No reason to lie.
A bit of shameless self promotion (since I am the lead developer), check out Eventum.
It might not be the perfect fit for you, but it is stable and customizable. Right now it is lacking built in customer management features, instead it relies on a Customer API to integrate with other systems. Right now I am working on integration with Sugar CRM but do not yet have an ETA on when it will be released.
Does citrusdb (http://www.citrusdb.org/) do what you need?
Postgresql. You may need to do some minor work customizing it....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
It's not Free, but you might want to check out Cerberus Helpdesk. They've got a free (beer) version that's subject to some limitations. We considered using it at my last job (before settling on another solution.)
I have discovered a truly marvelous
This question has come up before, and I usually answer the same way. RT: Request Tracker is a good place to start. It is a Perl+Apache+MySQL based open source solution. The first few times you install it can be tricky. Find a good and current how-to.
I have since moved away from RT and now use an in-house designed system. But I still give it two thumbs up.
I implemented trac at my workplace as a change control and task management system. We use it for both internal projects as well as billable work, with a number of custom fields for supporting our quoting system and quality control. The built-in Wiki also doubles as our IT documentation repository, all in one easy to access location.
It is extremely extensible, and anything not readily available can be easily created. It didn't take much time to learn the class and data structures and I've modified existing plugins and written a few of my own to support our needs.
JIRA runs under Linux. It is not open source, but the cost of the application and support is well worth it. I believe it is free to use for open source projects. They also provide the full source code, which has allowed us to heavily customize the application. When I started evaluating issue tracking systems this page proved to be rather useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ticket- tracking_systems.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. --Denis Diderot
Write one. If it's good, sell it.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
While not conceived as a ticket tracking app, phpBMS might be able to suit your business better than a plain old ticket tracker. phpBMS runs on LAMP and can manage customers, invoicing, and sales/prospecting. I found it while looking for a way to do billing but it's turned out to be good for managing contacts.
Definitely thumbs up for RT.
We are on a mission at the company where I work to replace all email / attachment based work management with it.
You'd be amazed how far you can push RS using the concepts of owner, status, subject line, journaling, parent child / depends on depended on by tickets, auto-notification, attachments etc. all built in.
If you think you need more structured data, you should at least see how far you can get prototyping it first in RT, using its minimal custom fields but also its custom views.
Most ERP / CRM don't have the kind of infinite flexibility of workflow you can achieve using the features listed above. They do however have structured data.
I'm sure glad there is some Woodland pride to compete with all this Davis pride just South. Nice website.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Check out Vtiger, it's a really nice CRM and also has ticketing features.
hmmm.
We've been running it for 2 plus years now, have 100,000 plus tickets, and it's quite fast. We did have to add an index recently when coming back to All Tickets view and many of us have a lot of queues.
I see others have had issues / bad experiences. Our shop has some very experienced Oracle guys and someone who, so far, has been able to make it do everything we've wanted it to using Perl mods. (auto assignment based on subject contents, custom fields, etc.).
Maybe other tools are easier when you don't have this kind of support.
We are using it also for project management and in conjunction with Twiki; it's quite effective to create an RT ticket and link it to a wiki page, instead of uploading attachments. This way we end up creating a web FAQ / history and have RT all at once.
We're using kayako (http://www.kayako.com/) as our user facing trouble ticketing system. It's not free (cost us something like a couple of hundred US$) but it is very functional and includes mechanisms to track costs. It has a bunch of stuff included that we don't use - like live support etc - as well as a bunch of cool stuff that I haven't seen elsewhere (like AJAX based searching of knowledge base articles as someone updates a trouble ticket). It also integrates nicely with our LDAP based single signon system. We support 6 remote offices and about 200 users with the product. You can even pay an extra license fee to have a non-branded version.
RT can be run in the open web, hosted. BestPractical sells this I think.
Access based solution also != Free.
Some people have been able to run Remedy via WINE under Linux.
2 1
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=23
Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team's established development process and policies.
It provides an interface to Subversion, an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.
I would look into some open source CMSs. Traq is an excellent option. I like doing web based setups to help clients feel more involved in the process.
I am working on a site right now that uses Drupal 5.2 and a few modules for it such as Casetracker and CCK to build just such a site. You can add modules to incorporate almost any functionality such as email notifications, SMS, source code tracking, revisions. See for more info and a quick how to.
http://www.osticket.com/
It works well; I use it integrated with Help Center Live
appleguru.org
Bug trackers such as bugzilla can do a great job of tracking small to medium sets of customers.
Whatever you choose, don't let it be RightNow. It's runs ActiveX and is remotely hosted. It's a very demanding program, slow, and buggy. It has a lot of nice features, but it's not very intuitive. Alas, my work uses it.
Take a look at http://www.stonekeep.com/keystone.php
:)
Opensource, non-alpha, many many users active, still being supported and worked on.
(Obdisclaimer. I wrote it.
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
... but it will cost you $150/hour.
...at least 2 months since this question was asked.
It amazes me the stuff that gets rejected vs the stuff that gets accepted over and over and over again.
Can we have another open-source cash-register thread tomorrow?
OTRS is what I use for tracking. It seems built specifically to deal with tickets opened through an email support box, but has lots of internal tracking features as well.
On a related question:
I am looking around for a ticketing system that allows custom workflow templates based on the type of ticket or workorder, to allow a ticket to be assigned to the proper team or person based on an attribute of the ticket.
Trac does seem to have a custom workflow but only one that is global for all tickets in a project, and the same seems to go for other projects.
I checked the Wikipedia article on the comparison of issue tracking systems, but have not yet really found a good match. Any applications I should look at?
http://www.otrs.org/
wow .. all he found was "pre pre pre alpha alpha alpha"
.. RT Open source , even has commercial support if you want.Ive been using RT in many forms for at least 10 years now. I remember it back in the late 90s.
.. remedy is another that pops into my mind.
t racking_systems
the author did not do a very hard search.
First and for most
And then of course there is JIRA. This may be more for dev work. Most places ive been used RT for anything that MIGHT face the customer and the areas that had 'issues' and 'projects' that would end up closing at some time. But JIRA was used by the devs for bug tracking and coding projects.
of course there are a lot of others
Seriously though. How could you have enough experience and knowledge to run your 'side business' and never have run into either of these projects in your travels. Where have you really worked that they have not used a ticketing system ? Or perhaps you are fresh out of school. But even fresh out of school. I would think that even the dorm network operators would have used SOME sort of ticketing system that you would have been exposed to , if even from the 'customer' side.
If your google-fu is so weak as to have not found these , then I fear for your customers.
there is even a nice wiki page comparing all the products..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_
When you say open source, do you mean you really want access to the source or you just dont want to pay too much (or anything at all)?
If you want quick, easy and cheap, check out workroll (https://www.workroll.com). It is java based and runs right out of the box on top of tomcat. I am able to configure this to have multiple accounts for each client and issues related to just them as well as global issues. Comes with a lightweight database so hardly any system configuration overhead.
I dont mind paying a little to another small developer for their good efforts. After all, I make my income from software. I just dont like paying $1000's.
We run peregrine service center, its mostly an enterprise level application but also support assets change management and requests. If you need something fairly hardcore. Its mostly designed for enterprise call centers though.
RoundUp (which is Python based) is a great system..
Its self contained.. a GREAT email interface.. easy to setup and easy to extend.
If you want something web-based, try out "Taskhopper"
http://taskhopper.com/
It's an addon for the Joomla! Content Management System ( http://www.joomla.org/ )
I have been using it extensively to track customer issues, log new requests, and update and manage any manner of work I might do.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
I am a big fan of the cerberus system. http://www.cerberusweb.com./ It's a fully featured system and depending on your needs you can use the free version of it. If your company is just you and a few other people. you might like to give it a try.
It seems to me that the poster might benefit more from a project management system than a trouble ticketing system. I'd see if dotProject would do the trick. It does have a rudimentary ticketing module to assist interaction with customers, too - FWIW.
Check out www.positiveware.com. Not open source, nearly free, and in use by small it teams to manage their business. Robust collaboration means you know what everyone is up to, and real-time time tracking means you know how you are doing against customer budget. Mac and Windows friendly, especially on Firefox and IE, nearly as good on Safari. Not iPhone friendly because of the lack of Flash support. And yes, this is shameless self-promotion.
This has been covered in a few previous "ask slashdots". When I was looking for a ticket system last time, I found some references to OTRS and ended up implementing at my company. IT supports ~200 people and we use it to track helpdesk, report, and feature requests. The system is open source and runs on a number of platforms including Linux and Windows.
Evolution: love it or leave it
All the other replies are pointing out great "ticket tracking" software, but I think that is the easy half of this request. I too have searched for what the original submitter is searching for. The key thing that is missing from the existing offerings is hour and work logs. Put simply, at the end of a ticket we need how much to bill the client for. Integrated invoicing would be awesome.
I support staff and guests at 5 hotels around NZ and use the free edition of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus (http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/servic e-desk/download.html?free) which is by far the best system I have tried (RT included). It can also integrate with their network monitoring tool which is a bonus.
It was easy to implement too, and can import user lists from AD (and yes I did see you mention Linux :P)
Jay
Features Include:
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Bugzilla, "not just for code anymore".
Not too sure what your requirements mean to you, but dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/) has good task separation for multiple clients. It's really project management software so you may find the ticket tracking a little weak, but it's functional enough for many tasks. Tasks are assigned to projects and project are assigned to companies, but tickets are assigned to users. It does track time usage and billing rates and you can attach documents to tasks and create task logs. I think it's pretty slick, though development seems a little slow. The interface is also a little 'quirky' until you grok the flow.
What is the difference between a ticket tracking solution and a bug tracking solution?
I'd try ClockingIT, which is a rails-based interface. I had been using roundup, which is nice because it's very easily customizable, but moved to ClockingIT because of the free hosting they provide, and the simple workflow. The nicest thing is that you interactively use the page itself to log your hours, so you don't have to manage the time side of things. It supports multiple customers, projects, milestones, etc, and has a built-in wiki, forum and reporting interface. It's really quite nice.
Take a look at DCL http://dcl.sourceforge.net./ It has served me rather well in the past.
You say you want a ticketing system, but that doesn't sound like what you really need (if it were, I'd suggest RT for issue tracking or Trac for defect tracking).
I'd take a look at SugarCRM, or one of it's forks instead. MySQL only, so be careful to keep regular backups.
JIRA may not be open source, but it is still significantly cheaper than some of the commercial products out there.
Archie - CIO-for-hire
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Eventum. It takes a little while to customise, but once it is up and running the email integration is oh sooo sweet.
http://www.zentrack.net/
what about OTRS... http://otrs.org/ ?
I am surprised people still have to ask this question. RT is probably the most most mature Free Software for this purpose (having been around since 1998 or so). Several entities, big and small, use it - take a look at their "praise" page. I personally find that most small businesses I have had to email for support (Vandyke Software, for SecureCRT - an example) use RT.
Several suggestions you'll get here would be for bug tracking tools. Those are not what you want - you want a trouble ticketing system; and that is RT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ticket- tracking_systems
I recommend you Bugdar. It is perfect for smaller companies. Simple to use and has all the necessary features a ticket tracker must have, without the too-complex-and-never-used features. The owner, Robert Sesek is a very helpful guy, helped me a lot, so all I could do is to encourage you to give it a try.
I wrote WorkOrder TS to track service tickets for computer stores but it can handle more. It currently keeps track of instore tickets, onsite appointments and it can run multiple branches from one installation.
Ohhh yeay, did I mention that it is almost operating system independent since it is web based?
It is not open source but a free (not demo) edition is available and a Pro edition can be purchased for not much money. It's is pre 1.0 release but it is already being used by a lot of companies around the world.
WorkOrder TS - Web-based, Operating System independent Work Order Management System
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
I have used Mantis in my former job for that kind of stuff. As far as I remember it does all you want.
What I like about vTiger is that it allows you to try it all - SugarCRM, Zimbra et all all want money upfront before you can test the useful bits..
Website is vtiger.com.
Insert
I started Project Dune in 2004 and rewrote a couple of things. It's Java + Hibernate + GWT at the moment. Timesheets are still in development, but the intention is to connect everything off the trouble tickets (issues) that you create in the system. http://www.sf.net/projects/pdune G>
Does anyone know of any that support the ITIL framework?
Try allocPSA
From the website:
allocPSA, the premier online Professional Services Automation solution, has now been released as open source software under the popular GNU Public License (GPL). Businesses worldwide can now obtain allocPSA, complete with source code, along with the right to modify that code, free of charge.
allocPSA is a suite of integrated applications (a Professional Services Automation suite) designed for services-based organisations, allocPSA enables services organisations to achieve better profitability by improving staff efficiency through increased utilisation of productive time, better planning and integrated knowledge management.
You can have features, windows, and running. Choose two.
I've been using Trac for a couple of years now, also for external projects where customers directly submit tickets. It was a bit rough around the edges, but over the last year a number of good improvements have gone in without compromising the ease-of-use.
This is a ticketing system where people don't need an hour of training to understand what's going on. The integrated wiki allows for note-keeping (I tend to use it for tracking my hours too), and the SVN-browser is simple but useful.
If you need something more structured, try some of the CRM-packages. However I've been in your shoes, tried Trac and haven't looked back.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Check out OTRS
www.otrs.org
I work for a company that chose Sugar CRM. We wanted something where we could connect it to our own customer database, and could add links to our own tools, like extra buttons to edit the customer info, purge them, perform system maintenance, etc. Unfortunately, none of the systems we found allowed this. The best we could do was to find an open source system that was easy to edit. We modified the pages to include extra buttons that link to external web applications. It's not the best integration, but it works. I was actually very disappointed that none of the tools offered any kind of "plug-in" functionality.
You can download the Jira source easily, but you are supposed to buy a license if it is being used commercially.
GLPI http://www.glpi-project.org/?lang=en is worth a look.
It's LAMP-based and does inventory tracking too. It supports user-submitted tickets and has a rudimentary concept of service levels/escalation. Reporting needs some work, but you can always use third party tools for this.
AT&ROFLMAO
I have been using HelpSpot for the last year. The integrated Forums, KB, time tracking, templating, and various integration methods are outstanding.
Taskjitsu could work for you. This professional services automation package tracks customers, projects, tasks, and time, and has extensive reporting features. It's an open source Java application distributed under the GPL.
It might be particularly useful to you if you want to track time spent per job. You would create a separate Taskjitsu project for each job, then log time per project in the time sheet system.
It runs under Tomcat 5.0 on a variety of different operating systems.
My company, PKR Internet, provides commercial support for Taskjitsu. Taskjitsu's motto is "The Art and Science of Tasks and Time".
I have seen several implementations of RT that has blown away every other ticketing system I have used. This ofcourse was because there were clued people behind the configurations/mods.
.
One implementation had problem drop down boxes could lead to possible problems/solutions/hints on where to look for helpful resources related to the problem. Old tickets can be made to flash red to scream for attention. Can readily link to customer databases. Service hooks can be added to to interface with sql, radius, edit zone/named files, whatever. At glance past history with links to all previous cases. Information about services supplied to the customer (ips, dns, interface, contact info...) And the end users can access the system via any webbrowser, meaning no end user software to install. The monetary savings there is only beat by the lack of frustration of a software roll out and the other complications of installing software on machines with unknown stability or tethering users to a particular OS. Oh, and you can book mark search/sort parameters which is extremely useful for finding dropped tickets, tickets of a particular type, that are owned by a group or individual. Oh, and SANELY formatted!!! No tabs, no freaken side scrolling and truncation of fields. TAB friendly too... no keyboard to mouse keyboard to mouse over and over again for just basic stuff. Did I mention that RT works very well for the end user OVER DIAL UP on a http://bestpractical.com/rt
But again. My experience with RT was also backed up with good programmers who knew what a real ticketing system should look like. It is because of these experiences that i loath all other ticketing systems for their
Worse ticketing systems? Heat, Vantive, and MAS 90 (not really a ticketing system, but i've seen it used to track customer issues).
Heat is the ticketing system of those overly concerned with metrics. It wastes times and impedes progress while giving the customer a bad customer experience. Vantive is a resource hog, requires wincap to be installed, and dislikes slow machines. Forget about ever getting a good over view of open cases at glance. You will click from tab to tab... keyboard to mouse over and over again. Oh, and did I mention both of these like to crash at the worse times? They whittle down the sanity of anyone who is forced to use them over any period of time. Breaking their will and pushing them closer and closer to going postal or quitting. Expect slamming of keyboards/mice/heads to be common place where implemented. Productivity killers. End of Line.
Pyster
We tried Trac at work for a ticketing system, and it was ludicrously hard to install. The upshot was neither I, nor the other sysadmin, could get it going acceptably. Mantis was an easy install (except for having to tell MySQL to use pre-4.1 (?) passwords), and Mantis is what we've continued to use.
mark
I tested Double Choco Latte about three years ago and didn't care for it, don't remember why anymore. Most recently, I've used Cerberus Helpdesk and was very happy with its features, though I don't think it's GPL, just open-source.
Whoever tagged this post as "doyourownwork" is an asshole who has no understanding of the way The Internet and it's online communities work. For any question that gets posted on Slashdot, there are dozens if not hundreds of Slashdot readers who want to know the answer. I wouldn't be surprised if 20% of the Slashdot community is running some kind of business that might have a need for a ticket tracking and CRM software setup. Many Slashdot readers are also very friendly, so while a person could easily spend hours researching a question like this, it's far more effective to come to Slashdot and benefit from the experience of it's users.
So to all the douchebags who criticize people who ask questions on Slashdot: FUCK YOU.
Sidejobtrack.com I've played around with it for some side work that I've done. Worked well enough for me. YMMV.
I use this:
http://www.troubleticketexpress.com/
It isn't a huge, feature-rich, bit of software, but it is small and reliable and has just enough functionality to be useful.
-ted
Anyway, it's PHP/MySQL - they went away from "optimized" (obscured) PHP code years ago, so the source is there - the user forums have a custom mods area, and they have a single-email-address version that's free. It was pretty cheap when we bought it for multi-domains as well. The only part that's closed soruce is the email parser that checks the license key as it receives email to turn into tickets.
Here's the product website
Journyx ( www.journyx.com ) , while not open source itself, is built with open source tools and has an API, etc. It does project tracking, time tracking, expense accounting, billing, invoicing, etc. The last time I looked at it, it wouldn't handle my rate schedule but it looks like that part of it has been made more flexible in the last few versions--in fact, I'm going to install it again as I was disappointed when I had to pass it up. There are also decent hosted choices, which is sometimes easier for a one man shop--you don't have to worry about maintaining it, if your server situation doesn't have a lot of fault tolerance/redundancy, etc. In that case, I'd look at the Basecamp/Freshbooks combo, or maybe Harvest (http://www.getharvest.com/ -- primary focus there is on time tracking.)
This isn't a bad package it works under linux and allows you to have different levels of users. Your customers are able to look up their tickets to watch the progress of resolution. (If you allow it)
http://www.phpsupporttickets.com/
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Try out Basecamp. It's pretty straightforward, and it's more than a cheap wrapper around a database. The views are well thought out, just the right amount of AJAX to make your day go easier, and good collaboration support. Start off free and pay if you need more than the free account provides. It doesn't get very expensive. If that's not your thing, put down another recommendation for trac.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
We've tried a variety of them, and RT is the favorite here [major university/supercomputer center's IT department]. [Likewise for some other centers].
We are running RT from last 2 years IMO its the best Open Source ticketing system.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
We used RoundUp for a while and had no problems with it.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
You had many advices of what to use for issue/ticket tracking but it is the only half of the deal. Time tracking is as much important as ticket tracking. I am releasing time tracking application written in Java in a week or so. http://code.google.com/p/time-ticker You are welcome to check it out.
-- Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!
I read through a lot of the comments and saw so many mentions of enterprise level ticket tracking and development management. You actually asked for a ticket tracking for IT sidework. I use Mojo Helpdesk. They have a free plan, 30 day free trial for their pay plans and gives you a central location to track open issues and receive reedback from clients.
Hope this helps.
Java based web app, http://www.ilient.com/freeware.htm
Linux version available. I like it because it integrates with LDAP (not avail with free version), uses existing email system for notifications, and lets me use an external DB. I think the free version requires you to use either firebird or derby embedded DB, but if you're small it shouldn't really matter.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcl/
It's been so long since we set it up, I frankly don't remember the details... but it has been running for years now without incident.
enjoy!
.
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
I would recommend http://www.oneorzero.com/. Lots of functionality and easy to use.
People here have mentioned RT, trac, jira and a couple of others. They are all very nice systems. There is also otrs and a gazillion others.
Together with the suggestions there is often an add-on: "And you can customize it yourself".
This is _not_ something you should plan to do up front. If the system is so small that you can see stuff you need that it doesn't do, don't choose that system. Your business is not going to make money off of you tweaking your ticketing system a couple of hundred hours. If you plan to have so little trade coming your way that you have time to customize a ticketing system, kill off that company right now and do something else.
My 2 cents worth.
You guys might also want to check out the open source help desk list.
I've looked into this several times before as well and finally settled for a drupal installation with the casetracker module. All depends on your needs and what you'll use it for. Is it for software project management or also for general tasks? Should it be flexible out of the box or are you able to add features yourself? I think that even bugzilla is a possibility as a ticketing system. It just has its own special features.
Baylink (who can't remember his password) writes:
... 3.2 days?
I never had problems with the interface, but it has been my (limited) experience that RT is not at all well tuned for situations where the 'customer' base is administratively separated: the "consultant" environment.
All ticket posters are considered administratively separate; there's no standard built-in way to say "these reporters are all employed by customer 1517, and updates should also go to customer 1517's coordinator, nobody@example.com, in addition to anyone else listed", and reporting and status suffers similarly.
Or so it was when I played with it last, in the late
It's tuned much more for corporate/collegiate internal helpdesk, in my view, though even those often want to group ticket reporters that way, and the issue's been discussed on the -users mailing list several times, most recently in a thread titled something like "RT 4.0?"
I like RT a lot, actually, but I can't sell it to my bosses, because that functionality is critical to what we do here, and the compromises necessary to implement it via custom fields make it sufficiently opaque that my boss isn't interested.
I'd have to dig back maybe 3 years into my email archive to find the mailing list traffic that ensued when I myself first raised the point, but my memory says that Jesse was pointedly uninterested in introducing that level of abstraction to the base system.
"Use Asset Tracker" was the answer. AT requires that you treat 'customers' as 'assets', and *still* didn't -- so far as I could tell -- permit the "add the customer's 'official' contact to a ticket automatically" behaviour (or there was no cookbook available on how to custom-scrip it)... and AT may have been abandoned anyway, based on something I think I saw on the list a couple weeks ago.
It is not open source, but my company uses a product called KnowIT as an enterprise level ticket tracking system. It is very helpful because it is more than just a ticket tracking system. It allows us to tie together all of the different IT domains into one platform.
That's what I use, and it's worked great for me for 5 years running.
http://www.centriccrm.com
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Hi;
I do a bit of network engineering consultation. I use a product I acquired via Nextel/Sprint connections for a monthly fee called Corrigo. The combination of online tracking plus mobile management is incredibly useful. I think I pay like $20 a month per person covering 3 friends and me who are part of the team.
Vtiger CRM 5 is what we have been using in the office for tracking tickets/accounts between 6 techs in 3 remote offices. Works great and it is AJAX based, so it is very customizable and easy to put a web portal up with for tickets on the go. Very, very easy to configure and pretty darn user friendly.
http://vtiger.com/
We are an SAP reseller. Several of our clients in this situation run SAP Business One. Let me know if you need a demo.
http://www.project-open.com/
It's an all in one ticket tracker, CRM, timesheet, project management (including GanttCharts), WIKI, form, full-text-search, etc. and it includes financial management. So you can create invoices directly from the time you spent on tickets and projects.
The downside: It uses TCL and AOLServer instead of PHP and Apache.
OK, maybe I am missing something obvious, but why hasn't anyone mentioned Bugzilla? Is it not suitable in some way I'm not seeing?
I've used both BZ and Trac and I find BZ *far* easier to use and much more friendly than Trac. (I actually can't stand Trac.)
So what am I missing here?
a lot of large companies use bugzilla with custom changes
I've heard that's what Yahoo! uses, for example to track customer care reports and code changes internally.
it's free
I work at a help desk for that supports a 1/3 of the College of Engineering, and we use http://bestpractical.com/rt/
Its Perl based, might be overkill for your purposes, but its very good and free.
I thought slashdotters hated Monsanto! Or is that just on weekends? Come on people lets see some consistency here.
(I kid, I kid)
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Launchpad? *ducks*
Whoever set this tag is a silly troll who should have their account prohibited from tagging stories.
Sorry I don't have an answer for you at this time.
I work for a company, our main product is very closely described by the article summary.
Given the size and complexity of our product, (which logs jobs then allows you to log labour and stock/parts against the job then tracks all that for invoicing later on plus numerous other features like Purchase Orders, Invoicing, reporting) I can see why there is no readily available Open-Source or free alternative... Sure there are issue and bug trackers which work quite well, when it comes to more complex features like job completion (and invoicing) these solutions turn to something else.
If anyone can find the killer application, I will be very interested to look into it, comparing it to our system.
A company called Internet Software Sciences has the perfect solution for your needs. Their link is http://www.inet-sciences.com/ The software is free for up to 3 logins at the same time. It runs on windows and Linux. Can use an MDB or SQL database backend and has all the setup instructions for both. It is completely web based so it has many possibilities. Also it has everything you need from customer to ticket to time to asset tracking. It even has full invoicing capabilities. I've seen this software come a long way from when it first appeared on Sourceforge to the great product it is now. Check it out. You won't be disappointed.
We've been using OTRS http://otrs.org/ for quite a few years and love it. It just plain works. It can use LDAP for a customer DB which can be also used with SugarCRM if a CRM is needed. We also use the LDAP directory to control the Java Messaging system for mail. We have had no down time in 4 years using this system. Its written in Perl and uses MYSQL for a DB. Yes it runs on Linux!
For what you are describing, Autotask (http://www.autotask.com/) is definitely the way to go.
I've been using it for over a year now, and I know of tons of guys that are IT consultants, service providers, etc that use it.
Most of the other things mentioned here are generic ticketing systems. Autotask is software that is meant for IT consultants to use to manage their work. It handles service ticketing, project work, time tracking, invoicing, contracts and a lot more, all integrated.
Don't bother with a generic ticketing system. You'll end up wasting your time.
I have used DCL extensively and love it. If you haven't given it a look, you should (http://dcl.sourceforge.net/). Their website is not that pretty, but the tool is great. Another tool with more breadth, but less depth, is dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/). Many ISPs will install this for you.
For what you are describing, Autotask (http://www.autotask.com/) is definitely the way to go.
I've been using it for over a year now, and I know of tons of guys that are IT consultants, service providers, etc that use it.
Most of the other things mentioned here are generic ticketing systems. Autotask is software that is meant for IT consultants to use to manage their work. It handles service ticketing, project work, time tracking, invoicing, contracts and a lot more, all integrated.
Don't bother with a generic ticketing system. You'll end up wasting your time.
We looked into ticket systems a while back, and the previously mentioned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ticket- tracking_systems was very helpful. We were looking for a non-commercial solution that was easy to deploy and had some nice features (including time tracking). We settled on RedMine (http://www.redmine.org/). It's written in Ruby on Rails, which makes it extremely easy to get up and running if you're familiar with the technology. It's fairly speedy and includes a gantt graph, calendar, SCM (subversion, darcs, mercurial, and cvs in the development version) integration, ldap authentication, etc, etc. Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but it works fine for us. We've got some 30 projects going with it.
A company called Internet Software Sciences has the perfect solution for your needs. Their link is http://www.inet-sciences.com/ [inet-sciences.com] The software is free for up to 3 logins at the same time. It runs on windows and Linux. Can use an MDB or SQL database backend and has all the setup instructions for both. It is completely web based so it has many possibilities. Also it has everything you need from customer to ticket to time to asset tracking. It even has full invoicing capabilities. I've seen this software come a long way from when it first appeared on Sourceforge to the great product it is now. Check it out. You won't be disappointed.
When I was searching for yet another request tracker a while back, I came across:
t racking_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_
Personally, over the years, I've used Bugzilla, RT and Mantis and they are all very good. Bugzilla is hard for non-techies to understand. Mantis may be a little feature poor and is good for simple bug tracking. RT seems to be the best for general use by techies and muggles alike.
http://www.opensourcehelpdesklist.com/
If you've used any of the products on the list, you can now add your comments about them.
Personally, I'm a happy HelpSpot customer. It's not open source and it's a great product. At least the db is open and the next version has its own API.