I’m currently examining ticketing systems. You know this thing who replies to you “You request #330248 has been submitted into our system,…. we’ll get back to you”. This may sound impersonal but there are still a few advantages:
- Feedback: it’s good to let the customer know that you are (or will be) working on his issue. It gives a warm feeling like “I’m not alone in this mess”. It also gives a more professional look to mail support.
- Centralization: it’s easier to manage issues or requests with a centralized system. After all, support or issues tracking is a MIMO (Multiple Input – Multiple Output). Multiple Customers having problems have to meet the Multiple Developers/Professionals and find the one fitting their needs. Moreover, sometimes you cannot handle a whole case by yourself from A to Z. Then you will be more than happy anyone else in your corporation can solve and close the case if you’re no more available.
- Knowledge: by using ticketing system, you get a bonus! The information is tracked and persisted so you can find back relevant information when someone already dealt with this problem.
If you agree with this, the only thing left to do is to find a suitable ticketing system. So here comes my short list of 4 ticketing systems:
- RT for Request Tracker. RT is available since 1996. It’s a wells spread system built in Perl and offering an enterprise-grade ticketing system with a lot of features like identification, prioritization,
assignment, resolution and notification. - OTRS for Open source Ticket Request System. Also built in Perl, OTRS offers the same usual features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails.
- osTicket is an open source support ticket system written in PHP. It offers a web-based solution to easily manage, organize
and archive all your support requests and responses in the same place. - eTicket is another PHP ticketing system, really similar to osTicket (above).
There are of course commercial solutions but I focused on open source alternatives. So you may also have a look to BMC, helpdesk pilot, tenderapp, simple ticket, mojo helpdesk or h2desk.
And if you still need other systems, you can refer to wikipedia, dmoz or slashdot.
Hey,
The best ticketing system for me is…
–> osTicket
Unfortunately, it’s not multilingual. But apparently someone made an hack : http://osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=564
To test.
Although it’s more of a group task management system, Intervals was built on the precepts of traditional issue tracking systems. It might work for your needs. Check it out.
Take a look at Bridgetrak.
It’s not an open source help desk solution but it was really worth buying.
It really simplified and organized our ticket tracking.