Ticket Tracking and Customer Management? 236
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?"
JIRA... (Score:3, Informative)
JIRA is not open source (Score:2)
Re:JIRA... (Score:4, Informative)
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I might suggest Trac [edgewall.org]. It's an open source ticket management system integrated with Subversion. Probably doesn't have the extensive customer management features but with the wiki+ticketing is done quite well and can no doubt be used to satisfy the posters needs.
Re:JIRA... is cheap (Score:2)
Re:JIRA... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to use something for external facing issue tracking and make it customer facing straight away I would suggest RT by Best Practical. It is GPL and relatively open as far as brain effort to extend it is concerned. It is also trivial to use for issue oriented CRM/sales which is typical of a service company or consultancy.
It is used as the primary system for tracking customer facing issues by companies with turnover in the billions like NTT/Verio. It is also used by small non-IT companies like my favourite plumbing supply shop http://www.plumbworld.co.uk/ [plumbworld.co.uk]. It is also often adapted to integrate the support, CRM and sales process like in Claranet http://www.claranet.co.uk/ [claranet.co.uk]. Judging by the people on its mailing list it is also running in pilots and internal projects at Audi, BT and a couple of other places.
It has been in stable for nearly 4-5 years now. I have used in my previous job, and while it is not completely free of bugs, it is possibly the best general purpose issue tracking system I have seen so far.
]project-open[ - Incidents, PM _and_ Finance (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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1) Out of documentation, it seemed that the request tracking module was still not developed; since by the time I was specifically looking for issue trackers, that meant the end for it.
2) It's based out of AolServer. I want Open Source because I can, well, open the source and tweak it; since I'm not an AOLServer/Tcl "fan" it went even lower on my lis
RT (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed on RT as First Step (Score:5, Informative)
I have since moved away from RT and now use an in-house designed system. But I still give it two thumbs up.
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We've adapted various business practices to take advantage of RTs strengths, and pretty much most of our company uses RT to one extent or another, from IT through to sales. We've set up autoforwarders on our mail servers so that e-faxes to certain numbers arrive in particular queues, we've got cron jobs setup to send e-mails out for regular departmental tasks and so on.
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My computer store has a workshop. We have computers / printers / anything at all come in to be 'fixed'
I would like to be able to enter the 'job' as the customer brings in the computer / whatever, enter the customers contact details, description of the fault(s) etc. (issue tracking?)
Whilst working on the fix, i would like to be able to add 'notes' to the 'job' I would also like to be able to track phone calls (CRM?)
If the job was virus removal /
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And more.
(Together with its "cousin" RTFM)
Advice: Install FreeBSD 6.2, update the ports and install it via the ports-system.
Installing and using RT is one of the most sensible things you can do in IT.
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It's humor people, laugh...
RT For sure (Score:3, Informative)
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 v
Re:RT For sure (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you index it? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 h
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We connected into other systems, had real time displays of information to help them answer questions inside the system. It was very nice until we were bought out, and started using a monolithic system that ha
Re:RT For sure (Score:5, Informative)
I'd love to hear a bit more about the scaling problems you had over on rt-devel@lists.bestpractical.com. We have end users (some of them paying customers, but plenty of them not) with well over a million tickets in their RT instances without any sort of performance problem.
And I'd certainly love to see patches for anything you had to do to get performance up to snuff. (Since, well, we'd certainly like to improve things if users are running into trouble.
Best,
Jesse (RT's chief catherder)
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Re:RT (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony of the situation is that I do specialize in Perl, which is why I went toward RT first. I assumed it would have been the better choice for making any changes to the underlying system, but in the process of working with trac I've learned Python enough to hack together a number of custom solutions for our needs.
Since I didn't go any further with RT after that first day, I can't say how well that would have worked, but in my case RT did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Re:RT (Score:5, Informative)
Now, it's extraordinarily simple. Initial understanding of some of the rights management will take a little bit of time depending on how complex you want it to be.
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I can't think of a web interface I've seen that's as bad. Using RT's web inter
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And as for making really low level changes, the source can only be described as labyr
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Re:RT (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RT -- Use RoundUp instead.. (Score:5, Informative)
Its self contained.. a GREAT email interface.. easy to setup and easy to extend.
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Can't agree. It's a pig to install, requiring dozens of Perl modules that stomp all over the filesystem and in FastCGI configuration at least it crashes regularly. It's also, as others have pointed out, more of a bug tracker rather than a support call tracker. If you need something akin to a bug tracker, then go with Bugzilla - it's also written in Perl, but it has fewer dependencies.
Was your Access Solution web hostable? (Score:2)
Access based solution also != Free.
Same thing under Windows (Score:2)
I'm looking for something web-based, allowing clients to enter tickets, and programmers to respond to them.
Any ideas?
Just a Hello from Davis (Score:1, Redundant)
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I'd be careful of gerbil/hamster based backends. There's always that one sysadmin whose just too interested...
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The tough choices of windows (Score:3, Funny)
You can have features, windows, and running. Choose two.
Eventum (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I'm currently evaluating Eventum for both IT support and generic issue tracking for service departments with no IT component. The only thing that feels beta about it is its obvious origin as a software issue tracker, but it won't require much modification to support generic issue tracking. Other than that, it is very stable, and customizable in a good way, not an evil, "I can't use this unless I completely rewrite the source code" kind of way.
I have experience with RT, and have installed it for clients w
CitrusDB (Score:1)
One (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite OSS (Score:2)
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I've worked for companies that spent ludicrous amounts of money on ticketing systems, and I've always wished I could go back to Cerberus. I just left a job that used RT, and I hated it.
trac (Score:5, Informative)
It is extremely extensible, and anything not readily available [trac-hacks.org] 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.
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Postgresql. You can authenticate with htdigest. There is also a
command line interface so you can automate administration with scripts.
You can also install subversion and browse the source trees through Trac.
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IMO, it's main strength is the simplicity for the user. An issue tracker is no good if nobody will use. I saw it many times: the IT department decides for a tool, install it, teaches everybody how to use it, and how important it is, but in the end nobody uses the tool. Trac interface is simple and nice, it does just what it has to do. Trac does not get in your way and feel like a burden.
We use JIRA (Score:5, Informative)
Be your own customer and ... (Score:1, Offtopic)
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phpBMS (Score:2)
Vtiger (Score:5, Informative)
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Kayako (Score:1)
Remedy under WINE (Score:1)
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=23
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Trac (Open Source; Python) (Score:2, Interesting)
It provides an interface to Subversion, an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.
OSTicket (Score:2, Interesting)
It works well; I use it integrated with Help Center Live [helpcenterlive.com]
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Keystone is still alive and kicking. (Score:3, Informative)
Opensource, non-alpha, many many users active, still being supported and worked on.
(Obdisclaimer. I wrote it.
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Drop me emailif you want to see the live demo.
COULD NOT FIND ANYTHING ?? (Score:3, Informative)
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_
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If you are going to be so condescending and pedantic, learn how to spell foremost correctly. You made a complete ass of yourself with that error.
Unless, of course, he thinks that tracking system is "For Most" of the users out there.
Seriously, if you are going to chide someone for being condescending and pedantic, then just do it. Pointing out a common grammatical error or spelling mistake, or some other minor posting error makes you look like a complete ass who needs to justify your your commentary. Besides, it's potentially misleading as well; you seem to be indicating that his post would have been acceptable, if he spelled that one word correctl
OTRS (Score:2)
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Major missing point... (Score:3, Insightful)
dotProject (Score:2)
Customer management rather than ticketing (Score:2)
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 [sugarcrm.com], or one of it's forks instead. MySQL only, so be careful to keep regular backups.
Mantis (Score:2)
Try vTiger (SugarCRM clone) (Score:2)
Website is vtiger.com.
Yet Another Trac Fan here... (Score:2)
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
Customizability (Score:2)
GLPI (Score:2)
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.
Mantis, not Trac (Score:2)
mark
doyourownwork = asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
So to all the douchebags who criticize people who ask questions on Slashdot: FUCK YOU.
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PHP Support Tickets (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.phpsupporttickets.com/ [phpsupporttickets.com]
Basecamp (Score:2)
Mojo Helpdesk (Score:3, Informative)
Hope this helps.
I have had success with: (Score:2)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcl/ [sourceforge.net]
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!
.
Centric CRM (Score:2)
http://www.centriccrm.com [centriccrm.com]
OTRS is great (Score:2)
Here's a good resource for you (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_t racking_systems [wikipedia.org]
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.
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We have put in some minimal workflow steps in our installation but now we are looking at (very expensive) commercial tools (tibco, oracle, others) for "BPM".
First, unless you create them, RT doesn't have any structured data points against which you can write workflow rules. Not sure about the other systems mentioned in this thread. So you're limited to queue, Subject line, and body text searches.
That said, you can get part the way down the ro
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