Open Source Work-Order Tracking System?

kchayer asks: "I'm looking for an open-sourced system we can use to track workorders for help and problem requests on campus where I work. It seems that all products with similar functionality are designed more for bug tracking and correcting in the software development process: dcl, bugzilla, request tracker (not exactly what I want, or fully-featured enough), to name a few. While those are nice programs, and can be fudged to do what I want, I am interested in something specifically designed to track requests for help solving computer problems among students and our various staff/faculty departments on campus."

"A web-based project (perhaps written in PHP or Perl) would be ideal (accessible from anywhere with a browser), and should include access for a secretary (or tech) to enter workorders; techs to access, modify, update, and close workorders; techs or management to track both tech productivity as well as history on individual machines (and servers, routers, switches, etc..). Additional nice features would be a searchable knowledgebase, so even the average user could attempt to troubleshoot a problem; other types of summaries and statistics; email reporting to techs of workorders they have to complete; a user-accessible interface to enter their own requests for help that techs could turn into workorders. I have seen commercial solutions to this, but being budget-limited and free software-concious, I'd rather go with something free. I know handling calls and delegating work is a must for any reasonably-sized IT department; how do other shops handle this? Anybody know of such an open source package out there?"

keystone

[peterjm]

check out keystone at
www.stonekeep.com [stonekepp.com]

-Peter

Keystone

[harlan]

They use keystone at my job. Very happy with it.

Web TTS

[Anthanos]

The WebTTS product at http://www.gashalot.com/software/webtts/ is very nice. Its small, but has the core features. I also work at a university and made extensive modifications and now it works/looks beautifully. email me at [e-mail] for details if you want them.

Good review of many ticket tracking tools

[danpbrowning]

http://linas.org/linux/pm.html [linas.org] has some good general information regarding Call Center, Bug Tracking and Project Management Tools for Linux, including open source solutions.

I have heard a lot of good reviews about KeyStone, which is free to download for personal use (including source code!) at http://www.stonekeep.com/content/download [stonekeep.com]. But StoneKeep isn't open source-enlightened yet, so they still charge $$ if you use it commercially.

Re:keystone

[sharkey]

Correct address: http://www.stonekeep.com/ [stonekeep.com]

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Liberum Help Desk

[duplicate-nickname]

Liberum Help Desk [liberum.org] is an open source, web-based help desk system. I designed this for use at my university [wisc.edu] and will probably be putting it in use where i work now [msu.edu]. It has just about everything you've requested...except for a user knowledge base. Currently it only has support rep searchable KB, although a user accessed one could be easily written. It is done in ASP for IIS 4/5 and can use Access or SQL as a back-end DB. It's not the Linux/PHP/MySQL system you were probably looking for, but Win 2000 is only $99 for us higher-ed users.

Try out the demo here. [liberum.org]

Main features are:

e-mail notification

problems entered by users or reps

users can view the problem status and add additional information

searchable problem database

usage reporting

comment forms

IRM

[[Rob]]

My current employer uses an open source software package called IRM [redshift.com] to perform help desk type functions. IRM is web based and uses MySQL and PHP.

DCL

[DCLGuy]

As the author of DCL, I feel somewhat compelled to reply to this.

DCL was born out of a need for a configurable system that handled multiple accounts. It is in no way totally software centric, meaning it could be used to report on a variety of tasks where history is required.

Prior to beginning DCL, we had looked at Keystone (bad UI, bad license, says it's open source but only up to a point), Bugzilla (totally software centric), Jitterbug (too much reliance on email), RT (clumsy interface), GNATS (difficult to set up), and probably some others.

I am trying to push DCL towards IT management. I created a new release just yesterday that includes call tickets, partial FAQ support (all the pieces are there, just needs some flow), enhanced project management abilities, and a whole other mess of features. All of these were only available in CVS since the 20000905 release until
yesterday.

DCL is used by our call center, our development staff, our QA staff, and our hardware/networking department. It has proven its value time and time again. We have ~25 products, ~280 accounts, ~12,000 tickets (since Oct 17!!!), and ~6000 work orders in the system.

Another item to consider is that DCL (sometime this year) will be made compatible with phpGroupWare, so DCL will gain some groupware modules and be more extensible.

Anyway, if you haven't, I highly recommend looking at the latest version of DCL. I do encourage users to submit ideas, requests, code, docs, or whatever they feel like contributing. I have a vested interest in DCL (if you couldn't tell!) and I try to listen to the users and accomodate their wishes while not compromising DCL's flexibility.

Hmm...

[cr0sh]

Seems like there are a few open source CRM packages out there. This is a good thing to see.

My current job has involved the design and implementation of one CRM package (alas, not open source - and done in VB with an Access back-end - actually, it works pretty well, overall, but if I had to do it over, I would probably go with Python or Java, and MySQL on the backend), and currently working on the "conversion" of another, slightly different one.

I can give these words of advice: If you are looking for such a package, look for a "pre-done" one - in other words, don't attempt to roll your own, unless you like headaches. While it may seem like a CRM system is simple, the users will make it anything but. Most of the time, what you or I think as the proper, most efficient way to do things, will probably not be what the users will end up wanting (for example, I had a function where you would open the job, but before you could do much of anything on the job, you had to enter in estimated time, then submit it to the client for approval - ie, a signoff. When you got the signed job back, this was an "authorized" job. Then work could begin. As a programmer, I have always experienced clients who would look at a job's estimated time, say OK - then when billed, would say "I didn't authorize that!", and not pay, or do something equally stupid. This was an attempt at doing a little CYA. Nonetheless, nobody uses it in the way it was intended).

Will using a pre-done package alleviate this? No, but it will keep you from burning the midnight oil as you try to modify the package six ways from Sunday...

Of course, I guess they could always come back with "But you have the source, why can't you modify it?"...

Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!