Open Source Help-Desk Software?

ASyndicate asks: "I am starting a consulting business. I am looking for a good Open Source program that implements a web-based help-desk system. What kinds of projects and programs would the Slashdot community recommend? What I need is a set of pages that will allow a client to check the status of his/her work order on the machine(s). The only projects I found were ones on sourceforge that did not have any files released. Only one did and It was no where near operational." There was a similar question back in 1999, and there were a small number of informative responses to the query. Has the intervening time improved the options at all?

Teacup!

[WH]

I have a version of one called Teacup that I have been making some significant modifications to. Teacup by itself supports email and web based submission, and web based tracking of tickets. It supports 4 user defined fields which really come in handy. The changes I've made to it are as follows: 1) email replies that include a PR # get added to the log file for the PR in question. 2) Tickets are sorted by priority. Urgent tickets are highlighted. 3) Uses only 1 .cgi for both users & admins and therefore can be used in an authenticated (intranet) type environment. (Teacup normally uses teacup.cgi for users and teacup-secure.cgi for admins and expects admins to be the only users with $ENV{REMOTE_USER} set.) 4) I wrote a small script that sync's an LDAP directory with the users in Teacup so you don't have to add all the requestors yourself. Just add them to your LDAP and they appear in Teacup. If anyone is interested in my version of Teacup email me at [e-mail] and ask for it. I haven't given it out at this point but it really is becoming very usable so I may as well.. can't offer any further support on it.. it's written in perl so it should be easy for most people to pick up and run with.

Mod this question "-1: Didn't check Google"

[penguinboy]

Here are two systems I found in less than five minutes:

• JCS [bynari.net]
• Request Tracker [fsck.com]

The Open Directory [dmoz.org] is also a good source of information - the have a whole page [dmoz.org] of Help Desk programs (though not all are OSS).

look at RT

[ckolar]

We recently deployed RT (www.fsck.com/projects/rt/ [fsck.com]). It is a compact system with email, web, and command line interfaces. The stable version (1.x) does not allow the requestors to check the status via the web, but v2 (which is now at beta 2) does. If you check the status page of the web site you can get into a server running v2 to check it out. We have fallen in love with it and it is chugging happily away on a P120. It is implemented using mod_perl and mySQL, it took all of 5 minutes to get up and running. Cheers.

Help Desk

[pcubbage]

Check FireFly from Open Care. We are actively interested in it at Open Country. It's nicely done and under active development. If you want to chekc it out, log in and try the demo at http://firefly.ocare.com/

Liberum Help Desk

[duplicate-nickname]

Here [liberum.org] is the open source, web-based help desk I have been working on. It does everything you requested....

It's on SourceForge, and is the first hit [google.com] on Google, so I'm not sure how you missed it.

You could have also checked out the Help Desk [dmoz.org] category at DMOZ for which I am an editor. There are several open or free help desk packages listed.

Let me say this.....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Before someone busts on someone for not looking or doing research before asking this, let me tell you this. This person wants to know from someone who may have experience using a open source Help Desk solution. He doesn't want to know there are X amount of products on freshmeat and X are 1.0 or above. He WANTS to know what are the pitfalls and good things about the software. Does it require alot of maintenance? Does it fail every 5 minutes? That kind of stuff. That said, from actually using a Help Desk product(non opensource), and from having worked a help desk kind of deal, I think I know what would work.

A help desk is something that, I find, is different for everyone. Some Help Desks ACTUALLY help, while others just take work orders. For ones that actually help, one that would have the ability to search prior work orders and see if the same thing came up before, and if there's instructions, then tell the user how to fix it themselves. This helps the user LEARN something saving your HD people another phone call. This is the best kind of help desk and one which should be a/the model. If this is just going to be something that people are going to hit a web page and type in what's wrong, then you could also just look for a web based work order system as well as other help desk type software. Help Desk's are highly different from company to company and some times, you just have to devlop your own software to make it do what you want.

Re:Pssst...

[goodEvans]

Grammar Nazi? Are you feeling alright? Surely you meant "hear" instead of "here"?

Dear Lord, Grammar Nazi getting his homonyms mixed up! What in the world is happening?

Re:Mod this question "-1: Didn't check Google"

[rjamestaylor]

*Sigh* That's the way of almost all Ask Slashdots. Michael should make an obligatory link to a Google keyword search for each question (that would at least cut down on "Didn't you check Google?" missives).

For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+help+de sk [google.com]. Lo! and Behold! A SourceForge project OpenDesk [sourceforge.net] as the "Lucky" result.

Re:Mod this question "-1: Didn't check Google"

[rjamestaylor]

Oops. I meant Cliff, not Michael. And, looking at the OpenDesk project at SourceForge it appears they have a long way to go before there is a product.

I asked a similar question recently

[kchayer]

Check out this recent submission [slashdot.org] I made. I was looking for help-desk software with the ability for our department to track our work through workorders. While we have not implemented it full-time yet, we will most likely go with DCL [sourceforge.net] at our campus. It may do most of what you are looking for, is pretty configurable, and is continually being developed. I believe you can give customers accounts so they can see progress of their work. Might not be exactly what you are looking for, but I recommend you have a look and see what it'll do.

"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes

Re:Pssst...

[grammar nazi]

Did I just here you whisper that from outside my house window?

check freshmeat

[grammar nazi]

Hi.

Check out Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] for what you seek. A search on 'help desk' brings up a page full of options, of which about 5 or so are what you seek. Of those 5, 3 of them version 1.0 or greater, so I think that they may be stable/robust enough for you to use. Ben

Re:check freshmeat

[grammar nazi]

hehe. The grammar nazi accidently released his secret identity because of a habit he is in when he ends an email message. Damn him for forgeting and including his name at the end of the post. Pray that no grammatically correct stalkers can now piece together where he lives and hunt him down. Pray for the grammar nazi! Ben

Let me add this.....

[epodrevol]

For real dude. Too many linzealots and dipshits here on /. forget that these are real people asking real questions. They are so snappy to give a classic RTFM response when they should just NOT post and move on. Im sure if someone asks a question here on /. they know to look elsewhere (google, freshmeat, etc) for stuff.

Unfortunately, the stupidity will continue.

Is it too much to ask that y'all stop being assholes by default?

Re:check freshmeat

[Beowulf_Boy]

Actually dude, he's told me his name before when I e-mailed him, granted it was about something totally different, and I just saw his nick in his e-mail sig,
I would tell you, but I deleted the e-mail, sorry

Useful reference

[sachachua]

There's a very good reference on Call Center, Bug Tracking and Project Management Tools for Linux [linas.org] at http://linas.org/linux/pm.html [linas.org]. It has helpful comments, too.

Re:is this for real?

[Britney]

He's asking for software. Any idiot could find it but he didn't.

I disagree. If it had been hardware, then it would be easy, I agree. You just go to the local hardware store, and ask for the nails or rope or whatever.
But I've never even seen a software store in my town, or the next one.