Ticket System [OT]

[Patrick M]

Brian Densmore wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Jonathan Hutchins
>>
>>Patric, you give some details on things like how you want 
>>buttons to respond, 
>>but no overview on what you're tracking.
>>
>>You say you have 400 clients and are tracking  "system 
>>problems" and "customer 
>>complaints".
>>
>>What service are you providing?  Are you supporting a 
>>software product?  Are 
>>you the help desk for a corporation, handling all support for diverse 
>>departments?
>>
>>... 
>>
>>What do you hope to get OUT of the tracking system?  Do you 
>>...
>>    
>>
>I'm not sure why what his service is, is relevant to choosing a help ticket
>tracking system. We know from his email he doesn't want one geared only
>for hardware. So this would tend to lean toward a more generalized system
>requirement. The things he didn't make clear were the types of features
>he wants in such a system. Such as should the ticket system allow clients 
>to log in and post tickets, or will all tickets be created from the support
>desk? Will clients be able to look up the status and history of their help
>tickets? 
>
Its possible as our customers become more tech savvy, but as of right 
now we phone based and thinking along those lines. This could be a break 
for us to take another step into the new century. We have been making 
upgrades, but some mindset still keeps our staff thinking that people 
would rather talk on the phone or are lazy and don't want to type.

Thats because our business is phones and we are afraid to say there is 
other stuff out there. Since we are phone based most of our clients 
think that way too. I think some people are lazy and would be O.K. with 
typing rather than only calling.

>What types of information needs to be tracked? Reporting? Summarizations?
>Searchability? A simple solution that just tracks and assigns help tickets
>that doesn't need reporting or any fancy stuff would hardly be worth paying
>big bucks for when a simple freeware version should do all that is needed.
>  
>
Some of these GPL systems seem to be pretty feature rich, its just how 
well to they function. Are they buggy? Easy to use?
I doubt the free ones are designed to send out pages, but you never know 
unless you look deeper they often just list reporting, emailing, and 
prioritization.

>But if a Ticket system needs to have all the bells and whistles, then it
>might be time to consider shelling out some bucks. Personally I can't see paying
>for a help ticket system. Like Jonathon says, a quick and dirty MySQL db based
>system should be all anyone needs, and functionality can always be added as needed.
>
>  
>
If all I wanted was a ticket number and fill in the blanks with 
information, and add/update information as we work on a problem, I could 
probably eventually create something. Our phone system has a Custom/open 
FrontPage based scripting package. That uses MSsql and will supposedly 
work with other sql servers.