Which Helpdesk Software.. Free or Not

[Grommit]

We are looking to have an Admin Person man a phone and Log Fault Calls..

Or a staff member can open and log a fault from thier classroom..

We are looking for software that can do this..

It needs to then be managed so that I can allocate a technician to it and then the job logged by the tech...

Any ideas ? links please..

I like Job Manager but it seems to be only from the Tech side in issuing jobs not recording new jobs from staff..

[localzuk]

I would recommend GLPI. Free, easy to use, easy to set up. Staff find it easy to use here and it has other functionality for future expansion too.

[webman]

Liberum?

[Ric_]

@Grommit: Do a search and you will find a multitude of links and software titles for this subject.

[Grommit]

@Grommit: Do a search and you will find a multitude of links and software titles for this subject.

I did.. but there was no conclusive outcome....

Which do you think is the best.. What about "My Little Helpdesk"

@ webman

Will look into it.. do you use Liberum

@localzuk

Will have a look

[webman]

It's in testing at the moment, we just need to integrate it into our Intranet and change a few reporting options. A few others on here use it though if you do search for liberum.

[Sylv3r]

We use Kayako. We paid about £150 for it, but its now starting to work really well here. http://www.kayako.com/ is the address.

[Ric_]

@Grommit: The reason that there is no conclusive outcome is because it entirely depends on how your operation works. I use GLPI and have OCS-NG intergrated for hardware auditing. I moved to this from One||Zero which is also very good... it just lacked the intergration with OCS.

Others find Liberum suits them better whilst others like ReportTracker for its simplicity. I believe that DB uses NetSupport DNA Helpdesk because he uses DNA and NetSupport Manager so they all link together and his budget can handle the cost.

You see... so many decisions. Search Sourceforge and you will find a plethora of projects if you want to go down the open source route. You really need to spend some time playing with a few.

[GrumbleDook]

We have used liberum but some of the feature set we want was not there.

My Little Helpdesk is really good for a free system and it would cover pretty much most things (even if you use it to get something up and running).

After using a bespoke one (built by a friend) and Liberum, we discovered we needed a bit more.

We now use SiteHelpDesk and we are still not using the full functionality ... there are some things that we will start using later in the year (inventory is imported in from csv atm but we will purchase a client based collection tool wen we get more money)

[enjay]

@Grommit: The reason that there is no conclusive outcome is because it entirely depends on how your operation works. ... You really need to spend some time playing with a few.

Exactly. Which is best for you will depend entirely on the scale of usage, how much detail you want included, how tech-savvy your staff are, what you want to do with it and a myriad of other factors.

You will always hear people recommend different solutions, and some names like Liberum and One or Zero will crop up more often, but that doesn't make them right for you (for example, I stopped using Liberum after only a few weeks). Expecting a "conclusive outcome" is like asking which is the best car or best band and expecting a consistent answer.

Another one to add to your list to try is SomeHelp - it's quite simplistic, I don't know if that's an advantage or disadvantage for you!

[plexer]

I've just moved from Request Tracker to My Little Helpdesk.

RT was good and simple to use but the windows port I was using was outdated and the linux install looked to complex.

I use OCS NG to retrieve pc info and glpi sucks this information in and I input printers etc... also use glpi to manage consumables stock.

Plus a wiki for support staff.

So that's 4 different packages.

Ben

[zag]

I wrote my own in ASP.net using a few web db tutorials, only took a day to write and suits all my needs.

This kind of software does not need to be complicated.

[Netman]

You could look at spiceworks too... www.spiceworks.com free but with ads (unless you block them) does inventory and helpdesk.

[budgester]

I am a developer on IRM, it works for us here, I recently added a cool page, that allows me to have a 19" monitor mounted on the wall showing priority helpdesk calls.

[JamesC]

I wrote my own in ASP.net using a few web db tutorials, only took a day to write and suits all my needs.

This kind of software does not need to be complicated.

Exactly what I was going to suggest. Surely writing something from scratch may take a little longer, but you will have every feature you need?

Have a think about using something like Access to start with, if you are more confident then try using mysql and writing an interface in vb.net or something along those lines.