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... http://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.

[maniac]

I use an often overlooked basic helpdesk system called hesk, available from phpjunkyard. (http://www.phpjunkyard.com) it's a very basic PHP based helpdesk, but because it's so basic it's very easy to adapt. I've added a feature to allocate jobs to a technician, and place jobs on hold which only took me a couple of hours with very limited PHP knowledge. It only needs a low spec server running WAMP (or equivalent) to get it working.

 

Mike.

[6Foot2]

Something we use which has not been mentioned yet, which is why I am posting this reply, is Cerebrus. it does more than we need, but what it does it does well. We are at version 2.7 and we are several versions behind the current release. It could be worth looking at....

[Grommit]

What i am looking for is a simple hlpdesk that the staff can have a desktop short cut and add jobs ...

 

It doesn't need authenticaton and the rest but just a simple shortcut to report a fault..

 

Ie for the teacher

 

Room

Fault

Small Description

Person Reporting

Date and time Reported

.

 

and then there will be a more indepth front end for me to allocate a technician and then a bit for time finished and feedback

 

Any ideas

[joe90bass]

We use the free version of Ilient here and are very pleased with it, it allows users to e-mail requests in or go to a web page and fill in a form. I'm hoping to buy the full version next year with asset management and other modules.

[sahmeepee]

What i am looking for is a simple hlpdesk that the staff can have a desktop short cut and add jobs ...

 

It doesn't need authenticaton and the rest but just a simple shortcut to report a fault..

 

Ie for the teacher

 

Room

Fault

Small Description

Person Reporting

Date and time Reported

.

 

and then there will be a more indepth front end for me to allocate a technician and then a bit for time finished and feedback

 

Any ideas

 

Ours does all that and runs as plain old ASP on IIS, talking to an Access database. Staff can also search through jobs and add (timestamped) comments to existing jobs. It will also email us when a staff member submits a job.

 

If you PM me your email address I'll send you the tutorial as a word doc. It's a bit out of date so some features aren't shown. The code may need a little tidying up to work in your environment, but it shouldn't take too long.

[boomam]

Ive just enabled the one built into our VLE.

The request get sent via email to whatever address i want, and it lists each request with exact VLE login information, so we can tie the request down to who's sent it.

 

.

[E_S_P]

We use the free version of Ilient here and are very pleased with it, it allows users to e-mail requests in or go to a web page and fill in a form. I'm hoping to buy the full version next year with asset management and other modules.

 

We have used Sysaid as well for about 18 months and are well pleased with it as it is also fairly customisable. Its open source and we have run it without any problems on everything from NT4 to 2003 server, to Vista.

 

You get 100 user accounts plus 100 network assests, and 2 admin accounts with the free version which just about covers our MIS network for now.

 

You also get built in hardware & software auditing, remote VNC deployment through the client agent, email integration (as mentioned above), monitoring, repair history etc etc...

 

We too are buying it.

[adurrant]

We use http://exoscripts.com/exohelpdesk

 

Web based so customers can log calls any time!

 

We have some staff think off things at home so we can respond 1st thing in the morning!

 

You can allocte tickets to staff members in your IT team its very good! We love it!

 

Adam

[spacevortex]

The school used Pel Desk for several years but stopped using it about 3 or 4 years ago (paid Version) and just did jobs by email, phone calls and on the fly with no order.

 

Try PerlDesk Demonstration - Help Desk Software Solutions

 

 

Back in feb i looked at Trellis and since May have been using it......

 

i like it a lot its being used, and the ules from the head are we can not close tickets they must be done by staff....... staff are very keen to post but not so keen to login and close the tickets once the work is complete....

 

ACCORD5 — Trellis Desk — Live Demonstration

[plexer]

fair point from the head but what about if you closed them if no response is received within say 48hrs?