brilliant help desk program

[featured_spectre]

Just found a helpdesk program which does what I need it to do.

 

You can get it for free (with 1 technician licence).

 

Help Desk Software by Web Help Desk

 

I have it installed on our intranet and it seems to work perfectly, installed and set up this morning (users can be imported from SIMS), and I have already got 30 tickets waiting, so its a working system.

 

Thought I might share with you all.

[Gatt]

been using it for a few months now - IIRC they are sponsoring our Mac forums too ;)Or at least Unipress (reseller i think) are!

[featured_spectre]

yeah unipress are. I didnt realise that! lol. Well I like it and it works well for the purpose that I need it too!

[hillskill]

we use ManageEngine from AdventNet.

 

Its quite expensive but has a lot of feature. One great thing is that you can build up your own personal knowledge base of solutions.

[Edu-IT]

I had a look at this and didn't think it was particularly friendly from a GUI point of view. I guess I was wrong?

[ilisle]

We used to use ManageEngine ServiceDesk, but migrated to GLPI last term. GLPI has nearly all the functions ServiceDesk has, including warranty tracking and a knowledge base, but is Open Source.

We also installed OCS inventory, which scans all machines for changes at start up, and updates the helpdeks accordingly.

Next step is to start using the booking feature for Cameras, Laptops etc.

[hillskill]

may have to look at GLPI then as the license the Manage Engine needs to be renewed soon!

[Gatt]

We use GLPI for our inventory, and looking at integrating it with OCG as well over the summer

[ilisle]

We paid £272 for our first year with ServiceDesk, and £550ish for our second year, and to be honest, once you get used to it, GLPI is nicer to use, and is cheaper ;-)

I'll try to find the link I used to set up the GLPI/OCS-NG integration, and post it here.

[mrmontymick]

We used to use an old free helpdesk which was fairly basic but clunky - take up was a bit low as people didn't like the fact they had a separate username/password for yet another system.

 

Since we already had Netsupport DNA installed (which is an hardware/software inventory tool with some handy extra features) we went for the DNA Helpdesk product.

 

The product is pretty good, it's AD integrated so it picks up your users from there (although you do have to make sure you have filled in department and company - which typically we hadn't!)

 

It handles tickets well, is configurable for different issue codes/resolution codes etc and it will email techs when a new ticket is put on.

 

The only thing I wish it had was the ability to make it's look'n'feel more like your own internal branding/intranet/vle/whatever.

 

But for me the best feature is the integration with DNA for the hardware/software inventory so you can see exactly what machine it is users are reporting a problem on. I understand you can integrate it with their remote control product as well so you can remote into a machine direct from the helpdesk - can't say how it works as we don't have the remote control product installed.

 

I'm not sure on cost though, might be an eeeeek moment.

[plexer]

ocs to glpi integration was pretty straightforward last time I did it.

 

You just whack the db details into glpi and it goes and reads the data from ocs.

 

Ben

[ilisle]

As promised, this is the doc I worked from to install and integrate GLPI and OCS:

 

English : OCS and GLPI installation guide - Les RPM de Remi

 

Took a little bit of tinkering, as I have in stalled it on Ubuntu, but is a good guide anyway. Highly recommended if you're doing a fresh install for the first time.

[Guest monkeyx]

I currently have a version of glpi/ocs running ona ubuntu serevr. But could never get the auto logon to work from apache. Does this work for anyone yet?

 

Somebody else suggested Spiceworks. But we have a lot more than 500 devices we need to manage. How does this compare as a helpdesk system to GLPI and other systems listed on here.

 

We currently use Liberum as our helpdesk syste, Would like something as simple with auto logon for staff. Would also prefer the system to run on Linux.

 

 

Tim

[EduTech]

Yeah we use GLPI, Currently integrating this with OCS

 

James.

[plexer]

mlh for ad/ldap integration. Asset management coming soon

[ayoward]

We use Service-Now.com It's SaaS stuff and may be a bit expensive for schools to run internally, but if you clubbed together and portioned it off for each school which is dead easy to do it would be fine. It has all the ITIL based stuff you would want (incident, change, problem management), an excellent discovery tool for your inventory along with a great asset management and configuration management system. It is configurable enough to run how you want it. You can try it out for yourself at http://www.service-now.com/demo

[featured_spectre]

thing is, schools clubbing together would only be a good thing IF they had a group of techs between them that service each school, otherwise there is no cost benefit!

 

*Edit*

 

Running the demo, it seems overly complicated and most teachers wouldnt have the slightest in how to use it. If it was simplified then it may actually be a good tool! (thats just my opinion, not anyone elses!)

[ayoward]

thing is, schools clubbing together would only be a good thing IF they had a group of techs between them that service each school, otherwise there is no cost benefit!

 

*Edit*

 

Running the demo, it seems overly complicated and most teachers wouldnt have the slightest in how to use it. If it was simplified then it may actually be a good tool! (thats just my opinion, not anyone elses!)

 

That's kind of the beauty of the system. You can simplify it as much as you like.

 

With regard to your first point. The system can be configured in such a way that you can carve it up into "companies", so each school could have the system work independently for their school and you would only be able to see the data relevant to your school, including separate SLAs etc etc. So in effect, you are getting, if you had five schools for example, five different systems within one system for a price spread across five schools.

 

Of course as I work at an RBC, we are all for aggregating costs across the region, which is why we have agreements brokered with people like Sophos for example where we get a five year license for a High School for something like £1200 which not only covers school machines, but covers the equivalent number of home machines as well with the full suite of products.

[whd_guy]

been using it for a few months now - IIRC they are sponsoring our Mac forums too ;)Or at least Unipress (reseller i think) are!

 

That's correct, however Unipress Software is much more than a Web Help Desk reseller. Unipress Software provides full localised technical & implementations support to the UK (as well as all of EMEA, India, and Russia).

 

Feel free to download a free help desk software trial or try out a 30 day hosted SaaS trial (hosted in the UK for optimal speed and performance). The hosted trial will allow you to avoid the red-tape many have associated with installing software on a server; especially when you only want to test the help desk software.

 

For more information about our help desk software, sold and supported in the UK, please visit:

 

Unipress Software - Help Desk Software by Web Help Desk

 

Go here to get a hosted SaaS help desk trial (click on the "Download" button and select the license type of "ASP Hosted Plan" for your hosted trial):

 

Hosted SaaS Help Desk by Web Help Desk

 

Thanks,

 

WHD_Guy

[chrisjako]

have a look at kayako support suite with livesupport module, we use it here all 3 technicians can pick up a request to provide support via chat interface