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I'm working in the administrative department of a large university, and I'm trying to find the right trouble ticket system. While I have tried Trac and OTRS already, there is a missing feature I need, and maybe someone can tell me if such a thing exists.

Imagine for a second you are working in a place where your users won't share information with each other unless they absolutely, positively have to do it (and sometimes, they won't share it unless you take it from their cold, dead binders). From here, feature number one would be "if I create a ticket, no other user should be able to see it" (this is why I had to ditch Trac, changing the ticket url makes really easy for users to spy on each other). But it gets more complicated. Lets assume that user A really messes up his reports (as in "I lost $200.000, which is casually the cost of my new car"), so a new ticket is created. Now, users B and C (say, the legal department and accounting) must also be kept in the loop, and maybe someone else in the future, so each change in the ticket must be informed to all of them, and also they have to be able to add details to the ticket, which leads me to feature number two: it should be possible to add an arbitrary number of users into a ticket.

Could anyone tell me if such a marvelous system exists? Or, even better, tell me how is such a marvelous system called? (call me a geek, but if someone answered "Yes" it would be my fault for not asking correctly).

Bonus question: it would also be a nice thing if it could be translated into spanish and had support for LDAP. Oh, oh, and it should make coffee too!

2
  • Anybody else wish the people behind serverfault would release an opensource version suited for use as a ticketing system? That's pretty much what it is...the most enjoyable ticketing system I've ever used. Mar 2, 2010 at 16:10
  • @carpenoctem if I could have "depends on" and "merge into" on SF and SO I'd be a happy man :-)
    – voretaq7
    Mar 2, 2010 at 16:32

5 Answers 5

5
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Try RT (http://bestpractical.com/rt) - sounds like it can do everything you need.

Bonus Answer: RT can authenticate against a bunch of stuff (LDAP among them). Not sure about translation though, and the coffee it makes is atrocious. :)

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  • Request Tracker is by far my favorite ticket system to date.
    – Warner
    Mar 2, 2010 at 16:34
  • Remedy is a nicer system (especially for the end-user/support folks or if you're doing helpdesk-type stuff), but it costs more than the GDP of some small nations, and RT can do everything it does with a little elbow grease
    – voretaq7
    Mar 2, 2010 at 17:01
  • +1 for RT. With a "grass is always greener" mentality, I go try other ticketing systems from time to time, but always come back to RT.
    – EEAA
    Mar 2, 2010 at 17:43
1
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We use Spiceworks which is free. (Ad supported.) It authenticates to AD, which is a bastardized LDAP, so if it's not supported out of the box, there should be a plugin, or even just instructions, for it. Users can only get access to their tickets, but you can "CC" others as needed so they can track progress. (You can force HTTPS as well.)

English is the only ootb language (besides pig latin), but checking the language pack page, I see 19 results for "Spanish", so whether it's Mexican or Columbian variants, I think you're covered there...

Spiceworks does lots more, as well. The network mapping tools is okay, still in beta and gets confused on some complicated setups, but the reporting and alerts can make life easier, once they are set up. It won't make coffee for you, but if your coffee maker is networked and supports SNMP, it can tell you when it's ready! :) I don't think it can you find a better work environment though.

1
  • +1 on Spiceworks, we use it here in the office and I really like it and it's free.
    – Hondalex
    Mar 2, 2010 at 20:18
1
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I really like osTicket:

http://osticket.com/

It functions very well, has a knowledgebase, email notifications, multi-user, and it is very easy to install.

0
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Jitbit Help Desk

http://www.jitbit.com/helpdesk.aspx

$600 one-time-fee (includes source code) ASPX SQL based Active Directory Integrated

There are some bugs based on our usage, but the software is light, simple to deploy and because it's SQL based you cabn run your own custom queries on it (we use it for department time allocation when we bill out for work)

You open tickets on behalf of users, but when making comments on tickets you can add other users as recipients, make tech only comments, publish tickets to Knowledge Base, etc.

0
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Try redmine, it's gpl and you can add "watchers" to the tickets.

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