What’s a Good Workflow/Request Tool?
By Bob Plankers on Jun 13, 2008 in Featured, LazyWeb, System Administration
Dear readers,
You folks are full of good ideas, so here’s my latest question. I’m rethinking workflow for my group of 20+ admins, so the customers we interact with have a nice single point of contact and the admins have a good idea of what’s in the queue for work. I’m looking for tools to help us. How we’ve lived this long without something to help us is a real wonder.
The tool needs to be able to accept email and web-based requests. It would be nice if it could have some logic in it so that the customer could help direct who gets the request by choosing the OS and (perceived) priority. It should be fairly lightweight overall. I don’t want to have to slog through a ton of pages to close a ticket, or spend longer on the administrivia than the request took to complete.
There’s the venerable RT. What else is out there that’s cool, easy to use and run, and helps more than it hurts?
:-)
10 Comment(s)
By Ben on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Have you seen the Mantis bug tracking system? Natively it’s geared toward software defect tracking, but my company has turned it in to a phenomenal workflow/ticketing system. See:
http://www.mantisbt.org/
By Jon Martin on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
I have been using Spiceworks for request racking. It currently does not have the workflow you are requesting but it is low overhead, web and email enabled and free. How extensible the app is to be able to easily write workflow in I do not know but I thought i would put my two cents in. I will say that the feature requests have been taken into consideration with every new iteration. There is a 3.0 version coming out with some helpful new additions. Thanks for your blog. Enjoy reading it.
By Dan C on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
I’m quite a fan of Trac for internal ticketing and documentation. Largely because it is so lightweight and incredibly easy to use that there’s no excuse not to log all workflow.
You can bolt in ticket creation by email. However it may not be quite so client facing friendly - which causes us to begrudginly maintain a seperate, much larger, Java based ticketing system elsewhere.
By Jake on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Second vote for Trac. Currently we are trying beat RT into ITIL compliance :-(..Not fun for anyone.
By bob on Jun 16, 2008 | Reply
even though ive tried several others i still think RT is the best choice. Its not as painful as it used to be.
By josh42042 on Jun 21, 2008 | Reply
Kayako - i love it
By Brian K. Jones on Jun 23, 2008 | Reply
I’ve used RT since 2001, when it was somewhat painful. In more recent years (2005 and on) the changes in new RT versions became more dramatic. RT is much faster, even with large numbers of tickets, and the features that were always there are a little less hidden. I still think someone could rewrite RT in PHP or Python and make it a whole lot easier for others to extend, but it does the job better than anything else I’ve found.
I’ve also used Trac, and my brain just seems to refuse to wrap itself around it. I’ve seen Trac implemented in a whole lot of different ways, but it seems like it really wants to enforce its own will upon you. I just don’t find the way it handles presentation to be intuitive in the least, whether it’s for ticket tracking, milestones, tickets, or even a simple wiki. My $.02. I know thousands of others who love it, I’m just not one of them yet.
Good luck in your search.
By Greg on Jul 7, 2008 | Reply
We’ve been using Numara Trackit! for a few years. It does everything you described in the Enterprise version. Not too bad of a system if you ask me. That being said, I’ve had my fair share of technical issues with it. Mostly revolving around a flaky host OS.
By Stephen on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply
Try http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/. We use it internally for our help desk.
By Bytevic on Jul 19, 2008 | Reply
I’ve used, GLPI, is a great Ticketing System, and inventory system, the features of customize roles are simple and powerful.