Comments on: Help Desk Software?

By: 1024

1024 — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:35:10 +0000

Hello

I have one software site that i would like to suggest you for your problem. I think this would very helpful to you.

Knowledge management software that helps you to manage all your activity in your organization.

By: jagdish

jagdish — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 06:35:51 +0000

I think the best bet is Smarttracker : http://smartworks.us

I have used this package and it can track all the status of the reports by the enduser. A trial version is available. Just have a check…

By: jklipa

jklipa — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:32:31 +0000

Track-It! is what we use… We have it configured so that when users send email to a HELPDESK address it automatically creates a ticket and sends that ticket # to the users…

Full of features and functionality, even has a browser interface so you don’t have to load the client on each pc…

You won’t be sorry.

By: beelymagee

beelymagee — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:27:47 +0000

Has any reviewed/used any of the Open Source help desk packages out there? Mozilla Bugzilla and MySQL Eventum are both web-based (Apache, PHP, MySQL) - require a bit of set up knowledge and management, typically in a Linux environment.
Both of these are Open Source and free software.

-*-Bill

By: KawWebguy

KawWebguy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 17:31:28 +0000

My employer has tried several solutions, none of which in my personal opinion have been fully implemented or used to capacity.
We first used a home grown system first based on Notes (I was not involved at the time with desktop support) and it failed because of lack of good design for a tracking application by our helpdesk team in the workflow, database and the inventory. The other problem that existed whas that in our shop at the time Notes was an orphan product, with no champion.
Secondly, we used Track-IT from Blue Ocean, then after it was acquired by Intuit. IMHO it was excellent. It had the inventory, remote control and that sort of stuff which did work, like reporting, mostly. I was then involved in support and really liked it. I do have a few “gotchas” with Track-IT. The first was the migration from v5 to v6 was a beast (and that migration was contributory to TrackIT’s demise in our shop. Second, DO NOT LET A NON DBA TRAINED TECH SET IT UP. The Help desk manager (no longer with us…) let a purely IT certifications and BS in Physical Education guy set it up. He screwed us over by changing definitions and usages of the custom fields in the middle of the year, without rolling the old stuff out of the database, which might have worked, but definitely didn’t with it in there. Very sucky. Licensing and seat count were issues, (as often is the case with Intuit). All this then turned a potential win situation into a loser.
Now we are using Remedy, with the Web Client, and a provider for the front line calls, who escallates to local IT if they cannot resolve the problem. First, it seems that they escallate a lot, even for ordinary MS Office end user questions, not good. Second, the web client, running Java times out on a regular basis, and we have multiple T-1’s for our pipe to the net. Third, I now email all of my requests in, since it seems that our provider has folks whose first language is not American English. (This was after my request for a server share point for a new project was so mangled by the o/s telephone tech that our server guys were ROTFLTAO over the request). Fourth, the web based reporting really sucks, mostly because it Does Not Function. Lastly, there are evidently lots of hidden costs, because one of the recent mantras is “Don’t create a remedy ticket unless you need to” where before it was “Get a remedy ticket for everything we do” ….) Also, we didn’t use their inventory and remote desktop, we are still looking at various alternatives for inhouse…..
-Kawwebguy

By: ciscocat6k

ciscocat6k — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:16:01 +0000

I actually prefer LANdesk as it not only has assest control but loads of other plugins or a complete Management Suite. It is just grand for our organization. We currently control 15000 clients, 25000 users acros 60 sites with it.

Cheers,

CatMan

By: poppaman

poppaman — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:35:50 +0000

Having used Remedy, TrackIT, HEATand “home grown” software I do believe that the best most complete package I used was a home grown system based upon Lotus Notes… Great if you use Notes and have access to (or are ) a Notes DBA.

Of the commercial packages offered, my choice is probably TrackIT. I have used it both from Blue Ocean as well as after its’ acquisition by Intuit. It’s a solid product, with a short learning curve. My only hesitance here is Intuit’s tendency to restrict usage with revisions to their EULA’s: I am a bit gun shy of using any of Intuit’s products at this time. But as far as raw functionality, it’s a good product.

Remedy is also good, but realluy oriented towards a larger, enterprise type organization….

By: Pennman

Pennman — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 08:34:56 +0000

I’ve been a helpdesk manager for 12 years and have seen many problem management systems. For your size of organization I believe Track-It by InTuit to be the best way to go as has been suggested by a few others. I have been hired by two much larger organizations to come in and fix problems they were having meeting their SLAs. In each case, they were using Magic (a recently acquired BMC product). While this can be a dynamic program, it is very inflexible once you start down the wrong path with it. It is also relatively expensive (abt $3400 per seat). These two organizations had the technical skills to resolve issues but lost big time by using this dog of a program. One of the companies even had it externally hosted which added to the customization frustrations.

NShomes: I don’t think you can go wrong with Track-It for your size organization and the kinds of duties you want it to perform.

If anyone in this forum has had any success with Magic, I’d be interested in hearing about it.

By: Melenie

Melenie — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 08:24:18 +0000

We are a school district, where funding is always a problem, and we use Track-It by Intuit. For Helpdesk, Inventory and our Work Order system is on Track-It. It has a web interface that seems to work well for our customers and there are security features that we can set ourselves which are a plus. I would recommend it to others.

By: sonotsky

sonotsky — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:47:11 +0000

Remedy is usually a good choice. It offers a lot of options, depending on how much you’re willing to pay for.

McAfee Help Desk (MHD) is decent, but I don’t think it’s offered anymore.

If you ever come across a package called SupportMagic - run. It’s a system originally designed as a sales tracking system for cleaning products. Each record in the database has about 200 fields, 80% of which are either duplicates of earlier fields in the same record, or are completely unused, yet still take space.

Stay away from Tivoli Help Desk from IBM. Yes, it integrates nicely with other Tivoli software, but it is a bitch to customize, and will conk out on you at the drop of a hat.

If you have the time, resources, and budget, I suggest creating your own system. That way, you get the specific needs of your organization covered off, and you don’t have to rely on support contracts for your support tools. For a small org such as yours, you can probably get away with a simple app written in Visual Basic, that accesses a couple of Access databases. Maybe a SQL Server/Oracle/MySQL/ instance if you need a more robust system.

Good luck!