Help Desk / Trouble Ticket Recommendations

[bdominick]

Hey all you resellers/hosts/developers out there. We're looking for some cheap, reliable help-desk/trouble-ticket software so we can keep track of all our client support requests. So far, we've tried cpSupport, osTicket, eTicket, and PHP Support Tickets. It's looking like we're going to have to cough up some dough, unless someone knows a good app we've missed...

Our requirements are pretty basic -- we just want something that works smoothly and that gives us some theming capability, however rudimentary.

Thanks!
B

[bdominick]

Okay, after a LONG, exhaustive search, I'm going to answer my own question in case future archeologists stumble across this lonely thread. We settled on a support ticket system called Trellis Desk. Of all the free/low-cost PHP/Perl packages we tried (many), this was by far the best. Seriously, nothing else even approaches it, in terms of flexibility, themeability, admin power and interface, etc, etc. So I definitely recommend checking it out. The only downside is that the community support forums are down indefinitely, but the makers (Accord5) seem to still be alive and kicking, so I'm hoping the support forums come back online. I'm only having one technical problem, which is that notices of tickets submitted by email (yes, it pipes them perfectly) are not being sent along to all the appropriate staff. That's a minor issue right now, though. Everything else is smooth.

http://www.accord5.com/trellis

[jmarcv]

archeological artifact noted!

Matt is using something that is at EOL, I am using something my support staff has been training on for a year and is STILL not implemented, so this thread is bookmarked. Thanks.

[bdominick]

Actually, Trellis is really similar to the ticket system GlowHost uses (ProSupport) -- so much so that I have been wondering if they share a codebase. If not, I'm pretty sure
Trellis's front-end and function logic are ripped off of it. Includes pre-seletion of "departments" before submitting a ticket, KB integration and search. But it also has email piping and several other great features. Also the PHP source code is among the cleanest I've ever seen -- I'm not much for PHP, but even I'm having no problem making modifications.

Anyway, I suspect it might not be impossible to replace ProSupport with Trellis in due time. The back ends are likely very similar.

[Matt]

I've seen too many of these helpdesks that either do not work, or come and go. We are just going to write our own and that will solve that problem. I might be 1000 years old by the time the programmers ever get it done, but it will happen...

[bdominick]

I considered coding my own, but once I started writing a spec, I realized it was way bigger than it seemed (that happens a lot), because of all the features I would want. And it's just not worth it for our business, even if done in ColdFusion which is super fast. I'm a little nervous about Trellis's support/commitment and all, but if we have to switch someday, it won't be as big a deal as it would (will) be for you guys.

[rlhanson]

Thanks for the recommendation Brian! I appreciate you taking the time to come back and make a recommendation!

[Richard OBrian]

From my experience I can suggest you try BridgeTrak.
It works very smoothly in our environment and the price is reasonable in comparison with many other tools.
It includes all necessary features for us such as easy tickets tracking, web interface, knowledgebase, autoescalating and many more.
Hope it helps!

[HarrySy]

Hey all you resellers/hosts/developers out there. We're looking for some cheap, reliable help-desk/trouble-ticket software so we can keep track of all our client support requests. So far, we've tried cpSupport, osTicket, eTicket, and PHP Support Tickets. It's looking like we're going to have to cough up some dough, unless someone knows a good app we've missed...

Our requirements are pretty basic -- we just want something that works smoothly and that gives us some theming capability, however rudimentary.

Thanks!
B

Hi Bdominick, we’ve gone through a similar process of hopping from one option to the next. So far, we’re very happy with our last choice, FocalScope. The ticket management and processing rules are incredibly useful and really have made our communications and support processes much more efficient. By theming I presume you want to re-brand it? I know post purchase I was informed that the UI can be customized if we wanted to.

[robiri]

There are a lot of such software on the market. I was also in search for some help desk for my company and I think that these three stood out from the rest:
Zendesk.com | Customer Service Software | Support Ticket System
Orcadesk | Support ticket system | Help desk software
http://www.kayako.com/products/fusion/

We have decided to use orcadesk because it is the cheapest one and has everything we need but you will see which best meets your needs.