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Best help desk ticketing system?

J

J32P

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Messages
1,881
I work for a university. We're going to be upgrading our help desk ticketing system to something that's supposed to be better then our current Uni-center Service Desk ticketing system. I'm just personally wondering if anyone here has any experience with numerous ticketing systems and know what the current top(say top three) choices are?

We've pinpointed two possible candidates, I will not mention them at this time though. I'm really just looking for new input from anyone with a long history or using various help desk ticketing systems(that can shed some light on this for me). What route should we take?

Note: This is personal research to educate myself on the topic.

Thank you
 
Glad your getting rid of Unicenter, its the biggest POS i ever used.

I have used Heat which i really liked, remedy, which was ok.

I'm using Connectwise PSA right now, but its more of a CRM than just a ticketing system.
 
We use Numara Footprints. Personally, I'm a fan because it's fairly customizable and it has a decent reporting feature. It's also browser based and has some nice options for setting up a portal for your users.
 
I've worked with kayako esupport for about 4 years and cerberus helpdesk for about 4 years (all web hosting related) I prefer Cerberus but it can get really really bogged down unless your running it on pretty beefy hardware.

we recently switched to a custom built system that smokes em both
 
we use HEAT. It works well.

only other ticketing I used was with my previous job, and was all homebrew web-based scripted in PERL.
 
We use ZenDesk here. Great support from the company and they can work with you to produce custom scripts.
 
Now that I have some replies to the thread topic(thanks). I will mention who the two candidates are.


It's between

Jira(which=bug and issue tracker, but someone wants it)

and

RT: Request Tracker(seems nice so far)

I'm first, trying to make sure at least one of these are the best possible route available.
I'm secondly, trying to find out what's wrong with them, if they're not the best choices currently available, what is?
And third, I'm just making sure our IT staff doesn't take a wrong turn somewhere. As well as maybe helping my boss pick a better one(If there is one).



Our IT staff is already being threatened with extinction if we don't show people(The Big Heads) we're worth keeping(they want the IT staff to be made of only students
= different topic though). We need new stuff(remote access, great ticketing system, and to push the best tech into the universities users laps) and we can't make any big mistakes doing it.

Just helping me pinpoint the Ticketing System will be greatly appreciated.
Note: This is a university, so it's big.
 
I use Numera Track-IT it's got a billion features and help desk is just one of them. It's slow at accessing database stuff but it keeps good track of our inventory.
 
I have used several of the mentioned programs and HEAT is a good choice and also made by the same company is ITSM which is a little more robust but also more of a pain in the ass. TRACK-IT is a great program it does ticketing and asset tracking among other things. I love it
 
Just make sure whatever you goes with works well with a big installation, currently using rememdy here and it gets hammered daily, a good 1000+ tickets a day and it runs pretty well.
 
Do not use Maximizer, Wyndia, or ServiceDesk Plus.

Using Kayako currently and it works decently. We are going to be switching in Q3 '10 it looks like.
 
If you're looking for an overall management system with ticketing, I would suggest Landesk. It does inventory, patching, remote access and has a service desk module. Personally, my company just uses it for patching, imaging, inventory and remote access and I love it.
 
I'm not sure the difference between Numara FootPrints and Numara Track-It.

Anyone have a simple answer?
 
Also, does anyone have any input on using Jira(bug and issue tracker) for a full fledged ticketing system?
 
Our company uses the OneorZero Helpdesk ticketing system its really customizable to your type of environment. Ours I do believe is completely customized to how we wanted to run things here and it differs from our corporates ticketing system plus is pretty user friendly but I want to say it is mostly a web based ticketing system not positive on it though as it was setup before i started working here and havent gotten much of a chance to see how it was fully setup yet.
 
I've worked with a number of difference systems including Onxy CRM and Remedy. Right now my organization uses HEAT which does a pretty decent job but is quite limited when you want to add on functionality such as Change Management, Problem Management and Asset Tracking.
 
Quite suprised to see so many HEAT users here. We just finished a huge migration from HEAT to NetSuite. Personally I'm not a fan of it, but it does work well.

Out of all that I've used, I still prefer Peregrine Service Center. Change management, ticket tracking and assest management all in one.
 
J32P said:
Also, does anyone have any input on using Jira(bug and issue tracker) for a full fledged ticketing system?
Click to expand...

I use atlassian jira as an issue tracking system. I manage the IT dept of a software development company with a large hosting infrastructure, so we have a ton of spill over. it works well enough for issue tracking, not only bug traffic, but I find that reporting is a bit unwieldy.

We set up different projects as queues (helpdesk, project related issues, etc, etc) and it seems to work well.

I can answer any specific questions you may have if you'd like, but I sort of don't know where to start...
 
tuanster1119 said:
We use Numara Footprints. Personally, I'm a fan because it's fairly customizable and it has a decent reporting feature. It's also browser based and has some nice options for setting up a portal for your users.
Click to expand...
That's what I used at my last job. Loved it.
 
tuanster1119 said:
Footprints is browser based, and Track-It has a client and web version.
Click to expand...


Sorry if this sounds dumb but I just want to make sure I understand the difference. Browser based means you access the application using a browser(sounds right). The other(client I guess) means it's an actual application that's run off each machine that uses that application and it's synced to a database, is that right?

I'm just trying to fully get the difference since the only one I'm familiar with is Unicenter Service Desk and it seems browser based, correct?

I know, sorry.
 
Has anyone ever heard of these being reviewed? Like say, heat sinks are reviewed.
 
After looking at a dozen options, (OTRS, Jira, etc) I chose Request Tracker because it's free, and stupid easy for users --- (just send an email!).

I'm a one man IT show at a 40 person company so my workflow is pretty simple... I prioritize items when I get requests, and when I'm done working on something I close the request with a message saying it's been fixed.

I imagine RT being perfect for a helpdesk of up to 10 people... more than that and you may want to be able to write Perl scripts to manage the workflow.
 
when i was working for a big helpdesk....about 4 years ago..i was using remedy...and also have used heat before that..check em out i think they are expensive..but for a big deployment..it shouldn't be too bad
 
J32P said:
Has anyone ever heard of these being reviewed? Like say, heat sinks are reviewed.
Click to expand...

Not really... I know Numara offers trial versions of TrackIt and Footprints. You'll probably have to contact the vendors and do some footwork to try out a few systems and see how you like it. I wish there was an easier way, but how effective a ticketing system is really depends on the environment. Some people love heat, but I hated it. Maybe it was just horribly setup when I used it. Vice versa, I love Footprints but I've heard people say they hate it. You just have to try them out and see which one you like. If you contact the sales departments for each vendor I'm sure they can have someone come in and demo the product for you.
 
Do any of these ticketing systems come with built-in IM(For clients to initiate)?

We're trying to make IM primary and phone support secondary.
 
Footprints has a built in IM option. It won't let you take the IM information and transfer it into a ticket directly though. You'll have to copy and paste. I'm not too sure if any of the other products let you easily transfer IM conversations into a ticket.
 
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