Outlook 2007 as a mini help desk ticket tool

[adam30k]

We run Microsoft Outlook 2007 in a college environment. We have a lab in one of our campuses that provides a variety of support like academic advisement, technical support and problems with our online learning website. The support is informal, whomever is covering the computer lab responds to phone calls and emails from students.

We have a distribution list setup in Exchange the five or six people who work in the lab can receive and respond to emails being sent to one email address, the recipient sees the lab's email address in the From field, and we all have a shared inbox. ([email protected]) What I'd like to hear is the best way to use Outlook to organize incoming emails, know who responds to them and keep some sort of daily log to communicate with other people who work in the lab. I've looked at marking emails as complete or assigning tasks to them and also color coding emails. I was wondering if anyone has used the Exchange journal. I'm trying to play around with it, Microsoft stuff can be powerful but a little tricky to get started.

I thought I'd ask if someone's done something similar on Outlook. It kind of sounds like we should use a ticketing program but if we could do it in Outlook, which I just need to lay out a workflow, then it'd be simple and easy for everyone. I'm not the IT admin but we can get in touch with them if we need to.

 

[gimp]

create sub-folders with each persons name.
if that person deals with the email, they put it in their folder.
maybe make another sub-folder under each "personal" folder called "sent" where they copy their reply to?

our helpdesk uses this process, sans the "sent" folder.

I would be no help on the journal part; never used that.

 

[k1pp3r]

I would just advise you get an open source alternative like spiceworks, it will give you the workflows you need out of the box

 

[adam30k]

I would just advise you get an open source alternative like spiceworks, it will give you the workflows you need out of the box

True but we're not IT.. everyone uses Outlook and all our messages are coming in through Outlook. It will work we just need to best way to set everything up. Thanks for the tips.

I actually use Spicworks on my home lab and posted this on their discussion boards. Got some more good feedback from everyone. Thanks again.