Post #279,897
3/28/07 4:55:00 PM
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Anyone ever write a help desk application?
Or research what's available in the market and evaluate one for purchase?
Our customers have been complaining that we don't have a 24/7 help desk for a few years now. This morning we had a company wide meeting, during which the VP said, "we're going to get one, it'll probably be outsourced to a local big firm, and Lincoln - you're going to write it."
The go live date hasn't been set, so I have some time now to begin thinking about database tables, screen shots for data entry, etc.
Looking for any input from IWETHEY.
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
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Post #279,899
3/28/07 5:02:51 PM
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use remedy its a piece of crap but most are familiar with it
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #280,032
3/29/07 9:22:49 PM
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Big River Books Runs On It
If you want ANYTHING done - you file a trouble ticket. Your first day, you file about a dozen tickets to order your computer, phone, pager, OS installs, additions to permissions groups, etc....
I4 NOW!
Impeach, Indict, Incarcerate, Inject
Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice
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Post #279,916
3/28/07 9:05:31 PM
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Yes.
Unless you've worked with one, then don't write your own. I'm serious. I maintain and extend one as my day job that I inherited and unless you've done that you should *not* think you can write one from scratch.
There are numerous ones that run web-based that can get you started. RT is perl-based, but quite popular and not too difficult to customise. There's also SugarCRM that I've only seen. It's in PHP. Both are open-source.
We've also looked at at least two commercial offerings and very quickly found limitations. Hosted services, for example, don't like 50Gb of database to import.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
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Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
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-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. | · my ·
· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
· [link|http://yceran.org/|website] · |
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Post #279,979
3/29/07 1:35:47 PM
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I've used Track-It at my last two positions.
As Peter pointed out, it's a turd.
I've been trying to get us to migrate to RT, as it does the job as well, and in fact gives a much better overall experience than Track-It. But, we're using Track-It already, so nobody wants to move.
Even though we pay WAY too much money for it...
Odoru aho ni miru aho!
Onaji aho nara odoranya son son!
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Post #280,007
3/29/07 5:38:57 PM
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We're a pure M$ shop
because the owner wants it that way. Also, I believe that the call center currently at the top of our list is also pure M$. So I think that your suggestions will be shot down.
If you can think of any others, I'll gladly listen.
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
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Post #280,098
3/30/07 1:20:03 PM
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Re: We're a pure M$ shop
RT does have a Winders version available according to their site.
Odoru aho ni miru aho!
Onaji aho nara odoranya son son!
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Post #280,118
3/30/07 2:45:37 PM
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RT - link please?
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
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Post #280,125
3/30/07 3:53:46 PM
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Re: RT - link please?
[link|http://bestpractical.com/rt|http://bestpractical.com/rt]
Odoru aho ni miru aho!
Onaji aho nara odoranya son son!
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Post #280,455
4/3/07 11:48:29 AM
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Thank you!
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
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Post #279,921
3/28/07 11:21:02 PM
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I researched 'em but it was years back.
Remedy was in the top tier back then. They're still in business.
-----------------------------------------
Draft Clark [link|http://draftwesleyclark.com/|now].
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Post #279,933
3/29/07 3:01:46 AM
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They're all crap.
Don't bother writing one yourself - it'll just be crap that you've got to debug.
"good" in this particular software field is entirely relative. With that in mind...
[link|http://www.mantisbt.org/|Mantis] isn't bad. You could also use [link|http://www.bugzilla.org/|Bugzilla] and throw away a lot of the fields.
On the Windows side, I've used [link|http://www.numarasoftware.com/Track-It.asp|Track-IT!] and thoroughly hated it. Additional minus points for having the word "Webinar" on their product page.
We've got an in-house web-based incident-tracking thing written in Java that's pretty good. It took a very, very clever man a long time to design, write and debug it. And five years on, it's still not quite right.
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
[link|http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?pwhysall|A better terminal emulator]
[image|http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h262/pwhysall/Misc/saveus.png|0|Darwinia||]
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Post #280,023
3/29/07 8:31:22 PM
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Very important question to ask
Are they looking for something to support the help desk reps, to make them more effective? Or are they looking for something to track the help desk reps, allowing them to "manage" by metric, allowing the reps figure out for themselves how to make their numbers.
If they're looking for management reports, it really doesn't much matter what you get.
===
Kip Hawley is still an idiot.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #280,116
3/30/07 2:43:10 PM
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Re: Very important question to ask
They are looking for something that the help desk reps will use because we don't have a help desk.
From what I gather, there's not much interest in having metrics about the reps themselves; rather, we want to create metrics for whatever problems our customers have so that we can prioritize our "to do" list.
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
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Post #280,492
4/3/07 7:14:43 PM
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I worked on a help desk as well as wrote a program
for a help desk. It has been a while, but I'll see what I can recall.
We couldn't find an existing one that fit our needs. I actually wrote it in Visual BASIC and MS-Access later converted to SQL Server for a tool maker I worked for in 1994-1996. It was a good job, and I was downsized, but they gave me a good send off. The management had blown a deal with Sears and they had to downsize 10% of all employees. I was the highest paid Computer Specialist in the IT department so they picked me to cut down on costs.
Anyway you basically create a trouble ticket or whatever you use to track problems/trouble and have a knowledge base of resolved solutions that you can look through with detailed steps that show how to resolve the problem. Now the bulk of the text was a memo field, but we used keywords and Access limited us to 255 characters in the text field as memo was not searchable. I expect that modern databases got around those limitations. You need a date-time stamp for a start and end datestamp so you know how long the help desk worker was working on the problem and how long it takes to resolve.
If I can recall any more, I'll help you. I cannot believe it was that long ago.
"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."
Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
[link|http://district268.xormad.com|I am from District 268].
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Post #282,932
4/24/07 4:54:13 PM
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I get to write it
because the third party options didn't win over our VP.
One product that had a favorable review came from our contractors, who at one time looked at [link|http://www.parature.com/help-desk-software.aspx|http://www.parature.com/help-desk-software.aspx]. Sadly they shot themselves in their own foot when our VP called them and tried to get the cost - they kept ignoring his request & pushing to come in and demo it. He just about crawled through the phone to strangle the sales drone in frustration. He got so pissed off he just hung up on them without ever getting the cost number.
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
[link|mailto:golf_lover44@yahoo.com|contact me]
|
