Does anyone know where I can get a good ticket based support system at?

http://www.perldesk.com/ ;)

Perldesk would be the boy!

Cheers,

DeskPro (http://www.deskpro.com) :)

Perldesk is a resource hog IMHO.

Try ticketsmith:
www.voxel.net/projects/ticketsmith

Hope this helps,
Jason

http://www.phpsupportdesk.com

Cheers

Gary

I second that, Gary. The phpsupportdesk is one hell of a piece of software.

http://phpsupportdesk.com

Thanks everyone for your replies, I will look these over, and hopefully purchase one here very soon.

Has anybody tried out eSupport from Kayako (http://www.kayako.com). We've been very tempted to purchase it all along but would like to hear some feedback from users first before deciding :)

If email ticket submission is important to you (it was to us), you might want to check out "Footprints" by Unipress:

http://www.unipress.com

Originally posted by JamesUS
DeskPro (http://www.deskpro.com) :) 2nd deskpro.. using it myself as well :)

PerlDesk now looking at DeskPro

Originally posted by ck
Has anybody tried out eSupport from Kayako (http://www.kayako.com). We've been very tempted to purchase it all along but would like to hear some feedback from users first before deciding :)

I have given eSupport a try and it was dissapointing. The major problem was that the different types of e-mail encoding(e.g. html e-mails) would not be displayed very well in eSupport.

Also, we relied almost entirely on customers using their e-mail client (e.g. MS Outlook or AOL, etc) to contact us as opposed to the web form. For some reason eSupport was assigning a new tracking number to each reply that we received from a customer so there were a bunch of different tickets open for one e-mail conversation. This made is VERY difficult to track an issue. There has been an update to the software but I haven't had time to reinstall and reconfigure. Hopefully these problem were fixed.

Originally posted by rbro
If email ticket submission is important to you (it was to us), you might want to check out "Footprints" by Unipress:

http://www.unipress.com

Hi,

e-mail ticket submission is the most important feature for us and we are again looking for a good ticket support application. We have tried eSupport and were dissapointed.

Since e-mail integration is our most important criteria FootPrints by Unipress is looking better all the time. However, it is expensive at $2,500+ for what we need.

I am considering perldesk or DeskPRO but I don't think that either is capable of handling e-mail ticket submissions like the Unipress product. We have also talked with the sales guy for HEAT at frontrange.com but that was a $10,000 solution.

rbro, what product did you finally settle on and how is it working?

I had a look at the unipress site but could not work out what features they had regarding email ticket submission. Is it a feature in particular more than just having tickets started when you send an email to support@deskpro.com (a feature both deskpro and perldesk, although I believe that you have more control over the created ticket with deskpro than perldesk).

jayjay

First I've heard of Ticketsmith (thanks for the tip) and it looks impressive. Any comments you'd like to make on your experience with or how it compares to any other Support systems?

Originally posted by BMM

rbro, what product did you finally settle on and how is it working?

Well we've been using Footprints for quites some time now, but after reading this thread, I'm starting to look at DeskPro. That seems pretty nice, pretty configurable and offers email ticket submissions as well. Footprints is pretty nice, but very expensive and they're now hitting us up for another annual support/maintenance fee which is twice the cost of the one time licensing fee of deskpro! I'd like to hear more about Desk Pro actually. I'd be happy to answer any Footprints questions you may have.

Originally posted by padders
I had a look at the unipress site but could not work out what features they had regarding email ticket submission. Is it a feature in particular more than just having tickets started when you send an email to support@deskpro.com (a feature both deskpro and perldesk, although I believe that you have more control over the created ticket with deskpro than perldesk).

I believe you can open and close tickets. I think there's also functionality for techs to close tickets via email. It gets pretty pricey though... They charge per tech as well as annual support/maintenance fees etc.

Hey Padders,
One problem we had with Footprints is spam. Occasionally we'll get some spam sent to our support email address. Footprints then sends it's autoresponder message and creates a support ticket. ALot of the time the autoresponder bounces back or creates an infinite loop with some other spam autoresponder and the next thing we know, we have 5000 bogus support tickets clogging up the system. Does Deskpro have anything in place to prevent something like this?

Yes. There are a number of levels of autoresponder protection. The first is that there are maximum numbers of replies per minute that are possible. That means that if you get sent an email, which you generate an autoresponse for and the person then generates an autoresponse for which goes back to DeskPRO which generates an autoresponse (the reply is seen as a reply to a ticket) well this can only happen a number of times. There is a set number of replies per minute that can happen (of course you can change the vales). Also once this happens that email is set as an autoresponder an automatic emails will not be sent again. There is the same type of protection for new tickets as well and also error emails, for example if someone sends an email without a message then an error email is sent. Email errors are logged as well to prevent this type of autoresponse problem.

We are always looking to improve this and over the next month are going to introduce another level which will compare the subject and message instead of just using frequency. If the same message gets sent 3 times in 5 minutes it is quite likely there is something wrong so flags will be raised. These are the sort of things we are looking at adding shortly.

Originally posted by eva2000
2nd deskpro.. using it myself as well :)

me3 :)

Does anyone have any experience with email Manager by ifModules? I went through a demo today and was quite impressed. Here is the link their site:


http://www.ifmodules.com/main.php

BMM,
Please refer to the following points:

1) eSupport features ability to either strip, display or parse the HTML tags, you can choose either one to suit your needs. (Settings > General)

2) The new version includes double ticket tracking which sends ticket id's in both subjects and body of emails thus improving the end result.

You are requested to contact us directly whenever you experience ANY kind of problem and we would be glad to assist you out.

Regards,

Varun Shoor

Originally posted by BMM


I have given eSupport a try and it was dissapointing. The major problem was that the different types of e-mail encoding(e.g. html e-mails) would not be displayed very well in eSupport.

Also, we relied almost entirely on customers using their e-mail client (e.g. MS Outlook or AOL, etc) to contact us as opposed to the web form. For some reason eSupport was assigning a new tracking number to each reply that we received from a customer so there were a bunch of different tickets open for one e-mail conversation. This made is VERY difficult to track an issue. There has been an update to the software but I haven't had time to reinstall and reconfigure. Hopefully these problem were fixed.

We have been using eSupport for little over 6 months, and its the best (and i emphasis this, cause ive tried almost all of them). Others comes no-way near what eSupport has to offer and Varun (coder) is also very helpful, and always open to comments and additional features which makes it even better.

All i have to say is if you want a good/stable product, dont miss this one. Also there is a new version releasing soon (2 weeks) added with even more features.

The text/normal email from eSupport is perfect and the html version is almost perfect (alot better than the others), but this can never be made 100% cause of the way different email clients add html code to the emails i.e. outlook.

Keep up the hard work :D and all them improvments and added features comming.

my 2 cents!
Shazad.

Hmmm esupport looks interesting too. I'd be interested in a blow by blow comparison of esupport and deskpro, if anyone is familiar with both. Deskpro costs more than twice as much I believe. Is it worth it?

Being in business for a while, we have tried quite a few of the helpdesk products available. Wonderdesk, PHP Support Desk, Perldesk, etc, etc. They are all decent products--don't get me wrong, but we have only come across one program that actually fit our needs: Request Tracker.

I'm not sure if it's complexity of the installation, the fact that it requires mod_perl to be installed or what, but I am extremely surprised that more people aren't using this software. Being a perl programmer myself, I can say with confidence that it is one of the best coded programs I have ever seen. Everything is object oriented, the webUI is done with an advanced HTML template system, and everything about the program can be configured to meet any company's needs. Albeit, it takes a little while to get it setup, but IMHO, it's well worth the effort. The web interface is clean, easy to use, powerful, and fast. But the best part about this program is the email tracking. It is, essentially, an email based system. In theory, everything could be managed via email--there is no need for the web interface at all. It may sound a little odd at first, but once you get familiar with the program's infrastructure, it will make more sense. It can manage multiple email addresses, multiple staff members (each being assigned to specific email addresses/queues) and so much more.

You can get it free (yes, that's right, the best software is always free) at the following URL:
http://www.fsck.com/projects/rt/

Please let me know what you think.

Speaking of which, is mod_perl hard to install and can it be installed for one account of say a multi account/partitoned Server?

I totally recommend PerlDesk. It is a nice system and it rocks. I think you should give it a try :).

Originally posted by TimPD
I totally recommend PerlDesk. It is a nice system and it rocks. I think you should give it a try :). My personal experience with Perl desk is that it is not yet ready for real production use. We actually switched our entire support system over to perldesk for a couple of weeks. The price was certainly right, but unfortunately our support staff didn't like it one bit.

Not that perldesk isn't a good concept--in fact it has a great looking interface (that's one of the reasons that we switched). But the code did not seem mature enough for our needs. I was constantly finding and fixing bugs in the program. I would send them to the developer and he was always pretty good about putting out a new release ASAP, but honestly I have better things to be doing than troubleshooting someone else's code (like posting on WHT, for example ;)). I remember when we first installed it, one of the SQL sub-calls was overwriting a preceding database handle and wiping out the whole routine. It was an easy enough problem to fix, and the developer implemented my change right away, but that should have been my first clue that maybe this program isn't really ready for a serious production environment. I'm not knocking the open source development process either--contributions from users is what drives the open source software community, but there are simply some instances where you would rather be using something that has been around for a while longer.

At any rate, for a small operation that doesn't get many tickets, I'm sure it will work fine. But when you're getting a large number of support requests, multiple categories/queues, and have more than a couple people working at one time, it did not appear to hold up as well as some of the other solutions available (Request Tracker, for example).

Albeit, it has been a couple months since we used Perldesk, but at the time, my professional opinion was that the internal database structure (which really didn't utilize the relational aspect of the database system at all) and the stability of the code left a bit to be desired. I'm sure it will come into it's prime soon enough (maybe it already has), but I figured I would at least share my experiences with the program, and let everyone know why we're not using it now.

Hope that helps someone somewhere. :)

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
(yes, that's right, the best software is always free)

But the best support isn't. Basic RT support is $6K per year and you're only allowed 16 support requests. Yikes!

Additionally, RT still has a sizeable bug list/wish list considering it's a narrowly-focused app and it's been around almost six years.

I'm sure it's a fine script, however.

<EDIT>

RT guys are smokin' the good stuff, that's for sure. Their Platinum Support is $120,000/year but you can only contact them between 8am-6pm. The upside is -- for those who have more dollars than brain cells -- you get 64 requests per quarter and an engineer on-site for one week. Nice work if you can get it. ;)

</EDIT>

Originally posted by alchiba


But the best support isn't. Basic RT support is $6K per year and you're only allowed 16 support requests. Yikes!

Additionally, RT still has a sizeable bug list/wish list considering it's a narrowly-focused app and it's been around almost six years.

I'm sure it's a fine script, however.

<EDIT>

RT guys are smokin' the good stuff, that's for sure. Their Platinum Support is $120,000/year but you can only contact them between 8am-6pm. The upside is -- for those who have more dollars than brain cells -- you get 64 requests per quarter and an engineer on-site for one week. Nice work if you can get it. ;)

</EDIT> Quite right. Fortunately anyone with some Perl skills will be quite capable of troubleshooting and modifying th program to fit their needs. We have made several customizations to the program, and have never run into an instance where we needed support.

As far as bugs go... I think it's about as stable as you can expect from a free program. It's code base is actually pretty complex (not so complex that it can't be understood--but it's an intricate program), and as such, bug reports are to be expected. We have yet to run into a bug in a stable release that has actually affected us. That's just our experience.

Think about it like this... how much do you think Linus or Alan Cox would charge to come work on-site with your linux admins? :) They give the software away free, and they will be more than happy to fix any bugs, but when it comes to using and implementing it, you're pretty much on your own.

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
Think about it like this... how much do you think Linus or Alan Cox would charge to come work on-site with your linux admins?

I don't care if they brought Bill Gates with them and they all stood on their heads and spit nickels. It's just a ticketing script, for crying out loud.

Anyway, I don't begrudge them their fees (just laugh at them). A thing is worth what a fool wants to pay.

Agreed. Paying for support is pretty much out of the question unless you have a money tree growing out back. :D

But considering the code is very clean and organized, you could hire a Perl programmer to make any changes you need. And actually, we've found that the people on the mailing list are always willing to help (including the developer, Jesse).

In my opinion, it's definitely a viable solution for any company with a bit of technical know-how.

Originally posted by Nicholas Brown


me3 :)

Me 4

Hooper!