I am doing some research for my company for a new ticketing system.

We are a global company with more than 100,000 employees. Our ticketing system will be used for only a few online tools however, with a very select group of users (lets say 100 people).

In your opinions, what are the best ticketing systems out there in terms of ease of use, setup, and flexibility? It would be nice to have both a "user portal" for users to submit tickets, as well as have it accept tickets via email.

We want the best/most reliable software out there. Cost really isnt too much of a concern.

Just looking to compile a list of possible applications for us to research further so we can evaluate based on our needs.

Thanks!

[Edited on March 22, 2012 at 9:49 AM. Reason : .]

3/22/2012 9:45:50 AM

This thread is relevant to my interests. Do you already use Spiceworks? I'm in the process of checking out the ticketing feature of their suite.

3/22/2012 9:48:18 AM

To be honest, I dont know what we use currently company-wide.

This is going to be used for a few "one-off" projects only.

I saw Spiceworks, and then saw it was free. If that is the best option, we may go with it, but honestly I'm afraid that our managers here will think it is "garbage" since it's free and will want to go with something else. But i'm interested to hear opinions on Spiceworks as well. If it's the best package for the job, then I may be able to sell them on it.

3/22/2012 9:51:47 AM

Spiceworks is fucking awesome. Don't let their business model fool you. I think they make money based on referrals. There are so many tools and the ticketing system is just one of them. I don't know if they accept donations or if they make bank from all the IT guys that ultimately end up using them as referrals for when they sign up with Google Apps and other services that play well with the software.

The community is great too. I wouldn't doubt it if there were multiple forum posts that compared the ticketing systems.

3/22/2012 9:58:16 AM

Yeah, I'm reading through forum posts at this very moment.

It definitely looks promising.


Right now I'm looking at:

Spiceworks
Autotask
Kaseya


[Edited on March 22, 2012 at 10:16 AM. Reason : .]

3/22/2012 10:00:21 AM

I've used spiceworks before with good results.

3/22/2012 10:18:23 AM

I don't do helpdesk, but I can honestly say stay away from Remedy. It's a horrible product that makes me and others that have to use it want to stab our eyes out. It does have a user portal, but it lacks any real features and looks horrible.

We use Salesforce.com, but if only 100 people are going to be using this then it might be overkill. We have a very, very customized instance, so I'm not sure if you can open tickets through email by default. I'm not sure if you can have a separate user portal without doing some customization.

If you're interested in FOSS we also use Request Tracker (http://bestpractical.com/rt/) and Issue-Tracker (http://issue-tracker.sourceforge.net/) internally for non-helpdesk stuff.

3/22/2012 11:16:26 AM

I would recommend looking at

Kayako (linux/php based) - has a pretty good addon for live chat too
zendesk (hosted saas)

I think most concerns when looking for a ticketing system are related to integrating it with other systems like billing, CRM, etc. If you don't need that, and just want a standalond system, then your selection should be a lot easier.

3/22/2012 1:21:16 PM

^^

SFDC has it all if you can afford it.

3/22/2012 1:38:46 PM

It does way more than just Helpdesk, so that may be a turnoff, but I love our Dell KACE appliance. I stood up Spiceworks for comparison but I didn't like it as much.

3/23/2012 11:59:22 AM

+1 for Salesforce. My company is around ~150 employees and it's great.

3/23/2012 12:40:28 PM

If this is IT ticketing, then http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/service-manager.aspx is worth a look.

3/23/2012 7:42:31 PM

custom php ticket system written for your company...would be ideal...


i use remedy everyday and i too, want to stab my eyes out.

3/23/2012 9:50:31 PM

we use zendesk and i love it

3/25/2012 7:40:13 AM

Cisco TAC just migrated to SFDC globally from an Oracle 11i based system. Millions of tickets per year, so we'll see how it goes.

We have remedy for internal support. as a user, I want to stab myself every time I need to open a ticket. it's probably intentional to discourage people from opening tickets.

3/25/2012 8:36:18 AM

kayako is what I use for my stuff....

BOSS

3/25/2012 11:56:27 AM

Two comments:
1) Define your requirements well, short-term, mid-term, and long-term. "Cost really isnt too much of a concern", until you ask several executives for their support and millions in funding on a project, and/or, they ask you to scale up and it costs a heck of a lot more to scale it than the initial pilot. I'm exaggerating here, but build a business case where costs are justifiable and flow from requirements.

2) Software alone will not guarantee uptime. Plan for triple or quadruple hardware redundancy and 24*7 support of the ticketing system.




The ticketing system I work with has been around 40+ years. The APIs into it are a bit archaic, but the core functionality is there and we are able to code a lot of useful functionality around it as a result (search archive, restore a 5+ year-old ticket from backup with a code fix in it, bridge your ticketing system to your code repository so engineers can create new code fixes seamlessly, centralized / shared emails that auto record all emails sent to it, etc.).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RETAIN

[Edited on March 30, 2012 at 7:05 AM. Reason : .]

3/30/2012 7:00:26 AM

oh dag it's Perlith

3/30/2012 10:50:05 AM