Development/Helpdesk Ticketing System Suggestions?

Yahoo Archive
1
I pitched the Atlassian solution but our support desk people wanted a full ITIL, CMDB system. We had a conference call with Alternative yesterday and they mentioned that they used Jira for all their project management as well. It seems well used within the Epicor space.

John
2
Greetings! I've been a member here for a bit, but first-time poster.

My development team has just completed a live release of a rollup from Vantage 4 to Epicor 9.05.702a/Progress/x64. As to be expected, we're fielding a LOT of questions, problems and requests from our company, and are in need of a system to manage these to prevent doubling up on work.

I currently have Spiceworks deployed as our general helpdesk, which has been phenomenal (especially for a free product!). However, we have the need to keep our Epicor tickets separate from the general helpdesk, as that will prevent things from getting too convoluted between the two teams (IT and Epicor development).

I can do a separate installation of Spiceworks for tracking Epicor tickets and development; with some customizations it should deliver what we're looking for.Â

So here's the questions for all of you. Have any of you used Spiceworks specifically for Epicor? How has that experience worked out for you? Are there other ticketing systems out there that would be better for this purpose?

Beyond just tracking tickets and assigning them to various team members (basic helpdesk functions that most systems have), I am also looking for something that will aid in development. Like the ability to tag categories as well as specific entities. For example, a ticket might be tagged like this: Category: BAQ (or BPM, Crystal Reports, etc); Item: [BAQQueryID].

This would allow me to create reports based on category so we can see in which areas our time is being spent, as well as track changes to individual entities. Sort of like an Epicor-style SVN (I come from a web development background).

I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas on what systems you all might use for this, and/or whether doing a customized Spiceworks deployment would do the trick. I'm definitely giving preference to open source projects, but if what I'm looking for doesn't exist in the open source realm, this is also something I'd consider paying for.

Thanks all, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
-ben

----
Ben Ahlquist
Email: benahlquist@... || Google Talk: benahlquist@...

--------------------------------
A pleasing and authentic blend of email flavour.


http://twitter.com/benahlquist || http://www.facebook.com/benahlquist || http://www.linkedin.com/in/benahlquist

3

We use Spiceworks and have fields for contact, related to, summary, description, assigned to, cc users, due date, priority, category (some of those you list below), department (internal business department), estimated time, location (division of our company), Main Category (Epicor is one of several here) among a few more fields.

 

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ben Ahlquist
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 1:30 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Development/Helpdesk Ticketing System Suggestions?

 

 

Greetings! I've been a member here for a bit, but first-time poster.

 

My development team has just completed a live release of a rollup from Vantage 4 to Epicor 9.05.702a/Progress/x64. As to be expected, we're fielding a LOT of questions, problems and requests from our company, and are in need of a system to manage these to prevent doubling up on work.

 

I currently have Spiceworks deployed as our general helpdesk, which has been phenomenal (especially for a free product!). However, we have the need to keep our Epicor tickets separate from the general helpdesk, as that will prevent things from getting too convoluted between the two teams (IT and Epicor development).

 

I can do a separate installation of Spiceworks for tracking Epicor tickets and development; with some customizations it should deliver what we're looking for. 

 

So here's the questions for all of you. Have any of you used Spiceworks specifically for Epicor? How has that experience worked out for you? Are there other ticketing systems out there that would be better for this purpose?

 

Beyond just tracking tickets and assigning them to various team members (basic helpdesk functions that most systems have), I am also looking for something that will aid in development. Like the ability to tag categories as well as specific entities. For example, a ticket might be tagged like this: Category: BAQ (or BPM, Crystal Reports, etc); Item: [BAQQueryID].

 

This would allow me to create reports based on category so we can see in which areas our time is being spent, as well as track changes to individual entities. Sort of like an Epicor-style SVN (I come from a web development background).

 

I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas on what systems you all might use for this, and/or whether doing a customized Spiceworks deployment would do the trick. I'm definitely giving preference to open source projects, but if what I'm looking for doesn't exist in the open source realm, this is also something I'd consider paying for.

 

Thanks all, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

-ben


----
Ben Ahlquist
Email: benahlquist@... || Google Talk: benahlquist@...
--------------------------------
A pleasing and authentic blend of email flavour.


http://twitter.com/benahlquist || http://www.facebook.com/benahlquist || http://www.linkedin.com/in/benahlquist

4
I am experimenting with using a UD table to hold a list of the issues I need to address. This has the advantage of being easily accessible to the Epicor Users to add/review issues and I get to learn how to use UD tables as well.

Brett
5

We use a product called fogbugz from fogcreek.com.  I’m very happy with it and it can be integrated with version control systems as well.

 

Easy to try out since you can install on your server or run from their cloud.  It’s relatively inexpensive as well.

 

John A. Hatcher  CPIM

Manager of IS

Versa Products Co., Inc.

(201) 518-5948 direct

(201) 843-2400 x4148

(201) 843-2931 fax

 

6
Hello,
We use Epicor 9 Case management and have a workforce setup for Epicor related cases.  We also do support cases for our customers and have a few cusomizations for generating emails etc.  We have an Open Support Cases dashboard that every user views.  Shortly we will be deploying a more individual view of the same information.  After that we will be implementing Epicor Service Connect to monitor emails, generate Cases and respond.  I know it sounds like a lot of work considering there are other systems like Spiceworks that can do it, but there you go that is one aspect of how we are using Epicor 9 in our Business.
 
Cheers
Simon Hall
7
We are putting in BMC RemedyForce on the Salesforce system. It is $80.00 per month per technician but it is a full Helpdesk and ITIL system. We are looking to integrate that into Jira for bug tracking. I don't think this integration will happen until E10 though due to the E9 language support.

John
8
This is great! Thanks everyone for your responses! Keep them coming if anyone else has something to add; this definitely gives me a few options to look into.

Much appreciated,
-ben
9
John, 

Did you know that Atlassian/JIRA has their own help desk solution now?  I don't work for or personally use or promote the use of JIRA, but just thought since you already have JIRA, maybe there would be a synergy there.  And I think the JIRA Help Desk stuff is new enought that some people don't know about it, so thought I would mention it.