The only problem that I see with email is while it's easy for users to send an email often issues sent via email are more difficult to track so the IT support/helpdesk people end up creating separate tickets for the issues anyways which is kind of redundant. I'm more a fan of having users fill out a simple web-based form and then having the support technicians refine/edit the ticket and add any additional info (internal priority versus user priority, clearer and more technical description of the problem etc).
Perhaps one area where email could be used is in sending out status updates to the user for an open issue. Such a email notification system could also be used to send email alerts to technicians (i.e. "you have a new ticket assigned to you") or to managers (i.e. a new ticket with a critical priority has been submitted).
I would prefer that these email alerts supplement the ability for the user to view the status of their open tickets in Open Audit (as Mark mentions). This would probably involve some form of authentication so maybe we could use the existing LDAP support somehow....perhaps with an additional table in the database specifying which role certain LDAP users have (i.e. everyone is assumed to be a standard user unless their account is listed in this table as a technician, manager, administrator etc).
This way everyone who is logged in would have their own "dashboard" view depending on their role. For users it might be a list of their current open tickets and the status of them. For technicians it would be a list of all open tickets that are assigned to them (and optionally below that on the same page in a separate table a list of all open tickets (we might want to have scroll bars for these lists) ). For a Manager it might be similar to the Technician's view with a list of tickets assigned to them (stuff that has been escalated usually), a separate list of open tickets, and then a third list of 'Critical' items such as tickets that have been open for a long time, ones that have a critical priority, or unassigned tickets that need to be assigned.
Currently I have a search feature that allows me to list tickets created within a certain period of time (a drop down field with: last day, week, month, year options) or a date range (i.e. between Jan 1, 2008 and June 29, 2008) as well as by status (all tickets including closed ones or only open tickets)
Reporting functionality for an Admin user / manager would also be useful. Perhaps we could have some general stats (average ticket completion time for the last month for example) as well as some pre-canned reports or charts ( like a pie chart of ticket volume by category and subcategory). I think that the best way to do this would be with a series of drop-down fields similar to the Ad-Hoc queries page in Winventory. This is kind of a nice-to-have feature though and could be implemented later after the main ticketing system features are in place.
As an example some of the categories I've got in my existing system (which is basically just an extension of what Mark started for Winventory) include:
Main Category -> Subcategory PC Hardware -> Install Component, Replace Component, Repair, Deploy, Upgrade, Move, Purchase Network hardware -> Install, Repair, Upgrade, Move, Connectivity Issue Misc Hardware -> Install, Repair, Upgrade, Move Software -> Install, Repair, Patch, Upgrade, Researching Solution Printer -> Install, Repair, Paper Jam, Replace Cartridge Phone -> Install, Repair, Move, Connectivity Issue Virus/Spyware -> Infected, Removed/Deleted, Researching Solution
What I currently do is display the Categories in one drop-down field and then depending on what category is selected a second drop-down field is populated with the appropriate subcategories for that Category. Third and possibly forth drop-down fields are populated based on the Categories and Subcategories selected. For example if the Software category is selected the third drop-down field contains a list of Software from the Software table (With an "Other" option in the drop-down list that is provided just in case that particular software isn't listed in the Software table) and the forth drop-down field contains a list of PC names from Open Audit so we can tell which machine it applies to. If the Printers category is selected a list of printers appears in the third drop down menu. If the Misc Hardware Category is selected a list of devices from the "other" table appears in the third drop down menu
In this way it is easy for people to quickly categorize issues with a minimum of typing. Since in many cases they are selecting from existing information that is already in the database this cuts down on the amount of form validation that is needed. The categories and subcategories are also useful for getting statistics later.
In my system the user's name is automatically entered into the ticket based on their LDAP login but can later be edited with a drop-down list of ldap users. There is an "Assigned To" drop down field with a list of technicians and managers. The status field is also a drop-down list with the following options: New, Assigned, Escalated, Awaiting more info, Closed/Completed.
I have a history feature that lists all of the actions performed for that ticket (i.e. if the ticket was edited and who it was edit by, if the status was changed, if the priority was changed, if the person assigned to the ticket was changed etc) along with the date and time for each event. There is also a log of comments for the ticket so in addition to the description more details or updates on the issues can be added later (I suppose that this could also be done by just editing the long description field). (Please see the attached screenshot for an example).
I've just done a new setup of Open Audit so my existing ticketing system is somewhat broken at the moment. I'll see if I can get it working again so I can post some more screenshots of it.
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