Advertisment

Open Source Ticket Request System

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update

Open Source Ticket Request System (OTRS) comes with two separate Web

interfaces - Agent Interface and Customer Interface. From Agent Interface all

administrative and ticketing tasks can be performed and Customer Interface is

where customers i.e, users can raise new tickets from, check status of the

already raised tickets, etc. Other than raising tickets through the Web

interface, new tickets can also be created through email and phone (manual). It

also comes with a dashboard which gives a quick overview of help desk activities

such as, escalated tickets, new tickets, activity in last 7 days etc.

Advertisment

Additionally, OTRS provides comprehensive reports which include created and

closed tickets, SLA analysis, solution time, answer time analysis, etc.

How to use?



OTRS binaries are available for Linux as well as Windows. Here, we are going to
limit ourselves to the Windows environment. OTRS is very simple to install.

Download its binary and run the setup. During installation, it will

automatically take care of Web server and MySQL part. Unlike other open source

solutions, where you first need to setup a Web server and database and then

configure the solution. This can be good or bad depending upon the environment

you have. Once its initial setup is completed, it will launch its Web installer

where you need to provide password for the admin user -root. Leave rest of the

settings to default. Next, it will ask you to provide the FQDN of the machine on

which you are installing it and a 'Admin' email address.



Once installed, launch OTRS Agent Interface from the start menu. Next, you will
be asked to provide the admin credentials which you provided during the setup.

Once logged in, you can manage tickets, view stats and perform other ticketing

tasks.

Under Queue, you can view all tickets assigned, with its

state, priority, etc, and perform tasks such as, close, lock etc.
Under admin area of OTRS, you can manage groups, create

rules for users, create SLAs etc.

Before you put the solution to use, it's important to specify the roles of

users. You can do this from admin. Here, you can also perform other

administrative tasks such as, managing queues, responses, auto responses, etc.

You can simply create a new user by going to Users option. When creating a user,

you can also specify if the user should be notified about the tickets. Once you

create a user, it will automatically ask you about the group the user should be

added to. Under Groups, you can perform group management. By default, it comes

with three groups, admin, stats and users.

Advertisment