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.
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.