We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Any type of Solutions functionality?
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Yes, but it is a function of your customizations.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Not so much.
Any type of Solutions functionality?
Yes, RTFM (yes it is a productname).
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
The customizations are very localized and the upgrades are quite
simple. I recommend some type of regression testing to confirm
functionality, but I would recommend that for an upgrade to Remedy
or any other product. We like RT a lot and chose it over Remedy.
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 02:20:16PM -0500, James Pifer wrote:
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Yes, but it is a function of your customizations.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Not so much.
Any type of Solutions functionality?
Yes, RTFM (yes it is a productname).
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
The customizations are very localized and the upgrades are quite
simple. I recommend some type of regression testing to confirm
functionality, but I would recommend that for an upgrade to Remedy
or any other product. We like RT a lot and chose it over Remedy.
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Yes, but it is a function of your customizations.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Not so much.
Any type of Solutions functionality?
Yes, RTFM (yes it is a productname).
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
The customizations are very localized and the upgrades are quite
simple. I recommend some type of regression testing to confirm
functionality, but I would recommend that for an upgrade to Remedy
or any other product. We like RT a lot and chose it over Remedy.
Cheers,
Ken
Thanks to everyone for their answers so far. Couple more questions.
What about routing the initial request based on criteria? Any way to do
that? We won’t have a “dispatcher” that reassigns requests as they come
in, so this is a pretty important piece.
For example, currently in Remedy if a user from New York enters a
request with a category of Desktop/Hardware/Printer Problem it would get
routed to a specific group or queue, like “New York SE”. Any way to do
something similar?
I’m would also interested in importing existing Remedy data. I realize
not all the data would be applicable, but I would want to import the old
data. I’m assuming I can do that somehow. Haven’t searched for that
specifically yet.
Lastly, how scalable is RT? I guess I could find some blurbs on the site
somewhere about it as well, but just wondering how many requests others
have in their DBs. Can RT handle several hundred thousand requests in
the DB?
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Yes, but it is a function of your customizations.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Not so much.
Any type of Solutions functionality?
Yes, RTFM (yes it is a productname).
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
The customizations are very localized and the upgrades are quite
simple. I recommend some type of regression testing to confirm
functionality, but I would recommend that for an upgrade to Remedy
or any other product. We like RT a lot and chose it over Remedy.
Cheers,
Ken
Thanks to everyone for their answers so far. Couple more questions.
What about routing the initial request based on criteria? Any way to do
that? We won’t have a “dispatcher” that reassigns requests as they come
in, so this is a pretty important piece.
Yes. That can be done using RT “scrips”.
For example, currently in Remedy if a user from New York enters a
request with a category of Desktop/Hardware/Printer Problem it would get
routed to a specific group or queue, like “New York SE”. Any way to do
something similar?
I’m would also interested in importing existing Remedy data. I realize
not all the data would be applicable, but I would want to import the old
data. I’m assuming I can do that somehow. Haven’t searched for that
specifically yet.
It could be done.
Lastly, how scalable is RT? I guess I could find some blurbs on the site
somewhere about it as well, but just wondering how many requests others
have in their DBs. Can RT handle several hundred thousand requests in
the DB?
Jesse can answer this better but there are RT instances with millions
of tickets. You may need to do some tuning based on your organizations
particular usage profile.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
It’s a kludge but the way that I do notices to technicians is with an
FYI queue, whose 5 most recently updated tickets show up as small block
on the right hand side.
This way if someone has an announcement that all RT administrators need
to see, they create a ticket in the FYI queue and it shows up on
everyone’s dashboard and some people’s email.
Hi James,
we run RT in a huge environment (30.000 active Users, round about 20.000 new
tickets a day) and you can have it running fast (page load times from round
about <2s) but it is depending on your hardware setup and software tuning,
but like Todd said, ask jesse, he can support you very well.
On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 14:15 -0600, Kenneth Marshall wrote:
On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 02:20:16PM -0500, James Pifer wrote:
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m
trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take
advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is
a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much
simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during
and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These
levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are there business hours and after hours specifications? Holiday
settings?
Yes, but it is a function of your customizations.
Any type of bulletin board or global notices functionality?
Not so much.
Any type of Solutions functionality?
Yes, RTFM (yes it is a productname).
There’s certainly more, but that’s a start. Can RT do any of these
things? If it was customized to do these things, how hard would future
upgrades be?
The customizations are very localized and the upgrades are quite
simple. I recommend some type of regression testing to confirm
functionality, but I would recommend that for an upgrade to Remedy
or any other product. We like RT a lot and chose it over Remedy.
Cheers,
Ken
Thanks to everyone for their answers so far. Couple more questions.
What about routing the initial request based on criteria? Any way to do
that? We won’t have a “dispatcher” that reassigns requests as they come
in, so this is a pretty important piece.
For example, currently in Remedy if a user from New York enters a
request with a category of Desktop/Hardware/Printer Problem it would get
routed to a specific group or queue, like “New York SE”. Any way to do
something similar?
I’m would also interested in importing existing Remedy data. I realize
not all the data would be applicable, but I would want to import the old
data. I’m assuming I can do that somehow. Haven’t searched for that
specifically yet.
Lastly, how scalable is RT? I guess I could find some blurbs on the site
somewhere about it as well, but just wondering how many requests others
have in their DBs. Can RT handle several hundred thousand requests in
the DB?
Just out of curiosity, may I ask what kind of hardware setup that might be?
You seem to be running a hugh instance and still have descent page loads. We
are experiencing slow performance in our environment although we have a
fairly fast db-server and rt-server.
Hi James,
we run RT in a huge environment (30.000 active Users, round about 20.000 new
tickets a day) and you can have it running fast (page load times from round
about <2s) but it is depending on your hardware setup and software tuning, but
like Todd said, ask jesse, he can support you very well.
Torsten
This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Microsoft Exchange.
For more information, connect to http://www.f-secure.com/
Hi Johan,
in our case it is a IBM pSeries p595 with 16 (quad core) CPU’s for the DB
and 96GB RAM at this moment and 4 Webserver Intel based with 4 CPU’s and 4
GB RAM.
The load times <2sec means a overall (measured with Cacti) for most common
activities. More in detail:
Login 5-10sec (depending on amount of queues and loaded “Modules” at the
RT At A Glance page
Open a queue view from Quicksearch <0,5sec
Open a “normal” ticket <1sec
PS: and there is also enough space for optimizations (old MySQL Release,
older RT Release) so i’m looking forward to speed it up more.
Just out of curiosity, may I ask what kind of hardware setup that might
be? You seem to be running a hugh instance and still have descent page
loads. We are experiencing slow performance in our environment although we
have a fairly fast db-server and rt-server.
Hi James,
we run RT in a huge environment (30.000 active Users, round about 20.000new tickets a day) and you can have it running fast (page load times from
round about <2s) but it is depending on your hardware setup and software
tuning, but like Todd said, ask jesse, he can support you very well.
Torsten
###########################################
This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Microsoft
Exchange.
For more information, connect to http://www.f-secure.com/
We currently use Remedy and it’s in need of an upgrade.If you know
anything about Remedy you know that can be extremely costly. I’m trying
to look at other Helpdesk products to see if something else could fit
instead of staying with Remedy.
Our helpdesk is somewhat customized, but we really don’t take advantage
of what Remedy has to offer. We use it for tracking tickets/incidents.
I have RT installed on a test server and configured for LDAP which is a
requirement.
We currently create and route tickets based on a three level category
and the user’s Location. My initial look at RT shows it as much simpler
than that. Basically writing an email and submitting. I assume someone
else is then responsible for routing the incoming tickets accordingly?
Other things we do:
Escalations? We have tickets with four different severity levels,
like Critical, High, Medium, and Low. Depending on the severity level
AND which group the ticket is assigned to, if nothing happens on a
ticket within a certain amount of time, an escalation
notification(email) is sent. Each group has three levels for during and
after business hours, plus three more global higher levels. These levels
are set for each group.
Yes, this is configurable. Check the wiki for information.
Are you referring to EscalatePriority and the other examples on that
page? I assume because that’s the only escalate I see. I guess I view
an escalation a bit differently. Our view of escalation is more of a
notification to the next person in line or within the group/queue.
For example, a request comes in that is Critical. If nothing happens to
that ticket within 30 minutes and escalation (or notification email) is
sent to the appropriate person, and the request is marked as Escalated.
This would happen over and over until the highest level of escalation is
reached.
I guess just about anything is possible depending on the customization I
want to do, right? Looks like what I want do to will require a
significant about of custom fields, etc. Plus running rt-crontool pretty
often.
I’ll step back and look at how requests get entered. I’ll need them to
get them entered with more specific details (like categories) before I
can even think about escalations anyway.