(Hopefully this is the right area to put something like this)
I just wanted to gauge how people feel about using RT in their organizations. I’ve used it in the past as an end-user (helpdesk, ticket-resolving capacity) but not on the back-end. I’d love to get opinions on RT from the back-end perspective! My current organization is considering switching to RT to handle ticketing and other various aspects of our IT & Communication (ex: Contact Us forms from our website mainly), which is why I’m looking for opinions. Thanks in advance for any opinion/guidance/thoughts y’all provide!
We came back to RT a year or so back (after having it many years ago and then having management decisions driving us to two other commercial systems that cost far more) and its been really popular. Part of the reason is that it has a clean, simple, very accessible user interface which actually works (unlike some of the flashy looking UI’s from the other systems which were often unusable or inaccessible to some user communities such as our blind users). But a bigger reason is that we’ve got access to the source so we can extend it and customise it to our hearts content. Its got to the point where “RT” is now popping up as a “solution” to issues in projects well outside of service desk ticket handling. We’ve got our change management process built into RT now, and are starting to deploy user request forms that drive workflows using custom lifecycles and scrips.
Prepare yourself for a very awkward installation phase. Learn Linux, some sort of web server (Apache), how to install a database and start learning Perl now… I had to spend more than a few solid days learning all of the above in order to get it all running, especially once the installation process ran into some errors. There are a few web pages out there with sample RT configuration files, which were very helpful. In other words, Godspeed; it’s going to be a lot of work to set up, but once it’s running, it seems rock solid with very little maintenance required.
If you’re looking for a solution that you can customize to your needs then RT is great for that. There is a learning curve for getting used to RT’s back-end and Mason/Perl. But once you’re comfortable with those you can really do anything and everything.
