Help me rebuild my office helpdesk/workflow setup.

October 14, 2009 11:09 AM

TechFilter: I'm part of a medium-sized IT support company and we're looking at some new helpdesk/workflow management software. What advice can you give on your setup or software you are currently working with?

I am currently looking at Heat from FrontRange Solutions, but it looks like it will take some time to setup. Here's some features that I am looking foward to:

• Workflow Management
• Call Logging/Tracking (most likely part of Workflow Management)
• Workflow Reporting
• Asset Management (to include hardware, software, Blackberries...etc)
• Knowledge Base

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated!!!

posted by de1mar to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Have you tried Spiceworks? We use it here and it rocks. Has everything that yo uare looking for. The free version has ads but the paid version does not.

Since its free you can download it to a server or any desktop machine and try it out.
posted by majortom1981 at 11:22 AM on October 14

I'll second Spiceworks if you're an exclusively Windows shop. Very robust and stupid easy to setup compared to something like Nagios. Have used the free version (the ads are very unobstrusive) with great success to monitor over 200 machines.
posted by word_virus at 11:42 AM on October 14

We use GWI c.Support. It ticks all your boxes and we're happy with it. Setup was easy.
posted by IanMorr at 12:09 PM on October 14

Our help desk (internal, 6 peope, in a law firm) uses TrackIt! and seems to like it.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:26 PM on October 14

If you're a Windows shop and you have the resources (budget, time, skills) to do it, Microsoft's CRM does all that you are looking at and a great deal more.

Straight out of the box, it will probably do most of what you are looking for, but its biggest advantage lies in its near limitless potential for customization. Not only can you customize the UI and the attributes of each entity, you can create completely custom entities and define relationships between them and the other entities.

We implemented it internally about six months ago and since then we've done implementations for two clients and I just sent a proposal out this morning for a third. When our customers have seen what it's like "out of the box", they express an interest in it. When they see what we've done in the way of extending it, they are ready to sign a contract.

One bonus for your situation is that you may be able to leverage some of CRM's capabilities for other departments (Sales/Marketing, Customer Service, etc.) and get someone else's budget to offset a lot of the cost.
posted by ElDiabloConQueso at 12:50 PM on October 14

majortom/word_virus: has the Spiceworks UI gotten faster since the earlier versions? How fast of a box are you running it on?
posted by djb at 1:13 PM on October 14

I am running it on a intel xeon 2.8ghz (the p4 version of a zeon) with windows 2008 . This server is also a domain controller.

It has gotten faster .

I dont mind since its free.

The microsoft one can be expensive.
posted by majortom1981 at 3:58 PM on October 14

I requested product demo for TrackIT and C.Support. Spiceworks looks very good but I do not think it will work within our security parameters.


We have Microsoft CRM on another project... :) Thanks guys!
posted by de1mar at 3:27 PM on October 15