* A free and open source trouble ticketing system
Most organizations require a trouble ticketing system. Whether it is for streamlining customer support requests, managing maintenance issues or scheduling work, a trouble ticketing system ensures that nothing gets dropped, lost or forgotten about. The trouble is that most commercial trouble ticketing systems are expensive.
An interesting alternative to commercial trouble ticketing products is a free, open source software called RT: Request Tracker created by Best Practical Solutions.
RT is considered by many to be enterprise grade and has become popular enough that O’Reilly Media has published a book on the system titled “RT Essentials”.
RT was written in object-oriented Perl making it portable and easy to modify. The system is both Web- and command line-based, is browser independent and is engineered to be Section 508 compliant. It also works with handhelds and even screen readers and is internationalized. It has an API and provides multi-level security, which you can see by viewing the summary of RT’s features on Best Practical’s Web site. There is also a library of user-contributed enhancements.
Installation is reputed to be complex but the end results are well worth it (one user posted this comment on Freshmeat.net about RT: “Highly recommended, assuming you have a competent geek available for installation.”)
However, your choice of platform can make a big difference in how easy RT is to get running (another user commented on Freshmeat.net: “You might consider your installation difficulties a problem with your distribution; with Debian, all you have to do to install RT is type ‘apt-get install request-tracker’.”)
I’m just in the process of installing RT under Debian in a VMware VM which should make for a good test or production platform; I’ll let you know what its like when I get it running.
