OTRS: Open Source Ticket Request System - Features
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It should be said that anybody who is looking for an application from the trouble or incident ticket system field, simply couldn't miss seeing or hearing about OTRS. This free product is the most popular and, thus, any sort of Google search with the common keywords will bring up OTRS among the first hits on the SERPs. It is amazing that an open source product has gained so much recognition because, unfortunately, this does not tend to happen.
At the beginning of this article, we pointed out that OTRS targets all of the departments that are handling customer or employee support. Here we can include pre-sales, sales, billing, helpdesk, internal IT, support, management, and so forth; “custom” departments are included too. The minimalist web interface is truly amazing.
Yes, the web interface is quite simple but nonetheless it does the job really well. It is very responsive because it is not fancy at all. There’s a web interface for adding, viewing, and responding to ticket inquiries, as well as for administrators to work on the system settings, see the logs, and perform other admin-related tasks.
OTRS was written in the Perl implementation language. It is a cross-platform ticket request system and is able to work on all kinds of database backends: MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. It sports advanced reporting and configurable dashboards. The workflow is customizable, and support for Unicode isn’t neglected. LDAP user authentication is possible, as well as a high level of user responsiveness.
Beside the web interface, it sports amazing two-way e-mail integration by sending out e-mail notifications to users as well as accepting and updating the system regarding inquiries. Theme supports and skins are possible. Multi-language support (26 languages, at the time of writing) is pretty impressive. The entire suite is completely translated, including both agent and admin web interfaces, manuals, and everything.
As mentioned earlier, the e-mail management system is great. You can set up auto-responders, dispatch incoming mails into queries, send notifications based on custom settings (such as new follow-ups, new tickets, lock timeouts, etc.), and also convert to plain text from HTML. This is sometimes preferred (i.e., makes searching easier). It is very scalable due to the Apache mod_perl module.
Now we’ve reached the most important part of the system—tickets. Let’s discuss the features that are closely related to tickets. This long list includes ticket locking, replies (pre-programmed responses), auto-responders per queue, ticket history (archiving, evolution of a ticket status history, including actions taken), ticket logging, priorities, status management (pending, open, closed), time accounting, PDF print view, bulk feature, hook divider…
Agents have the ability to add notes on tickets; there’s a ticket event layer module too, as well as ACL (access control list) support. Jobs can be scheduled, and then based on the preprogrammed responses, actions can also be taken on tickets that satisfy specific requirements. The ticket zoom feature is interesting. The search mechanism works seamlessly. Moreover, you can add rules according to which tickets are forwarded and/or bounced to particular e-mail addresses (or mailing lists/groups).
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