@quixoticjeremy said in Sodium release for helpdesk: related tickets, attachments, changed time management, etc.:

@scottalanmiller said in Sodium release for helpdesk: related tickets, attachments, changed time management, etc.:

I added ticket 3 as related to ticket 1. In ticket 1, this shows up in the list like it is a sub-ticket. But it ticket 3, it does not show up at all. If 3 is a sub ticket of 1, this might make sense. But if they are just "related" it should show up the same on both sides, right?

So this begs the question of is this a functionality issue or a terminology issue. I've seen people describing what they want as both related or sub ticketing. I tend to lean towards sub ticketing and creating a tree of some kind rather than just related tickets. That's just me though. Even with the tree of some kind I would want to list parent though so that's something I do need to do

Related tickets doesn't have any obvious use. What does it mean that tickets are "related"? I think that that will just cause users to be confused and start relating tickets based on any factor, like similar issues or such. That might be interesting in some other way, but it seems like that needs a lot of planning.

Subtickets are the real thing, where a number of tickets are part of a larger "super ticket." The super ticket can't be closed until all sub tickets are closed. It's a ticket "collection" of sorts.

@stuartjordan said in Sodium release for helpdesk: related tickets, attachments, changed time management, etc.:

What Ticket/Helpdesk system is this?

This is the Helpdesk of the Sodium management and monitoring system. Sodium is a project code name, it'll have some cool name once it is fully in production.

@quixoticjeremy said in Non-IT News Thread:

@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:

Lucid is a new all electric car that might give Tesla some actual competition... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/08/the-electric-lucid-air-hit-235mph-in-testing-but-will-it-see-production/

"software-limited top speed." ....hmmmmmm.....

Just a software governor. Those have been around for decades.

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

I'll reuse my list from here:

Here's a few things that I really appreciate:
 

1. Merging tickets. Absent = Deal breaker
2. Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker
3. Multi-Tech assignment.
4. Clean interface
5. Customisable reports. Absent = Deal breaker
6. Multiple ticket views (Mine, All, closed, urgent, stale.. etc)
7. Sub-tickets is a nice feature
8. Add users/clients easily

Great link, I'll check that out. Thanks.

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

This in and of itself is essential. In an SMB at least, users will just hit reply instead of clicking a link to reply to a ticket. For SolarWinds, this will create a new ticket, which becomes a nuisance created even by some techs.

I've heard that Spiceworks often creates a new ticket as well, because of parsing issues or something. But when we test it, it seems to work.

@quixoticjeremy said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@manxam said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Proper scheduling! That's one of the major missing pieces for all the less expensive PSAs/ticketing systems. This is about the only thing that ConnectWise does really well:

While in a ticket you can assign a status and then schedule the ticket for either
a) perform this task on this day/time (i.e: you've made arrangements with a user to do X at time Y and it should take Z time to complete)

b) follow-up with the user at this date/time for whatever purpose you deem necessary (i.e. pre-ticket closure email ensuring the issue is resolved to the client's satisfaction)

Exchange / Outlook integration a huge plus...

Also, time tracking via manual entry or start/stop.

Definitely some great ideas in here and also some ideas that are already in place! I like the scheduling concept and will try to put that through product management. As for time tracking this is already in place. It works currently but it is very bare bones where we we're planning on revamping it an approaching it from a (very slightly) different direction.

Yes, I'm excited about the scheduling bit. That's something that I have seen before but I've not heard anyone on our team here discussing this yet so this is something that seems extremely possible in the short term and was simply overlooked. But seems like a super value-add compared to a lot of other products. That's exactly what we were hoping to find in this thread.

Keep the ideas coming!

@wrcombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

watching trolls for the 100th time in the last week.. gotta love 2 year olds.. Lol

The Sounds of Silence has never been more ironic.

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@quixoticjustin said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Self-service portal with customize-able pages for users to self-submit tickets of common tasks that requires specific information, such as on-boarding/off-boarding (but not waterboarding ;-)). Needs to also contain clickable links to items either within the system or on the network. It would be even better if permissions could be applied based on user/group accounts, tied either through AD/LDAP or within the system itself.

This is in the plans already, but certainly not worked on yet. In the longer term, we plan to make many of these requests into workflows rather than just tickets. So the ticketing system might actually resolve the issue automatically rather than passing it on to the tech.

Something similar to "I locked my account. Can somebody unlock me please?" would have the sodium find the email that sent it, searched for the user that the email account is tied to, lookup the username of account and execute a script unlocking the account within the authentication system?

Yup, like that.

@dustinb3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

ha...

http://imgur.com/gallery/NVyMq

LMFAO

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

I've had a small wishlist since SW that they never took advantage of, them bastards.

This might be expanding the scope of the project, but I definitely think that asset management needs to be tied into the helpdesk for the reason that the IT department would then be collecting a history of that device. "This device has failed x many times within y many months because of z. It needs to be replaced."

Done

Also, parts management. How many monitors have been replaced, to what departments, for how much cost? Tie that part management to the ticket, deduct it from parts management, and receive alerts as to when parts fall below a certain threshold and needs to be reordered, similar to stock in a store.

That's interesting. That might be something that could be done. Would take a bit of research and design.

Self-service portal with customize-able pages for users to self-submit tickets of common tasks that requires specific information, such as on-boarding/off-boarding (but not waterboarding ;-)). Needs to also contain clickable links to items either within the system or on the network. It would be even better if permissions could be applied based on user/group accounts, tied either through AD/LDAP or within the system itself.

This is in the plans already, but certainly not worked on yet. In the longer term, we plan to make many of these requests into workflows rather than just tickets. So the ticketing system might actually resolve the issue automatically rather than passing it on to the tech.

@gjacobse said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Device Field

Users move around - nice to know what device I need to look wout without digging through the ticket to much.. but - that is more of a maybe that a need.

Already there, called "Asset".

@quixoticjeremy said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@quixoticjustin said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Company user list - similar to the hardware list already gathered by Salt.

Already there but having a glitch populating.

Works on my computer ;). All joking aside yeah I really do need to take a look at it from your machine.

When it works currently it's the "write in" list rather than pre-filling from the selected customer.

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@minion-queen said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

A way to use the data in the tickets to populate a Database for each client. (We use Onenote to keep client data in and OS ticket for ticket information people rarely remember to move important info from tickets to the OneNote for the client).

How about a Client/user info DB. This goes in with my user list, but would add a client option there. Depends if the goal is MSP style or single company style.

Goal is both, possibly with different screens so that you aren't getting MSP data in your single user business environment when it would just be in the way. ALready tickets are assigned to clients and users, there will be more data about clients and businesses over time. It's there now, just very basic.

@minion-queen said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

A way to use the data in the tickets to populate a Database for each client. (We use Onenote to keep client data in and OS ticket for ticket information people rarely remember to move important info from tickets to the OneNote for the client).

So customer-based view of cumulative ticket data instead of a device-based view. Interesting.

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Company user list - similar to the hardware list already gathered by Salt.

Already there but having a glitch populating.

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Private support person notes area.

ALready there and working. ANd it is FAST. Ugly right now, but FAST.

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

email integrated. Users and support staff can create/update/close tickets via email.
Include attachments.

These things are just around the corner. It's already multi-user. And the email spot is there, just not plumbed, yet.

We've been working on an attachment design that isn't just "attachments" but makes them a bit more powerful and useful than a more traditional helpdesk.

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@QuixoticJeremy @QuixoticJustin Maybe this needs to have its own thread, but how are you funding your tools? I'm always interested in working with new tools, but the world of FOSS is littered with abandonware.

We are funded by a private equity group in Texas that invests in technology-related businesses, primarily. I doubt that we will be going anywhere, we have no venture capital type people to answer to, and our backers have been around for a long time and are just changing their investment style. Traditional VC is churn and burn (build it up, get market, sell it) but ours are long term growth investors - they specialize in building long running businesses focused on revenues years out and make their returns from operational success, not selling to a larger player like California style VC focuses on.

I find the highlighted thing hard/impossible to believe. They might not be leaning on you, but I'm assuming they own enough of the company to make your life difficult at minimum, bad at worse.

Maybe I worded that poorly. I meant that there are NO venture capital people to answer to. Not that the ones we have don't ask for answers. I mean we aren't VC funded, no VCs in site. Because we have no VCs, there are none to answer to at all.

Aww, well then you're either part owners yourself or employees, But I'm assuming there is still a CEO to answer to.

I'm not sure I follow the logic here. A CEO is not like a VC. And why would all staff be owners if there aren't VCs? Maybe I'm being unclear, but a VC is an extremely specific type of investor that normal companies do not use. Do you have VCs investing in your workplace that expect to build and sell the company off in just a couple of years? Assuming you don't, does that then make you a part owner of that company?

Well you're stuck on the VC thing - I was more talking about 'people to answer to' part. You have people to answer to, they just aren't VCs. That's true even if the people you're answering to is yourself.

This whole sub-topic came from:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@QuixoticJeremy @QuixoticJustin Maybe this needs to have its own thread, but how are you funding your tools? I'm always interested in working with new tools, but the world of FOSS is littered with abandonware.

Your answer brought in VCs, not his question. So getting back to his question - where does funding come from? If not from VCs, then where?

I'm also curious what tools @Kelly is talking about? Is he talking about you purchasing software to help you make your software? i.e. IDEs (though many are free) or is he talking about who's paying you to make Sodium, or another way to look at it, how are you surviving financially while making this? Which we already know the answer to that second part - you still have a full time day job. You're writing Sodium on your own time after hours. So other than hosting, I'm wondering what expenses you have? Considering the people involved, I'd be very surprised if the entire thing isn't being written in FOSS solutions to keep you out of any lock-in.

I was curious about their business model to keep the products moving forward when they're free and hosted. Those two are much harder to combine and be at least revenue neutral.

Not as hard as you might think. Or harder than people think, those are the two realities Making software is an expensive endeavor, no way around that. But hosting is not as expensive as local deployments, for example. If you are just making free software and leaving end users to fend for themselves then local deployment software is very cheap, of course. But once you want to do things like get support or have ad revenue, those things get very hard. The cost of one part time deployment support person is many times larger than the cost of hosting, for example.

Hosting means supporting only one system, only one version, and when you update you know if it worked or not. You aren't dealing with lots of deployment scenarios that might go wrong down the road. You don't deal with an install ending up ten versions behind and needing to catch up. You don't deal with end users corrupting databases or trying to do weird things. Hosting brings a lot of cost benefits that might be overlooked.

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@QuixoticJeremy @QuixoticJustin Maybe this needs to have its own thread, but how are you funding your tools? I'm always interested in working with new tools, but the world of FOSS is littered with abandonware.

We are funded by a private equity group in Texas that invests in technology-related businesses, primarily. I doubt that we will be going anywhere, we have no venture capital type people to answer to, and our backers have been around for a long time and are just changing their investment style. Traditional VC is churn and burn (build it up, get market, sell it) but ours are long term growth investors - they specialize in building long running businesses focused on revenues years out and make their returns from operational success, not selling to a larger player like California style VC focuses on.

I find the highlighted thing hard/impossible to believe. They might not be leaning on you, but I'm assuming they own enough of the company to make your life difficult at minimum, bad at worse.

Maybe I worded that poorly. I meant that there are NO venture capital people to answer to. Not that the ones we have don't ask for answers. I mean we aren't VC funded, no VCs in site. Because we have no VCs, there are none to answer to at all.

Aww, well then you're either part owners yourself or employees, But I'm assuming there is still a CEO to answer to.

I'm not sure I follow the logic here. A CEO is not like a VC. And why would all staff be owners if there aren't VCs? Maybe I'm being unclear, but a VC is an extremely specific type of investor that normal companies do not use. Do you have VCs investing in your workplace that expect to build and sell the company off in just a couple of years? Assuming you don't, does that then make you a part owner of that company?

Well you're stuck on the VC thing - I was more talking about 'people to answer to' part. You have people to answer to, they just aren't VCs. That's true even if the people you're answering to is yourself.

This whole sub-topic came from:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@QuixoticJeremy @QuixoticJustin Maybe this needs to have its own thread, but how are you funding your tools? I'm always interested in working with new tools, but the world of FOSS is littered with abandonware.

Your answer brought in VCs, not his question. So getting back to his question - where does funding come from? If not from VCs, then where?

I'm also curious what tools @Kelly is talking about? Is he talking about you purchasing software to help you make your software? i.e. IDEs (though many are free) or is he talking about who's paying you to make Sodium, or another way to look at it, how are you surviving financially while making this? Which we already know the answer to that second part - you still have a full time day job. You're writing Sodium on your own time after hours. So other than hosting, I'm wondering what expenses you have? Considering the people involved, I'd be very surprised if the entire thing isn't being written in FOSS solutions to keep you out of any lock-in.

I was curious about their business model to keep the products moving forward when they're free and hosted. Those two are much harder to combine and be at least revenue neutral.

Things like this are typically either using Ads or selling data (or both) to earn revenue.

We've been talking about being ad supported from the beginning. @QuixoticJeremy in one of his posts from last week talked about how the space is left on the right hand side for ad placement. That's been the plan from day one.

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@quixoticjustin said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@QuixoticJeremy @QuixoticJustin Maybe this needs to have its own thread, but how are you funding your tools? I'm always interested in working with new tools, but the world of FOSS is littered with abandonware.

We are funded by a private equity group in Texas that invests in technology-related businesses, primarily. I doubt that we will be going anywhere, we have no venture capital type people to answer to, and our backers have been around for a long time and are just changing their investment style. Traditional VC is churn and burn (build it up, get market, sell it) but ours are long term growth investors - they specialize in building long running businesses focused on revenues years out and make their returns from operational success, not selling to a larger player like California style VC focuses on.

I find the highlighted thing hard/impossible to believe. They might not be leaning on you, but I'm assuming they own enough of the company to make your life difficult at minimum, bad at worse.

Maybe I worded that poorly. I meant that there are NO venture capital people to answer to. Not that the ones we have don't ask for answers. I mean we aren't VC funded, no VCs in site. Because we have no VCs, there are none to answer to at all.

Aww, well then you're either part owners yourself or employees, But I'm assuming there is still a CEO to answer to.

I'm not sure I follow the logic here. A CEO is not like a VC. And why would all staff be owners if there aren't VCs? Maybe I'm being unclear, but a VC is an extremely specific type of investor that normal companies do not use. Do you have VCs investing in your workplace that expect to build and sell the company off in just a couple of years? Assuming you don't, does that then make you a part owner of that company?

Well you're stuck on the VC thing - I was more talking about 'people to answer to' part. You have people to answer to, they just aren't VCs. That's true even if the people you're answering to is yourself.

What's the question about answering to, then? Of course we answer to management. Do you? What issue does having a manager have? I'm afraid I don't understand the concerns caused by being managed.