In putting together my create your own art site (premiering on December 8th), I figured I needed a decent helpdesk system to handle the influx of user issues.

I've previously used and recommended Hesk (phpjunkyard.com), but the drawback to it is, while you get e-mail notifications of questions from users and they get e-mail notifications of answers from you, all the communications have to be done through the web interface.

Having to go back to the site when they want to reply to you is annoying to a number of users. So this time I looked for something that could interface with the mail system so users could reply to or start tickets via mail.

The one I settled on was osTicket Community Version. The original osTicket had a good fan base, but they started alienating them by saying "we're working on version 2" and ceasing to support older versions even when critical security holes were reported. Because they kept this up for over a year, and a pretty big security hole was discovered in their functions for letting users attach files, people were starting to leave in droves.

On top of that, they've been promising the new version is "coming soon" forever. A lot of people were feeling lead on.

But some dedicated users took advantage of the older version's GPL license and forked the older codebase into the osTicket Community version, fixing the security problems and tightening up the code for better performance.

The best part of osTicket is the e-mail integration. If you're on cPanel, it's as simple as editing a Perl file to give it some database access information, then setting up autoforwards in cPanel to forward the mail to the script instead of another address.

How does that work? Well, normally, when you do a forward, you'd tell cPanel to forward mail for one address to another address. Instead of entering the other address, you enter a pipe symbol and the path to the script ("|/home/your-account-name/public_html/cgi-bin/scriptname.pl").

That means, if you respond to a ticket, the user gets an e-mail they can reply to directly without having to go back to the site. And if they know the support address, they can mail you directly without having to use the web forms ever. Mails without a ticket ID in the subject get assigned a new ticket. Boom.

Installation of OsTicket requires a little tech savvy if you really want to take advantage of its features. And while the code is good, I did find (as I tried to customize some design elements and tweak one or two functions to my liking) that it is not well commented.

But if you have a decent working knowledge of Perl, PHP, cPanel, and MySQL, and you make sure to *read* the instructions, you can have the basic system up and running 20 minutes after downloading it. Took me another two or so hours to customize it to my liking and incorporate it with my site design, but that's true of any software package I install.

Their site is an off-brand wiki implementation called Trac and can be hard to navigate. You can download the software directly here...

http://osticketcommunity.ath.cx/files/builds/osticket_community/ostcv-r118.tar.gz

I also found Cerberus Helpdesk, which is a heck of a project, combining a sweet helpdesk ticketing system and a knowledgebase/FAQ system. Unfortunately, the installation guide was daunting even for me. It looked like installing, learning, and tweaking the system could be a 1-2 day project instead of a 1-2 hour project.

While I'm in the midst of a run toward a deadline, that's too much time. But there are a few things that have me considering a transition to it down the road...

• A friend says he's been running it with great results.
• The integrated knowledgebase and FAQ system.
• Their code seems to be more actively developed than OsTicket Community Version.

They offer a free version (max 1 e-mail address, three resolver/responder accounts), then higher level licenses with more features for a price. They even give special discounts to small businesses. They also offer a paid installation service.

If you want to spend a few hundred bucks or have the time, they're a good alternative with more features.

Last, I pinged LivePerson for pricing. Aside from their live-chat support system, they now have an integrated help center option that offers e-mail support management, a FAQ/Knowledgebase management system, live chat and live call. It's a pretty sweet system.

They originally quoted a $150 a month price for a start-up with a small userbase, but when I hemmed and hawed, saying I only wanted the e-mail management and knowledgebase, they said they didn't offer a mix-and-match option, but could offer a special price of $100 a month.

Given, if you've got the time and/or inclination, you can get many of those same features by combining Cerberus HelpDesk for mail/FAQ and CraftySyntax (a free, open source alternative to LivePerson) for live support and user monitoring.

So, to sum up.

Hesk

Benefits: Free, good interface
Drawbacks: Customer and Resolver must communicate via web site

OsTicket Community Version

Benefits: Free, fairly easy set-up, processes incoming e-mail, good interface
Drawbacks: Bad web site, may be abandoned or forked again

Cerberus Helpdesk

Benefits: Free "starter" edition, processes incoming e-mail, integrated knowledgebase/FAQ
Drawbacks: Daunting install instructions and learning curve

LivePerson

Benefits: Integrated chat, e-mail tickets, FAQ/Knowledgebase, click to call
Drawbacks: Pricing starting around $1200 a year

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 5:00 am and is filed under Techno Thoughts, Web Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.