OT: work ticketing/help desk software for K-12 environment

[blackholemac]

I would be interested to hear what others are using out there for this. Our current system no longer meets our needs and is antiquated. I seek to learn which systems are out there and actual Apple admins use, what they like and what they don't like. Now ideally, said ticketing system should also be able to be customized for multiple department use (such as HR/Maintenance), but that is not an absolute requirement.

Thank you in advance for advice and suggestions,
blackholemac

[dmw3 · Accepted solution]

Really like and have used Web Help Desk (now owned by Solar Winds). We have used this product for 15 years and are very happy with it.

http://www.solarwinds.com/help-desk-software.aspx

Has good hooks into Casper, SCCM and others.

[millersc · Accepted solution]

We're using Web Help Desk. It's good. I feel we're only using about 10% of it's capacity, but hoping to get that number up over the summer upgrades.

[davidacland · Accepted solution]

Hi,

We have our own service desk and work with lots of client systems. Have been using Zendesk for quite a while and really like it. Nice and easy to setup and lets you run a very customer focussed service.

We used an internally developed system for the 10 years before that. Worked fine but just became too much of a distraction to keep developing.

We've worked with Service now, Remedy, LANDesk, Heat and Sunrise used at some of our clients sites. These are some of the systems designed for "big" service desks with lots of ITIL features. They definitely do what they want from an IT director perspective. The techs never had anything good to say about them unfortunately and actual user experience is pretty poor in my opinion. As an example, Sunrise is described as a Mac compatible web based solution, but doesn't work properly in Safari on a Mac!

I tested Web Help Desk for a short while but was really underwhelmed. Zendesk is definitely my favourite at the moment.

[psmac · Accepted solution]

+1 for Freshservice

We recently went through testing 20ish helpdesk systems and this was a clear winner.

Can break down departments and very easy to use. They will soon (within weeks) be releasing a Mac agent that reports back system info which is a massive benefit for us.

[dmw3 · Accepted solution]

Really like and have used Web Help Desk (now owned by Solar Winds). We have used this product for 15 years and are very happy with it.

http://www.solarwinds.com/help-desk-software.aspx

Has good hooks into Casper, SCCM and others.

[millersc · Accepted solution]

We're using Web Help Desk. It's good. I feel we're only using about 10% of it's capacity, but hoping to get that number up over the summer upgrades.

[davidacland · Accepted solution]

Hi,

We have our own service desk and work with lots of client systems. Have been using Zendesk for quite a while and really like it. Nice and easy to setup and lets you run a very customer focussed service.

We used an internally developed system for the 10 years before that. Worked fine but just became too much of a distraction to keep developing.

We've worked with Service now, Remedy, LANDesk, Heat and Sunrise used at some of our clients sites. These are some of the systems designed for "big" service desks with lots of ITIL features. They definitely do what they want from an IT director perspective. The techs never had anything good to say about them unfortunately and actual user experience is pretty poor in my opinion. As an example, Sunrise is described as a Mac compatible web based solution, but doesn't work properly in Safari on a Mac!

I tested Web Help Desk for a short while but was really underwhelmed. Zendesk is definitely my favourite at the moment.

[adamcodega]

Since you are education, are you on Google for Education? You may like Freshservice, which is one of the only I could find that integrates with Google for Work/Education so you can import your users and your agents easily and people can log in with their Google account. Freshservice is like Freshdesk and Zendesk but made for an internal IT department. Could setup service desks for other departments as well like HR and maintenance. I really like their UI/UX for both users and agents.

[psmac · Accepted solution]

+1 for Freshservice

We recently went through testing 20ish helpdesk systems and this was a clear winner.

Can break down departments and very easy to use. They will soon (within weeks) be releasing a Mac agent that reports back system info which is a massive benefit for us.

[adamcodega]

@psmac

O_O

I had no idea, will have to keep an eye out for that!

[brandonusher]

Mother of god.... I may start trying to convince my District to switch to that if it reports well enough and can somehow be hosted inside

[psmac · Accepted solution]

There is also SAManage - this also has a Mac agent that we tested and works well. Their interface isn't as good and ultimately theirs sales guys put us off, but worth using as a comparison.

[bwiessner]

We use BMC Remedy Force which is a flavor of Sales Force. I would not recommend it. However, Desk is a great flavor of Sales Force and I have seen it work great - same thing with Zendesk.

http://www.desk.com

https://www.zendesk.com

[John_Wetter]

+1 for Web Help Desk. Love the easy connectivity to inventory with Casper. Also like the workflow and that the look of the system stays fresh and is fairly dynamic. The mobile site is nice too. We use it along with our facilities department. The workflows for auto-assigning tickets have a ton of options, of course that adds complexity but they have good mind maps of how it works that I just put on my second screen as I was making all the groups. You only need to buy licensed seats for people that resolve tickets, so you can have people do work in the system for free which is different from some others.

We're just starting to enable some of the ITIL functions in it as well like CAB's.

[tcam]

Currently using JSS and Web HelpDesk, Web HelpDesk is hosted with loop1. Asset discovery typically works without issue. when we went from 8 to 9 we had to briefly work with loop1 to get asset discovery working. And right no we're waiting for loop1 to update to from WHD 9.1 to 9.2; because the poodle patch broke asset discovery in 9.1.

• I like how WHD allows tickets to be attached to users & assets. Making the history more relevant in support.
• Asset discovery means less manual process, more accuracy, and more information in inventory. And means WHD and JSS inventory is more accurately maintained
• LDAP support removed the need to manage users in our ticketing system.
• WHD support for long notes, and multiple notes, makes it easier to have relevant information in tickets.
• email to ticket has made it easier to convert emails into tickets, and reduce the amount of tickets that have to be manually inputed into the ticketing system.
• the organizational tools are really helpful in cutting support request into specific support groups / user groups / sites.

[Chris_Hafner]

@davidacland I will give a big +1 for ZenDesk as well. We replaced a ticketing system that we build years ago. We've also been successful in pulling data in and out of our inventory system (Which will shortly up updated via the JSS API).

[jaymckay]

@psmac How did you end up deploying your Samanage agent package to all of your Macs? Did you use Composer to package it up and deploy it that way, or did you use their silent install method? I'm having a little trouble at the moment, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[psmac]

@jaymckay i used the below script - only edit is changing our account name.

I think the trick was hosting the latest SAManage package on an internal web server to bypass proxy issues, but you may be able to get away with a policy package to copy the installer pkg to the client and a postflight script to run the actual install.

Hope this helps!

#!/bin/sh

# Uninstall current SAManage agent
/Applications/Samanage Agent.app/Contents/Resources/uninstaller.sh

# Change working directory to /tmp
cd /tmp

# Download SAManage Mac agent software
curl -O http://172.16.0.1/download/SAManage-Agent-for-Mac.dmg

# Mount the SAManage-Agent-for-Mac.dmg disk image as /tmp/SAManage-Mac-Agent
hdiutil attach SAManage-Agent-for-Mac.dmg -nobrowse -noverify -noautoopen

################################################################################
#
# Replace <ACCT_NAME> with your Samanage account name below
#
echo "ouraccountname" > /tmp/samanage
#
# Remove the '#' from the next line if you do not wish the Samanage agent to collect software information
# echo "nosoft=1" > /tmp/samanage_no_soft
#
################################################################################

# Install the SAManage Mac agent
installer -dumplog -verbose -pkg /Volumes/Samanage-Mac-Agent-*/Samanage-Mac-Agent-*.pkg -target "/"

# Clean-up
# Unmount the SAManage-Agent-for-Mac.dmg disk image from /Volumes
hdiutil eject -force /Volumes/Samanage-Mac-Agent-*

# Remove /tmp/samanage
rm /tmp/samanage
rm /tmp/samanage_no_soft

# Remove the SAManage-Agent-for-Mac.dmg disk image from /tmp
rm /tmp/SAManage-Agent-for-Mac*.dmg

exit 0

Paul