A help desk is a department or person that provides assistance and information, usually for electronic or computer problems. In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University studied the value of an organization's help desks. It found that value was derived not only from a reactive response to user issues, but also from the help desk's unique position of communicating daily with numerous customers or employees. Information gained in areas such as technical problems, user preferences, and satisfaction can be valuable for the planning and development work of other information technology units.
Technical support, also known as tech support, is a call centre type customer service provided by companies to advise and assist registered users with issues concerning their technical products. Traditionally done on the phone, technical support can now be conducted online or through chat. At present, most large and mid-size companies have outsourced their tech support operations. Many companies provide discussion boards for users of their products to interact; such forums allow companies to reduce their support costs without losing the benefit of customer feedback.
A bug tracking system or defect tracking system is a software application that keeps track of reported software bugs in software development projects. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system.
OTRS is a service management suite. The suite contains an agent portal, admin dashboard and customer portal. In the agent portal, teams process tickets and requests from customers. There are various ways in which this information, as well as customer and related data can be viewed. As the name implies, the admin dashboard allows system administrators to manage the system: Options are many, but include roles and groups, process automation, channel integration, and CMDB/database options. The third component, the customer portal, is much like a customizable webpage where information can be shared with customers and requests can be tracked on the customer side.
Help desk and incident reporting auditing is an examination of the controls within the help desk operations. The audit process collects and evaluates evidence of an organization's help desk and incident reporting practices, and operations. The audit ensures that all problems reported by users have been adequately documented and that controls exist so that only authorized staff can archive the users’ entries. It also determine if there are sufficient controls to escalate issues according to priority.
An issue tracking system is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues. Issue tracking systems are generally used in collaborative settings, especially in large or distributed collaborations, but can also be employed by individuals as part of a time management or personal productivity regimen. These systems often encompass resource allocation, time accounting, priority management, and oversight workflow in addition to implementing a centralized issue registry.
Request Tracker, commonly abbreviated to RT, is an open source tool for organizations of all sizes to track and manage workflows, customer requests, and internal project tasks of all sorts. With seamless email integration, custom ticket lifecycles, configurable automation, and detailed permissions and roles, Request Tracker began as ticket-tracking software written in Perl used to coordinate tasks and manage requests among an online community of users.
Notable issue tracking systems, including bug tracking systems, help desk and service desk issue tracking systems, as well as asset management systems, include the following. The comparison includes client-server application, distributed and hosted systems.
Software audio synthesis environments typically consist of an audio programming language and a user environment to design/run the language in. Although many of these environments are comparable in their abilities to produce high-quality audio, their differences and specialties are what draw users to a particular platform. This article compares noteworthy audio synthesis environments, and enumerates basic issues associated with their use.
Tracker is a family of business software products developed by Automation Centre. Each product includes applications for various business processes. While these products share a similar process framework, they differ in platform deployment.
Jira is a proprietary product developed by Atlassian that allows bug tracking, issue tracking and agile project management. Jira is used by a large number of clients and users globally for project, time, requirements, task, bug, change, code, test, release, sprint management.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software:
GLPI is an open source IT Asset Management, issue tracking system and service desk system. This software is written in PHP and distributed as open-source software under the GNU General Public License.
Supportworks is an issue tracking system designed for use in help desk and information technology (IT) environments. Two branches of the software are developed concurrently, Supportworks ITSM, a certified ITIL compatible IT service management (ITSM) solution, and Supportworks Helpdesk Professional.
SysAid Technologies is an international company founded in 2002 that develops and provides IT Service Management software. SysAid Technologies is a privately owned company, founded by Israel Lifshitz.
UserVoice is a San Francisco–based Software-as-a-Service company that develops customer engagement tools.
Help Scout, legally Help Scout PBC, is a global remote company which is a provider of help desk software and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company provides an email-based customer support platform, knowledge base tool, and an embeddable search/contact widget for customer service professionals. Help Scout's main product is a web-based SaaS HIPAA-compliant help desk.
Help desk software is a computer program that enables customer-care operators to keep track of user requests and deal with other customer-care-related issues.
Networked Help Desk is an open standard initiative to provide a common API for sharing customer support tickets between separate instances of issue tracking, bug tracking, customer relationship management (CRM) and project management systems to improve customer service and reduce vendor lock-in. The initiative was created by Zendesk in June 2011 in collaboration with eight other founding member organizations including Atlassian, New Relic, OTRS, Pivotal Tracker, ServiceNow and SugarCRM. The first integration, between Zendesk and Atlassian's issue tracking product, Jira, was announced at the 2011 Atlassian Summit. By August 2011, 34 member companies had joined the initiative. A year after launching, over 50 organizations had joined. Within Zendesk instances this feature is branded as ticket sharing.
Data center management is the collection of tasks performed by those responsible for managing ongoing operation of a data center. This includes Business service management and planning for the future.
