Original author(s) | Jesse Vincent |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Best Practical Solutions, LLC |
Initial release | 13 October 1999 |
Stable release | |
Repository | |
Written in | Perl |
Operating system | Any Unix-like |
Platform | Cross-platform |
Available in | Multiple Languages |
Type | Issue tracking system |
License | GPLv2 |
Website | bestpractical |
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.
RT's first release in 1996 was written by Jesse Vincent, who later formed Best Practical Solutions LLC to distribute, develop, and support the package. [2] RT is open source (FOSS) and distributed under the GNU General Public License. [3]
Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR) is a special distribution of RT to fulfill the specific needs of CERT teams. [4] At this point, RTIR is, at once, a tool specific to incident management, a general purpose tool teams can use for other tasks, and also a tool that can—and very often is—a fully customized system built on layers of user integrations and user customizations.
It was initially developed in cooperation with JANET-CERT, and in 2006 was upgraded and expanded with joint funding from nine Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) in Europe. [5]
RT is written in Perl and runs on the Apache and lighttpd web servers using mod_perl or FastCGI with data stored in either MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQLite. It is possible to extend the RT interface using plug-ins written in Perl. [2]
Jesse Vincent, while enrolled at Wesleyan University in 1994, worked for Wesleyan's computing help desk and was responsible for improving the help desk and residential networking software infrastructure. This task included setting up a ticketing system for the help desk. Initially he set up a Linux server to run "req", [6] but later he identified that the command line interface was limiting usage. Over the next two years he created and maintained WebReq, a web based interface for req written in Perl. Eventually the req portions were removed and what was left became RT version 1.0. A complete rewrite occurred for RT version 2.0 when Jesse started to work on RT full-time in 2001 and founded Best Practical Solutions. RT was used by Perl's CPAN, but because of declining use, a sunset date of March 1, 2021, was announced at the Perl NOC on December 4, 2020. rt.cpan.org will sunset on March 1st, 2021. Following a pushback from the developer community, a company was contracted to take over the hosting. rt.cpan.org to remain online.
Organizations of all sizes use Request Tracker to track and manage workflows, customer requests, and internal project tasks of all sorts. Among other things, RT offers custom ticket lifecycles, seamless email integration, configurable automation, and detailed permissions and roles.
RT has many ways to highly customize creating and updating tickets, owners, dependencies, custom everything, and workflows. A web interface is available for both logged in users and guest/customer/end users. Template callbacks allow the modification of the software's web pages without requiring extensive knowledge.
Seamless email integration is another primary interface to RT and is often the only interface many guest users see. The email system includes support for auto-responses, attachments, and full customization of all the rules which govern email. Emails are stored in RT as correspondence on a ticket, and the software can make a distinction between public replies and private comments to show them as appropriate.
A basic REST-like API and a command-line tool are also provided as another way to interact with RT.
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a repository of over 250,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 12,000 contributors. CPAN can denote either the archive network or the Perl program that acts as an interface to the network and as an automated software installer. Most software on CPAN is free and open source software.
WebGUI is an open-source content management system written in Perl and released under the GNU General Public License.
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.
Information technology service management (ITSM) are the activities performed by an organization to design, build, deliver, operate and control information technology (IT) services offered to customers.
A web content management system is a software content management system (CMS) specifically for web content. It provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools that help users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages create and manage website content. A WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, providing users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a content repository or a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets the system needs.
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.
In a computer system or network, a runbook is a compilation of routine procedures and operations that the system administrator or operator carries out. System administrators in IT departments and NOCs use runbooks as a reference.
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.
GNATS is the GNU project's issue-tracking software.
Roundup is an open-source issue or bug tracking system featuring a command-line, web and e-mail interface. It is written in Python and designed to be highly customizable.
Wrike, Inc. is an American project management application service provider based in San Jose, California. Wrike also has offices India, Dallas, Tallinn, Nicosia, Dublin, Tokyo, Melbourne, and Prague.
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.
AbuseHelper is an open-source project initiated by the computer emergency response teams (CERTs) of Finland and Estonia with ClarifiedNetworks to automatically process incidents notifications.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Perl programming language:
Unified communications (UC) management is essentially the management of unified communications; it refers to the systems used by enterprise organizations to automate their enterprise communications services and the voice network infrastructure that those services run over.
Freedcamp is a web, mobile and desktop project management and collaboration system for teams. The company was launched in 2010 in Santa Barbara, California by founder Angel Grablev.
Pyrus is a cloud-based workflow automation and document management system developed by Simply Good Software, Inc. Pyrus comes as SaaS and offers a web-based interface to launch workflows, assign tasks, and manage documents. It is a unified corporate communication environment, accessible from any device. Mobile versions are available for all platforms, including iOS, Android, and Android Wear. Users are able to set up and route workflows without coding and IT assistance.
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.
Tables is a collaborative database program developed out of Google's Area 120 incubator. Tables is available as a web application. The app allows users to collaborate in real-time to track work more efficiently using automation.
Request Tracker (RT) [...] is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
ready out of the box for your CERT or CSIRT to use