Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Help Desk Tools

As part of the IT Support & Services that I am trying to build, I came to understand some of the tools necessary to support IT Help Desk functions. And due to budget constraints, I have to rely on Open Source / free tools to do those. Ans since most of the good ones are not free, my choices are limited to the following:

Windows tools:
1. SpiceWorks - This is a freeware monitoring tools with a nice GUI and has a support forum for users to collaborate.
2. Look @ LAN - A very simple scanning tools for IP addresses & other Windows related info; however, some of the Windows firewall configurations might need to be disabled / opened.

Linux tools:
1. Nagios - The best Linux based monitoring tools. There are a few other alternatives such as Hyperic, Pandora, or OpenNMS, just to name a few. However, none can compete with Nagios in terms of support & popularity.
2. SysAid Free Edition. I have experienced with the paid version in my previous company, but it was installed on Windows system. Now it has Linux version, and so I think it might worth to get a second look.

Web-based tools:
1. Trellis Desk - free web-based trouble-ticketing system, easy to configure and support localization (I have translated it to Indonesian) :-)
2. OTRS - Open source Ticket Request System with various features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails
3. Free Helpdesk Software - A very simple helpdesk solution

Do you have any other tools that is worth to be included in the list, please inform me on the comments below. Thanks.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Updates

I sincerely apologize for not posting anything for the past few months. It has been the ups and downs of my career, and now I am starting my own business providing IT service support. There are lots of information in the internet on the tools to do this, so I am planning to share it here in due time. Hopefully it won't take too long... :-)