paper -
36 Helpdesk.Drew.Edu: Home Growing a Helpdesk Solution Using Open Source Technology
John
Saul, Drew University
Elizabeth Black, Drew University
Erik Larsson, Drew University
In July of 1999 the department of Academic Technology
at Drew University began the search for a trouble-ticket tracking package. After researching several commercially
available products, we determined that none offered us the flexibility we
needed at a price we could afford.
Despite our lack of success finding a commercially available product our
need for an effective trouble-ticket package was becoming more pronounced.
In August of 1999 the HelpDesk project was created to
write our own web-based trouble ticket tracking package. It began as a
suggestion from a pair of students, Erik Larsson and Jessica Socke, that we could use open-source technology to
produce our own tracking-system that would be web-based.
We obtained space on a web server and named our
project helpdesk.drew.edu. At this point the helpdesk project became modified
to include asset tracking and management, and a discussion forum.
We chose to use PHP as the primary coding language.
Our choice of MySQL as a database engine was based on our need to have a fast,
reliable database that PHP could easily interface with. For the discussion forum we used and
modified an open-source product called Phorum which uses PHP and MySQL as
well.
At present, helpdesk.drew.edu has been in use successfully for two semesters. We plan to continue to refine and improve what problems are tracked through this system. Our methods and solutions can be modified and adapted to any school’s helpdesk that doesn’t have a large budget to spend for a trouble-ticket tracking package or is unhappy with the adaptability of their current trouble-ticket solution. Our paper is intended to further explain the process that we went through in choosing the specific open-source solutions that we did, and the problems and benefits we encountered during the development process.