- OTRS
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For the Wikipedia e-mail system, see Wikipedia:OTRS.
OTRS: ticket overviewOriginal author(s) Martin Edenhofer Developer(s) OTRS Inc. Initial release 2001 Stable release 3.0.11 / October 18, 2011 Written in Perl/JavaScript Platform Multi-platform Type Trouble Ticket System License Affero General Public License, version 3 Website www.otrs.org OTRS, an initialism for Open-source Ticket Request System, is a free and open-source trouble ticket system software package that a company, organization, or other entity can use to assign tickets to incoming queries and track further communications about them. It is a means of managing incoming inquiries, complaints, support requests, defect reports, and other communications.
OTRS is part of the Lisog open source stack initiative.
Contents
Overview
The Open-source Ticket Request System (OTRS) is more than a mailing list notification system for ticket requests.
Every ticket generated by the system has persistence or "history" showing what happened to the ticket within its life cycle. OTRS has the ability to merge multiple requests about the same incident, thus making it possible to work on an incident rather than on singular requests.[1] OTRS is a multiuser system which means that multiple agents may work simultaneously on the tickets in OTRS, reading the incoming messages, bringing them in order, and answering them. OTRS is highly scalable, capable of handling thousands of tickets per day and a nearly unlimited number of simultaneously working agents.
OTRS has integrated functionality for creating, reworking and searching FAQ texts. The FAQ texts may be incorporated into the agents' answers on tickets.
By using a multilingual web user interface, OTRS is usable independently from the respective operating systems since it is operated from a web browser. Furthermore, this facilitates the usage of OTRS by external agents or even customers participating in, working on or contributing to tickets.
OTRS establishes a framework of functions. For example, the incident handling system SIRIOS of BSI, Germany, is based on OTRS.
Technology
OTRS: answering a request
OTRS: search in FAQsSince its beginnings OTRS has been implemented in the programming language Perl. The web interface is made more user-friendly by using JavaScript (which can be switched off for security reasons). Different functionalities are implemented as reusable backend modules, making it possible to create custom modules to extend the functionality of the OTRS system.
The web interface itself uses its own templating mechanism called DTL (Dynamic Template Language) to facilitate the display of the systems output data.
Originally, OTRS worked only on MySQL databases. Support has since been added for PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. OTRS may be used on many UNIX or UNIX-like platforms (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, etc.) as well as on Microsoft Windows.
The scalability of OTRS systems may be increased by using mod_perl for the Apache Webserver or by separating the database and web server systems, allowing a large number of simultaneously working agents and high volumes of tickets.
In UNIX and UNIX-like environments OTRS works closely with system programs like the mail transfer agent Postfix or the mail filter procmail.
History
The OTRS.org project was founded in 2001 by Martin Edenhofer.[2] OTRS has been installed over 80,000 times worldwide.
See also
- Comparison of help desk issue tracking software
- Comparison of ticket-tracking systems
References
- ^ "Technical report - OTRS: Issue Management System Meets Workflow of Security Team". Cesnet.cz. http://www.cesnet.cz/doc/techzpravy/2006/tickets-review. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
- ^ "((otrs)): OTRS GmbH becomes OTRS AG". Otrs.com. http://www.otrs.com/en/news-and-press/news-details/article/otrs-gmbh-becomes-otrs-ag. Retrieved 2008-09-16.[dead link]
External links
Categories:- Free network-related software
- Help desk
- Bug and issue tracking software
- Free software programmed in Perl
- Perl software
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