Any suggestion open source support ticket system

[Tom Metro]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> Kevin D. Clark wrote:
>> 3:  does RT allow somebody to define milestones and to search/report
>> based on these?
> 
> No, this is a ticket system more than a bug tracker. The
> emphasis is on interaction with customers on one end and
> engineers on the other end, without annoying either side too
> much, and possibly putting a layer of semi-technical support
> people in between. 

This is an important distinction.

RT is a workable compromise between a developer-oriented tool, and a 
customer-oriented tool, but it is lacking in both areas. There are newer 
"web 2.0" issue trackers that provide a friendlier interface for 
non-technical end-users. And developers will find RT lacking, unless you 
have rather light needs in a bug tracker. Some of the deficiencies can 
be made up for through customizing RT. For example, addressing the 
question above, adding a custom field to track milestones is something 
I've seen done.

Although lots of developers must find a fairly light feature set 
adequate, as a popular tool, Trac, is not much better in terms of 
developer features.

I've yet to see anything better than Bugzilla when it comes to 
developer-oriented capabilities. Out of the box it supports all the 
states of a well controlled workflow, fields for projects, components, 
versions, and milestones, provides separate fields for QA roles, and 
features for managing patches and code reviews.


> Has anyone got Jesse Vincent to do a talk on RT?

He gave a talk to Boston Perl Mongers a couple of years ago on his Jifty 
application framework:

http://search.cpan.org/~sartak/Jifty-0.80408/lib/Jifty.pm

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/