support ticket software

[generic]

looking for a good support ticket and faq software for my hositng site. I want to avoid logging into the conotrol panel and want to point my customers outside their cp for support and faq's too, because I also support other things like software.

I currently use osticket and site cubed faq, but I want to/need to go with .asp based or anything that can run on a windows server because I set up my main account on windows rather than on unix. (regretting I chose windows every day!)

I am looking into
Kayako http://www.kayako.com
Liberium http://www.liberum.org/index.html
Cerberus http://www.cerberusweb.com

leaning towards Kayako, cause I see it works well here, anyone use it on a windows server here yet? Guess I gotta shell out $99 a year though.

anyone have any experience, or use something they can recommend?

[craigdunlop]

Originally Posted by tracewebspace

looking for a good support ticket and faq software for my hositng site. I want to avoid logging into the conotrol panel and want to point my customers outside their cp for support and faq's too, because I also support other things like software.

I currently use osticket and site cubed faq, but I want to/need to go with .asp based or anything that can run on a windows server because I set up my main account on windows rather than on unix. (regretting I chose windows every day!)

I am looking into
Kayako http://www.kayako.com
Liberium http://www.liberum.org/index.html
Cerberus http://www.cerberusweb.com

leaning towards Kayako, cause I see it works well here, anyone use it on a windows server here yet? Guess I gotta shell out $99 a year though.

anyone have any experience, or use something they can recommend?

Perl Desk is very popular as well, don't know whether it is still actively supported though, they were very slow when I was last in discussion with them... ...but I think it's cheap. :-)

[Brangwyn]

looking for a good support ticket and faq software for my hositng site. I want to avoid logging into the conotrol panel and want to point my customers outside their cp for support and faq's too, because I also support other things like software.

I've thought about doing this but don't actually think it will make things easier, you can't actually turn off the built in Support System so your still actually going to have to logon becase people will still use it no matter what you try and get them to do What I tend to do is just reply via email to all support tickets and pretty much only check in the Control panel once a month for anything I might have missed getting an email for.

Just have an external support forum people can use and not bother with a proper ticket system is the way to go imo.

[DVHost]

I've actually been pretty lucky with my customers when it comes to support. They just dont seem to use the H-Sphere support system when in the CP; they insist on email. Not to mention I loathe the new ticket system in H-Sphere 2.4.

Over the past four years I have written many applications to make operating my business easier. I just completed my own ticket system (SMS v1.0) which resembles Kayako's product in many ways. Its pretty sweet and does virtually all the same things where tickets are concerned. A web based interface as well as intelligent email handling, ticket numbers, keys. It was designed to handle one or multiple hosting companies depending on your needs. It assigns ticket numbers based on which web interface is used or email account receives the mail, I.E.: support@thisco.com or support@thatco.com.

Its so good that I am considering repackaging for a one time fee. Products like Kayako eSupport have monthly or annual fees. Where's the fun in that?

Right now I am working on a full blown automated billing system for my other hosting co. which I must finish. So I have put my ticket system venture on hold for now. Once I am finished I will focus on marketing SMS. I will keep you guys posted so if anyone wants a great solution for a reasonable cost, you will have one.

If you want to get an idea of what I have, just PM me and I will make arrangements for a demo.

[Zoren]

I'm looking at using cerberus free version for my support desk. You can set up mail or submissions sent to your cp helpdesk to forward to your external desk. Cerberus does email piping. This would allow you to accept the occational submission from hsphere but use the other helpdesk to respond and track them. Although the free version only allows one email address, you could forward or alias email sent to billing or software@yourdomain.com to go to support@yourdomain.com. This would mean, however all responses come from "support". Cerbus doesn't have the best admin interface, but you can customize what your customers see with a bit of work. Cerberus will also allow me to integrate an external knowledgebase. I want to use the activecampaign kb or the lore kb with it. I plan to have a navigational banner in my cp with a link to my external helpdesk. I'd like to use kayako, but don't want to shell out the extra money at this time. When/if the API ever works I will alter the left cp nav to link to it as well. Did you ever move your helpdesk to another provider? Care to share your experience? I'm hoping that by the time I'm ready to go live with my external support site Vortech will have the kissamee dc ready for hosting. Let us know how things work out.

[generic]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

I've thought about doing this but don't actually think it will make things easier, you can't actually turn off the built in Support System so your still actually going to have to logon becase people will still use it no matter what you try and get them to do What I tend to do is just reply via email to all support tickets and pretty much only check in the Control panel once a month for anything I might have missed getting an email for.

Just have an external support forum people can use and not bother with a proper ticket system is the way to go imo.

Well, I decided to play with this today. Ok, its not so bad, but I hate having to log into hsphere to update tickets, etc.

Since Hsphere is pulling my support email, i cant have outlook grab it too, and I am unable to send an email to a customer from my support email address from outlook which I think they might find confusing.

How do you manage to reply via email and update the status of the ticket at the same time?

Do you use a second email address to reply to your clients, if not how do you manage to do it

[generic]

I give up as far as finding a good solutions for windows.

I will just stick with my unix help site and forward any tickets created in hsphere to my osticket site so I wont miss them. Ill just clean out hsphere once every 6 months.

[Brangwyn]

Since Hsphere is pulling my support email, i cant have outlook grab it too, and I am unable to send an email to a customer from my support email address from outlook which I think they might find confusing.

I just turn that off, support@... goes straight into my inbox instead of being picked up by the ticket system, much easier imo. I have the tickect system then send a copy of tickets to support@... as well to catch any that users have entered directly via the CP.

You have to keep in mind that you cannot do e-mail piping, which seems to be the prevalent method of picking up inbound TTs. Since the mail and web servers are separate machines, you need something that will retrieve mail over the network.

[mresell]

Is this diff on windows side? Is the auto tt close option not available anymore? I just have pop email address set for support email which comes thru to me on pop client. It shows in ticket system also. On unix tho.

[Brangwyn]

Auto close is still there.

Alex is referring to the fact that no matter whether you setup your ticket system on Windows or Unix you'll not be able to retrieve emails via anything other than POP3 or IMAP becuase mail isn't on the same server, many of the ticket systems require piping which can't be done in this environment becuase of the seperation of web and mail servers.

[mresell]

Sorry, I was referring to outlook grabbing the email over hsphere.