PHP Helpdesk Software

- Recent AdvancesManaging a help desk is a known commodity in terms of how to handle the flowof information, and the jobs that need to be done. Ticket items come in, they getevaluated for severity, and they get assigned to a queue to be handled by atechnologist.While they're a known quantity, the software that makes managing a help deskmore efficient, usually PHP helpdesk software running on an internal web server,is a fervent breeding ground for vendor competition, as each tries to come upwith something that's standards compliant and agile enough to handle aparticular organizations specific needs.http://www.PHPHelpdeskSoftware.org PHP helpdesk software occupies the low end of the niche; dedicated customerrelationship management software (CRM software) for enterprise and largebusiness level organizations tends to both do more, and cost more, not just forthe software itself, but for the implementation across the board. These areinstallations that give a lot of customizability and flexibility, and integrate withseveral parts of a large organization.They're basically an attempt to turn an SAP implementation into a full on, 'readyto run from the box' solutionand they're massively overkill for most businesses inthe country.PHP helpdesk software started out at universities, which are have chronicallycash strapped IT departments, and computer science students willing to do workstudy programs. As they've matured, and the people who wrote them graduatedfrom college, a fair number of them were released as Open Source products, oras commercial ware products. The market place, and competing installationshave since caused a bit of an escalation in their features and performance. Today's PHP helpdesk software is usually built on an Apache web server runningon Linux, with a MySQL or PostGres database underlying it. The scripts that manage all of this are packaged for easy installation, and for anadministration console where features can be turned on, turned off, orcustomized. A lot more effort has gone into making them easy to set up or toinstall, and for features to fold in from competing versions.(Basically, once one vendor has come up with a feature, it's a better than evenchance that it will be re-implemented by someone with an Open Source license,at which point, it migrates to all the versions available.)Some of these features include enhanced performance, and the ability to offloada lot of the functionality of the software onto the user base as well, enablingthem to establish their own knowledge bases and technical walk throughs. There are more options for report generation as well, for identifying which typesof trouble tickets come up most often, who handles the most tickets and more;many IT and help desk and support departments have learned that those reports