What helpdesk software does your company use?

[drum]

My company is looking to get some software that will restore some order to our IT department. D: We have about 50 various servers and around 800 end users. We are mainly a Microsoft shop
We are looking at getting some type of solution that includes the following or most of the following:

• helpdesk/ticketing functionality
• remote control
• inventory/licensing management
• reporting
• some kind of network/bandwidth monitoring
• Software patch management
• software installation
• Active Directory integration... including being able to make changes to Active directory and audit who made the changes

What software solutions is your company using? Do you like it?
Is there something it doesn't do that you would like to have?:hmm:

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

SysAid
Does most of what you're looking for and its cheap.

 

[drum]

SysAid
Does most of what you're looking for and its cheap.

That is actually one I am reading about right now. Are you using any additional modules or just the core modules?

 

[CptCrunch]

I used to work for our helpdesk, so I'll try and answer the following: BTW, we have 11k employees, 3 data centers, 100s of servers, citrix farms, and over 12k workstations throughout the institution (I work for a hospital)

• helpdesk/ticketing functionality we use iET ITSM, but I hate it, its horrible
• remote control we use SMS for this, and it works well, but not for Macs. I use VNC for my side jobs and that works well
• inventory/licensing management SMS
• reporting we use peoplesofe/oracle for this
• some kind of network/bandwidth monitoring we use a combination of nortel and cisco switches, cisco APs. not sure what they use to monitor everything.
• Software patch management SMS
• software installation SMS can deploy whatever
• Active Directory integration... including being able to make changes to Active directory and audit who made the changes Server 2008 Enterprise

What software solutions is your company using? Do you like it? we are a huge microsoft shop, using SMS for most of our inventory/patches/installs/etc. It works well, most software deploys within minutes
Is there something it doesn't do that you would like to have? the main thing I hate about ITSM is that its very slow, even through citrix, unable to have multiple tickets open at once, its slow, very clunky interface

PM me if you have any other questions. BTW, this is SMS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Center_Configuration_Manager

 

[Electric Amish]

HEAT

Don't buy it. It sucks horribly (at least our implementation)

 

[jacc1234]

This is of interest to me as well. Sysaid looks very nice but can one of you give me a rough cost estimate. I hate contacting sales to get quotes.

 

[VoteQuimby]

We use SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager)

It does most of the things you listed. It was really slick when we rolled out Office 2007 to all of our users silently and automatically. My major complaint is that because it is AD driven it cannot discover network devices like switches routers or peripherals attached to computers like monitors.

I recently discovered http://www.kace.com/ which does alot of the same stuff as SCCM. Honestly I'm not sure that there is one product out there that does everything well.

 

[vi edit]

I haven't used a service desk app that actually was decent. Heat. Vantive. Remedy. HPSD. They are all clunky, hard to use, buggy applications that have shit for searching ability. I guess that's what you get for having open ended, highly customizable apps.

As others have said SMS will handle about half the requirements you are looking for.

 

[dougp]

We use a heavily modified JIRA-based system. When I was with the service desk, I had setup MediaWiki as our documentation/knowledge base - they're in the process of converting to using Confluence since it ties in with JIRA (from the same developer.)

Another portion of our company used ServiceDesk, which had asset management, user management with AD, direct SQL reporting. The only thing it lacks is OS and app deployment and updates. I'm a huge fan of this product, but it can be pricey.

I'm in the process of setting up an SCCM server to coincide with our JIRA ticketing system.

 

[drum]

We use SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager)

It does most of the things you listed. It was really slick when we rolled out Office 2007 to all of our users silently and automatically. My major complaint is that because it is AD driven it cannot discover network devices like switches routers or peripherals attached to computers like monitors.

I recently discovered http://www.kace.com/ which does alot of the same stuff as SCCM. Honestly I'm not sure that there is one product out there that does everything well.

In our research so far we are discovering that fact.
I'll look more into system center.
We have taken a quick look at kace, N-able, TrackIT and we're just trying to decide what features are most important.
Keep the suggestions coming, I appreciate it.

 

[Linflas]

HEAT

Don't buy it. It sucks horribly (at least our implementation)

Same here and I suspect the same regarding the implementation. It is pure torture for me to access this thing.

 

[Saga]

We use e-mail. Wonderful in it's simplicity.

 

[rasczak]

I haven't used a service desk app that actually was decent. Heat. Vantive. Remedy. HPSD. They are all clunky, hard to use, buggy applications that have shit for searching ability. I guess that's what you get for having open ended, highly customizable apps.

As others have said SMS will handle about half the requirements you are looking for.

this.

 

[drum]

We use e-mail. Wonderful in it's simplicity.

I think what our IT manager is trying to put an end to is all of us being interrupted constantly by the phone ringing. Whatever was being worked on gets put on hold a second while the phone is answered and that problem taken care of and things slip through the cracks.
We are trying to use this as a reason to improve our other systems such as PC auditing at the same time.

 

[jacc1234]

We use e-mail. Wonderful in it's simplicity.

You obviously don't track thousands of issues.

 

[Saga]

You obviously don't track thousands of issues.

Funny. My tasks menu in Outlook has 15,735 records approximately.

 

[amdhunter]

Numara FootPrints.
I hate our implementation, but it seems capable enough.

 

[AMCRambler]

Computer Associates - Service Desk software

 

[Pepsei]

Wells Fargo

• helpdesk/ticketing functionality BMC Remedy
• remote control server-terminal service desktop-netop
• Software patch management Server - Shavlik
• software installation SMS

 

[trmiv]

We use Altiris for most of that, a few other systems for the other stuff, but mainly Altiris. We're not using the help desk ticketing portion though, we use iET for that, which is a massive POS.

 

[Numenorean]

I designed a custom application from scratch because they didn't have anything and email is horrible. Who wants 100 emails and 250 phone calls a day with crap?

 

[jinduy]

bmc remedy

 

[drum]

Sounds like many of you have multiple solutions for handling this.
This might be a tougher sell than I originally thought.

 

[compbuilder00]

we have this elaborate system where they call my extension and i walk to their office.

 

[OutHouse]

http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/index.html?gclid=COWlmNzl7aECFR5V5wodoT-3Lw

it works so well that most departments in our company use it to track dept issues/tickets