OTRS Help Desk

Abstract

This chapter describes the features of OTRS Help Desk (OTRS). You will find information about the hardware and software requirements for OTRS. Additionally, in this chapter you will learn how to get commercial support for OTRS, should you require it, and how to contact the community.

Basics

OTRS Help Desk (OTRS) is a web application that is installed on a web server and can be used with a web browser.

OTRS is separated into several components. The main component is the OTRS framework which contains all central functions for the application and the ticket system. It is possible to install additional applications such as OTRS::ITSM modules, integrations with Network Monitoring solutions, a knowledge base (FAQ), et cetera.

Features

OTRS has many features. The following list gives an overview of the main features included in the OTRS framework.

User interface

  • OTRS comes with separate, modern web interfaces for agents and customers.

  • It can be used on any modern web browser, including mobile platforms and is retina ready.

  • The web interface can be customized with own themes and skins.

  • Powerful and customizable agent dashboard with personal ticket overviews and graphical statistics support.

  • An extensible reporting engine provides various statistics and report scheduling options.

  • With the ProcessManagement it is possible to define own ticket-based screens and processes (ticket workflows).

  • OTRS has a built-in rights management that can be extended with fine-grained access control lists (ACLs).

  • Support for more than 30 languages and different time zones.

Mail interface

  • Support for MIME emails with attachments.

  • Automatic conversion of HTML into plain text messages (increased security for sensitive content and enables faster searching).

  • Incoming mail can be filtered and pre-processed with complex rules, e.g. for spam messages or Queue distribution.

  • Support for PGP and S/MIME standards for key/certificate management and email processing.

  • Automatic responses, configurable for every queue.

  • Email notifications for agents about new tickets, follow-ups or unlocked tickets.

  • It is possible to define an own Ticket identifier to recognize follow-ups, e.g. Call#, Ticket# or Request#. There are different ticket number generators (date-based, random etc.) and you can integrate your own as well. Follow-ups can also be recognized by In-Reference-To headers or external ticket numbers.

Tickets

  • OTRS uses Tickets to gather all external an internal communication that belongs together. These tickets are organized in Queues.

  • There are many different ways of looking at the tickets in a system (based on Queues, Status, Escalation etc.) in different level of detail (small/medium/preview).

  • The Ticket history records all changes to a ticket.

  • Tickets can be changed in many ways, such as replying, forwarding, bouncing, moving to another Queue, updating attributes (state, priority etc.), locking and accounting working time. It is possible to modify many tickets at once (bulk action).

  • Pending time and escalation time / SLA management allow time-based scheduling and restrictions on tickets.

  • Tickets can be linked to other tickets or other objects such as FAQ entries.

  • Automatic and timed actions on tickets are possible with the "GenericAgent".

  • OTRS comes with a powerful search engine that allows complex and fulltext searches on tickets.

System

  • OTRS runs on many operating systems (Linux, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS 10.x) and supports several database systems for the central OTRS back-end (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL).

  • The core system can be extended by installing OTRS packages. There are many free packages (such as FAQ, OTRS::ITSM and others) as well as FeatureAddon packages that are available for service contract customers of the OTRS group.

  • Integration of external back-ends for the customer data, e.g. via AD, eDirectory or OpenLDAP. Customers can authenticate via database, LDAP, HTTPAuth or Radius.

  • With the GenericInterface it is easy to connect OTRS to other web services. Simple web services can be integrated without programming, complex scenarios with custom extensions. The OTRS Ticket connector allows the creation, updating and searching of tickets, via web services from a third party application.

Now let us look at the changes in recent versions of OTRS.

New features of OTRS 4

Productivity
  • A new cleaner flat design has been implemented.

  • Agents can now reply directly to a ticket note. The original notes body is quoted in the new note.

  • Agents can now make use of templates in all screens with internal notes.

  • Ticket action screens (such as note, owner etc.) now allow to do actions without always creating an article (configurable).

  • New ticket overview based on "my services" that an agent can subscribe to. Notification options for new tickets and follow-ups can now be based on "my queues", "my services" or combinations of both.

  • OTRS can now display tickets with thousands of articles.

  • Customer online list in Dashboard now links directly to CustomerInformationCenter page for the customer.

  • Agents can now persistently reorder their main menu with drag&drop.

  • Agents and customers can now search tickets by attachment name.

  • New Dashboard Widget for running process tickets.

  • New search options for the last change time of the ticket.

  • Added new screen for outgoing emails on a ticket that are not replies.

Scalability & Performance
  • OTRS 4 can handle more concurrent users/requests on the same hardware, and response times for single requests are shorter as well, especially for pages with lots of data.

Working With External Systems
  • The GenericInterface now also supports HTTP REST as network transport protocol.

Installation & Administration
  • Postmaster filters are no longer limited to 4 match/set fields. They can now have a configurable amount of fields (default 12, up to 99).

  • A new configuration option Ticket::MergeDynamicFields makes it possible to specify which dynamic fields should also be merged when a ticket is merged to another ticket.

  • Added new options to check dynamic fields of type text on patterns relating to error messages (translated), if they do not match.

  • Added new options to restrict dynamic fields of type date/datetime on future or past dates.

  • OTRS can be configured to automatically unlock a ticket if articles are added and the owner is out of office.

  • Linked tickets of a specific type (e.g. merged or removed) can now be hidden via SysConfig option.

  • ACL handling has been improved, made more consistent and easier to debug.

    • Added new ACL option PossibleAdd to add items to a possible list without resetting (like Possible does).

    • Added new ACL value modifiers [Not], [NotRegExp], [Notregexp], for all ACLs parts.

  • Process handling has been improved, made more consistent and easier to debug.

    • A new GUID-based entity naming scheme for the OTRS Process configuration makes it possible to safely transfer processes from one system to another without duplicating the entities.

    • Added new Transition Action to create a new ticket.

    • Added possibility to define variable Transition Action attributes based on current process ticket values.

  • The possibility to schedule System Maintenance periods is available from the System Administration panel in the Admin interface.

    • A notification about an incoming System Maintenance period will be shown with some (configurable) time in advance.

    • If a System Maintenance is active, a notification about it will be shown on the Agent and Customer interface, and only admin users can log on to the system.

    • An overview screen informs admins about active sessions, which can be ended all on one click or one by one.

  • Added possibility to disable sysconfig import via configuration.

  • Added Apache MD5 as a new password hashing backend, thanks to Norihiro Tanaka.

  • Added the possibility to restrict customer self registration by email address whitelist or blacklist, thanks to Renée Bäcker.

  • Added new dashboard module that shows the output of an external command, thanks to ib.pl.

Development
  • New powerful template engine based on Template::Toolkit.

  • A central object manager makes creating and using global objects much easier (thanks to Moritz Lenz @ noris network).

  • The OPM package format was extended to signal that a package has been merged into another package, allowing the package manager to correctly handle this situation on package installation or update.

  • Caching was centralized in one global cache object which also performs in-memory caching for all data.

  • Added cache benchmark script, thanks to ib.pl.

New features of OTRS 3.3

Productivity
  • Dashboard ticket lists and regular ticket overviews can now be filtered by eligible ticket columns, and the shown coumns are configurable.

  • Ticket medium and preview overviews are now sortable.

  • Added a calendar widget for the dashboard that can show tickets as events.

  • Added new dashboard widget that shows in a matrix form the number of tickets per state and per queue.

  • Agents can now mark important articles.

  • A new tree selection widget makes working with tree data (queues, services etc.) much faster and easier.

  • Added support to search relative dates ( e.g. more than 1 month ago ) in Date and Date/Time dynamic fields.

  • It is now possible to specify templates (previously "standard responses") also for creation of new tickets and for ticket forwarding.

  • The list of available processes can now be filtered by ACLs.

  • Added support to initiate processes from Customer Interface.

  • In many places text is not shortened any more by a fixed number of characters ("Queue1..."), but instead by available screen estate. This makes it possible to see more information at once.

  • OTRS is now Retina-ready. Images have been adapted to match the higher resolutions and most of the image icons have been replaced by font characters from the FontAwesome webfont.

  • Added new feature "management dashboard". This makes it possible to display statistic charts in the dashboard. Please note that IE8 does not support this feature.

Working With External Systems
  • OTRS can now use multiple customer company databases, thanks to Cyrille @ belnet-ict.

  • OTRS can now automatically store customer user data in ticket dynamic fields for permanent storage in the ticket. This can be useful for reporting.

  • OTRS is now able correctly assign incoming emails to existing tickets based on ticket numbers from external systems.

  • OTRS can now fetch email also over POP3/TLS connections.

Installation & Administration
  • Web Installer now can setup OTRS on PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL Server databases in addition to MySQL.

  • OTRS now has full support for MySQL 5.6.

  • Generic agent jobs can now be executed for configured ticket events.

  • The new graphical ACL editor makes ACL editing easier.

  • Postmaster filters can now use negated filter conditions, thanks to Renée Bäcker.

  • Postmaster filters can now specify relative pending dates and Owner / Responsible for new tickets based on incoming email data.

  • Customer and Agent passwords now can be encrypted using the strong bcrypt algorithm, which is better than SHA.

  • Many icons now use an icon font which makes it much easier to create custom skins with different base colors. This also improves overall performance through smaller amount of (image) files to load.

New features of OTRS 3.2

More customer focused
  • The new "Customer Information Center" provides a great dashboard-like view on a customer (company). You can see

    • Escalated, reminder, new, and open tickets of the customer company.

    • Customer users (contacts) belonging to this customer company, with their individual ticket count and shortcuts for creating new tickets for them.

    • An overall ticket status view of the customer company.

  • New "switch to customer" feature makes it possible for an agent with the required permissions to look into the customers's panel with their rights.

More customizable
Process Management
Customer Interface Improvements
  • The customer web interface now fully supports AJAX and ACLs.

  • It now requires JavaScript and is not compatible with Internet Explorer 6 or earlier versions.

  • In the Customer Interface, you can now set the default ticket type for new tickets. Additionally, you can now also hide the ticket type and use a default value for all tickets created via the customer interface.

Agent Interface Improvements
  • Agents can now search for tickets based on escalation time.

  • New option to show DynamicFields by default in ticket search.

  • Screen usage optimizations in the ticket screens to avoid scrolling in popup windows. For each ticket screen, the size of the richtext editor can now be configured separately.

  • It is now possible to move tickets to another queue from within the TicketAction dialogs (TicketNote, TicketClose etc.) after activating a configuration option. This is turned off by default.

  • Ticket search will now directly jump to the ticket zoom screen if only one ticket is found.

  • New ability to hide the Article Type from TicketActionCommon-based screens which can be helpful to fit more data in the browser window.

  • There is a new out-of-office dashboard widget that lists all currently unavailable agent colleagues.

  • New CKEditor 4 makes working with rich text content (such as HTML emails) easier and more stable.

Administration improvements
  • Event Based notifications can now be sent out only for specific Article Sender Types.

  • The Statistics engine in OTRS now understands 'Weeks' in addition to days, months and years. This grants the ability to, for instance, create a report for tickets 'created last week', or generate a report that shows tickets created per queue per week.

  • It is possible to place customized DTL (template) files in Custom/Kernel/Output/HTML, so that they override the system's default DTL files just as how this already works for Perl files.

  • In AdminSMIME it is now possible to display human readable certificate contents.

  • SysConfig now supports config setting types Date and DateTime.

Better scalability
Ticket Archiving Improved
  • When tickets are archived, the information which agent read the ticket and articles can be removed, as well as the ticket subscriptions of agents. This is active by default and helps reduce the amount of data in the database on large systems with many tickets and agents.

  • There is also a new script to remove this data from existing archived tickets.

  • Archived tickets are now always shown as 'read' by the agent.

Performance Improvements
  • Session management is up to 10 times faster, especially with many active users.

  • It is now possible to limit the number of concurrent agents and/or users to avoid server capacity overload.

  • Significant reduction in the number of executed database statements in ticket overviews and ticket masks in agent and customer frontend.

    • This will reduce the load on database servers, especially on large systems. In some cases OTRS will become visibly more responsive (if the system was slowed down by the DB load or latency).

  • Improved performance of LDAP user synchronization.

  • Improved cache performance with many cache files.

More Interoperable
FAQ Connector for the GenericInterface
  • It is now possible to access the data of the FAQ module (OTRS knowledge database) via web service (GenericInterface). This can be useful to embed FAQ articles on your company website, for example.

Hardware and software requirements

OTRS can be installed on many different operating systems. OTRS can run on linux and on other unix derivates (e.g. OpenBSD or FreeBSD). OTRS does not have excessive hardware requirements. We recommend using a machine with at least a 2 GHz Xeon or comparable CPU, 2 GB RAM, and a 160 GB hard drive for a small setup.

To run OTRS, you'll also need to use a web server and a database server. Apart from that, you should install perl and/or install some additional perl modules on the OTRS machine. The web server and Perl must be installed on the same machine as OTRS. The database back-end may be installed locally or on another host.

For the web server, we recommend using the Apache HTTP Server, because its module mod_perl greatly improves the performance of OTRS. Apart from that, OTRS should run on any web server that can execute Perl scripts.

You can deploy OTRS on different databases. You can choose between MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server. If you use MySQL you have the advantage that the database and some system settings can be configured during the installation, through a web front-end.

For Perl, you will need some additional modules which can be installed either with the Perl shell and CPAN, or via the package manager of your operating system (rpm, yast, apt-get).

Software requirements

Perl support

  • Perl 5.10 or higher

Web server support

  • Apache2 + mod_perl2 or higher (recommended)

  • Webserver with CGI support (CGI is not recommended)

Database support

  • MySQL 5.0 or higher

  • MariaDB

  • PostgreSQL 8.4 or higher

  • Oracle 10g or higher

The section in the manual about installation of Perl modules describes in more detail how you can set up those which are needed for OTRS.

If you install a binary package of OTRS, which was built for your operating system (rpm), either the package contains all Perl modules needed or the package manager of your system should take care of the dependencies of the Perl modules needed.

Web browser support

To use OTRS, you'll be OK if you use a modern browser with JavaScript support enabled. Supported browsers are:

  • Google Chrome

  • Firefox version 10 and higher

  • Safari version 5 and higher

  • Internet Explorer version 8 and higher, Microsoft Edge

We recommend always using the latest version of your browser, because it has the best JavaScript and rendering performance. Dramatical performance varieties between the used browsers can occur with big data or big systems. We are happy to consult you on that matter.

Community

OTRS has a large user community. Users and developers discuss OTRS and exchange information on related issues through the mailing-lists. You can use the mailing lists to discuss installation, configuration, usage, localization and development of OTRS. You can report software bugs in our bug tracking system.

The homepage of the OTRS community is: http://www.otrs.com/open-source/.

Professional Services for OTRS

Our OTRS Business Solution™ offers you best professional support from the OTRS team, reliable OTRS security and regular free updates as well as an exclusive set of additional Business Features that you can flexibly activate or deactivate according to different deployment scenarios.

The OTRS Group offers specific training programs in different countries. You can either participate in one of our public OTRS Administrator trainings which take place regularly, or benefit from an inhouse training that covers all the specific needs of your company.

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