tirsdag 19. april 2011

Using SQML in the IT department

Ordinarily, on doesn't use home grown technology at work. "Who is going to maintain it if you go?" is the typical caveat. "Let's use open source instead," says the government. Well, guess what. Open source technology is home grown technology. Mostly.

So I started implementing eTicketSupport in SQML. I mean, the application is already up and running, all I'm doing is change the gateway to it, using SQML to modify the database directly through my own GUI.

Points I've implemented so far:
  • Support technician may now respond "as user", so emails sent directly to the technician may be copy/pasted to the ticket as if the user had sent his/her email to the support address.
  • Response by email is optional.
  • Private messages are embedded as ordinary messages, though visible only to IT department. This way, it is easier to follow how these messages came to be.
  • Added another table with template responses based on ticket category. Once category is selected, you may click on template, which then gets pasted into the response edit box.
  • Users log in with their AD login information instead of ticket number+email address. Session is stored in cookie and valid for a week after last access.
  • Once logged in, their first view is all open tickets, followed by tickets closed the last 7 days.
  • Department leaders and super users get to see all open tickets within their own and all departments under them, and are allowed to add more information and follow what's going on in their own department.
  • Archive of old tickets on separate tab.
  • Integrated with overview of who works in your department and ability for department leader and superuser to add "new user" requests and reset passwords.
The code for this shall be open sourced soon.

And if I go? Well, I will continue to develop (it is open source), and I may give support as a consulting job - as will probably many others. And either way, this is merely a new entrance to existing systems. All I have done is to make it more efficient.

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