OTRS Help Desk and Asset Management

Le Bouder
Goneri

June 2012

Solutions Linux 2012

 Le Bouder
Goneri

About myself
I

FusionInventory project co-leader

Debian Developer

Work at TECLIB, Paris, France

Asset management and Help Desk consulting
(FusionInventory, GLPI, OTRS)

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

Why an Help Desk software matter?

the Benefits
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central point of contact for the users

associate request depending on the agent skill

ensure request are resolved in time (SLA)

reporting

much more

History

2001 Created by Martin Edenhofer

2002 OTRS 0.5
2003 OTRS GmbH
2007 OTRS 2.0
2010 OTRS 3.0 and OTRS::ITSM 2.0
today OTRS 3.1

OTRS

the big picture (1/2)

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an Help Desk software

not to confuse with a bug tracker

an IT Service Management solution (ITSM)

ITIL V3 Best Practices

The big picture

the big picture (2/2)

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Free Software: GNU Affero General Public License 3

Available in 33 languages

A powerful underlying framework

Who is behind the software (1/2)

OTRS Company
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Drives the project

Offices in Germany, Netherlands, USA, Mexico, Hong

Kong, Malaysia

70 employees

Provides consulting, software development, Support,

etc

Who is behind the software (2/2)

The community
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QA

Specific platform support

Localizations

Provides Add-On and integration

Free support (mailing list, forums, etc)

Promotion

OTRS

Who use OTRS?

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Used World-Wide!

100 000+ corporate installation

Certified partners on 3 continents

OTRS

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

Supported OS

OTRS can be used on any Operating System

I

Linux

Solaris

AIX

FreeBSD

MacOSX

Windows

...

Supported Database

Supported databases
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MySQL 4.1+

PostgreSQL 8.2+

Oracle 10g+

MS SQL 2005+

OTRS also has unsupprted drivers for

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Ingres

IBM DB2

Authentification backend (1/3)

Database
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the default configuration

Authentification backend (2/3)

Great LDAP integration

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Large collection of supported servers

Advanced native LDAP interface

Ability to deal with exotic configuration

Authentification backend (3/3)

But also
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HTTPAuth

Radius

Access Control List based on Email domain

Easy to write or extend Auth module

...

Conclusion

OTRS is
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versatil
use the OS, DB, Auth mechanism you need

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

Public interfaces

OTRS for end-users

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Customer interface
optimized end-user interface: Show up just what matters

Email

Phone call

Public interfaces

OTRS for agent

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Agent interface

Email

Phone call

iPhone and Android apps

Other system (1/2)

How to deal with

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the monitoring Alerts

notifications from other system

other Tracking systems

Other system (2/2)

OTRS offers various interfaces

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works out of the box for most of the monitoring

solutions

Email
with or without meta informations (X-OTRS-*)

SOAP

REST/JSON

Internal modules

Conclusion

OTRS is
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much more than a random web application

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

Ticket life cycle

Common request
1. Customer input
2. Queue assignment
3. Agent process the request

the Customer

Customer has
1. A company and common information
phone number, etc
2. No need to know him/her, an email is enough
helpful for a contact@mycompany.com like address
3. Some settings
Language, ...

the Agent

Agent has
1. Subscribed to one or more Queue
2. Some advanced privilege (Group and Role)

a Queue

Queue can have

1. some email templates
2. a specific email address
3. its own signature
4. sub-Queue

Also

OTRS offerts
1. a well desgined tool to do the job
Simple enough for new comers
2. a lot of action can be automated
e.g: All request from @foobar.com to the same agent

Conclusion

OTRS is
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powerful and can deal with all the common Helpdesk

configuration

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

deeper integration

Advanced configuration (1/4)

1. A lot of advanced settings are available
2. Dynamics Fields
3. Template tweaking

deeper integration (2/4)

OTRS Framework allow to do more or less anything

1. Filter some ticket based on criteria
2. Collect information from another software
3. etc

deeper integration (3/4)

Not to forget
1. SMIME and GnuPG support
2. define your own signature / language / template /
etc
3. basic Service and SLA support at this stage

deeper integration (4/4)

Addons
1. OTRS Corp repository: only available for OTRS
customers
2. OPAR repository: OTRS Package Archive more than 50
public packages already available

Documentation and API reference to write addons is

available.

Addons can be harmful

An Addon changes the DB structure and existing files.

Conclusion

OTRS
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offers various ways to address very specific needs

ITSM

6 certified processes (Pink Elephant)

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Incident Management

Request Fulfillment

Problem Management

Knowledge Management

Service Asset and Configuration Management

Change Management

ITSM

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

OTRS::ITSM import computer informations (1/4)

The CMDB
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ITIL compatible

Ability to edit quickly Configuration Item Class

Definition
Connector Generic Interface, FusionInventory

OTRS::ITSM SLA

based on ITIL incident lifecycle

Advanced SLA:various time spans

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up to 99 different calendars

Response Time: reaction time with incidents

Update Time: notification time

Solution Time: time elapsed until incidents are

resolved or delivery time for service requests

Min. Time Between Incidents

OTRS::ITSM import computer informations (2/4)

FusionInventory Integration
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Runs on most the Operating System

Windows, MacOSX, Linux, Solaris, AIX, BSD, HP-UX, etc

I Simple deployment with predefined configuration files

OTRS::ITSM import computer informations (3/4)

FusionInventory Integration
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REST/JSON communication

OTRS acts as a FusionInventory server

Import software, network, computer CIs

OTRS::ITSM import computer informations (4/4)

FusionInventory Integration
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In developement since december

Mostly ready, b
eta open to OTRS Customers

Will be freely available in the future

For now, only for OTRS Customers

Conclusion

OTRS
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has an ITIL compliant CMDB

can act as a FusionInventory server to collect

information from the assets

Outline
Help Desk?
System requirements
The Help Desk solution
Request processing
Deeper integration
Service Asset and Configuration Management (ITSM)
Change Management (ITSM)

ITSM: Change Management (1/5)

A lot of small changes

A common SI change requires action from different team,
sometime in different departement, country or company.

ITSM: Change Management (2/5)

Various level of acknowledgement

Each step has to be validated by the related manager.

ITSM: Change Management (3/5)

Getting things done in time

The planning matters a lot.

ITSM: Change Management (4/5)

Example
IT Changes: new Help Desk software
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A new server must be deployed

(heat, outlet, power, etc)

A OS must be installed

Documenation needs to be validated

Software has to be configured

DNS configuration changes must be operated in time

I Service has to be monitored
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Help Desk people need to get ready

...

ITSM: Change Management (5/5)

Drive you infrastructure changes with OTRS
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understand impact, cost, benefit and risk of proposed

changes
Keep in touch with the teams in a global strategy
Reduce the background noise, give only the information
that matters

Split operation as work orders

CMDB: Identify affected CI

Follow step by step what has been done

Schedule the actions

Statistic
Changes Within a Defined Period, Changes by Category,
Rejected Changes, ...

Conclusion

OTRS Change Management will help to

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understand impact and cost of changes

secure your incoming SI changes

improve communication between team

...

Question?

Thanks

Thanks!
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OTRS team