Web Applications: OTRS User-friendly Interfaces for Customers and Agents

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A trouble ticket system is a software system which works on multi-channel customer requests centralised management. It can help streamline work flow processes, track and solve requests more effectively and improve customer satisfaction. Ticket is this case is as same as medical report which records trouble description, process and result. Finally, it is archived after it closeshttp://doc.otrs.org/3.3/en/html/introduction.html.

Open-source Ticket Request System (OTRS), is a free, open-source and AGPLhttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html licensed software packages. OTRS is separated into several components. From functional prespective, the main component is OTRS framework which includes all central functions for application and ticket system, including user interface, mail interface, tickets and system aspects.

OTRS is a web application and provides separately user-friendly interfaces for customers and agents. The interface is available in several modern web Browsers including mobile platforms. The web interface is allowed to customize to another theme or skin. OTRS has customizable and powerful agent dashboard design that agent could add his own ticket overview and check ticket statistics diagrams on it. Besides, report engine could be extended with a fem statistics and scheduling options. Process management allows user to define own ticket-based processes that ticket could automatic transfer to next state with minimum manual operation. OTRS has built-in rights management that could be extended with fine-grained access control lists (ACLs). 30s language support and multi-choice time zones make it adapts international operating environment well.

In main interface aspect, OTRS support for MIMEhttp://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2046 emails with attachments. In order to increase security for sensitive content and improve searching speed, OTRS converts HTML into plain text messages automatically. When system receives a mail, mail will be filtered and preprocessed by pre-defined rights. For example, email contains ticket number will directly link to specified ticket. PGP and S/MIME standards are accepted to key/certificate management and email processing. Ticket could be responded based on pre-defined queue templates. Agents receive notification when ticket created, updated and whenever state change happened which improved follow-up of the ticket. In addition, agent could define customized follow-ups rule based on call, ticket or request. Ticket number is generated by system. Generation rule is modifiable.

OTRS saves external and internal communication information in tickets. Ticket is classified at least by queues. There are service ways to observe existing ticket based on tickets attributes. Ticket history is different from communication record, which indicates admin operation of ticket (system change, agent operation, etc.). Ticket could be operated by replying, forwarding, updating attributes and so on.

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