Open Technology Real Services
| Open Technology Real Services
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|---|---|
 Dashboard OTRS 6.0.x |
|
| Basic data
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| Maintainer | OTRS AG |
| developer | OTRS AG |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| Current version |
6.0.29 ( July 3, 2020 ) |
| operating system | Linux , Windows (only for OTRS version <5), macOS , Solaris , FreeBSD and other Unix variants |
| programming language | Perl , JavaScript |
| category | Trouble ticket system |
| License | GPL v3 |
| German speaking | Yes |
| www.otrs.com | |
The Open Technology Real Services ( OTRS ), formerly known as the Open Ticket Request System , is a ticket system or service management system . a. is used as a help desk system or issue tracking system and creates transparent (customer) communication. OTRS is free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) (until 2018 under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)). OTRS is the ITSM component of the open source stack Open Source Business Alliance .
General
With the help of the web-based ticket system OTRS, all types of inquiries (for example fault reports, service and information inquiries) can be recorded, classified, saved and processed in a structured manner via the e-mail, telephone and customer web frontend. For clear referencing by the person who created the request - service employees or third parties involved - the processes with the initial storage process receive a unique process number . The processes recorded in this way (so-called “tickets”) can then be automatically or manually forwarded to the responsible areas of responsibility of an organization for further processing. The areas of responsibility are set up in OTRS in the form of so-called queues (in German about "queues"). Both the initiator of the report (usually a customer) and the processor (often called "agent" at OTRS) can track and influence the processing progress and status via their respective web front end. Escalation and notification mechanisms support the OTRS agents in complying with the service level agreements (SLA) agreed with the customer, thus ensuring that response and solution times can be adhered to and no process is lost. In this way, a large volume of inquiries can be dealt with by a few agents without reaching the limits of conventional e-mail clients (lack of transparency, sequential process entries, lack of classification options, etc.).
An optionally installable knowledge database ( FAQ ) provides additional support for agents . It can be used to document existing solution knowledge or knowledge acquired as part of a solution path and be made available to the agents for further processing of inquiries. The text modules stored in the knowledge database can be transferred to the customer in connection with the creation of answers. This solution knowledge can also be made available to customers directly via the customer web frontend.
OTRS supports processes with similar problem causes by merging and splitting (from English to split : to divide) similar processes. Closely related to this function is the optionally installable master-slave mechanism, which allows all tickets of the same type (the slaves) assigned to an original ticket (the master) to be closed by closing the master ticket.
OTRS is audit-proof and keeps a detailed history of all processes that can be evaluated later. It also forms the basis for comprehensive service level reporting across the entire OTRS database. OTRS offers its own statistics and reporting framework for creating reports.
Access control to the ticket system, its functions, reports and modules takes place via the granularly definable role and authorization concept in OTRS.
The web application is operated independently of the operating system via a web browser . The user interface is available in several languages and can be easily adapted to an individual corporate design .
Range
When changing the version to 3.2, OTRS AG stated that 60% of the companies represented in the DAX were using the software as a whole. In 2015 OTRS AG reported 150,000 installations of the software and 5 million downloads worldwide.
Related projects
As a framework, OTRS is the basis for
- the ITIL -compliant IT service management solution OTRS ITSM and
- the security and CERT solution for IT security incident handling SIRIOS (up to version 2.4.x).
Extensions
In addition to the standard functions, there are many extensions on the market that were often created by internal needs and then released. Since March 2011, extensions have been collected and distributed via the “OPAR” (Open Package Repository) platform. OPAR was founded by four OTRS-experienced programmers (Renée Bäcker, Martin Balzarek, Michiel Beijen and Tom Kirchner) in order to promote the free availability of OTRS modules in the sense of open source. As of April 2011, more than 20 modules are available.
technology
From the beginning, OTRS has been implemented in the Perl programming language . The web interface can be operated with the help of JavaScript . The individual functionalities accessible from the user interface are implemented as separate code modules. This is why OTRS is easy to expand with functionalities.
As of version 4.0.x, the web interface itself uses Perl :: Template as a standardized template language (.tt Template Toolkit), which enables flexible output of system data.
Initially only with a MySQL database (also MariaDB) in the background, OTRS now also uses PostgreSQL , Ingres , Oracle and DB2 databases as well as Microsoft SQL Server up to version 4 . OTRS can be used on all common Unixoid operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD etc.) as well as under Microsoft Windows (including OTRS version 4).
Through various optimizations, for example the use of mod perl for the Apache web server and the separation of the database and web server system, the performance of the system can also be scaled for large ticket volumes and many processors. High availability environments can be implemented with (module) extensions from the manufacturer.
In Unix-like environments, OTRS can work closely with system programs such as the mail management program Postfix , Sendmail and the mail filter Procmail . The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is used on Windows systems .
history
The OTRS.org project was started in 2001 by Martin Edenhofer .
In 2018 OTRS AG announced a new corporate orientation. The freely available variant of OTRS is now called "((OTRS)) Community Edition", the fully managed solution, which is subject to a fee, is called "OTRS". A large part of the non-public functions of the “OTRS Business Solution” flow into OTRS, OTRS Business Solution is no longer used as a product name. In the future, new OTRS versions will initially only be made available to paying customers in OTRS, and will only be made available to the public in the ((OTRS)) Community Edition with a delay for several years.
| version | date | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | April 9, 2002 | First official version; Core system is running |
| 1.0 | February 14, 2003 | The first stable version after more than two years of development work |
| 1.1 | May 1, 2003 | Numerous improvements in the backend and user interface |
| 1.2 | February 16, 2004 | Five new translations, FAQ database, Unicode support and single sign-on functionalities |
| 1.3 | September 22, 2004 | New statistics framework, time zone support |
| 2.0 | August 1, 2005 | 19 languages, new features such as PGP , S / MIME , XML database interface, application package manager (to install additional applications via a web depot) |
| 2.1 | October 5, 2006 | Multi-calendar function, improved LDAP support, PDF generator, new knowledge database, support for hierarchical organizations, statistics generator |
| 2.2 | July 2, 2007 | Improvements, e.g. B. Service and Service Level Agreement (SLA), native ticket typing, modified escalation mechanism |
| 2.3 | August 5, 2008 | Performance improvements, implementation of some functions with AJAX technology |
| 2.4 | July 22, 2009 | Changes in the front and back end, e.g. B. Management dashboard, WYSIWYG editor, AJAX-based customer search and auto-completion, dynamic views, new bulk action, event-controlled notifications, license changes to the GNU Affero General Public License (Version 3), article filters |
| 3.0 | November 15, 2010 | Redesign of the entire surface, unread function for tickets and articles, optimized full-text search, improved ticket zoom, support of the WCAG and WAI-ARIA standards, integrated archive function |
| 3.1 | February 14, 2011 | Replacement of the previous free fields with "Dynamic Fields", new "Generic Interface" for connecting external applications |
| 3.2 | January 29, 2013 | "Customer Information Center" for a better overview of tickets for certain customers, process management function for improved mapping of processes in the ticket engine |
| 3.3 | November 12, 2013 | Improved: productivity, collaboration with external systems, installation / administration |
| 4th | November 25, 2014 | Conversion to a single-digit versioning scheme, flat design, improved caching mechanism, core system uses new object manager |
| 5 | 20th October 2015 | 35 languages, responsive design of the web interface, improved statistics generator, improved notification system, daemon improves performance |
| 6th | November 21, 2017 | 38 languages, time zone support, improved ticket handling, various backend improvements |
| 7th | 19th November 2018 | 38 languages, available as a cloud solution or on-premises , dynamic search, ticket search templates, corporate design in processes, prefabricated processes according to ITIL . License change to GNU General Public License (Version 3) for all current releases. In 2018, OTRS declared that the free version should only appear about two years after the commercial version was published. So far there is no version 7 of the "OTRS Community Edition" |
Web links
- OTRS Group - manufacturer and world's largest service provider for everything to do with OTRS
- OTRS Community - official community website
- OTRS Community Board - official community representation
- OPAR - official database for additional modules
- OPMZone - automated package creation and provision of additional modules
Individual evidence
- ↑ ((otrs)) goes public on December 23rd. In: OTRS homepage. December 22, 2009, accessed July 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Release 6.0.29 . July 3, 2020 (accessed July 6, 2020).
- ↑ OTRS 3.2 with improved process management , heise Open Source . Retrieved August 8, 2013.
- ↑ OTRS Free - The Flexible Open Source Service Management Software. Retrieved February 18, 2016 .
- ↑ OTRS realigns product strategy. Retrieved February 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Release Notes: OTRS Help Desk 3.3.1. Archived from the original on December 14, 2013 ; Retrieved December 14, 2013 .
- ↑ Release Notes: OTRS 4. Accessed December 22, 2014 (English).
- ↑ Release Notes: OTRS 5. Archived from the original on February 18, 2016 ; accessed on February 18, 2016 .
- ↑ ((OTRS)) Community Edition Release Notes. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
- ↑ OTRS AG presents Version 7 of its Service Management Suite OTRS. In: corporate.otrs.com. Retrieved February 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Change of orientation. In: it-novum.com. 2018, accessed on February 29, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Community Board for Open Source Helpdesk OTRS founded. Retrieved February 25, 2011 .
- ↑ Community organizes itself in the committee. Retrieved February 25, 2011 .