No subject

1) Users prefer not to use them.  They'll do whatever gets thier problem
solved with the least amount of effort.

Some might even decide thier problem isn't enough of a problem to put in a
ticket, but they will complain to co-workers and management.  You might hea=
r
of a problem from your boss via this way.

2) If management doesn't support tickets, no one will use them.  Your
management needs to make clear to the users they should be using the ticket
system.  You need the ability, supported by your management, to say "I'm no=
t
going to remember this unless it's a ticket".

3) If you accept requests outside the ticket system, people won't use the
ticket system.  This includes typing in tickets for people.


Things I've seen work:

Not accepting anything besides a ticket.  You need to say "I'm going to
forget it if it's not in a ticket."  Your boss needs to back you up on
this.  Of *course* there are exceptions.

Simple web forms.  Email eliminates this.
  check boxes to catagorize
     ex: printer, windows, linux, phone, facilties
  priorities
     ex: 5 - request, 4 - 1 person working w/ workaround, 3 - 1 person
stopped, 2 - multiple working w/ work around, 1- multiple people out, 0 -
everyone stopped, building on fire.
  minimal description of problem in text

Feedback.  Every time you touch a ticket the user gets an email with the
changes.

Don't worry about statistics in a ticket system.  If that's the purpouse,
you're going to spend all your time tracking problems instead of solving
them.  You can get enough stats out of anything (# tickets closed/opened in
N days) but they should be an afterthought.

The worst things I've seen are telephone based systems with someone enterin=
g
tickets by hand.  You spend lots of time transcribing and losts of stuff
gets lost in the translation if you're not the transcriber.  You usually
have to talk to the user yourself.  If the user fills out a form, you've go=
t
it narrowed down and can do some automated sorting.




--
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad
measures.
  - Daniel Webster

------=_Part_12443_15929058.1132777917733
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

<br><br><div><span class=3D"gmail_quote">On 11/23/05, <b class=3D"gmail_sen=
dername">Travis Roy</b> &lt;<a href=3D"mailto:travis at scootz.net">travis at sco=
otz.net</a>&gt; wrote:</span><div>&nbsp;</div><blockquote class=3D"gmail_qu=
ote" style=3D"border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0p=
t 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Because they HATE the interface they refuse to use it and rather then<br>ch=
eck the website they call, usually requesting every little detail.<br><br>I=
'm trying to get them to knock that off, but it's not going to happen<br>
with RT.</blockquote><div><br>
<br>
&nbsp;I'd wager that they're going to hate any ticketing system you
come up with and are going to call the you rather then checking the
website.<br>
<br>
Some users will use the web, some will use email, some will phone and some =
will walk over.<br>
<br>