ORIGINAL REDDIT POST
Self hosted ticket system
After spending an entire weekend helping family members with computers and tech, I got to thinking, is there any self hosted ticket system software that will allow a friend or family member to submit their issue that way I can work through them like I do on…
After spending an entire weekend helping family members with computers and tech, I got to thinking, is there any self hosted ticket system software that will allow a friend or family member to submit their issue that way I can work through them like I do on the help desk level? It would be nice to keep all of my troubleshooting notes under one request for people.
Collected discussion
Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.
I've embraced being the IT support guy of the family, it has its perks. Father in law recently moved and basically gave me all his old cell phones and computers, and when I say old I mean still usable hardware that I play with in my homelab
I need it more for me and to be able to add notes and troubleshooting steps and research. The issue I had over the weekend dealt with a lot of screenshots and info, so collecting it in one spot would be amazing for the workflow
If the process was user friendly like sending a text message I don't see the issue. I usually need to ask followup questions and have them grab screenshots or take pictures anyway so I know what I'm dealing with before I arrive
They are asking me because I'm patient with them and I don't treat them like they're stupid for not knowing. I've learned working on a help desk is that it's not about the ticketing system but the actual customer support after the ticket is submitted.
I like that there are open source projects that use redmine, that's a great sign and shows the work and dedication to the project. I'm of the sentiment that vibe coded projects shouldn't really be sold for profit, it should be used as a learning tool. Downvotes be damned, AI has sparked my curiosity to learn to code and learn the software development process. I'm all for using it in the production process as a tool, it helps projects similar to yours get out to more people faster. Now give me all the Downvotes you can reddit, Im here for it
They already call and text me most of the data in a ticket, in ok with me just taking that data and putting it into a servicenow type interface so that I can do my research and troubleshooting
I sense regret in your future young padawan
Yup... For real. And the more official you make the system, the more you'll be on the line.... I sure hope they pay you (op, or whoever is reading this and doing support...) for your support.
Good luck getting your friends and family to submit tickets
haha i’ve also been supporting my family since i was a 8 year old boy with the computer
Good luck getting your family to actually use it. At best, you'll get some gibberish in a ticket and then a text message or a phone call asking for help 😃
I can't even get my users to submit tickets and they're getting paid to be there, you think you're gonna get friends and family to submit them just out of courtesy of your time? Lol
https://www.redmine.org/ Before you go "I should vibe code my own" We're working on a Jira competitor, been in the making for the past couple of years, even with Claude we're hundreds of hours in on it, plus the probably thousand hours before that. We still have a lot to do. Anything you can vibe code in a weekend: just fucking install Redmine (or any similar FOSS options).
I'm not sure you'd be interested in this but might worth looking at Hermes agent for the creation of tickets, it has working implementations for telegram, discord and many other platforms including whatsapp - which I didn't test yet although I'm thinking about doing but in a professional environment, getting tired of always having to remind colleagues to do this and that and was thinking to have the agent do it and if that works well perhaps move it as a point of contact with customers, will see. the workflow could potentially be: a message comes in on your messenger of choice, agent could ask (or not) some more questions or for screenshots or whatever and open a ticket, or just write an .md file of the issue which you can then open in Obsidian, or a git hub issue, or whatever. https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/ https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/ edited to add: this is to resolve the first pain point in having a platform for tickets and that is, imo, nobody likes or usually takes the time to open tickets :-)
https://github.com/osticket/osticket
No. Just...no.
I think family members are asking you to help (partially) because they want to not deal with ticketing systems.
iTop (shared webhosting friendly), or Zammed (Proxmox helper script available)
it’s been a while, but GLPI can do this, get the user to email the glpi inbox, it should auto create a ticket and has workflows iirc
Request Tracker is the grand daddy of self hosted ticketing systems and still rules feature wise.
osTicket works great for family help desk stuff. web based and tracks everything per ticket. no dealing with email threads or scattered notes.
freescout will be the best,its simple plus it has iOs and android app.
I use Zammad and have it set up with email and twilio. So people can email or text and it creates a ticket and lets me.know
I like Zammad, and if you happen to be running Proxmox, there’s a community installer for it. That said, I also agree with the other comments. Getting your family to submit formal tickets is not going to happen. At best, the ticket system can be invisible to them, and you just leave notes for yourself there, without their interaction.