I have recieved an email from Daiji and I will paste the relevant
source here as I think it breaks down the problem quite nicely:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
While at their core, they are similar, helpdesk apps and issue tracker
apps are very different. One basic point is that the general
terminology of "helpdesk" vs "issue tracker" users is different. The
second is what the real end goal of each app is.
A true helpdesk app would eventually aim towards the following goals:
- Goal: customer-relationship management
- live support
- identification of "experts" for a given query
- desktop integration
- Timeline: minutes to days (how long a ticket should take to resolve)
Whereas a true issue tracker would aim towards some things that
helpdesks don't:
- Goal: problem management, analysis and resolution
- integration w/ source control and release engineering tools
- Timeline: days to months (how long an issue should take to resolve)
I generally feel that apps that try to do both have tended to fail at
being easy to use in the issue tracking dept. If you wrote two separate
apps that integrated well, that would probably be a better solution than
what I've seen so far.
But what you've written in your project scope doc sounds to me (from a
terminology standpoint) like a helpdesk app... And I think you really
need to define what the real end goal is for your project, or you'll
wander around for a while. There's enough room out there for more than
one app project, so I wouldn't worry about which one is the "right" one
to do. The fundamental question is which one you'd like to do and are
more passionate about.
I can be passionate about a true issue tracker app. I probably wouldn't
be as passionate about an app that wandered or tried to do both.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a planing doc for this project. I will paste it here just so we can
start the discussion:
<p>
We would like to develop a helpdesk application based on Grails framework.
<p>
Initially we would like to enable the following features:
<ol>
<li>
Creation of support line. Think of it as Project on JIRA. We name it support line since in Helpdesk it will probably be something like an area of support. So, to accomadate both types of conventions we give this artifact a name of "SupportLine".
</li>
<li>
User should be able to create an issue addressed to the SupportLine.
</li>
<li>
Users should be able to comment on the issues.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
We should have the following roles for the system:
<ul>
<li>Site Admin</li>
<li>Support Line Admin</li>
<li>Support Line Member</li>
<li>User</li>
</ul>
<p>
User role(s) will determine the set of functions availble
to the user.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I have recieved an email from Daiji and I will paste the relevant
source here as I think it breaks down the problem quite nicely:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
While at their core, they are similar, helpdesk apps and issue tracker
apps are very different. One basic point is that the general
terminology of "helpdesk" vs "issue tracker" users is different. The
second is what the real end goal of each app is.
A true helpdesk app would eventually aim towards the following goals:
- Goal: customer-relationship management
- live support
- identification of "experts" for a given query
- desktop integration
- Timeline: minutes to days (how long a ticket should take to resolve)
Whereas a true issue tracker would aim towards some things that
helpdesks don't:
- Goal: problem management, analysis and resolution
- integration w/ source control and release engineering tools
- Timeline: days to months (how long an issue should take to resolve)
I generally feel that apps that try to do both have tended to fail at
being easy to use in the issue tracking dept. If you wrote two separate
apps that integrated well, that would probably be a better solution than
what I've seen so far.
But what you've written in your project scope doc sounds to me (from a
terminology standpoint) like a helpdesk app... And I think you really
need to define what the real end goal is for your project, or you'll
wander around for a while. There's enough room out there for more than
one app project, so I wouldn't worry about which one is the "right" one
to do. The fundamental question is which one you'd like to do and are
more passionate about.
I can be passionate about a true issue tracker app. I probably wouldn't
be as passionate about an app that wandered or tried to do both.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a planing doc for this project. I will paste it here just so we can
start the discussion:
<p>
We would like to develop a helpdesk application based on Grails framework.
<p>
Initially we would like to enable the following features:
<ol>
<li>
Creation of support line. Think of it as Project on JIRA. We name it support line since in Helpdesk it will probably be something like an area of support. So, to accomadate both types of conventions we give this artifact a name of "SupportLine".
</li>
<li>
User should be able to create an issue addressed to the SupportLine.
</li>
<li>
Users should be able to comment on the issues.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
We should have the following roles for the system:
<ul>
<li>Site Admin</li>
<li>Support Line Admin</li>
<li>Support Line Member</li>
<li>User</li>
</ul>
<p>
User role(s) will determine the set of functions availble
to the user.