Email-based helpdesk

Question

I'm trying to find helpdesk/ticketing software that is largely email-based. This means it should ideally have the following features:

• All new emails sent to a support email (e.g. [email protected]) are converted into tickets
• Employees are notified when a new ticket is generated
• Employees can respond to tickets/customers through their own email account, but the response will be rerouted through the main support email so that customers are only ever interacting with a single email account
• Ticket management, such as closing and modifying ticket attributes, can be done by employees through email
• Available for GNU/Linux

I've most recently been trying to get osTicket to work, but their email support is not fantastic (responding to tickets, modifying tickets, etc. all has to be done through the web interface without some unreliable hacks). I've thought about using Bugzilla since it does have the ability to convert emails into tickets, but I'm not sure if has the other features I'm looking for and fear that it may be too software development-oriented. I've also tried looking into RequestTracker but can't seem to find any half-decent documentation on how to configure and manage the software.

Does any such gratis software exist? Alternatively, am I missing something about the aforementioned software and they actually do fit my criteria?

Answer 1

Consider Jitbit Helpdesk.

• We are heavily focused on working with email and have all the necessary features.
• All emails are converted into tickets or replies to existing tickets.
• We have a flexible permission and notification systems. Your agents are notified about new tickets vie email, browser desktop notification and phone push notifications by default.
• You can use your email to respond to tickets. We take care of the proper routing and we have various settings to set it up exactly how you need it to work. In fact, it works the way you've described by default.
• You can do basic operations on tickets by putting special tags in email subjects when replying to ticket notifications.
• Unfortunately we are Windows only, but we fit everything else you've described perfectly. We offer a hosted SaaS version as well.

Answer 2

If you are willing to set up a VM with Windows on it you could use Spiceworks.

They have an on-premises free helpdesk which will do most of the tasks mentioned above if not all.

As I have been looking lately for a Service Desk myself, I could find anything Free/Open Source that does what you mention.