Considering move to OTRS from Remedy Service Desk Express

[tmcgovern]

Hello, new member here.

Locally in our country, we use BMC Remedy Help Desk Express with SLA capabilities and the "Management Center" module for better reporting/dashboards. The purpose of Remedy is to support many clients in a cloud/managed service setup with a Customer login available also. (I am in the architecture group here and not in the servicedesk group and so am not Remedy or OTRS experienced, I want to take a neutral approach to this)

I'm doing an initial evaluation of OTRS. OTRS is used at a corporate level for our internal helpdesk only and it may make sense to migrate to it locally in the managed service space. The following are the higher priority areas in the requirements (or concerns) as to whether OTRS can meet the needs, your help is greatly appreciated:

1) Is it suitable for multi-Client managed services with dedicated, segregated organisations, sub-organisations/projects within each client with a dedicated portal for each client ?

2) Assuming there is customisable workflow, can you setup SLA's per Client, e.g. Priority 1,2,3,4, expiration notifications on tickets, Level 1,2,3,4 support structures ?

3) Can you have pie chart, bar chart/other refreshable ticketing information for display to the helpdesk staff (for display "on the office wall" so to speak). Does it meet SDE Management Center capabilities do you think ?

4) Can you produce PDF weekly reports for each client ?

5) Do the notification options equal or surpass Remedy SDE e.g. changing between Priorities of a ticket, can the client be notified ?

6) Is resolution a concept and do "resolutions" become categorised and/or is there a good "knowledge base" built with search engine capability ?

7) Can you attach documents to a case/ticket ?

This is a slightly general question: Do you believe we can for the most part match the opening screen view in Remedy SDE or quite similar ?

many thanks for any assistance, Tony.

[crythias]

1) Is it suitable for multi-Client managed services with dedicated, segregated organisations, sub-organisations/projects within each client with a dedicated portal for each client ?

Projects? Maybe, if you consider a Queue a project, but generally, OTRS doesn't appear to be Project centric. Organisations -> Groups, Queues, and subqueues. Dedicated portal for the client, yes.

2) Assuming there is customisable workflow, can you setup SLA's per Client, e.g. Priority 1,2,3,4, expiration notifications on tickets, Level 1,2,3,4 support structures ?

There's an SLA module, Priorities, and autoclose. Much of this is customizable.

3) Can you have pie chart, bar chart/other refreshable ticketing information for display to the helpdesk staff (for display "on the office wall" so to speak). Does it meet SDE Management Center capabilities do you think ?

There's an Open/Close line graph on the Dashboard. Take a look at the demo. Plus, there is a stat API that you can use to push to your own graphing module.

4) Can you produce PDF weekly reports for each client ?

Yes. Check the demo.

5) Do the notification options equal or surpass Remedy SDE e.g. changing between Priorities of a ticket, can the client be notified ?

Yes

6) Is resolution a concept and do "resolutions" become categorised and/or is there a good "knowledge base" built with search engine capability ?

There's an FAQ module that can handle internal, client, and public knowledge base. Tags, rating, and searching are included.

7) Can you attach documents to a case/ticket ?

Yes

Do you believe we can for the most part match the opening screen view in Remedy SDE or quite similar?

Probably, if you want to, you can customize what you want.