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Review: Bugnet - Really great open source issue tracking and project management software



YAY For Bugnet! Bugnet is a fantastic tool to track support issues and log calls as well as being able to log time spent on issues.


Here is the tools homepage!



We have been using it in our organization since January 2007 and have found this to be a great tool for tracking support issues and making sure that all our bases are covered when it comes to customer services. We also use it to plan our development strategy going forward and see how effective we have been in the past with patches or new features. We have tracked over 400 issues and ideas using this system.



Our organization covers a wide variety or IT services.

Namely:

1. Custom Software Development

2. Product Software Development for corporates

3. Product Software Development for the general public

4. IT Infrastructure for our group of companies

5. IT Support and networking for selected clients



Here are the features I really like:

1. Open source.

2. ASP .NET 2.0.

3. Multiple Project Support.

4. Ability to add attachments to issues.

5. Easy to read ticket numbers are issued by the system.

6. Automatic Changelog and Roadmaps for your software projects.

7. Very granular user security from totally public to solidly locked down.

8. Nice project metrics.

9. Easy navigation and filtering.

10. Project Summary shows nice overview of issues.

11. Full history on tickets.

12. Nicely formatted comments on issues.

13. Ability to link an issue to a related issue.

14. Active support from the developers.

15. Export a project list to Excel, or subscribe via RSS to a project or issue!!

16. Each project can have multiple categories, versions and milestones. You can also give deadlines and time estimates on issues.




Here are some features which I don't use but you might like:

1. Ability to log calls sent to an email account.

2. Very good reporting.

3. Custom field definitions on support tickets.

4. Active Directory / SAM authentication.



Overall this is a very powerful product and well worth investigating in your business.


Once again, here is the tools homepage! Enjoy!

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By: RexMan | Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 1:07:00 PM | |

Free network and workstation auditing software


Spiceworks the great free network and workstation auditing software


In our business keeping track of the IT Assets for a group of companies is challenging. There are numerous products out there to help an IT Manager do this, however they either cost an arm or a leg, or the software provider wants a copy of the information gathered, or the free stuff is just pure crap!


Well in my travels across the NET I came across SPICEWORKS. It is seriously good remote WMI auto-discovery software.The management interface is a set of web pages with a consistent and clean look.


Key features:


  1. SNMP, network device and network printer scanning

  2. Linux scanning via SSH

  3. Alerts on customizable definitions (eg machines with no anti-virus or low printer toner)

  4. Ability to manage your software licenses

  5. Software automatically categorizes machines into groups. eg Laptops, servers, routers etc

  6. Ability to define custom devices

  7. Ability to compare one machine with another





There are several catches:


  1. Some clients you will need the administrator password for, a problem when it comes to private hardware

  2. You need to make sure the firewall is opened from the machine you are running the scan from to the target machine to allow WMI requests through

  3. The software is not 100% free as it displays some adverts





All in all this is a fantastic piece of software. I was involved in writing this type of software in the past and compared to what I wrote these guys have really taken the cake!
Download it from their website immediately and start pro-actively managing your IT assets today!

Download Spiceworks Free Network Management Software!

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By: RexMan | Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 8:42:00 AM | |