OTRS (originally Open-Source Ticket Request System) is a service management suite. The suite contains an agent portal, admin dashboard and customer portal. In the agent portal, teams process tickets and requests from customers (internal or external). There are various ways in which this information, as well as customer and related data can be viewed. As the name implies, the admin dashboard allows system administrators to manage the system: Options are many, but include roles and groups, process automation, channel integration, and CMDB/database options. The third component, the customer portal, is much like a customizable webpage where information can be shared with customers and requests can be tracked on the customer side.
History
In 2001, OTRS began as an open source help desk ticketing software.
In 2003, OTRS GmbH was formed and a professional company entered the EMEA market. This was followed in 2006 by entry into the North American market.
In 2007, the company was renamed to OTRS AG with the intention of going public, which it did in 2009. This is the same year in which OTRS was brought to Latin America with the Mexican subsidiary officially being founded in 2010. Entry into the APAC region occurred in 2011.
In 2015, a new version of the software, known as ''OTRS Business Solution'', was launched. This commercial version was designed for professional users who needed additional support, configuration and features.
Also in 2015, STORM powered by OTRS was launched.
In 2018, both OTRS-specific products were renamed: The open source version became ''((OTRS)) Community Edition''. The commercial and managed version is named ''OTRS''. A third offering is called ''OTRS
On-Premise
On- premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and incorrectly referred to as on-premise) is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm ...
'' for professional customers who intend to host the platform in their own data centers.
In December 2020, OTRS AG announced the end of life of support for the Community Edition which led to several
forks
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...
.
Alongside its customers was
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...
, which used ((OTRS)) Community Edition to run Wikimedia OTRS system; after its discontinuation, in April 2021, it was migrated to Znuny, a fork of ((OTRS)) Community Edition. Being no longer ran on original OTRS software, the system was renamed
Wikimedia VRT.
OTRS Group
OTRS
GmbH was originally founded in 2003 by André Mindermann (CEO) and Burchard Steinbild (chairman of the supervisory board). In 2007, the company became OTRS Group, also known as OTRS
AG. In addition to the two, today's management board includes Christopher Kuhn (COO), Sabine Riedel (board member, Marketing, HR), Gabriele Brauer (VP Finance) and Manuel Hecht (VP Global Software Development).
OTRS AG is the source code owner of OTRS.
The OTRS Group has its headquarters in Germany. There are six subsidiaries worldwide, including OTRS Inc. (USA), OTRS S.A. de C.V. (Mexico), OTRS ASIA Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), OTRS Asia Ltd. (Hong Kong), (Brazil), and OTRS Magyarország Kft. (Hungary).
OTRS AG is listed in the Basic Board of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Additional OTRS-related products
OTRS is very often used independently, but it is also the foundation of two other solutions.
STORM powered by OTRS is a
SOAR that is used by CERTS, SOCs and
product security
Security engineering is the process of incorporating security controls into an information system so that the controls become an integral part of the system’s operational capabilities. It is similar to other systems engineering activities in tha ...
incident response teams (PSIRTs). It uses the OTRS service management suite as its backbone, but incorporates security-relevant processes and information.
CONTROL powered by OTRS is an
ISMS. It configures OTRS in such a way that it can track and document ISO 27001, TISAX and other controls for compliance teams.
OTOBO is an Open Source Help-Desk based on OTRS.
Technical notes
Since its beginnings OTRS has been implemented in the programming language
Perl
Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...
. The web interface is made user-friendly by using
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
(which can be switched off for security reasons). The OTRS web interface uses the Template::Toolkit rendering engine to dynamically generate the HTML output of individual frontend modules. This approach allows the underlying logic of the OTRS frontend modules (written in Perl) to remain separate from the presentation of each module's user interface (served as HTML to the user).
Originally, OTRS supported only the use of a
MySQL
MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...
RDBMS for use as the webserver database. Support has since been added for
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
,
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
,
IBM Db2
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON a ...
,
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ma ...
, and
MariaDB
MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ori ...
(a community-developed fork of MySQL). OTRS may be used on many
UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
or UNIX-like platforms (e.g.
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
,
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...
, etc.) as well as on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
.
The scalability of OTRS systems may be increased by using
mod_perl
Mod, MOD or mods may refer to:
Places
* Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band
* M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US
* ...
for the
Apache
The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...
Webserver or by separating the database and web server systems, allowing a large number of simultaneously working agents and high volumes of tickets.
See also
*
Comparison of help desk issue tracking software
This article is a comparison of notable issue tracking systems used primarily for help desks and service desks rather than for bug tracking or project management.
See also
* Comparison of issue-tracking systems
This article is a compariso ...
*
Comparison of issue-tracking systems
This article is a comparison of issue tracking systems that are notable, including bug tracking systems, help desk and service desk issue tracking systems, as well as asset management systems. The comparison includes client-server application, di ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Perl
Help desk software
ITIL
Bug and issue tracking software
Perl software
Software using the GNU AGPL license