🚀 go-pugleaf

I've just moved into our small computer / LAN management shop to help
plan for our LAN's future, both in the physical layout/media/capacity
and customer support/service areas.  I've found documentation about the
LAN's physical plant or operating charistics sadly lacking.  The techs
in the office have done fairly well in maintaining the inventory of the
PCs and documenting what software has been licensed to which machine.
They have NOT done any type of service call tracking other than the "I
remember doing this on that machine to fix the problem" personal
memories routine.  Their memories have worked fairly well for our
current 200 users of 150 PC's on a stand alone Novell 3.11 LAN but, some
things are getting lost every so often.  As we ramp up to over 600 users
on 500 machines, along with an Internet link, I doubt very much that our
personal memories will be sufficient to keep track of calls (waiting, in
progress, awaiting additional help, completed), and produce accurate,
meaningful management reports.
 
Anyone out operating or supervising a help desk?  Can anyone suggest
what package we should look at to automate our service/customer support
calls?  I'm thinking we want something to open, assign to a tech, track
open calls, close calls, and be able to show trends of common problems
on a type of machine, type of board, program, operator, etc.
 
Thank's for any advice you can give me.
Chester F. Howes
<chowes@nyx.cs.du.edu>