Best way to implement helpdesk functionality?

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Kevin wrote:
> 1) email sent to info at example.com gets sent directly to some list of
> maybe 4-8 "helpdesk" users (cyrus mailboxes) for action by any one of
> them;
> 2) replies to any of those messages (the ones that were written To:
> info at example.com) from any of this list of 4-8 helpdesk users get sent
> to all of the helpdesk users (so that all of them know when a message
> has been replied to and needs no other action);
> 3) state of the mailbox preserved between access by different users
> (again, so that all of them can see what's been done already by someone
> else);
> 4) any of these replies (written by pam at example.com or joe at example.com)
> actually have (as From: fields) the original address info at example.com
> and no trace of the actual user's email address.

This is not the kind of reply you want, I know.  But why don't you use a
free-software helpdesk system, such as http://otrs.org/ ?

A proper queue and ticket-tracking system such as the one implemented by
OTRS will give you less hassle on the long run.  And it will take about the
same ammount of effort to implement as what you describe, but it is less
prone to operator error.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh
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