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Showing posts from July, 2018

osTicket Lessons - Filtering and Exchange

Here is a thing I’ve discovered and it will hopefully save someone else hours of time.  I have osTicket installed, with IMAP enabled to download emails from our Exchange mail server into the system. I then have filters enabled to apply rules to these emails to automagically point them at the right team / department / user – we use osTicket for marketing, reporting and so on as well as for IT Support. For example – reports@domain.com need to go the Reporting Department, not support. Seems simple right? There is a problem though – I do not want to have 10 email accounts (and associated logins) set up for my osTicket emails. In an Exchange environment, you can’t just have a shared folder – it needs to have a full user account and an associated Exchange mailbox to use POP3 or IMAP and this costs us a CAL (Client Access License) every time. Frustrating! So I thought – let’s use an alias instead. I called the actual user account something like ithelp@domain.com and then a

osTicket - updated review

Some time ago I published a comparison of OTRS and osTicket. I've now had the chance to use osTicket as a daily task management tool, so I thought it might be worth updating my initial impressions. It has taken a bit to get used to osTicket coming out of a CRM and OTRS as my task management platforms. Specifically, understanding how tickets and tasks relate to one another. The way I've been thinking of it is this: A ticket is almost like a mini-project - it can be used standalone, with references back to a client creating the ticket and keeping it updated, with tasks (like a work breakdown structure) applied against the ticket. The ticket can't be closed until all the tasks are completed. Tasks on the other hand, can be autonomous of a ticket and are quick and easy to start, fill in and then to close. There is no link back to a creating user though. I've used both extensively - many of the tickets I have running have numerous tasks dependent on them (although it

Lenovo T430 - a dynamite laptop with an attractive price tag

My go to laptop of the last 6 months has been this little beauty. I picked it up cheap and while she ain't much to look at: The T430 - image from: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t430/ it's a ripper of a machine. Now I paid under $250AUD for this off a friend. The Windows install was stuffed and needed a full rebuild. Pretty easy right - 2 hours for install and then wait for patches - but she wasn't having a bar of it and bought a shiny, but shite new laptop. And I ended up with a terrific spare laptop that quickly became my number one machine. The specs of this beast: 3rd generation Intel® Core™ i7-3520M (2.90 GHz, 4MB L3, 1600MHz FSB) 256 GB OPAL SSD 8GB RAM 14.0” HD (1366 x 768) (200 NITS) - look at those NITS! 2.166kg   I get about 6 hours out of the battery - and this is mostly running the machine flat out. It has a nice bright screen, isn't very heavy and is very robust. The shining feature of this laptop is the keyboard.