Web Help Desk

I started using this software 4 years ago. From a very first moment I could really see a difference from other products. I liked an ability to have multiple locations, with each location having multiple points of contacts. With that, I was able to set up routings of my tickets so they would always reach a correct IT person. This is very useful, when your business is spread through multiple timezones. Another feature that I really liked is LDAP authentication. This allowed me to restrict access to only authorized users, eliminating a possibility of phishing emails reaching the system.

As the company grew, at some point my AD structure become very complex - multiple ADs not connected to each other. Unfortunately, at that point, I had to stop using this solution because it couldn't handle more that one AD efficiently.

It provides an effective customizable solution for IT help desk. We use this tool for internal and client ticketing. It allows you to configure email rules to allow for tickets to be created based off keywords. This makes it much easier for users to create tickets. We host ours in AWS and it has performed admirably. Customer service has always been easy to get a hold of and will work with you until a solution is discovered.

The interface is dated. It has not received a refresh since we started using it three years ago. When you attempt to use it on a mobile device it looks like I am back on iOS 3. There have been many changes with HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript and I expect the tool to adopt these new changes to improve the UI.

It allows us to get statistics on our helpdesk calls. Our data center is able to create tickets automatically. It is a repository for all help calls that we did not have before so management can get an overall picture. We like that we can build custom reports and dashboards. Creating forms that can ask a user for data is helpful but we have not implemented any yet because it is cumbersome.

The UI for the software is stuck in the 90s, very table oriented, Comments in the tickets have a lot of wasted space, we have to scroll constantly to see history. The table widths are not relative or resizable. Images are stored and provided to the user as links with generic names, half the time the link is a signature logo. Our users use screen shots in almost all of our tickets. Not being able to see the images without clicking on a link is painful. Also, we can not use the customizable forms because a user has to save their image to their local hard drive and then upload to the form. Many users don't have a clue how to do this so we have to use email. Because we have to use emails we get duplicate tickets because the software does not recognize a reply. Some of this is the lack of training for our users but if the UI was better we would send them directly to the website. We have compiled a list of questions and will be contacting SW to see if we are missing something in our configurations or if it is a lack of training. If we are not able to resolve most of these issues we will be looking for a different solution.

It offers a lot given the price. You have a ticketing system, FAQs section, Reports that can be run on tickets / techs. You can also set up action rules that can automate tickets, for example reports being run. Integrates with AD. The layout is fairly intuitive and organizing tickets / categories / etc is easy.

Some features are half baked. Assets / Parts isn't very intuitive to work with and creates more problems than it solves. For example it will produce multiple entries based on a wireless IP and wired IP and there is no way to force it to use a MAC address which would make a lot more sense. I would say there is a fairly steep learning curve if you really want to get into advanced features. I didn't even know a lot of them existed until about a year ago. Support is hit or miss.

Software is very easy to setup, everything you need to get a support system up and running is there. Solarwinds Support is very prompt to respond to questions or issue that you may have. The reason I suggest Solarwinds Helpdesk was that I had been a user / admin on a system before. Thicket history is great, asset management is very good

The report module and the part and billing feature is weak.
Generating reports is not that intuitive and there is things that you cant get an report on.
Parts and billing, missing pricing features and invoice / packing list options.
Solarwinds is not so god at coming back to with feature request that you have submitted nor to let you know that bug have been fixed. There is to long between bug fixed / new releases is being released .