Freshservice

Vorteile

- Easy to use
- Good platform to manage incidents/problems/changes/releases as well as requests
- Good CMDB for managing company assets
- Pretty simple to perform administrative tasks
- Good customization
- Has mobile app that will notify you when someone performs an action on any of your items (Such as assignment of a ticket, replies, approvals, etc.)
- Had good experience from Freshservice support staff
- Has the ability to integrate into your domain account via Single Sing-On (SSO)
- Good solution for storing your IT Support based knowledge base

Nachteile

- Customization could be better in some areas
- Some changes require you to contact Freshservice support directly
- Digital asset management is a bit clunky
- Mobile app is not as intuitive as desktop experience and can feel difficult to navigate for some users
- Noticed that at times, usually in the morning hours of EST time zone, Freshservice access cuts out for 5 minutes

Vorteile

Simple to use - one of the main reasons we went with FreshService was that during a trial of many other systems FreshService was by far the easiest to setup and configure. This means more time doing other projects rather than administering the helpdesk system.

Powerful Automations - my trial version had the new Smart Workflow addon which made creating complex workflows very easy and simple. There is still room for improvement and some fields cannot be used in automations e.g. Impact or Urgency.

Self service catlog - its a nice to have and allows easy segregation of Service Requests compared to Incidents, the custom forms are nice although would be better to dynamic i.e. drop down of all requesters for example.

Branding - nice branding options and easy to use giving full access to CSS / HTML although not as easy to manipulate as ZenDesk.

Self Service Portal - We haven't rolled this out to end users yet but the portal is easy to use and with the branding options can be customised. The embedded widget is also useful and can be embedded into SharePoint.

Nachteile

Reporting - very limited compared to some systems although improvements are on the road map.

Software Assets - confusing to use as you have to track each software item as an asset, cannot easily search on what is installed on computers across the database. Again improvements coming on the road map.

Dashboard is useless - current implementation of the system gives a very basic overview of the system and an activity log. We don't use it as it doesn't provide any useful information.

Certain Form Fields - you cannot change the default fields or even hide them without using JavaScript, this means I have had to create custom fields to tell my agents to ignore certain fields which isn't ideal. Also the categories list is shared among tickets, our change requests differ from our incidents.

SLA breaches - compared to ZenDesk it isn't as easy to see when a ticket is due to breach SLA. Currently the ticket interface only shows Resolve Due date and not response due date, the response due just appears in the main ticket view when its close to expiry. Not ideal but workable.

Vorteile

The FreshService interface is pleasant and pretty intuitive to work with. We had been using a different ticket system for more than a decade. Nonetheless, the switch to FreshService was relatively smooth for the whole team. I think the major reason is that the interface feels rather natural or comfortable to work with.

The same kind of intuitiveness is also seen under the hood (Admin panel), which is where a lot of other systems fall short. Even though Fresh Service packs a ton of features under the hood, you are not battling against a maze of intertwined difficult-to-manage configurations. I personally don't need to do a lot of changes in the configuration (I'm rather the "backup" for those kind of things), but when I do, it doesn't take me too long to find out where I need to adapt what setting.

I had to contact Fresh Service support a few times and so far always got a satisfactory reply in a decent reply time.

Nachteile

With all of the above said, it also lacks some features you could see as "basic" or "take for granted" here and there.

Agents can't configure an "out-of-office" period themselves.
There's no possibility to set up a custom dashboard per agent.
My major pet peeve is the text editor, which options are very limited (can't send a reply with a paragraph in fixed with font, can't edit the source ...) and which sometimes behaves unexpectedly (some odd behaviour with linebreaks, weird cursor position when pasting text ...)

And finally, while there is integration with Jira, I have the feeling it tends to break quite easily. We've probably had it more half- or not-working-at-all than working as it should. This makes it unreliable, requires manual effort and follow-up and really undoes the usefulness of having integration at all.

Vorteile

It's literally "pay and use". Zero footprint in your current IT architecture, everything is habdled via any compatible web browser. And yet it includes advanced ITSM functionalities such as asset management and CMDB, in which you mdeploy Probes and Agents to Windows, Linux and Mac devices to scan and inventory hardware and software. And like every other Freshworks solution, it's very customizable interms of UI, automation and notifications, as well as integrations with third-party solutions and via API for developers.

Nachteile

Perhaps adding new modules. Freshservice deals with this by integrations and automations, but out of the included modules (Tickets, Problems, Changes, Releases, CMDB, Projects, Solutions and Reports) you can't, at the moment, add a new one, such as Facilities or HR for example. However, provided that the included modules cover most, if not all, or ITSM's basic needs, and that the mnost generic modules (such as Tickets) are easily adaptable and customizable, that's not much of a problem.

Vorteile

SaaS based product so no on premises hardware or software. Setup is more than 10 minutes that some of the marketing indicates, but definitely not a complex setup. Once you understand the workflow things become fairly intuitive in setting up the software. The ability to process tickets from one screen, enabling you to reply, enter case notes and disposition the ticket from one screen is very good. Like anything there is a learning curve involved, but it becomes very straightforward to Administer. This is very important as I am handling issues, closing tickets and assisting end users so I do not have the time to spent an hour a day doing routine maintenance tasks. The technical support team is also very helpful.

Nachteile

Most of the issues have not been with things that do not work as much as do not conform to our individual work flows and processes. A few things that are challenges include that pasting into tickets using the portal does not work. Any screen shots or images depicting issues and end user is facing need to be added as attachments. By default you are given a long and not intuitive URL for your Portal. While you can create a custom URL it requires purchasing an SSL certificate or the connection is not secure. If a User submits a ticket via email and at a later time tries to create an account on the Portal it will advise them that the email is in use. To resolve this they just need to request a password reset, but it is not intuitive to the User, they think something is wrong.