Bug trackers and service desks

I have recently been evaluating options for our customer support work. For years, my company has used a bug tracker to handle both bugs and support requests. It has worked, mostly well enough, but there are some definite shortcomings. I can’t say that I’m an expert on all the offerings in the two spaces, but I’ve used quite a few over the years. My only conclusion is that there is no single product that does both well.

Much of the basic functionality is the same, but it’s the differenences that are key. A truly excellent service desk system is aware of customer SLAs. Support tickets shouldn’t languish untouched for months or even years. But it’s perfectly normal for minor bugs to live indefinitely, especially if the “bug” is actually a planned enhancement. Service desks should present customers with a self-service portal, if only to see the current status of their tickets. Unfortunately, most bug trackers present too much information for a non-technical user (can you imagine having your CEO using Bugzilla to manage tickets?). While this interface is great for managing bugs, it’s pretty lousy otherwise.

Of course, because they’re similar in many respects, the ideal solution has your service desk and your bug tracker interacting smoothly. Sometimes support requests are the result of a bug. Having a way to tie them together us very beneficial. How will your service desk agents know to follow up with the customer unless the bug tracker updates affected cases when a bug is resolved? How will your developers get the information they need if the service desk can’t update the bug tracker?

Many organizations, especially small businesses and non-profits, will probably use one or the other. Development-oriented organizations will lean toward bug trackers and others will favor service desk tools. In either case, they’ll make do with the limitations for the use they didn’t favor. Still, it behooves IT leadership to consider separate-but-interconnected solutions I’m order to achieve the maximum benefit.