OTRS (originally Open-Source Ticket Request System) is a

service management Service management in the manufacturing context, is integrated into supply chain management as the intersection between the actual sales and the customer point of view. The aim of high-performance service management is to optimize the service- ...

suite. The suite contains an agent

portal Portal may refer to: Arts and entertainment Gaming * ''Portal'' (series), a series of video games developed by Valve ** ''Portal'' (video game), a 2007 video game, the first in the series ** '' Portal 2'', the 2011 sequel ** '' Portal Stori ...

, admin dashboard and customer portal. In the agent portal, teams process tickets and requests from customers (internal or external). There are various ways in which this information, as well as customer and related data can be viewed. As the name implies, the admin dashboard allows

system administrator An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as Server (computing), servers. The ...

s to manage the system: Options are many, but include roles and groups, process automation, channel integration, and CMDB/database options. The third component, the customer portal, is much like a customizable webpage where information can be shared with customers and requests can be tracked on the customer side.

History

In 2001, OTRS began as an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

help desk ticketing software. In 2003, OTRS GmbH was formed and a professional company entered the EMEA market. This was followed in 2006 by entry into the North American market. In 2007, the company was renamed to OTRS AG with the intention of going public, which it did in 2009. This is the same year in which OTRS was brought to Latin America with the Mexican subsidiary officially being founded in 2010. Entry into the APAC region occurred in 2011. In 2015, a new version of the software, known as ''OTRS Business Solution'', was launched. This proprietary version was designed for professional users who needed additional support, configuration and features. In 2018, both OTRS-specific products were renamed: The open source version became ''((OTRS)) Community Edition''. The proprietary and managed version is named ''OTRS''. A third offering, also proprietary, is called ''OTRS

On-Premise On-premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and often written as "on-premise") is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm or cloud ...

'' for professional customers who intend to host the platform in their own data centers. In December 2020, OTRS AG announced the end of life of support for the Community Edition which led to several

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a Eating utensil, utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with whic ...

. Alongside its customers was

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

, which used ((OTRS)) Community Edition to run Wikimedia OTRS system; after its discontinuation, in April 2021, it was migrated to Znuny, a fork of ((OTRS)) Community Edition. Being no longer run on original OTRS software, the system was renamed Wikimedia VRT. In December 2024, the French company EasyVista acquired a majority stake in OTRS AG.

OTRS Group

OTRS

GmbH (; ) is a type of Juridical person, legal entity in German-speaking countries. It is equivalent to a (Sàrl) in the Romandy, French-speaking region of Switzerland and to a (Sagl) in the Ticino, Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. It is a ...

was originally founded in 2003 by André Mindermann (CEO) and Burchard Steinbild (chairman of the supervisory board). In 2007, the company became OTRS Group, also known as OTRS AG. In addition to the two, today's management board includes Christopher Kuhn (COO), Sabine Riedel (board member, Marketing, HR), Gabriele Brauer (VP Finance) and Manuel Hecht (VP Global Software Development). OTRS AG is the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

owner of OTRS. The OTRS Group has its headquarters in Germany. There are six subsidiaries worldwide, including OTRS Inc. (USA), OTRS S.A. de C.V. (Mexico), OTRS ASIA Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), OTRS Asia Ltd. (Hong Kong), (Brazil), and OTRS Magyarország Kft. (Hungary). OTRS AG is listed in the Basic Board of the

Frankfurt Stock Exchange The Frankfurt Stock Exchange (, former German name: , ''FWB'') is the world's 3rd oldest and 12th largest stock exchange by market capitalization. It has operations from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm ( German time). Organisation Located in Frankfurt, ...

Technical notes

Since its beginnings OTRS has been implemented in the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

. The web interface is made user-friendly by using

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

(which can be switched off for security reasons). The OTRS web interface uses the Template::Toolkit rendering engine to dynamically generate the

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

output of individual frontend modules. This approach allows the underlying logic of the OTRS frontend modules (written in Perl) to remain separate from the presentation of each module's user interface (served as HTML to the user). Originally, OTRS supported only the use of a

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

RDBMS for use as the webserver database. Support has since been added for

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

, IBM Db2,

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a proprietary relational database management system developed by Microsoft using Structured Query Language (SQL, often pronounced "sequel"). As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of ...

, and

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

(a community-developed fork of MySQL). OTRS may be used on many

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

UNIX-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

platforms (e.g.

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

, etc.) as well as on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. The scalability of OTRS systems may be increased by using

mod perl mod_perl is an optional module for the Apache HTTP server. It embeds a Perl Interpreter (computing), interpreter into the Apache server. In addition to allowing Apache modules to be written in the Perl programming language, it allows the Apache ...

for the

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Webserver or by separating the database and

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

systems, allowing a large number of simultaneously working agents and high volumes of tickets.

References

External links

* * * * {{Perl Help desk software ITIL Bug and issue tracking software Perl software Formerly open-source or free software

History

OTRS Group

Technical notes

See also

References

External links