Questions about using eSupport in a large enviroment

[fowen]

I just started a new position and have been tasked with finding a helpdesk for the entire company. I have used Kayako eSupport in the past and I thought it would be a good place to start. I have a few questions before I can go further.

Some background information:

We will have between 50 - 100 technicians and about 400 people putting in tickets. We have multiple locations worldwide and our helpdesk is based in India. All tickets will go to one address and the helpdesk will sort through them and assign them to the proper technician if it is out of their "realm".

Questions:

1. What kind of hardware requirements are needed?
2. Will Kayako interface with Exchange?
3. How well does Kayako run on a Windows based IIS server?
4. If we decide to start out with the hosted version and then move to the full version hosted on one of our servers will Kayako help us migrate our data and settings?

Added Plus:

Currently for certain requests to the helpdesk (IE: Major changes to the network, Non Employee email address additions, etc.) 1 or 2 (depending on the request) members from upper management must approve the request. Is there a option or a custom module available to do this?

Thanks for the help!

[supportskins]

1. What kind of hardware requirements are needed?

A server with 2GB HD space, 512 MB ram with processing speed of 1Ghz should be good enough to start on. I suggest this would be basic requirements although this can increase depending on how busy your helpdesk is going to be.

2. Will Kayako interface with Exchange?

By interface do you mean connect to Exchange server? If that is the case the yes you can set POP3 accounts in the software although you need to make sure your server PHP is compiled with IMAP support.

3. How well does Kayako run on a Windows based IIS server?

We have configured Kayako on numerous client IIS server and never had any issues in installing nor have the clients had any issues using it so I guess it works without any real issues.

4. If we decide to start out with the hosted version and then move to the full version hosted on one of our servers will Kayako help us migrate our data and settings?

Yes they should for a certain fee.

Added Plus:

Currently for certain requests to the helpdesk (IE: Major changes to the network, Non Employee email address additions, etc.) 1 or 2 (depending on the request) members from upper management must approve the request. Is there a option or a custom module available to do this?

I am not sure I got this.

HTH

[fowen]

Originally Posted by supportskins

....

I am not sure I got this.

HTH

That helps out quite a bit. The "Added Plus:" section was meant as something that we would like our helpdesk app to do, but wasn't 100% nessisary. Let me see if I can explain it a little better.

Certain technical requests in our company require upper IT management approval. For instance at my location we were running out of IP's that could be assigned by DHCP. A request was put into our network team to increase our IP range. Before this could be completed the network team had to fill out a form and send it to a group of IT managers. These managers had to respond back to the email approving the action before it could be done.

They were wondering if we could find a app that could streamline and keep track of these requests as well as handle the helpdesk.

I hope that clarifies the request a bit better.

Thanks again!