Re: iSeries service desk software (5250)

Jon,

Why not use one of the many free (and excellent I might add) PHP Help desk

systems?

Hesk is great (that's what we use) also osTicket and Mantis/400 to name

just three that are all very good and easy to install.

The only reason I can conceive of for wanting to stay with a 5250 solution

is if you have large numbers of "real" 5250 users in the shop.

That's the ticket... (pun intended). Some years ago I installed ZEND and
Mantis/400 in our 520(v5R3) system. It turned out to be very complex and a
resource hog (not my words), so ZEND and Mantis got booted out of the
system. Our 520 was our main production system until it got replaced about
five years ago by a SAP/Oracle/HP solution, which has proved to be very
complex, expensive and really a pain when trying to implement new
applications.

Our 520 is used nowadays mostly as a BI system, reading and digesting data
from Oracle and SQL Server. Most of the results are provided in the form of
email messages (with excel, csv and/or pdf attachments) and a few web-based
applications. Now, every time either management and/or our Project leader
wants to implement a non-SAP solution (an internal service desk, a small
data analysis program, etc) the first thing they think of is our old and
trusty i5. BUT, it is not our main production machine, it is stuck at V5R3
and they don't want to spend a dime more buying software for it. Luis's
(me) salary should cover it all :-(

It has been an uphill battle to implement SQL, service programs and a few
web-based apps. PHP? That would be too radical...


Regards and thanks to all for your help,

Luis




Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries