The osTicket is one of the famous open source ticketing tool , widely use in many organisations and companies. We will explain, how to install osTicket ( Open source ticketing tool) on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS . We will do self hosted osTicket installation. In case, you are looking for professional support for osTicket , that is also available.

Why we need ticketing tool

This is something important to know , why we need ticketing tool. In many IT companies , ticketing system play very vital role. We are trying to list out some of them –

1. We can track the progress of work through SLA (Service-Level Agreement)
2. We can analyse the quality of work.
3. We can record the performance of employees.
4. We can mitigate the frequent occurring issues by analysis / RCA (Root Cause Analysis) .

Features of osTicket

Custom Fields : Customize the data collected from users when submitting a ticket to help get straight to the issue.
Rich Text HTML : Rich text or HTML email, is supported and allows for rich text markup in staff replies and internal notes posted to the ticket thread.
Ticket Filters : Define rules to route incoming tickets to the right departments or staff members, and action triggers.
Help Topics : Configurable help topics for web tickets. Route inquiries without exposing internal departments or priorities.
Agent Collision Avoidance : Ticket locking mechanism to allow staff to lock tickets during response and avoid conflicting or dual responses.
Assign and Transfer : Transfer tickets between departments to make sure it’s being handled by the correct staff. Assign tickets to a staff or to a team.
Auto-Responder : Configurable automatic reply sent out when a new ticket is opened or a message is received.
Internal Notes : Add internal notes to tickets for staff. Activity logs let you see events or actions that have been taken, when they took place, and by whom.
Service Level Agreements : SLA Plans allow you to track tickets and due dates without the hassle.
Customer Portal : All support requests and responses are archived online. User can login using email and ticket ID. No user account or registration required to submit a ticket.
Dashboard Reports : Get system overview and basic historical statistics on tickets count and status per department, staff and help topics.

Install osTicket

In this section we will install self hosted osTicket on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server.

Basic Requirement to install osTicket

Web Server: Apache
PHP Version: 5.3+
MySQL Database: 5.0+

Our server environment details

Operating System : Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server
Arch : x86_64
Web Server : Apache 2.4
Database Server : MySQL Server 5.6
PHP Version : PHP version 5.5 and require extensions .
IP Address of Server: 192.168.122.131 (This our Lab’s server IP Address)

Login into server

Login into server and switch to superuser by below given command.

sudo su -

OR

su -

Setup LAMP for osTicket

Here, LAMP refer as Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP stack. For more details, you can read how to setup LAMP stack on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server.
You can quickly follow the below given commands to setup LAMP stack.

Install apache web server

apt-get install apache2

Install MySQL server 5.6

apt-get install mysql-server-5.6

Install PHP 5.5 and extensions.

apt-get install php5 php5-mysql php5-imap php5-gd
php5enmod imap

Setup Database and database user for osTicket

Login into MySQL Server

mysql -u root -p

Run the below given query in mysql console to create database and its user. Please note, set your own password by replacing keyword password given in below query.

create database osticketdb
CREATE USER 'osticketuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL ON osticketdb.* TO 'osticketuser'@'localhost';
flush privileges;
exit;

Download osTicket

Download the latest stable osTicket package. We are using command line to download currently available osTicket-v1.9.8.1 package

wget http://osticket.com/sites/default/files/download/osTicket-v1.9.8.1.zip

Extract downloaded osTicket package and copy to web data directory

Unzip osTicket package. We will unzip the osTicket package in newly created directory called output .

mkdir output

unzip osTicket-v1.9.8.1.zip -d output/

Now create directory called osticket in /var/www/html

mkdir -p /var/www/html/osticket/

Copy the extracted out osTicket code from output directory to /var/www/html/osticket directory

cp -rvf output/upload/* /var/www/html/osticket/

Change owner and group of /var/www/html/osticket/ directory to www-data .
Note: Check /etc/passwd and /etc/groups file, you will find the www-data user and group there.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/osticket/

Now restart the Apache Web Service.

service apache2 restart

Let’s start installation through web browser

Once all above setup is in place, we now start rest of process on Web browser. In other words, let’s do osTicket installation through web browser.

Open your web browser and type IP address of osTicket server in web address field. You should also add suffix as /osticket in web address field.

Check your osTicket Server ip address, as per our Lab environment it is 192.168.122.131 . Hence in Web browser I will type –

http://192.168.122.131/osticket

Once I opened the osTicket URL in web browser ,you will see the ‘Prerequisites’ check web page. If anything is missing, fulfill the requirement. If all is good, click on “Continue” button.

In next page , you will see three settings –
– System Settings : In this section, you will set the Help Desk URL,Help Desk Name, Default email and Language.

– Admin User : Set your osTicket administrator in this section. Fill all the information and set the password of osticket administrator user.

– Database Setting : Use the Database information which we have set in this tutorial. Provide the Database Name,Database user,host address and Database user’s password .
Once you place all the information in the form, click on “Install Now” button.

Just wait it will take time to complete the process in backend.

After the installation get completed you will get the Congratulation page. Moreover , see at the end of page, you will see the useful URL addresses.

Because our server has ipaddress 192.168.122.131 , we got the following given below links at the bottom of page.

1. Your osTicket URL:
http://192.168.122.131/osticket/

2. Your Staff Control Panel:
http://192.168.122.131/osticket/scp

3. osTicket Forums:
http://osticket.com/forum/

4. osTicket Community Wiki:
http://osticket.com/wiki/

To open the “Staff Control Panel” page , add /scp as suffix in URL address. See the below given screenshot.

To open the osTicket page for ticket raiser. type the URL of osTicket. See given below screenshot as example.

Setting Apache configuration for osTicket

In this section we expect you have basic knowledge on Apache. Hence, sharing the simple apache VirtualHost settings.

In our server , we have created new file in site-enabled directory and pasted the VirtualHost Configuration settings.

## Using vi editor for file editing and creation
vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/osticket.conf

## paste the below given configuration in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/osticket.conf file
#

        ServerName support.example.com
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/osticket
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/osticket-error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/osticket-access.log combined
 

NOTE:
In above VirtualHost configuration –
1. Replace support.example.com with your domain name which you have purchased from Domain registerar.
2. Replace webmaster@localhost with your email address.
3. Replace /var/www/html/osticket if you have custom the osticket path (not as per this tutorial)

Now at the end, restart the apache2 service.

service apache2 restart