A trouble ticket system (TTS) is usually a software application that receives customer requests in the form of trouble tickets and then proceeds to verify, group and assign them to a function or person for further action? until the request is fulfilled or the problem resolved. The trouble ticket then becomes a closed ticket. In it's function, a trouble ticket is similar to the hospital reports or charts hung beside a patients bed.



The similarity arises because both the chart and ticket start with a problem and gradually progress to reflect the work done on it by multiple people at various stages.A modern trouble ticket is identified as the electronic form of a customer request.The request may consist of an unexpected problem, a suggestion for improvement, an inquiry for information, or a request for an upgrade. A customer with a problem can create a trouble ticket as easily as filling up a form. A trouble ticket consists of a ticket number, the name, telephone, address and other details of the creator of the ticket, the time of creation, the priority, closing date, group or subgroup, request description, solution, owner, status (open, assigned, in process, or closed) and time taken for arriving at the solution.

The trouble ticket system of today uses Web, emails and fax as it's media and connects with other systems such as customer database. These systems perform multiple functions including compilation of problems, distribution and assigning problems to different functions or support personnel, monitoring the actions and time taken for resolving the problem, ensuring compliance to standardized workflows, and enabling analysis of common and frequent problem or ticketing areas. In addition, most TTS generate alerts automatically, allow collection of customer questions and their solutions in a FAQ format and ensure adherence to agreed policies such as service level agreements.

To ensure compliance, a TTS may prioritize a ticket created by a customer in accordance with the service level agreement and operational level agreement.

It sends e-mails to notify service staff about the new customer request. Certain tickets such as the help desk software tickets from Applied Innovation Management can be set to be completed by or on a certain date. You can use this feature to schedule system backups and upgrade. Ticketing systems such as HDEIT provide a To Do Calendar feature that displays a monthly report of all the activities generated by tickets. To enable easy identification and resolution between simultaneous requests, it also breaks down an issue to highlight the priority of the issue.

AIMs trouble ticket system provides an Alarm feature, which can be used to alert service staff about an overdue ticket or a pending ticket. Service administrators can use this feature in tandem with HDEIT's target reporting feature to control and be aware of who is assigned to what issue and ensure that no issues go unattended.