Help!!! I.T. Help Desk Project Ideas

[dschuett]

Hey everyone, I know this is kind of a broad post, and if anyone has any suggestions on a better place to post this please let me know.

Anyways, I work as a Desktop Support Tech in a medium size company. We just had a long meeting about going beyond the call of duty to make things more effective in our support environment. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas for a good Linux project that could help out an I.T. Department. I just want to show my boss what I can do for this company, so I need a project that could benefit the department or even the whole company! I love working with Linux, and they don't have any Linux systems here at all, so I think it would be a plus to show them what it can do. Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Dana

[b2bwild]

You want to use Linux to benefit your company, but in what manner?

There are tons of Linux projects which can help you. but what is the exact change you want to bring? You have to decide that first.
It wont work it out like 'Give me something really cool, and I will show it off'

I can't suggest you anything specific because there are so many many projects came up in my mind.

[dschuett]

In my meeting today, my boss mentioned how it would be nice to have a portal for end users to go out to for self installation files aka one-click installaitons (such as adobe reader, project, visio, etc.) Or a knowlege data base for end users to access via webpage that will give instructions on how to do a veriety of things. Something that will make the department more effective in serving the end users in a more efficient manner.

Thanks!

I do only plan to use this from a server standpoint.

[b2bwild]

You mean something like Linux Mint software portal -> Software Portal - Linux Mint
Or You can get 'knowlege data base for end users to access via webpage' via Wiki Websites

[crazy01]

As b2bwild said, there are heaps of things that you could implement. i would focus on showing how stable linux is.

if you wanted a portal, perhaps you could host it from apache, or you could try setting up some sort of internal forums. (nothing special.. but hey why not) you could also make a backup system eg large hdd with cronjobs that backup data each night....

i would focus on the strong points of linux, then find what your company needs and go from there.

some of the strong points of linux:

reliable
free
very customizable
ability to be run on very old systems

etc

a word of warning... i wouldn't try to force linux as a the OS for client PC's in my experience end users dont adapt very well. so i would suggest that you only use it for server side solutions.

[dschuett]

Thanks for the input guys! I think I have it narrowed down to what I want to achieve here: I would like to set up a knowledge database to store How-To files and other documentation. Is there any Linux applications for this? I know I could use a Wiki, but I think I can do something a little more impressive than that. Having a forum within the base would be nice as well. I have looked into creating a forum from mysql and phpmyadmin which looks like it would be very interesting to try and conquer, but if you have any other easier or better ways to go about this that would be awesome!

Thanks again!

[b2bwild]

You can use Zim Desktop Wiki, Zim - a desktop wiki
which allows you to edit local wiki files...

but I would prefer, phpBB • Creating Communities Worldwide phpBB for forums, because it is the best way to do that.