[ale] Linux Help Desk Call Apps?

[Jonathan Glass]

To go off on a small tangent...

Something I think would be useful to develop is a web-based testing 
system for teachers.  The teachers input the questions and appropriate 
answers (or select from a DB), then presents the test to the students.  
Once the student finishes the exam, the correct answers appear on the 
screen, along with his grade.  The teacher gets a real-time admin screen 
showing who has taken the text, average time taken, and pretty graphs of 
the grades.

A professor at Macon State designed such a system using ASP.Net and 
tight Office integration (and he doesn't want to OSS/GPL it).  I think 
something comparable from the OSS world would be a help for 
teachers..although I'll admit to not having done market research to see 
what commercial packages are available.  I've only had professors ask 
for this.

My $0.02

Jonathan Glass

James P. Kinney III wrote:

>Great point, Dow. I guess I've sat on the web application I wrote at
>Emory for providing a web-forms based spreadsheet with graphing and
>curve fits long enough. 
>
>The more stuff that is "out there" the more weight the opensource
>process gets.
>
>On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 11:16, Dow Hurst wrote:
>  
>
>>You may not expect the interest of other people in the code since your 
>>being humble.  However, since I've been thinking about open source 
>>lately and it's impact on people's lives, I think you may find that your 
>>code could be a nice project on sourceforge.  It can grow, if watered, 
>>into something businesses would want and would pay support for.  The 
>>code can be GPL'd but still companies will pay for support.  I think it 
>>is amazing to see the projects that start out like this one and grow 
>>into world influencing pieces of software.  Think about the influence of 
>>Apache, GCC, and Gimp.  I am in the midst of my first install of Gentoo 
>>1.4 and have been thinking philosophically as I watch compilation 
>>happen.  I think my Celeron 333MHz laptop will become useful again due 
>>to this project.  Gentoo's install isn't that bad either for the benefit 
>>down the road.  Just amazed once again at the power of people like you 
>>being involved in open source,
>>Dow
>>
>>PS.  There is never enough variety of software.
>>
>>Jonathan Glass wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Oh yeah!  I have a verbal ok to publish the s/w w/a GPL license. 
>>>Wesleyan's only request is they get the updates, too.  :)
>>>
>>>I'm preparing for the GRE over the next 4-6 weeks, but after that I'll
>>>have time to publish that code on my web site.  I'm not sure how many
>>>people would care to see it, but it will be available.
>>>
>>>I think I'm going to post my notes on some of my other projects as well
>>>(SMB auth via PHP, PDF printer for Samba that acts as a Windows printer
>>>and emails the resulting PDFs to the user, etc).
>>>
>>>Life is good, and information wants to be free!
>>>
>>>Jonathan
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>A comment you made is why I see Open Source software as inherently
>>>>better than closed.  You said you'd post it (given permission, of
>>>>course) "after cleaning it up".  If you know no one outside the coding
>>>>group will see the source, why make it pretty?  Granted, I'm not a coder
>>>>, but I can see that being the case.
>>>>
>>>>Brian
>>>>
>>>>Jonathan Glass wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>I use Perldesk to catch incoming email to "helpdesk at ibb" and
>>>>>"help at ibb"...
>>>>>
>>>>>I wrote WesHelpDesk for Wesleyan College that does all the required.  It
>>>>>interfaced with Exchange 5.5 via LDAP for user info, NT 4 for
>>>>>authentication, and a local smart-relay for outbound email and paging.
>>>>>ALl ticket updates automatically get sent to the end-users, and
>>>>>escalations get sent to the Director.  Because everything is MYSQL
>>>>>driven,
>>>>>the Director is able to use ODBC to generate usage/tracking reports.
>>>>>Pretty cool 6 month project...earned me As for 2 different classes (DBA
>>>>>and Web Design).  :)
>>>>>
>>>>>If anyone wants to look at it, I'll ask the Director for permission to
>>>>>GPL
>>>>>it, and post the code somewhere (after cleaning it up a bit..of
>>>>>course!).
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks
>>>>>
>>>>>Jonathan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It would be nice to put a computer to catch help desk calls, log them,
>>>>>>email them to techs, or have the system page them etc. etc.  I seem to
>>>>>>rember reading a review in Linux Journal. Anyone remember which one?
>>>>>>Any
>>>>>>one successfully putting a computer box to catch the initial calls?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>John
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>       
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>     
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
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>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
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