Hello fellow selfhosters, I tried to find a piece of software that could achieve my goal but maybe I am not searching in the correct areas. So I thought of asking here for suggestions or directions I could take.

What I am looking for:

I am looking for software that could fill a purpose of tracking like a helpdesk ticketing portal but not be a full blown ticketing portal.
For example I want to track current tasks like an RMA I am doing right now with Logitech (currently organized in my email inbox/folders) or keep track of shipments (currently tracked in Google Keep in this format: Shop | MM YYYY | Order-ID | Contents | Tracking:<Shipping Number>)

Features I am specifically looking for:

  • Tracking items (like shipments)
  • Keep track of issues (fix light bulb), Tasks (go to citizen office to renew ID),
    • Optionally: Keeping communication like E-Mails (like go back and see the communication history with Logitech concerning the RMA#999999)

Platforms I use:

Android and Windows.

What I have found so far and seemed to fit:

How I am coming to the conclusion I need something like that

  • As mentioned earlier, I keep track of some stuff like shipments, overtime todo, money I am owing or someone does owe me in Google Keep. It kinda works but I feel like I am straining the borders of it’s use case. And I fear Googles Graveyard
  • I keep track of my e-mails via folders (to some extent). But I will probably not find the email of communication I had 5 months ago with that system.
    At work we use a classic ticket helpdesk system. I can more or less find the ticket of an issue a customer had on the phone and correlate it with the problem I have right now.
  • Some of my knowledge base is in Obsidian.md for technical stuff or minor stuff like “find x here”, while the stuff related for real life (e.g. recipes) are stored in OneNote.
    It’s not necessary to consolidate it but maybe I can remove some of each into the new system?

What I would like to avoid:

Things like creating companies to track tickets with. I would rather just keep track of the issue (maybe with some form of history to go back in time?) and not be lost in endless classification of company number, telephone, contacts etc.

Maybe I am in search of a unicorn-glitter editiontm and just need someone to tell me that doesn’t exist or I am not looking for the correct thing or term.
The help is highly appreciated :)

PS: While preferred it doesn’t need to be selfhosted. It should be accessible via smartphone (app or web doesnt really matter) and on desktop (program or web).

Update:

Currently in consideration are (thanks for the suggestions so far!):

  • OpenProject
  • Focalboard
  • Vikunja
  • Tarallo
  • kambusha@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    I use logseq (similar to Obsidian) with a To-Do plugin. Logseq has a journal feature, so I can write all tasks that come up in a day, and then I can view all tasks across all days using the to-do plugin.

    Then you can use some sync tool (syncthing for example) to sync all your notes between desktop & android. That way, you can create tasks on both your phone & desktop.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Markdown on the go is a bit annoying.

      If you are not aware, there is a community plugin called remotely which can sync to OneDrive, S3 (compatible), Dropbox and WebDav. Might be worth a look to circumvent syncthing.
      Personally use syncthing for photosyncing and data backup from phone to NAS

      • kambusha@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Markdown on the go is a bit annoying.

        True. It does have WYSIWYG editor, so I use that more than any actual markdown.

        Although, I don’t add that many things on the phone usually. I might scribble a quick note in the middle of the night, or add a quick task. Tends to work alright for that.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.itEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    I like freescout.

    It is well made and aesthetically pleasing but it has four main problems

    1. The devs are complete assholes. Ask for a clarification because of missing documentation and they ban you from their GitHub repo without even replying.
    2. The program is open source but everything is under closed source paid plugins. Plugin pricing is very cheap and without subscription but in order to get the bare usable minimum you need to spend at least $50 in plugins. I had to compile an excel file with the list of 50+ plugins and rank them, so I could buy the $400 of plugins over an year, buying the most important in the beginning. Then they banned me because after the first purchases I asked help with one of their paid plugins. Well, thanks for let me save $390, I won’t buy anything anymore.
    3. Plugins have unfair regional pricing for some reason. $2 becomes €4, even with vat the math doesn’t add up. They take the amount in dollars, convert in local currency using unfavorable exchange rate and rounding up, then they add VAT and round up again. With 40 “must have” plugins, this trick becomes expensive for no reason. Why Europeans have to pay double? It’s a business expense in 90% of cases, so the vat shouldn’t be considered in the price because a business can deduct them.
    4. No support. At all. Even if you are willing to pay for it. They don’t want to set a forum, use GitHub discussions or even (ugh, I hate that but better than nothing) discord. For a program that’s used for business this is a bit of a problem. How a company can rely on a software where if something is missing from the documentation and you ask for help, you are simply banned&ignored. You discover than you’re banned when a week later you go to see if someone replied to you. I don’t see why they can’t have a $50/hour support package like anyone else.

    As an alternative, there’s uvdesk. It’s similar but when I discovered it I already set freescout with the bare minimum paid plugins like “see all emails”, “see list of customers”, “send later”, “add attachment to the email”.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    Setup a standard issue tracker. The classic ones like Trac could be a bit limited but the newer, extended systems like OpenProject that try to compete with Jira can do anything. Taiga is also pretty good. OpenProject is very flexible and allows you to go from super simple to super complicated or anywhere in-between. Sprints, no sprints, kanban, whatever you want.

    You might also want a wiki. DocuWiki and Wiki.js are !selfhosted favorites.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Focalboard seems to be in line with what I found in Plane (plane.so)
      The fact it’s way more light weight than plane makes it way better (dont need that much more digital debt ^^) for deploying it at home.

      Will take a look at it the next daytm. The suggestion is appreaciated!

  • mlaga97@lemmy.mlaga97.spaceEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    My partner and I use a git repository on our self-hosted gitea instance for household management.

    Issue tracker and kanban boards for task management, wiki for documentation, and some infrastructure components are version controlled in the repo itself. You could almost certainly get away with just the issue tracker.

    Home Assistant (also self-hosted) provides the ability to easily and automatically create issues based on schedules and sensor data, like creating a git issue when when weather conditions tomorrow may necessitate checking this afternoon that nothing gets left out in the rain.

    Matrix (also self-hosted) lets Gitea and Home Assistant bully us into remembering to do things we might have forgotten. (Send a second notification if the washer finished 15 minutes ago, but the dryer never started)

    It’s been fantastic being able to create git issues for honey-dos as well as having the automations for creating issues for recurring tasks. “Hey we need to take X to the vet for Y sometime next week” “Oh yeah, can you go ahead and put in a ticket?” And vice versa.

  • univers3man@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    I don’t have any recommendations to make here, I just wanted to chime in and say I am looking for the same tool and I’m glad someone could put into words what I wanted.

  • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Click up! I think it’s an excellent UI/UX. Highly customizable. I used it for like 2 years to great effect.

    Don’t be too off-put by the “get started, it’s free.”

    It’s totally free if you’re using it for 1 project (yourself). If your a business with a dozen clients or something, you’ll edge into the territory of needing to pay. At least it used to be!

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Just tried out the tutorial.
      Seems like it could fit most of my use cases but feels like a shotgun vs a fly in scope (tbf my request is equally blown out of proportion).
      Do you know of something that is more light weight and maybe aimed at a single person or for personal use?

      I felt like the software “kanboard” fit the deal the most in terms of lightweight but I feel like the tracking abilities are kinda restrictive for my needs and Google Keep can do the most of it without additional maintenance.

      Do you know of a kanban board with subtasking/commenting features?
      With that I could probably manage to mention the subject line of an email or the RMA ID to find it later in my inbox

      Edit: I feel like I found something to my liking: https://plane.so
      Kanban Board like, has an editor and can create sub-issues.
      if you find something similar or better, I’d appreciate your suggestion :)

      • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        I felt like the software “kanboard” fit the deal the most in terms of lightweight but I feel like the tracking abilities are kinda restrictive for my needs and Google Keep can do the most of it without additional maintenance.

        There’s also Nextcloud Deck, which has an Android companion app. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/it.niedermann.nextcloud.deck/ I am not sure how well Deck and Notes inside a Nextcloud web interface could work together but if I remember correctly Deck entries show up as Tasks in Nextcloud, in your customized welcome dashboard after logging in.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          Seems like Deck is dependant on a Nextcloud instance?
          If yes it would be something I am currently not interested in as it entails too much at the moment. Will keep in mind for the future though.

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          7 months ago

          Hey! Let’s add more bugs into an existing pile of bugs (Nextcloud)!

          • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            7 months ago

            I am not a Nextcloud advocate at all, and yes there’s bugs for sure, but this is a Selfhosted community and running Nextcloud inside a LAN could be worse :-)

  • VinS@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Something like Notion or Coda would not fit the bill? You need to do some work to fit your usage (configuring tables/views)

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      From the few google pictures and the website it looks like Notion would fit.
      But I don’t feel like I want to be reliant on more online services if possible.