Ticket System

We are looking to create a support ticket system (similar to a helpdesk system) to be used by various support groups in the organization. We would like the system to have a web-based UI (using PHP) and the scheduling service to be written in Java (this would need to run as a windows service using a wrapper). All components will need to run on a Windows 2008 Server using IIS. Attached is an informal class diagram which includes the types of information required to be stored by the system, their attributes and their relationships. This class diagram was put together to support the following requirements: Basic functionality: - All functionality in the application should be split between "scopes". Each scope should appear like a separate instance of the application (separate ticket submission screen, separate ticket management screens, separate category configuration, separate tags, separate user permissions, separate search scope, etc.) - Web-based form for end user to submit a support ticket. - Screen to view tickets submitted by the logged in user (read-only) - Search by category, tags, submission date, client, owner, and full text on subject, comments, and request text. - Submission of tickets by email (can make use of Microsoft Exchange infrastructure) - Allow updates to tickets by email (ticket identifier parsed from subject line) - Ticket management screen. Would allow the support staff to browse/list tickets for which they are the owner, tickets which have been recently submitted (not assigned to anyone), tickets currently open (all users), and tickets recently closed (all users). - Ticket update screen. This screen would be used by the support staff to view/edit the ticket and add comments to the support request. When adding a comment to the support request, there should be the option to have the comment emailed to the ticket customer and any other recipients required. The support staff would also have the ability to change the owner of the ticket and the customer assigned to the ticket. The support staff would have the ability to close or re-open the ticket from this screen as well. - Tickets should be able to be linked to another ticket in a parent-child relationship. Tickets having children tickets should list those tickets when the support staff is view the request. Tickets with a parent ticket should list their parent ticket as well. - Any number of tags should be able to be added to a ticket. Tags are used to categorize tickets in an ad-hoc fashion. Tags can not be added on the fly by all users, they must select from a pre-existing list of tags available. Ideally, the tags should be added to a ticket using a textbox with auto-complete. - A fixed number of catgory fields should be available in each scope. These categories provide fixed choice and controlled categorization of the ticket. Administration: - Add/change/delete tags. - Add/change/delete category fields and the categories in each field. - Manage user roles/permissions within the scope. Authentication/Permissions: - All user authentication should be performed through pass-through IIS authentication if available and if not the application should prompt for a username/password using in-application authentication. - User management screen to add/change/remove user accounts. Should integrate with pre-existing XML webservice to lookup user information from Active Directory. - Should have one super-user account which has the abliity to manage user accounts and add/change/delete "scopes". - User accounts should be auto-created when using pass-through authentication. A default user role would be used for all auto-created accounts. This is a reasonably high-level description of what is required, so it is expected that there will be some additional discussion around the details of the solution.