I have been asked to make a program to handle escalated issues. They way it is done now is the supervisor is given a piece of paper stating the issue to be escalated with information needed. This is bad because the supervisors end up loosing the paper and what-not.
I would like input on how to go about this. I had two thoughts on how to do it. BTW This will most likely been done in Java since it has been used for other programs we use and it's already installed on all computers. The IT guy/people I need it approved by, I know they know Java and can review the source code, I don't think they know C++ or C# which I had wanted to do it in, so Java it is.
1:
All supervisors have their own share drive on the network that we as agents can read for outages and all. Put the program in each share drive for the agents and have a mini-filesystem to store the tickets in, in txt files or the like. That way each supervisor has their own separate file system for them to work with so their is no cross-ticketing issues. This seems the simplest way to me.
2:
Use a database for everything, 1 database to store all info including log-in info and ticket info for all supervisors and agents to use. It would be web-based, like other programs we use. I would hopefully use Python for the sever to access and edit the database. The issue I see with that is convincing them to install Python on the systems (side note: if this works well for this center it will be implemented in all centers the company owns/uses making it harder to convince everyone to install Python).
I am thinking option 1 is the one I would go with. Just wanna hear your opinions or how you would go about it. I know databases are the norm now-a-days, but I don't really see a need for it in this. I'm thinking a filesystem/txt based method might work better since it would force it all to be separate and easier for the supervisors to work with since they can see all tickets in their own system and all.
Your $0.02?
P.S.
This will be all open sourced.