Gain Ticketing Experience With Peppermint
Most of the jobs I want to get require previous ticket management system Experience, but this has always been a chicken before the egg problem for me. How the heck am I supposed to get this magical ticket experience before I get a coveted help desk position? There are no tickets at my current role. I mostly write passes for students to go to the bathroom and take attendance using technology as old as the Egyptian pyramids--Dried up tree pulp. This is nowhere to gain ticketing g experience. I don't really have access to the ticketing system because I don't have real access to much technology other than a light switch or the occasional smart board I get to practice my finger drawing skills. Luckily some dude in a Discord room I hang out in suggested Peppermint, a free and open source ticketing system thatallo2s any nerd to gain ticketing experience.
Running Peppermint
There are two options for running a Peppermint ticketing system. You can pay $5 a month with Linode, or you can run it on Docker. I chose Docker because I like to keep my subscriptions low, but it is easier to host these things over the clear net if you use the Linode option.
I don't need to host this over the Internet though as it is a home network and nobody outside of .y home uses any of this stuff. To be honest, my wife already told me she will never use it because she hates putting tickets in at work and doesn't want to go through the hassle at home now, but the rest of my family doesn't mind.
I didn't realize how useful a ticketing system would be until I installed this one. I run a couple servers and do the smart home thing with home assistant. Managing the devices with this invariably comes with pain points. Our Air Conditioner broke. We paid an HVAC company to replace it because installing Air Conditioning/Furnaces is not within my skill-set. Unbeknownst to me, they also replaced our thermostat with a fancier thermostat. That's great, but I already integrated my old thermostat with home assistant, but the AC guys didn't add the new thermostat to Home Assistant, nor would they be able to.
I added a ticket.
Smart light bulb no longer works?
Add a ticket.
We got a few new DVD's this weekend. I need to add them to the Jellyfin streaming media service.
Looks like I need to add a ticket
I already have 11 tickets that arose due to normal maintenance. As it turns out, ticketing systems are not just useful for getting hands-on experience, but it helps organize my tech to do list and keeps me focused on what I need to fix.
I wasn’t going to host it on the Internet because I figured I would only use it at home, but as I thought about, I changed my mind.🤔 What if I have an issue when I’m away? That’s happened to me before. If the power goes out, there’s nothing I can do. I won’t be able to put in a ticket because my servers requires electricity to work. Sometimes one server gets disconnected for some reason. Usually this means I’m running too many programs on it. I haven’t had that happen in a while, but things happen. Maybe I’ll think of something while I’m cruising Costco. Here’s how I hosted my ticket system on the Inter Tubes.
- I installed Peppermint using docker and docker-compose.
2. I put it on the Internet using Cloudflare. I’ve been using cloudflare on two of my servers, so I’m familiar with how to set up tunnels, but I had some trouble trying to install it using the docs on Github. After banging my head on the keyboard about eight times, I decided to do what any aspiring IT professional would do: I did a search on YouTube. Actually, I use invidious, but it doesn’t always work these days. Network Chuck has a video that teaches you how to do this. But it’s nearly ten minutes due to ads and he didn’t mention you could buy a domain name on Cloudflare and skip all the DNS BS. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good skill to have, but it’s not necessary so I recommend starting the video at step 3. You won’t miss much. He tells you to get redhat and optimizes the algos. You just copy and paste this code into you terminal. I just did this on my PopOS! Instance.
Then I added it to a subdomain on one of my many domains. I have a domain name shopping problem.
Peppermint Features
Peppermint features notifications, email fetching, single sign on… You know what? It’s just easier if I take a screenshot from their website.
Now I run my own ticketing system with Peppermint! I did this because most of the jobs I have applied for ask for ticketing experience with something like ZenDesk. I did a fre trial of zendesk, but I didn't want another monthly bill so I canceled it. The 21st century ad-driven content machine tells us we need to pay corporations every month like a serf If you’re a nerd like me, you probably own a computer or two...or 17. Why should you rent compputers from a digital overlord when you can just host everything for free on your own computer?
- It’s just 5 bucks a month
- It’s just 20 bucks a month
- It’s just 30 bucks a month.
Before you know it, you have 187 subscriptions that cost between five and ten bucks a month and you don’t understand why you’re as broke as an shell of a yolk. Now I can ell my family to “put in a ticket” anytime something goes wrong with my fleet of computers. That way my wife can put in a ticket instead of telling me something is wrong with our media server at 9:00 p.m. I’m too tired to fix these things at bedtime. Watching Friends is not a sleep-loss worthy IT emergency. So I installed a progressive web app on my tablet. My wife asked, “So I need access to your tablet to put in a ticket?”
Nope—It’s on z-Internet! You can put it on your own tablet. I texted you the link. Book mark it or add it to your homescreen. Easy-Peasy Lemon squeezy.
So if you want some ticketing experience please click this link and give them your credit card number, experiation date and that three digit secret key so they can charge you a monthly fee so I can earn like 50 cents per click. OR if you find this information valuable, please consider sending some value back to my lightning address at
- [email protected]
- https://strike.me/marc26z/
- Zap this article on nostr
If you don’t have any bitcoin or are afraid of it or something, sign up with Strike. This is not an affiliate link, but it’s a useful tool for sending money all over the world, even if you have a bitcoin allergy.
Thanks for reading.
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