django-helpdesk - A Django powered ticket tracker for small businesses.

Copyright 2009-2025 Ross Poulton and django-helpdesk contributors. All Rights Reserved. See LICENSE for details.

django-helpdesk was formerly known as Jutda Helpdesk, named after the company which originally created it. As of January 2011 the name has been changed to reflect what it really is: a Django-powered ticket tracker with contributors reaching far beyond Jutda.

Complete documentation is available in the docs/ directory, or online at .

Demo Quickstart

django-helpdesk includes a basic demo Django project so that you may easily get started with testing or developing django-helpdesk. The demo project resides in the demodesk/ top-level folder.

You will need to install the uv package manager to simplify setting up the demo:

If you have not already created a virtual environment then run this command:
uv venv

To start up a demo project server, run this command:

> make rundemo

or with docker:

docker build --file standalone/Dockerfile -t demodesk ..
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/app" -p 8080:8080 demodesk

then pointing your web browser at (log in as user admin with password Pa33w0rd, defined in the demo.json fixture file).

For more information and options, please read the demo/README.rst file.

NOTE REGARDING SQLITE AND SEARCHING: The demo project uses sqlite as its database. Sqlite does not allow case-insensitive searches and so the search function may not work as effectively as it would on other database such as PostgreSQL or MySQL that does support case-insensitive searches. For more information, see this note in the Django documentation.

When you try to do a keyword search using sqlite, a message will be displayed to alert you to this shortcoming. There is no way around it, sorry.

Installation

• For **standalone** installation, refer to [standalone documentation](./docs/standalone.rst).
• To **integrate** with an existing Django application, follow the guidelines in [installation documentation](./docs/install.rst) and [configuration documentation](./docs/configuration.rst).

Developer Environment

Front-end Dependencies

Before you get started, make sure you have the following installed:

• node – Command-line JSON processor
• yarn – JavaScript package manager
• npm – Node.js package manager

Build Dependencies

The project uses the modern uv package manager: There are a number of options that make life a lot easier in the Makefile. To see option for the Makefile run: make

Follow these steps to set up your development environment to contribute to helpdesk:

• check out the helpdesk app to your local file system:

  git clone https://github.com/django-helpdesk/django-helpdesk.git
  

• Install the uv package manager::

• install a virtual environment :

  uv venv
  

• install the requirements for development:

  make develop
  

• you can install optional dependencies using the --group option. The make develop script installs test dependencies.

  > # This installs pinax teams dependencies for production uv sync > --all-extras --group teams # This installs pinax teams > dependencies as well as test uv sync --all-extras --dev --group > test --group teams

If you prefer working within an activated virtual environment instead of using the uv tool then you can use the normal command after the above step for creating the virtualenv to activate it:

source .venv/bin/activate

- or depending on your shell it might be:
. .venv/bin/activate

The project enforces a standardized formatting in the CI/CD pipeline. To ensure you have the correct formatting run:

make checkformat

To auto format any code use this:

make format

Testing

From the command line you can run all the tests using: make test

To run specific tests then run quicktest.py with arguments in an activated virtualenv or use this:
uv run quicktest.py <arg>

See quicktest.py for usage details.

If you need to create tests for new features, add your tests in a test file to the tests module:

- from an activated virtualenv use::
   python quicktest.py helpdesk.tests.test_my_new_features -v 2

- whether a virtualenv is activated or not you can use this command::
   uv run quicktest.py helpdesk.tests.test_my_new_features -v 2

Upgrading from previous versions

If you are upgrading from a previous version of django-helpdesk that used migrations, get an up to date version of the code base (eg by using git pull or pip install --upgrade django-helpdesk) then migrate the database:

python manage.py migrate helpdesk --db-dry-run # DB untouched
python manage.py migrate helpdesk

Lastly, restart your web server software (eg Apache) or FastCGI instance, to ensure the latest changes are in use.

You can continue to the 'Initial Configuration' area, if needed.

Contributing

We're happy to include any type of contribution! This can be:

• back-end python/django code development
• front-end web development (HTML/Javascript, especially jQuery)
• language translations
• writing improved documentation and demos

For more information on contributing, please see the CONTRIBUTING.rst file.

Licensing

django-helpdesk is licensed under terms of the BSD 3-clause license. See the LICENSE file for full licensing terms.

Note that django-helpdesk is distributed with 3rd party products which have their own licenses. See LICENSE.3RDPARTY for license terms for included packages.