How to decide between native SharePoint Lists or External Content Types?

Question

We need some guidance on where we should house data for an application that will have all the data entry performed through SharePoint.

Our team is building a HelpDesk ticketing system in SharePoint. We put in about 100 new tickets a day and make edits to about 200 of them a day. We will rely heavily on the data input to report out time spent on tickets for each department, by each individual on our team, for each end user, etc.

We are debating whether or not we should store the data in SharePoint Lists or store them and SQL Server and expose the data entry screens in SharePoint using External Content Types and SharePoint Lists. Any recommendations on which we should use for this scenario?

The way we see it there are benefits either way:

SharePoint Lists

• Easy to make changes to schema
• Workflows will work without problem

Data in SQL and exposed through External Content Type

• Better reporting ability/ease
• May Scale better

Any pros or cons to either we are missing?

Answer 1

Data in SharePoint has more advantage than storing in SQL.

1. Search
2. Workflow
3. Alerts and Emails
4. Automatic remainders
5. Easily scale (Database or by extending farm)
6. Powerview (SharePoint Enterprise)
7. Export to excel and then create adhoc reports
8. Easy form creation (Any change in fields will automatically updates the CRUD UI)

Answer 2

I would prefer the SharePoint for the tickting system,

• easy to use
• customization options
• Alerts, workflows etc
• Use BI tools to get the reports
• archiving the old tickets( if proper planed).
• Search.

Only drawback for advance features you need the Enterprise License.

Here are two Example of Ticketing systems, which will help you understand it.

http://www.falconitservices.com/support/KB/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=116

http://sforsharepoint.blogspot.com/2013/08/helpdesk-ticketing-system-in-sharepoint.html