Accessing Autotask from Mac and Linux

Autotask is a great tool for CRM and tracking service tickets, but the one downside is that it supports Internet Explorer only. Spoofing the IE user agent from Firefox will not work, because Autotask is really really meant for IE only.

So if you're on a non-Windows platform like Mac or Linux, you're pretty much stuck because IE is not natively available on those platforms.

We're a multi-platform shop (we run Windows XP, Vista, Mac, Linux, and of course AccessEnforcer runs on OpenBSD), and we do have a need to access Autotask from non-Windows platforms.

We could run a Windows virtual machine and use IE from the VM, but that seems like overkill especially when all we want to do is just to access Autotask. Nobody likes a draggy desktop.

To get around this, we recently tried a program called CrossOver from Codeweavers. It lets you run Windows apps on non-Windows platforms, but the only IE version it supports is IE6 (yeah I know, ew).

Nevertheless, it does work:



It has its own quirks, though. For example, it crashes from time to time especially when you're working on multiple windows, although it's not serious enough to be a show stopper. This is probably because IE6 is rated only as Silver in CodeWeavers' compatibility database, which is defined as:

"This application installs, and runs well enough to be usable. However we find it has enough bugs to prevent it from running flawlessly."

But we can live with those quirks, because (1) we get access to Autotask; and (2) we don't have to go through the hairy process of setting up something like Wine manually to get IE to run.

Check them out -- CrossOver for Mac and CrossOver for Linux. It's $39.95 for the standard edition, and $69.95 for the professional edition.

Also don't forget to check out Autotask. :)