Those are all great suggestions! With the new emphesis on modularity, all of those are modules.

You'll be happy to know that the trouble tickets are about to receive their first upgrade. Because osTicket is now defunct, we're upgrading the tickets to eTicket (it's successor, same interface)
The refresh can be accomplished by editing the mod_osTicket.php in your themes, either put a meta refresh, or a java refresh in there.
There are plans for a settings module. This module would backup the HCL database as well as allow you to edit the settings for the program without ftp or shell access (say a staff member).
I'm hoping that someone builds a database module for HCL. I use knowledgebase builder, so that would be my favorite. Maybe after some of the core features are finished up I may work on it.