Guest Post:
Incident Management
The IT department of almost any organization is often faced with the task of providing incident management and a range of technical support to improve the end user’s experience. This isn’t the easiest job in the best of times, and without some kind of organizational structure to keep all those users in line and make sure the most important tasks get the most immediate attention.
Help desk software was created to help organizations manage the constant flow of new tasks and make sure that all the users are receiving enough attention. In order to make the most of the software solutions, though, a few things have to happen first.
Utilizing Help Desk Software Ticketing
The biggest bottleneck in the IT support structure is normally the users themselves. Everyone naturally thinks that their problem is the most pressing, and without a structured approach, they can bombard the IT department with service requests through phone calls, emails, or, perish the thought, personal visits.
Users need to have a simple system in place to submit their problems to the system. This is most effectively accomplished through a user portal that logs requests, allows customizable tickets, and even gives users the ability to take care of simple problems on their own with access to a large database of knowledge and frequently asked questions. Most importantly, though, this system automatically puts requests into the queue, where they can be evaluated and given the correct priority.
On the other side of this portal, though, is the IT team. Their needs must also be included in the system, and the right management tools should give them access to the hardware and software inventories, the ability to view support requests, and even get remote access to important systems. To learn about ticketing and help desk software click here.
Who Gets First Priority?
Once the tasks are entered into the system, a policy-based workflow allows for more efficient organization and prioritization. Every new task must receive a certain amount of scrutiny, and the final priority needs to be decided very quickly. By setting rules and policies in the system, a lot of this can be done automatically. The IT department can define the flow of service tickets and even set up different queues for different departments. It’s all about controlling the workflow and making sure that real priorities float to the top.
Staying in the Loop
Help desk software is only really effective when the managers can use it to stay completely up-to-date on the most recent developments and task resolutions. Any problems with a task should be reported immediately, and the job can then be switched to another person who has different skills or experience.
The software solution you use to manage and organize your support tickets must give you clear visibility into the different tasks, incident resolution times, and service desk workloads. This way, the IT department will have a much better chance to stay on top of problems as they occur instead of getting swamped by unnecessary support calls at 3AM.
David works with Dell KACE he loves anything IT related especially the topic of software deployment, learn more here.
image via KACE.com
