Fault Recording?

[talksr]

Hi there,

In the past at our school, we have asked staff such as teachers and teaching assistants to record their faults in a folder. This can be a pest as the folder can go missing or the teacher's views on how to record a fault leave a lot to be desired. An example being:

My projector is not working - No room number, no staff name, no further description of what has been tried etc

 

I think it is about time we took our fault log digital and was wondering what some people use? We are a three form primary school with an RM CC4 network and a Windows 2008 R2 vanilla network.

Ideally, I would like something where a technician can add comments such that they could find out further info on a problem without having to keep bothering the teacher in class to get to the bottom of something.

[FN-GM]

We use spiceworks. The free helpdesk in it is pretty good. Does everything you ask

[Norphy]

I think the place to start would be Spiceworks

 

We don't use it here because it doesn't scale up to our level very well but there are plenty of people here who do and they seem to like it! If you end up needing something more advanced there are plenty of paid products out there that will do it such as ManageEngine Service Desk, SysAid, System Center Service Manager and lots more besides.

[Davit2005]

The main things you want are the requirement for Location and who has reported the issue otherwise the log does not get through onto the system.

 

I had a call at the last place and it simply stated "It doesn't switch on when I log in", that was it no room, no nothing

[Grey-gear]

You could setup a e-mail account such as [email protected], and ask the teachers to e-mail you if they have problems.

[talksr]

You could setup a e-mail account such as [email protected], and ask the teachers to e-mail you if they have problems.

 

How about the email address: [email protected] ?!

 

Spiceworks was one I had already considered, but it seems like a large solution which can do all sorts of other bits and bobs too.

Has anyone managed to customise it well enough that it has the fields they require? And if so, did it take you long to achieve?

All of the user accounts are stored on our cc3 server which is getting on a little. It does not store their email addresses and I note that spiceworks appears to like using email addresses as effectively the username.

 

I would be quite happy to use a web based solution if it was out there (would mean I could access the faults remotely when not at the school) and would be happy to pay for it. I couldn't check SysAid out as our school has that site blocked as apparently it is classed as 'remote access'!

[FN-GM]

I think Spiceworks its the smallest solution I have seen. Something else to consider is Spiceworks support is also free.

[Norphy]

Have you looked at OPSmartdesk? Our own @ICTNUT looks after that one.

[talksr]

Have you looked at OPSmartdesk? Our own @ICTNUT looks after that one.

 

Oh that looks quite good. Don't need the asset manager part, but does look good. I will give it a trial and see how it runs, would be keen to see if the Active Directory integration works with RM CC3.

[Norphy]

Should do. CC3 is just AD with a middleware layer on top of it, the underlying technology is the same.

[plexer]

Yup the AD integration will work fine.

 

You can turn off the bits that's you don't need to make it simpler.

 

Ben