Helpdesks

[hardtailstar]

Hi All,

 

Looking at improving the 'helpdesk' in ways.

 

We currently use spiceworks and just log a ticket when an email comes through.

 

What do others do?

 

Do you have screens up on walls displaying the helpdesk?

 

Thanks in advance

[Gardinho]

We use GLPI but I'm tempted to bring up a VM with OSTicket on. It seems to be pretty popular!

[Edu-IT]

Improve it for who, the end user or yourself?

[dry]

Had a simple form for users to complete when raising a ticket via Spiceworks. Although we had a 'helpdesk@' email address linked to Spiceworks (which would auto-generate tickets from incoming emails), we generally deterred staff from doing that as going through the Spiceworks portal meant they had to read the FAQs first, and they are able to monitor status of their own tickets more easily via the portal too.

[hardtailstar]

Improve it for who, the end user or yourself?

 

Both..

[Arreks]

In all three Schools I've worked at, we've always used Spiceworks but to varying degrees of optimization.

 

Currently, we have Spiceworks set up so that users can either email our support address which will automatically open a ticket or they can use a form on our intranet to submit a ticket. There are various different types of tickets ranging from device loan requests, maintenance and end-user support/software requests which get filtered into categories within Spiceworks. To make things easier for us, we then use due dates and priorities to keep on track of things (a plugin to set a due date automatically based on priority helps a lot).

 

Spiceworks is love Spiceworks is life

[hallb15]

We use Spiceworks Portal for our homepage as well as the helpdesk. We have three tabs across the top for the Homepage, HelpDesk and Knowledge Base.

 

Its simple and easy enough for staff to use and it allows me to keep track of issues. We ask staff to post requests via the homepage but any that come through directly to my email address I forward to the ICTHelpdesk@ email address and CC the original sender using the #cc tag. I also create a new ticket when I get a support call from a staff member so I can make notes in the ticket instead of writing it on a post it note or similar that then gets lost...

 

I've customised the portal quite a bit to make it more user friendly. Its easy enough to do, but a bit of a pain whenever there is an update to Spiceworks as all the custom images have to be copied to the new installation folder.

[hardtailstar]

We use Spiceworks Portal for our homepage as well as the helpdesk. We have three tabs across the top for the Homepage, HelpDesk and Knowledge Base.

 

Its simple and easy enough for staff to use and it allows me to keep track of issues. We ask staff to post requests via the homepage but any that come through directly to my email address I forward to the ICTHelpdesk@ email address and CC the original sender using the #cc tag. I also create a new ticket when I get a support call from a staff member so I can make notes in the ticket instead of writing it on a post it note or similar that then gets lost...

 

I've customised the portal quite a bit to make it more user friendly. Its easy enough to do, but a bit of a pain whenever there is an update to Spiceworks as all the custom images have to be copied to the new installation folder.

 

do they need logins for the portal?

[dry]

do they need logins for the portal?

Yes but you can integrate with AD:

 

Active Directory - Spiceworks

[Steve21]

Should get used to some of the Spiceworks shortcuts too

 

e.g. Forward "XYZ"s omg it's broke ticket to helpdesk email address and use #creator XYZ within the body and it opens ticket as them etc No more manual write ups etc

 

Steve

[hallb15]

do they need logins for the portal?

Nope. The portal is set as the default homepage by a group policy so all staff and children get it. If a staff member wants to post a support request, they have to type in their email address but that's all.

 

I did experiment with AD integration years ago but stopped using it for some reason which I can't now remember. It may have improved since the early days.

 

The email shortcut tags are part of 'Tickets Anywhere' and are very useful if, like me you read emails on a mobile device when not in school and rather than then forget about them you can forward the request to the helpdesk email address and let it deal with it for you or your minion(s) to handle.

 

There's a list of them all here:

http://community.spiceworks.com/help/Tickets_Anywhere

Edited January 13, 2016 by hallb15

[ButterflyMoon]

Love Spiceworks! We use it here

[crwardell]

Use Spiceworks to... helpdesk, inventory, network monitoring all good and free.

[hardtailstar]

Use Spiceworks to... helpdesk, inventory, network monitoring all good and free.

 

Which we are using it for that.

 

I'm after ways to improve it

[lyricalway]

A big "UP" for OSTicket here. Used it for 4/5 years absolutely flawless and links to AD accounts.

[mthomas08]

We use email, it works and Staff seem very good using it - they cant say they don't know how!! HA!

 

Plus it's added on to our LM so it groups in a folder, even if he doesn't read them he gets to see how many emails a day we get.

[bushby]

here i use freshdesk its a nice clean cloud based helpdesk and its free for 3 techs

[crwardell]

Which we are using it for that.

 

I'm after ways to improve it

 

Hi hardtailstar

 

If you mean utilise the Spiceworks install to your benefit then yes setup a dedicated PC with a large screen to show the helpdesk and the network monitoring App very useful for quickly checking how all your network devices are performing and to see how many tickets are being created etc.

Also we use the reporting function to run a monthly report on open and closed jobs which is then emailed to senior management.

We use the inventory side of spiceworks to monitor printer status, client PC hard disc status and lots of other useful information.

We have the Portal setup to provide users with another way of sending tickets to the helpdesk...help documents and useful web links have also been put on the portal.

 

Hope that's that helps

[jmak]

Does anyone use the Spiceworks cloud based help desk?

 

I stopped using the help desk as no one else used it, but head wants people to see how busy I am (on my side at the minute ) and leave me alone a bit to get on with useful things. I need a way to report - help desk seems ideal, especially as I already have Spiceworks installed. Cloud based option is new since last time I used it.

 

Thanks

[crwardell]

Does anyone use the Spiceworks cloud based help desk?

 

I stopped using the help desk as no one else used it, but head wants people to see how busy I am (on my side at the minute ) and leave me alone a bit to get on with useful things. I need a way to report - help desk seems ideal, especially as I already have Spiceworks installed. Cloud based option is new since last time I used it.

 

Thanks

 

Hi Jmak

 

Apologise for bumping thus thread again I love Spiceworks its helped simplify my Job no end.

 

The cloud based helpdesk is a no-brainer if you only want the use of an helpdesk.

[twin--turbo]

We use email, it works and Staff seem very good using it - they cant say they don't know how!! HA!

 

Plus it's added on to our LM so it groups in a folder, even if he doesn't read them he gets to see how many emails a day we get.

 

Just e-mail? No actual ticketing database??

 

 

I started out with "OneOrZero" circa 2005, we would just add on tickets. staff would get e-mail updates but did not interact with it.

 

2009 went to "GLPI" again we started out just using it ourselves but move on to adding the users. 2011 at the start of autumn term after merger and restructure we stated that All tickets MUST be logged diectly on the helpdesk. The uptake was super.

 

We had all the assets and contracts in there, a knowledge base too. SSO was screamed for, but noone said thanks when it was introduced!

 

 

A big improvement for us was that I wrote a script that pulled ticket data from the database. It diplayed on a HTML page in each office the current number of calls. when a new call came in the screen flashed allerting us that there was something needing looking at. we were handling 20-25 calls a day across the two sites.

 

 

I have moved on and my current organisation uses ManageEngine Service Desk. I don't particularly like it's workflow but it also has all our contracts, purchases, assets, projects, solutions, change control, etc...

 

TT