What are your reporting methods?

[indiegirl]

How do you manage your workloads? Do you ask staff to report problems and requests in a certain way, or do you do jobs as and when?

 

I'm trying to set up some proper reporting and request methods, and wondered if anyone else utilises this.

 

I've pulled together problem report forms and change request forms and am trying to get them into circulation.

 

Do you refuse anything by word of mouth, or do you ask staff to follow it up with something in writing?

 

I have a NM who never writes anything down, and I'm getting staff coming to me saying: "he said it'd be done in October, and it's still not done.. can you sort it?"... so I'm hoping that with proper reporting procedures, less stuff will get missed.

 

Oh for my HSBC days with separate departments dedicated to problem, and change management!!! 8O

[Norphy]

We had the same problem, due mainly to staff grabbing us in corridors whenever we were in the middle of a job saying "oh, can you just do this for me?" and us promptly forgetting about it.

 

What we do now is have them call our receptionist who notes down the task in a public folder in Exchange. We examine the tasks periodicly and things get done from there. We refuse scraps of paper and people who acoust in corridors and tell them to go to Reception

 

Seems to work well, getting less complaints this year anyway.

[CyberNerd]

Becta have provided a framework for IT in schools.

http://www.becta.org.uk/fits/

 

We use request tracker to manage our helpdesk. I tested a lot of software to do this and found that Request Tracker beats most commercial solutions.

http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

 

In theory, request tracker is our single point of contact. Staff can email the request tracker, enter the info through a browser or call a technician (to enter the info) If a support request is entered into the request tracker, the user is supplied with a ticket and the job will definately get done. If I get stopped in the corridor I mostly forget... staff soon get the message.

 

A big advantage is that the other techs can keep an overview of what each other are doing. As all our information is now entered into the request tracker database, we also can keep track of faulty equipment and training needs (faulty users) more easily.

[MkII]

Ah yes - RTFM Good to hear you find it works well.

[paul]

We have our own scratch built online reporting system which we have incorporated into our VLE/Website (this can also be sold separately as it is all modular report/job tracking module only £30 for site license), we only accept requests via this method. Jobs are collated in an SQL database and shown in priority order; Jobs can then be assigned to particular NM/technicians.

 

Staff submit page

http://www.longridge-high.co.uk/staffsubmit.jpg

 

Admin Page

http://www.longridge-high.co.uk/adminscreen.jpg

 

Staff also have the ability to track the fault, displays notes added by technician giving updates on the job process.

Closed jobs are also added to a KB giving staff option to search for previous fixes.

[kingswood]

I looked into this kind of solution some time ago, but then turned to the one we already had inside of some software CSE give us anyway. Voila. Do the staff use it anyway?

 

Not on your life.

 

But it is there :-)

[paul]

Yes, they have no choice but to! Its dead straight forward to use, There are variouse other modules we have created which are used by staff on a daily basis such as pupil daily reporting. Which is used between teaching staff and our office personell to great effect.

[CyberNerd]

Do the staff use it anyway?

Not on your life.

 

This was one of the reasons we went with request tracker, Our staff were already used to e-mailing faults, so the only thing they needed to do differently was to email helpdesk rather than the individual technician.

 

it has already improved things around here, now I just need to explain to SMT how to plan in advance, and the benefits of being aware of TCO and change management.....

[tosca925]

We only accept faults emailed to us by staff.

 

They all do lesson registration by the hour so they are always logged on. They have no excuse not t o email us. They all used to stop us in corridors as well.

[acb_]

We use Liberum Help Desk which allows tracking by user, automatically assigns jobs to staff based on category reported (yes, this isn't necessarily the same as the actual category), emails updates when they are made. Easy clicky webby interface. And the price is right.

 

In terms of getting people to use it, that's a slightly different matter. If I'm accosted in the corridor I tell them I will forget unless they report it. We've done some animated tutorials to show them how to use it, so there's no excuse. We're quite a way down the track of it being universally used, though I suppose there will always be those who think that the rules are there for someone else but they are special...

 

In some ways the biggest battle has been to get people to understand that the process is essentially a dialogue: submitting a report that 'there was an error message' is bound to trigger a request for more information - many of our users seem to think that their involvement ends when they first click the 'submit' button.

[indiegirl]

Liberum looks good (especially the price!), now, all I need to do is to sit down with some peace and quiet (so not any time soon then) and work out where it'll sit, and how it'll integrate with our Exchange server. I hope it's smooth...

 

Any other free options are welcomed. I did find the SomeHelp software simple to setup, but the interfact isn't pretty and it required users being setup... which could've taken me a long time...

[acb_]

Integration with Exchange (so the NM informs me) isn't too bad - use either Jmail (free download) or CDONTS.

 

Cheers

 

Alison

[Norphy]

You could try the Sharepoint Helpdesk template thingamy. That'll integrate right into your network assuming you're using AD. IIS, Sharepoint Services, Windows 2003 and MS SQL database of some flavour required

[CyberNerd]

This is one of the other products I tested:

 

http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/service-desk/

 

But I still maintain that requesttracker beats most of the others in functionality, it took about 2hrs to set up, has excellent support and works in pretty much any environment (with our exchange server).

[Ric_]

@indiegirl: If you pester me I will send you the stuff I have written which is due to be sent out to our staff next week. This includes a list of things that the staff must attempt before logging a fault - until these tasks are completed no action will be taken. There is also an explanation of the prioritisation of tasks.

 

I am implementing a formal method for reporting faults, using a One||Zero (http://www.oneorzero.com) helpdesk system. After much trawling of opensource systems, I found that this has just the right amount of features and is easy to configure and use.

[plexer]

For anyone looking to implement Request Tracker on a windows based server http://www.netvigilance.com/winrt has a download including working email support. The windows download linked in the RT docs seems to be unavailable at the moment.

 

Ok having tried this version I can't recommend it as it doesn't appear to work either on my home 2K machine or windows 2003 server at work. I have a copy of the latest windows installer from the original page which does work if anyone needs it.

 

Only thing I need to get working now is the email side of the tickets.

 

Ben

[plexer]

Just to update if anyone is thinking of trying this on windows. I now have the email submission and creation of tickets working. What I had to do was to actually do a cygwin install then run cygwin once to setup the profiles etc.. for the user I was logged in as. For testing this is local administrator but when I change it to a different user then I would imaging I would have to rerun cygwin for that user.

 

Once this was done fetchmail works fine and downloads messages and creates the tickets, what isn't working at the moment is the SMTP replies when tickets are created, amended and closed.

 

Ben

[manojsundar]

We have found HappyFox to be useful for managing and solving our client requests. The web-based tool integrates with our email and website, and converts incoming requests into tickets. HappyFox helps us to categorize tickets into different categories/departments based on type of client request. The affordable pricing plans has also helped us keep our costs under check.

[plexer]

Raised from the dead, head shot for the zombie please.

 

Ben

[SHimmer45]

i dont think the CDNOTS plays very nice with new versions of IIS as i having been tinkering with Liberum to put it into one of our primary feeders, as it simple to look at and used which is something other bug tracking/helpdesk software isnt.

shame they appeared to stop developing it.

[twin--turbo]

We have used the Glpi Free helpdesk for a couple of years ( oneZero before that ) Last september we told all staff that requests have to be submitted on the helpdesk. If they ring - they are asked to put it on the help desk, if they e-mail - they are asked to put it on the helpdesk, if they stop us - they are asked to put it on the helpdeks.

 

If it's not on the helpdesk - it's not getting done.

 

Proved to be totaly invaluable.

 

Rob

[localzuk]

We have a helpdesk in place, and all requests must go through it - unless it is urgent, in which case we add it to the helpdesk ourselves.

 

It allows for us to track issues, and also gives us accountability when someone says 'I told them about X 7 years ago and it still isn't fixed'; we can check the helpdesk for such a request and if it isn't there, then it is the end user's fault for not reporting it correctly.

 

On top of this, a helpdesk allows us to show that our workload has been steadily increasing since September, so that we can then justify changes being made or a new member of staff.