TJ-Diggers Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 Hi All I need to implement a Central helpdesk for a MAT. I'm currently running on-prem Manage Engine Service Desk but happy to start fresh across the MAT. Any recommendations on a helpdesk and whether to go cloud or on-prem? TIA
Sydders01 Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 Spicework is the way to go. You can easily put different locations on it. One most important thing to consider when going cloud is where the data centre are due to GDPR. We use on prem.
Roberto Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 ServiceNow is good, and if you're multi-site I'd think very favourably about cloud (or hosted) services that won't stop people on other sites working just because some clumsy fool in one building hoofed the wrong plug out of the wall or something equally absurd. Obviously I'd say an appropriate level of ITIL standardisation is a good idea for a large multi-site setup, whatever you choose.
chris11256 Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 (edited) ManageEngine can easily cope with multi site setups, so I'd consider staying with it. Not quite a MAT but at my previous school we maintained the infrastructure for a nearby prep school with the onsite tech doing general support bits. So the had it setup as an additional site on ManageEngine which the tech then had full access too. Edited January 2, 2020 by chris11256
FN-GM Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 Spicework is the way to go. You can easily put different locations on it. One most important thing to consider when going cloud is where the data centre are due to GDPR. We use on prem. The problem is development for on Prerm has stopped. Spiceworks cloud is just painful - it lacks many features and the search doesn't work.
rogerdnixon Posted January 2, 2020 Posted January 2, 2020 We have recently started using Freshdesk which works well. Been a long-time user of Spiceworks - but the on-site solution is showing its age + we wanted G Suite integration as local AD is not something we do anymore.
HPlum78 Posted January 3, 2020 Posted January 3, 2020 I mentioned Plumsail and if you scroll down the page there is a review of the product by someone off this forum, who is using it in a MAT environment. Maybe worth contacting them directly and get a look see. Jira wow err we use that and it's a lot of product to do just a help desk on good if you are going to leverage all the other stuff but not just a H/D solution in my view.
MicrodigitUK Posted January 4, 2020 Posted January 4, 2020 Used GLPI in a single large secondary, thinking about implementing it again in a MAT as I find it works well. https://glpi-project.org
localzuk Posted January 4, 2020 Posted January 4, 2020 We've been using SiteHelpdesk IT for a couple of years, but have just signed up to user Zoho Heldesk as it is more modern and at a good price point for the features we want.
DarrenShan Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 What about the cloud-hosted version of ServiceDeskPlus? all versions of SDP support multi-site.
DavidYoung Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 We've been using SiteHelpdesk IT for a couple of years, but have just signed up to user Zoho Heldesk as it is more modern and at a good price point for the features we want. We're also trialing Zoho Desk at the moment and it does look really good. The price seems to be very competitive as well. The only real issue for us is 'customer' management, i.e. end users. We currently have SysAid which imports from AD and everyone can sign in but haven't found a way to do this in Zoho Desk. Are you just importing your users with spreadsheets? Ours is a bit more complicated too as we want users to be able to sign in with their Google logins but aren't all on the same Google domain (as we support external schools). I'm trying SAML but I think that links with just one Google domain. They have really good social logins for the agent side so I've been emailing them to see if that is possible on the customer side.
Wubbalubbadub Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 After EXTENSIVE testing and swapping i ended up on: https://www.supportpal.com These were my findings on the others: Spiceworks on-site: Good but i needed external access and i didnt want to open up my internal domain. Also a bit clunky at times Spiceworks hosted: Also good, and very close! But somewhat buggy and also hosted outside EU. Zendesk: Missing certain tools, and cost ended up being pretty high Freshdesk: Above (If Zendesk and Freshdesk merged together it would be a perfect soloution tbh...) Plumsail: I very much liked the sharepoint intergration, but the cost was somewhat high for what it was, the support was also not very effective - given they are in russia, the time difference was a killer. Also given it was hosted in Sharepoint, it meant sites not within our tenancy were hard to manage / make tickets for. Support pal has a nice pricing model (Pay once) and i wacked it in an external web server we host outside the school via go-daddy for other sites that we host. Hope this helps. Matt
localzuk Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 We're also trialing Zoho Desk at the moment and it does look really good. The price seems to be very competitive as well. The only real issue for us is 'customer' management, i.e. end users. We currently have SysAid which imports from AD and everyone can sign in but haven't found a way to do this in Zoho Desk. Are you just importing your users with spreadsheets? Yeah, our plan is to do this via spreadsheets, generated via a powershell script. However, they do have an API, so when I have a minute (ha) I may rustle up a program to do the integration for us using that. Ours is a bit more complicated too as we want users to be able to sign in with their Google logins but aren't all on the same Google domain (as we support external schools). I'm trying SAML but I think that links with just one Google domain. They have really good social logins for the agent side so I've been emailing them to see if that is possible on the customer side. SAML would be for a single domain too, yeah.
DavidYoung Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 Yeah, our plan is to do this via spreadsheets, generated via a powershell script. However, they do have an API, so when I have a minute (ha) I may rustle up a program to do the integration for us using that. Yeah, that's our plan too. We'll start with spreadsheets and one of my colleagues might put together an API integration. Do you have SAML implemented? My G Suite SAML isn't working at the moment.
localzuk Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 Yeah, that's our plan too. We'll start with spreadsheets and one of my colleagues might put together an API integration. Do you have SAML implemented? My G Suite SAML isn't working at the moment. Not got that far yet. The SAML stuff is only for end users accessing the Zoho Desk Portal though, not the actual helpdesk for your agents.
DavidYoung Posted January 8, 2020 Posted January 8, 2020 Not got that far yet. The SAML stuff is only for end users accessing the Zoho Desk Portal though, not the actual helpdesk for your agents. Yeah, that's the bit that we want to be as seamless as possible. We'll see what they say.
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