Help Desk Subscription

[L_Smith]

Hello everyone,

 

We are currently looking to change the helpdesk software we use but have specific requirements so I was wondering if anyone could recommend anything that would suite our needs.

 

Just a little bit of background; we are a senior school that supports 10 local primary schools, and at the moment we use the online version of Spiceworks, and if I am honest, it works very very well. We also use a site called When I Work to organise site visits. This also works very well but we are looking for something that would do both, preferably free but we are willing to pay as long as it isn't too costly. Our Spiceworks is set up with different organisations and each organisation has their own individual email address to log tickets, this is something that we would need to have if moving over to a different solution as we would like to separate all the schools tickets. We would then also like to be able to have the ability to organise technician visits within the same system.

 

Is anyone aware of anything that could do the job?

 

Thanks

Lewis

[EssentialRug]

Hello everyone,

 

We are currently looking to change the helpdesk software we use but have specific requirements so I was wondering if anyone could recommend anything that would suite our needs.

 

Just a little bit of background; we are a senior school that supports 10 local primary schools, and at the moment we use the online version of Spiceworks, and if I am honest, it works very very well. We also use a site called When I Work to organise site visits. This also works very well but we are looking for something that would do both, preferably free but we are willing to pay as long as it isn't too costly. Our Spiceworks is set up with different organisations and each organisation has their own individual email address to log tickets, this is something that we would need to have if moving over to a different solution as we would like to separate all the schools tickets. We would then also like to be able to have the ability to organise technician visits within the same system.

 

Is anyone aware of anything that could do the job?

 

Thanks

Lewis

 

We use a mix of Google Forms, Trello and Zapier. We've set up a Google Form ticket template that staff fill out when making a request, and then Zapier imports this into Trello. In Trello it auto picks up which school in our MAT it has come from and colours the card accordingly. I can then assign technicians to the ticket so they can carry out the work. Not sure if any of that is helpful to you, but we really like this solution.

 

If you didn't want to create a Form, Trello also has a 'email to board' feature.

Edited February 7, 2022 by EssentialRug

[MatthewL]

We use Service Desk Plus from Manage Engine.

 

One of the best service desk platforms I've used in 15 years. We don't use it for half of what it can do but sounds ideal for what is needed.

[subway_lunch]

Just migrated our helpdesk system from spiceworks over to osticket. Osticket can be hosted locally or in the cloud, and you can also setup different teams for each of the schools you manage.

[dhicks]

We use a mix of Google Forms, Trello and Zapier.

 

We're using pretty much the same setup - flexible enough to be customisable to what we want to do, but the basics of what we wanted to do were there to start with. We're spending around £20 per month per user (as in helpdesk user, 3 of us, not every user in the school) for Trello and the email add-on.

[EssentialRug]

We're using pretty much the same setup - flexible enough to be customisable to what we want to do, but the basics of what we wanted to do were there to start with. We're spending around £20 per month per user (as in helpdesk user, 3 of us, not every user in the school) for Trello and the email add-on.

 

Is the £20 a month per technician so that you can email out from Trello? We're currently just using the free version but would be interested to know how it's working for you.

 

After showing our ticket system to our Premises team, we've now set the same up for them and they seem to be getting on really well with it. News travels fast as I think HR and Finance want the same now too!

[dhicks]

Is the £20 a month per technician so that you can email out from Trello?

 

Yes, £20 per month per technician - I think that's actually split between Trello itself and the email add-on, which was originally a separate tool but (I think) has now been bought by Trello, so I'd think / hope that might get a bit cheaper shortly.

 

After showing our ticket system to our Premises team, we've now set the same up for them and they seem to be getting on really well with it. News travels fast as I think HR and Finance want the same now too!

 

That sounds perfect - everyone on the same system and able to swap / move about tickets as needed. For us, IT tends to wind up getting involved in too many different bits around the school, partly as we're simply reasonably well organised and have a working tracking system.