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Other Higher Ed Folks Using WHD To Support All IT Needs?

Hello!

I'm an IT Support Director from a relatively small private art institution. We've been using WHD for several years but have recently decided to rebuild our setup. Since we have a lot of crossover between IT tech departments I'm having a hard time deciding how to create the tech groups. I'd be really interested to know how other higher ed (particularly art institutions) are using WHD and how they break down tech groups and request types if anyone out there feels like sharing!

Cheers!

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mchelone

Not Higher Ed, K12 here but we support 22 buildings, some buildings that share departments and grade ranges. We also have many different tech groups some of which cross over, I'd be happy to help you spitball.

typhoon87

I am higher Ed. We have 4 main tech groups, the labs, central it, web services, and admin computing. We have about 12 buildings. The request types are based on standard types of user questions that each department came up with as well as a few having custom fields. Maybe some more specific questions and I can assist you more.

madornetto

Right now I am trying determine what makes the most sense in terms of tech groups.

We have five IT sub departments, Info Services which deals primarily with our ERP and applications connecting to it (previously this department was called Administrative Computing), Infrastructure which deals with our network, phone and email systems, Printing, Media Resources, and Support. Support (my area) includes a walk up help desk, phone and email support. The staff here do as much initial troubleshooting as they can and initiate a little more than half the tickets - another good sized chunk are self created by clients (students, staff and faculty). Some they resolve and some they pass along to techs in the other departments. We are small and there is a lot of crossover with tickets getting passed between the departments.

Right now there are quite a few tech groups which are basically built to support various request types. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it feel a little messy. I was wondering if others create tech groups in this way or if they segregate by actual department. My feeling is that there is more likely to be crossover in an education environment than a more classic business setting or where there isn't a live person help desk to accompany the software. I could be wrong about that!

Thank you!

mchelone

They way we do it is we have a support group much like your walk up helpdesk, they get a majority of tickets filtered through them. If its a specialty application that is only ever handled by a certain department we have tech groups for that specified ticket category. The majority of the time our support group receives initial tickets and escalates on an as needed basis, as 80% of all issues can be resolved by level 1 techs. Most of our tickets have quite a bit of crossover, we are hoping for multiple techs to be assigned to a single ticket in future releases to alleviate this issue.

jmaier

I realize I'm a little late to the conversation, but I just got on the forum today and was poking around… I'm at a small(ish) private art college as well, so I figured I might be able to share some helpful info if it is not too late!

We have our groups broken up by their general area of oversight (Windows Academic Team, Mac Academic Team, AV Support, Admin Computing, etc). These groups in almost all cases are the level 2 techs. There are two level 1 techs for every group- the Help Desk receptionist (who routes all tickets) and myself (support services manager). I only see tickets outside my area if the HD receptionist is unsure of who to route them to, or if it is an unusual case requiring research, finesse, etc.

If it is a support issue requiring multiple tech groups, then notes are left at every stage of completion and the assigned tech is updated to move it along. The primary stakeholders in the issue are CC'd on the progress in the email settings (Having the option to not copy the client at every turn is handy as well). The way tickets are handled will of course depend on how your department is structured and who retains "ownership" of the issues as they come in, but we find that having the front line people as the level one techs works out very well. We can resolve a number of support issues before anyone else is bothered, only passing along requests for which we do not have access to the resolution.

I hope that helps, or at least provides some point of navigation for you!