Helpdesk workflow

Helpdesk manages the process of submitting and attending to service or help requests. Each job goes through the following process
1>The help or service request is submitted. This can be done directly by the user who is making the request, or on the user's befalf by a technician or administrator. For more information, see Helpdesk role:
Helpdesk User Roles
Helpdesk understands three groups of users, called roles.
Normal User role
Normal users are the service request clients. As a user, you have the ability to enter service requests and to view the status of your help requests. You may also receive email notifying you of certain changes to the status of your request(s).
Technician role
Technicians are the people servicing the requests. Technicians have the ability to monitor the job queue, allocate and update jobs, and close jobs when completed. They may also receive email notifying them of new jobs and jobs allocated to them for attention.
Administrator role
The administrator role is responsible for maintaining Helpdesk and changing Helpdesk's configuration

2>The newly submitted job is added to the active jobs queue as an unclaimed job. In other words, the job has not yet been assigned a technician.
3>Each technician sees their own jobs and all unclaimed jobs in the job queue.
4>The job is assigned to a technician by the administrator, or is claimed by the technicians themselves.
5>The job can be updated any number of times to reflect the work performed, expenses incurred and the current status of the job.
6>The job can be transferred from one technician to another at any time.

7>If the job takes too long, Helpdesk will escalate the job. This results in the colour changing and an escalation message being sent to the designated person, who may be the Helpdesk administrator, or a supervisor or manager. For more information, see Helpdesk escalation:
Job Escalation in Helpdesk
What is escalation?
When a job has not been completed within a certain time, extra attention may be required. Escalation allows these jobs to be brought to the attention of the Helpdesk administrator or the relevant manager.
How Helpdesk handles escalation
Helpdesk escalates jobs according to the priority assigned to the job when it was first entered. Helpdesk considers both the controllable and the total elapsed time since the job entry and will escalate jobs which exceed the standards on either of these criteria.
When Helpdesk detects a job exceeding the escalation limits, it generates an email message that is sent to one or more designated mailboxes. This work is performed by the escalation component.

8>When the technician believes the job to be complete, they submit a completion report.
9>Helpdesk sends an email to the user with hot links for the user to sign the job off, if the issue has been fully resolved; reject the sign-off if not; or defer a response until a future date.
10>If the user signs the job off, then the job is removed from the queue and archived. If the user rejects the job as not complete, it is returned to the queue for the attention of the technician who closed the job.

Sources:http://www.intexnet.co.za/UserGuide/workflow.htm

Help Desk software

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is an IT help desk software which helps to manage all your help desk requests efficiently. Tracking emails and phone calls becomes easier with ServiceDesk Plus as it manages the requests with several automated process like request routing, business rule application, SLA management and escalation management. Its easy to install, implement and provides a good user experience.
ServiceDesk Plus offers Help desk Managers the right set of features that are simple and easy to use. It helps them focus on winning users' satisfaction without having struggle with technology or tools.

Self - Service portal:

The web-based Self-service Portal reduces the help desk call volume to a greater extent by helping the user to raise their own requests, tracking the statuses of their requests and browsing through the available solutions before they report an issue. Keep the end user informed about the major outages or down-times by adding announcements in their self-service Portal.

Knowledgebase:

Create a robust knowledge-base in your helpdesk application for the users to find their solutions before raising a request using ServiceDesk Plus. This also helps the technicians to reduce the turn-around-time in finding the resolution for an issue.

SLA Management:

Give solution to a request within the defined resolution time and improve the customer satisfaction by defining your SLA and setting up different escalation levels for the SLA violations in your help desk software. This helps to prioritize the request and set different colors to the priority levels.

API Integration:

Integrate your web-based help desk software with any thirdparty software with API integration and manage your events or requests created else where

Business Rules:

Enable the auto-dispatch of Requests to different levels, priorities, categories, technicians etc., by using business rules. Around 70 percent of the requests coming to your help desk software get assigned automatically into appropriate
classifications using business rules.

Notification Rules:

Send confirmation receipts to the users and support engineers automatically from your help desk software by enabling notification rules. Get these automatic alerts from ServiceDesk Plus at the time of request logging or a change inside the request or whenever the request gets assigned to a technician or a group or at the time of SLA violations.

Reports:

Get complete reports on IT Help Desk load, technician performance and SLA violation etc., using the Help desk Reports and do a trend analysis to find out how the service failure happened.

User Survey:

Get to know the satisfaction level on the issue resolution and the technicians competent level by enabling user-survey. This helps to streamline your IT service and improve the customer service to a greater extent.

If you need to any further detail on helpdesk software so you can visit..
http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/help-desk-software.html

Phone Line To Technical Support,Techniacal Support

Technical support is a type of services which providing their help with technology product like Mobile phones, televisions, Computer or other electronic items. Tech support services gives their help the user solve specific problems related with a product. In general, Technical support services attempt to help the customer's problems through the phone calls like Call center.

Most companies provide technical support for their products, either freely available or a free. They provide their service through the phone technical support or remote technical support. Larger organizations have internal technical support which is available to their staff for computer related problems. Technical support may be delivered by different technologies depending on the situation like, direct question can be ask by online chat, through e-mail, through the phone and remote.

Many organization locate their technical support departments or call center in countries. Call center provide the technical support through the phone. We can ask any problem through the phone like computer's problem, mobiles phone's problem etc. But it is more expensive because it requires a technical to spend more time working on a problem as explained complex issue quire studying their history and making sure about the problem.

Many companies provides their services online like computer repairing by the help of taking computer remotely. Remote computer repair is troubleshooting common computers errors via remote desktop connection by logging into remote computer. These repairs are popular as remote technical support, online help and onsite technical support. Common repairs available with remote computer support provides are computer virus, spyware issue, virus issue, PC optimization, slow performance, registry repair, driver or software issue etc. If our Internet explorer is working fine then remote technical support service is much better services but if our Internet explorer service not working then we need to help phone technical support services because with Internet we cannot take any remote of the computer.

All companies needs technical support engineer or technician which s provide technical support services. He is responsible for maintain or repair their products like mobiles, computer etc. Example, In computer field area technical support technician are responsible for repairing and maintaining the computer, installation of software, hardware configuration, creating a new network etc. They provide the service through the online chat, e-mail, phone, remote and dealt with directly to the customer.

Phone Technical help and support is also divide into many levels for business purpose. The only reason to divide technical help and support in different levels because to provide their best possible services in the most possible manner. Another advantage of availing these tech help is their 24x7 availability.

ServiceDesk Plus - Helpdesk The World Loves

ServiceDesk Plus is a web-based helpdesk software that helps you manage all your communications from a single point. It offers an integrated Request management (Trouble Ticketing), Asset management, Purchase order management, Contract Management, Self-Service Portal, and Knowledge Base. ServiceDesk Plus packs all the modules at an affordable price.

ServiceDesk Plus comes in 3 editions - Standard, Professional and Enterprise Edition. Compare Editions Now!!

ServiceDesk Plus Features:


Helpdesk Management:


ServiceDesk Plus help desk management gives you everything to manage your help desk requests effectively. It includes self-service portal, knowledge base, auto routing of requests, notifications, sla management,email integration, LDAP, AD integration, API integration, custom request form,user survey, flash reports, multi-site support, help desk reporting.


* Self-service portal to enable login for users to submit their trouble tickets
* Web-based knowledge-base system for users and technicians to search and add the troubleshooting docs
* NMS Integration to integrate with Network Monitoring Software for tracking events and network failures
* Service Level Agreements to set escalation levels for the SLA violations
* Multi-site functionality to manage requests, assets and technicians separately for different sites in your organization
* Email Integration to handle all the help desk emails sent by the users
* Notification alerts via email or sms, to inform users or technicians for request handling
* Request scheduling to manage and track the preventive maintenance tasks
* API integration to integrate your web-based help desk software with any third-party software
* Active Directory integration to enable user authentication with single sign-on functionality
* Robo technician to automate the "reset password requests"
* Request survey to know the technician competent level and user satisfaction level on request resolutions
* Flash Reports to get a consolidated view on what is happening with your helpdesk
* Help Desk Reports to schedule and review the reports based on Request-status, SLA-violation and many more from the list of default reports or to create your own custom reports

Asset Management

ServiceDesk Plus asset management helps you manage and track all the assets in your organization. It includes integrated Asset Management, Purchase Management, Contracts Management along with Helpdesk(Standard Edition Features). The Asset management also comes with Software compliance & license tracking, Product Catalog, Asset Reports etc.

* Asset scan to add all assets across the organization without any manual effort
* Track information pertaining to all the assets and relate each request to specific assets
* Automatic asset discovery to detect and update the hardware and software changes periodically
* Remote Control to access any workstation in your network
* Asset relationship to find out the dependability of an asset
* Dynamic asset groups to manage asset based on its properties
* Product catalog to create and manage a comprehensive list of all the assets and product types that your organization owns
* Software license management to track software usage, license violations and ensure compliance
* Software license compliance to maintain accurate software information for software audits
* Software usage tracking to manage the purchase of frequently used software
* Purchase management to track and manage your IT purchases, Generate POs and automatically create assets from POs
* Contract management to track all your support/maintenance contracts and lease agreements and get alerted when contracts are due for expiry

ITIL Ready:


ServiceDesk Plus ITIL ready helps to streamline your IT service with the ITIL best practices easily. The workflow designed out of the box helps you implement without any expert consultations. It includes Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

* Incident Management - Restore normal services as soon as possible with workarounds or solutions to make sure that it does not affect business
* Problem Management - Find the root cause of incidents and reduce the impact on business. Problem Management is a proactive approach that prevents recurrence of incidents
* Change Management - Implement a comprehensive change management system that allows you to handle pre-approved changes and changes with complete approval cycle
* Configuration Management Database(CMDB) -CMDB is a centralized repository that holds all the information about all the assets. CMDB also manages the relationship between the Configuration Items (CIs)

Source:http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/