Over the last few weeks I have been working to try and collect information from our call tracking system that we have in place at the Help Desk.  The software we use for call tracking is called Numara FootPrints. I have been very happy with the results.  Every week on Wednesday the system e-mails me the total number of people assisted in the last week complete with a summary description chosen by the Help Desk worker.  Last month the Help Desk assisted 800 people, this month the Help Desk assisted 808 people.  I believe these numbers are fairly accurate.  Right now we can only see the numbers of people that have contacted us, but in the next few months we will be able to see the method by which we were contacted and the amount of time it took for us to help each person.

I have always known the Help Desk has been busy, but now I have the numbers to help show how busy we have been.

One of the things I pride myself on is my ability to break down the complexity of computers into simple everyday descriptions.  When I was asked to describe the problem that we are experiencing on our Exchange Server here is what I came up with:

All the e-mail at the university is stored in a database in an exchange environment.  This sort of database is similar to a file drawer in your desk that contains hanging file folders.  Each account is a hanging file folder and each e-mail is a piece of paper in the hanging file folders.  At this point there are so many hanging file folders in our drawer that we cannot remove any, nor can we fit any more in the drawer.  When we remove paper from the file folders, it is simply filled up with more paper in other hanging file folders.  So when the I.T. Department opens the file drawer all we see are hanging file folders.  If people remove paper from their folders, it assures more space for future paper, but there is no way in this current system to change our file system.

It made sense to me, I hope it makes sense to others.

Over the last week I have spent some time working to create announcements for the upcoming laptop return and renewal process. Thankfully, I have been able to reuse and update old announcements. We also used the Help Desk Facebook account to create an event in an effort to communicate in a more direct manner to the student body. We have been working to streamline our laptop extension policies and focus on making this laptop return and renewal run even more smoothly than last year.

Laptop Return/Renewal is approaching as the semester nears its imminent end. With the new Help Desk location, we have to rethink a few of our usual plans. I have spent the last few days preparing for the process changes, writing letters ahead of schedule, and sorting out the Help Desk Schedule for they busiest week in the Help Desk year. It has been fun to rethink and old process.

One of the biggest challenges we have as a Help Desk is communicating what we support versus what we do not support.  Although I hate to say it, there is so much technology out there in the world it is nearly impossible to support everything as completely as I would like.  Because our University Help Desk is completely staffed by 12 Students and 2 full time staff members (who also have other responsibilities), we need to be sure that we explain exactly what is supported and what is not supported.  I have begun to work on a supported software list which will eventually take us down the path to Service Level Agreements and other statements that help inform folks what they can expect when they contact our Help Desk.

I have spent a bit of time over the last few weeks merging our minimal support documentation from the CSP Help Desk Site to the massive collection of support information that exists in our CSP Support Site. It has been a great exploration of old documentation and updating documentation. I have learned a lot about wiki formatting and after a week of working in wiki tables, I can create wiki tables without a second thought.

We have seen a few laptops over the last few months with broken sleep button depressors. The sleep button depressor is a small piece of plastic that is part of the screen bezel. Brock and I have been stumped as to figuring out how these are breaking. They are small, out of the way, and part of the screen bezel. This does not make for an easy part to accidentally break. Because of its size and location on the computer it also doesn’t make for a part to carelessly break.

Today a student worker (who will remain nameless to protect his innocence) figured it out for us. The student came back and said, “I have seen quite a few people sliding file folders in between their laptop screen and keyboard and then closing the lid. Could that be breaking the sleep buttons?” Genius.
So we now know that there is not a design flaw related to this part. We also know that you should never place anything on the keyboad of your laptop and close it (even if it is a piece of paper.)

Things at the Help Desk have been pretty busy with all the transitions and after-affects of the Daylight Savings Time transition.  The top three service requests we have received this week are:

1. Issues with the office/residence hall phones and Daylight Savings Time.
2. Issues with Microsoft Outlook Calendaring Times being off due to Daylight Savings Time.
3. And the standard weekly password resets for Bear Path, WebCT and Network Accounts.

All in all, I think we are doing great at keeping up with the work load and have spent some time documenting our solutions in the new support site which is yet to be named.