REQADM Organizing the Chaos: Managing Request Tickets in a Large Environment Steve Willoughby Intel Corporation

REQADM Introduction Every support group needs to deal with tracking of customer requests. –Different size groups have different needs. –If you have the resources, building your own may be an ideal solution Requires significant time and effort to design and implement –Or, you may prefer to purchase a system Also requires significant time and effort to configure, customize and manage

REQADM Introduction But it’s not just about software. –How you design your system support infrastructure is just as important. –Perhaps more important. –Unexpected advantage to building your own: Must thoroughly examine your work model Opportunity to build closer relationship with customers

REQADM Introduction This is the story of our adventures… … creating tracking software … creating a support infrastructure … for a growing group of 50–1500. There’s more to the story, though... –REQADM BoF Thursday at 8:00 –Paper in Conference Proceedings –Download REQADM and play with it

REQADM 50 Small Groups 1991 May be single administrator. Need: keep system administrator sane and organized. Requests often informal –“Hey, Steve! Got a second?” – directly to system administrator –Little or no tracking (status reports)

REQADM 50 Small Groups 1991 Problems: –Accountability –Problem Analysis –Missed/Forgotten Commitments Solution: –I got to learn Perl :) –Single flat-file “database” of issues –Reports to management –Really helped prioritize and track issues

REQADM Small Groups Same basic game, with more players –Customers mail favorite sysadmin directly. –Ask for help informally in hallway. Simple solutions –Mail alias to contact support team –Still informal handling of issues by administrators

REQADM Larger Groups More specialization More formal tracking needed –Requests “owned” by admins. –Customer feedback throughout process and at resolution time. –Management reports of “delinquent” tickets, follow up with owners.

REQADM Larger Groups Customer Disp. SteveKathyTim Mailed request Assignment

REQADM Larger Groups Customer Disp. SteveKathyTim 1-on-1 interaction, feedback on progress

REQADM Growing... Growing pains (software) –Perl scripts breaking, corrupting tickets –Sysadmin mistakes: re-packing the request queue –Difficult to get indicators to track computing issues proactively –Web/GUI interface needed: can’t send mail in every situation –Not scaling well

REQADM Growing... Growing pains (human) –Customer relations nightmare Miscommunicated urgency Tickets closed too soon Need more personal attention –Frustrated system administrators Overloaded, overwhelmed sysadmins Working hard but not always feeling appreciated Call volume increasing

REQADM Solutions... Request Team formed –Key customers identified to provide input –Key support admins and managers –Identified customer requirements –Specified new help desk processes –Worked out specification for new software tools to implement help desk changes

REQADM Solutions... New procedures and policies –Service Level Agreement “You want what? When?” –Computing Support Center (CSC) Central place to go for help Phone and walk-in support Everyone close enough to cooperate Full-time “front line” staff Next tier of more experienced admins serving week-long CSC shift

REQADM Solutions... New software tools –Better “importance” rating system Urgent, high, medium, low Specific “requested by” date –Rotations Automatic, weighted assignments within group of owners –Easier process Mail, X, web, batch, CLI, NT (soon) clients

REQADM Solutions... New software tools –Root-cause analysis (RAT) Proactively fix problems (stop requests from coming in to us) –Bi-directional tracking Make everything as easy to use as possible –Personal preference profiles –Customer approval of resolution

REQADM Huge Groups Three years later… –Customer groups almost doubled again, call volume heavy, more tickets… –No massive changes to software or CSC; both scaling well to larger demands. Looking at supporting more distant sites –Ticket passing between sites

REQADM Huge Groups Drive incoming tickets down –More environment measurement –Better generation of request metrics, analysis for trends What could we do better? –Tie-in to knowledge bases –Replicated backup servers –Better cross-referencing of tickets

REQADM Come to the BoF session –Thursday, 8–10pm, Douglas Room –Live demo of REQADM software –Discussion of issues involved in creating request tracking systems. Look at REQADM yourself: –ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/reqadm/ Contact me: More...