1. Matthew Maderos Matthew Conlon Information Technology Massachusetts College of Art & Design Matthew.maderos@massart.edu Matthew.conlon@massart.edu NERCOMP 2008 All You Ever Wanted To Know About Implementing A Helpdesk Ticketing System But Were Afraid To Ask!

2. MassArt 1,300 undergraduates 300 graduate students 600 faculty and staff Information Technology 12 full time staff 3 co-op students 5 work-study students The Product Chosen Unipress/Numara Footprints Purchased Version 7.0 Currently running 8.0

3. Background Current home grown access system lacked numerous features that were essential for a functional helpdesk Out grew old system time for a more powerful system

4. What we were looking for… An easy to use web based ticketing system Integrated with our LDAP and AD systems Custom reporting Able to fit our allocated budget Expandable to other departments Mechanism to automatically provide status updates Future expandability Asset Tracking Application deployment, Knowledgebase

5. Project Time Line With backing of CIO and area VP money allocated July 2005 Established budget of +/- $15,000 Goal to have system in place for September 2006 February 2006 demo various products March 2006 bid went out to vendors April 2006 contract awarded to Footprints May 2006 general testing with users Installation and rollout August 2006 Footprints administrator Matthew Conlon attended training: November 2006

6. Implementation & Features Installed Running on Windows Server 2003 Dell server w/ dual Xeon processors, 8Gb Ram Linked to AD via LDAP Linked to existing SQL server Incoming & outgoing email notification Editable interface Stepped through Project Wizard Configured LDAP issues Address book issues Re-configured Footprints 2.0 Footprints 2.5

7. What didn’t work… What’s your “Title”? What kind of problem is this? Master ticket: to use or not to use? Email overload/out of office? What is critical?!?! Email submissions/spam Marketing/user training

8. Benefits Priority and notification features Allows for better issue tracking A new helpdesk, a presence People are coming back! Customizable agent and customer roles Incoming email ticket generation: helpdesk@massart.edu Customer interface displays ticket history Tickets can be added to knowledgebase after being resolved Led to drop down dependencies… 3,800 tickets in 18 months

9. August 2006 – March 2008 (note in first nine months only 2 months with over 200 closed tickets, in the next nine months there were 6)

10. What we learned, so you won’t have to… It’s more about process than product… No system will fix a bad work flow process Keep perspective on the way issues are handled by the human before we can determine how the software will process them Look into vendor training on your product… At first glance the administrator training for your product might look long, boring, and pricey, but look again Allows you to fully customize and maintain your system in- house without spending time calling vendor tech support.

11. Not all systems are created equal… All have strengths and weaknesses Web-based vs. Client-based, small or large scale, fully featured or bare bones Ask around, do a site visit Customization is key… The more you use the software the more you will want to tweak, trust us Expect that you will redesign the system at least once for customizations Make sure that your product can be customized to your needs What we learned, so you won’t have to…

12. Scale the product accordingly… Make decisions about which entities will be using your solution early and make them clear Split cost with involved departments if possible Be aware of agent license costs Communicate the benefits of new system to users for buy in

13. The Future Survey system Expand knowledgebase Automate reporting More ticket templates Inventory/asset management Application deployment tool

14. Questions? Matthew Maderos Matthew Conlon Information Technology Massachusetts College of Art & Design 617-879-7888 Matthew.maderos@massart.edu Matthew.conlon@massart.edu

15. THE TOUR http://footprints.massart.edu http://helpdesk.massart.edu