Help Desk Organized for Williamsburg–James City County Public Schools

Business Challenge

Widespread disorganization causes IT headaches

Located in southeast Virginia, Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools serves 10,000 students in 15 schools. An IT team of 21 supports the district’s 1,800 staff, with some team members dedicated to specific schools and others rotating as needed.

Before implementing a help desk solution, staff members would call in-school technicians directly or simply stop them in the halls. Without centralized tracking, IT lacked any way to prioritize issues, assign them to the most appropriate person, ensure they were resolved, or report on volumes and types of problems.

Solution

Small IT Team feels relieved with Issuetrak Help Desk Software

The district deployed Issuetrak to create a new centralized help desk. Specifically, Issuetrak provides much-needed tracking of every issue and ease of use for staff and IT. Additionally, it integrates with the district’s Active Directory for automatic import and updates of users, and single sign-on. Staff members call, email, or input issues via the intranet, with the main help desk addressing about 50 percent of those needs. The team escalates the other half to the appropriate onsite or rotating technicians.

Through automation (formerly called business rules) in Issuetrak, the software seamlessly turns issues submitted via email or online into tickets that are tagged by type and directed to that type of technician. If a ticket remains open too long, Issuetrak automatically escalates it to a supervisor, helping ensure that nothing goes unresolved for long. Staff members also use Issuetrak to reserve audio/visual and other equipment to be delivered and set up at certain times in a specific place. Before, the team could get wrapped up in other tasks and more easily forget.

Benefits

Improved communication solves multiple problems once plaguing 15 different schools

Issuetrak enables the IT team to communicate more effectively with district staff. Any time a technician updates a ticket, the associated staff member receives an email update, helping reduce calls to the help desk. And simply having a centralized system – where no ticket goes unanswered – has significantly improved customer service. With monthly reporting, the help desk follows number of tickets closed, by whom, how long it took, and the type, providing numbers to plan staffing, training or other IT needs.

Cathy Honsinger, help desk technology support specialist, finds Issuetrak’s own support team there whenever her team needs anything. “Issuetrak has been so great to work with. Their service is terrific,” she said. “The software meets our needs and we’re very happy with it.”

“Issuetrak has been so great to work with. Their service is terrific. The software meets our needs and we’re very happy with it.”