TeamDynamix implementation for Service Desk 11/16/2016

Please read the following announcement and let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

On November 16, 2016, Client Services and Server Support will transition to using TeamDynamix (TD) for all new Incident and Service Request tickets. Existing tickets in COHO will be processed and closed within Coho. Following that, COHO will be available in read-only mode for those tickets created prior to the cut-over. Other teams still in Coho will continue to use it until we have cut them over as well.

The project team’s current focus is on finalizing the design and build of the ticketing application in TD for the Service Desk. This work includes designing ticket types, templates, task templates, forms, groups, reports and technician dashboards for Service Desk and Server Support.

Training
Once the design and implementation is complete, the project team will prepare documentation and training for all technicians. The training session for technicians will be about 2 hours long. We will hold several training sessions in late October, allowing people to fit the training into their regular work schedule.

Our TD consultant will be on-site this Thursday to meet with the project team, IS leadership, and to conduct train the trainer sessions.

Road Map
For the November implementation, we are only including Incident Management, Service Request Management and Change Management. We will not be including Service Catalog, Knowledge Management, Project Management, Problem Management, Asset Management or other components of TD at this time. We will be scoping out the roadmap for these features at a a later date.

Starting in December, other IS teams will be rolled in to TeamDynamix as well, pending further coordination with those groups. Priority will be given to teams that are either already in Coho, or that don’t have a ticketing system and process a large number of requests.

Improvements
The project team recognizes that changing a tool like this can be very disruptive. We are taking this opportunity to streamline processes that to-date have been burdensome in COHO. The following are some of the improvements technicians will see in TD:

  • TD will require only minimal fields in order to enter a ticket; time tracking will not be required.
  • The user’s department and type (e.g. employee, student) will be auto-filled based on a Banner upload.
  • Ticket history for a user is easily viewed within TD, unlike Coho where we have to use a separate tool (RefTool) to see this information.
  • Templates will be available within TD to facilitate auto-filling fields for specific, oft-requested items.
  • Custom attributes in TD allow us to replace templates from TemplateHub, and we can perform queries on these attributes.
  • We will define desktop templates to facilitate finding new tickets that need attention, or items that have been assigned to individual techs.
  • Metrics are easier to report and display on, showing the work you accomplished.

So, while many things will be different, and some probably “not as nice” as COHO, other features will be a big improvement for us.

Q&A
Q: Will this change impact me?
A: This change will impact the following teams: Call center, Walk-up, CN Field, CN Bench, CN Accounts, CN ECTU, CN OSU-Cascades, Campus Labs and Server Support. Other teams and their workflows will be brought in to TD at a later date.

Q: Will this change impact customers?
A: Customers will notice differences in the look and feel of emails and e-mail addresses from our ticketing system. As we transition web forms to TD, customers will see those changes as well. Overall impact to customers should be very minimal, however.

Q: Who are the project team members?
A: Currently, the project team includes Lucas Friedrichsen, Kirsten Petersen, Max Cohen, Chris Sinnett, Jason Appah and Liv Vitale.