Service Desk Digest – 11/1/2016

TeamDynamix Go Live November 16

Reminder: The IS Service Desk will be moving from Coho to TeamDynamix on November 16, 2016.

In addition to the TD training, you may find the following documentation helpful:

TeamDynamix Guide in ITKnows

TeamDynamix Service InfoSheet

IT Service Management – TeamDynamix (Service page for ITSM)


Noisy Construction

Beginning Wednesday, 11/2, contractors will be doing some concrete drilling in Milne 212 (the data center) for the new fire suppression system.

If the noise is too loud to continue support calls, please let the caller know there is construction, that we apologize for the disruption, and that you will return their call shortly.

We don’t know exactly when the drilling will be, nor how loud.


Casper Server Upgraded 10/31

James Dudzik upgraded the Casper server Monday evening. James recommends downloading the v9.96 Casper tools, which are located here: \\software.oregonstate.edu\Utilities\Casper JAMF

More information about Casper: Casper Suite Tool Guide


New Major Incident Team and Process

Information Services is working out the details of a new plan for responding to major incidents that have widespread campus impact – such as outages for the network, Canvas, Banner or Exchange. The goal of the outage communications plan is to get information to campus as quickly as possible via whatever technologies are available at the time.

The Incident Management Team (IMT) will use Rave to coordinate with each other at the start of an outage. An Incident Commander and Communications Lead (sometimes the same person) will be designated, and the Comm-L will send the initial Outage communication to campus.

The team is working to incorporate Rave (OSU Alert) into the Outage communications, so that end-users may opt to receive outage notices via SMS text. A sign-up form for OSU IT Outages can be found on the Service Request Forms page.

For now, Service Desk should still follow our normal steps during an outage: create a master ticket to link other tickets to and notify a supervisor or manager.


Oracle Database Migration over Thanksgiving

Enterprise Computing are planning to do Oracle database migrations over the Thanksgiving break. Some users, particularly of BI query, will need to make configuration changes. More information to follow.


Box Accounts for Associates (INTO, Foundation)

People who are associates and not employees (such as many folks in INTO and OSU Foundation) do not currently have access to a Box account through OSU. They may create a free Box account associated with a non-OSU email address. They are not limited to the free account quotas so long as they are sharing with a folder that is owned by an OSU person.

The decision to allow other users into the OSU Box instance will likely not be revisited until at least next fall.


New Hires for Service Desk

Max is in the process of on-boarding 8 new student workers for the Service Desk. The new hires will be in-training for several weeks, but by next term our staffing levels should be much better.

We will not do another round of hiring until Spring, most likely.


Handing Off Tickets or How to Be Kind to Your Coworkers

Please put all pertinent information about the customer and their computer in the ticket in a timely fashion.

If referring a customer from Call Center to WalkUp, make sure to:

  • Update the ticket
  • Give the customer their ticket number and ask them to bring it and their ID to the WalkUp
  • Ping the WalkUp in #sd-walkup channel on Slack

When sending a CN field tech to visit a customer on site:

  • Make sure the ticket says WHY you are sending a field tech; what work needs to be done
  • The ticket must contain information about the user AND computer
  • The ticket should say what steps you have already tried and what the results were
  • Follow the steps in the process guide (Call Center Processes, Appointment Scheduling) – if you have not been trained on the appointment process, let Kirsten or Max C. know

When working with a customer at WalkUp or Call Center, always check for open tickets for that person.

Remember: the ticket is like the customer’s medical chart at a hospital. It should have all the information that another technician would need to know the status of this issue and to help the customer.

Also note: the most frequent customer complaint I have seen lately is that they had to repeat their problem description when working with a second tech. So, please be kind to our customers, too. Review the ticket so they don’t have to repeat themselves.