Process Changes
Extension/AES Pickups and Shipments
In an effort to provide better customer service to Extension and AES customers, I have made a change to the process for pick-up or shipment of computers.
In the Recommendations and Purchasing Process, the last step has been changed as follows:
When customer picks up or items are shipped:
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If customer is picking up, have them login to the computer before they leave our office (if they have time to do so).
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Set “Computer Location” to “With customer”.
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Assign Responsibility to “Service Desk”.
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Set ticket status to “Scheduled follow-up”. For pick-ups, set “goes off hold” to the next business day. For computers we ship, set “goes off hold” 2 business days in the future. When the ticket reopens, Service Desk will call the customer to confirm they were able to setup and use their computer, then close the ticket.
Reason for this change: because these customers are at remote locations, support over the phone is very difficult. We need to make sure they can login to the computer before they leave. After they pick up their computer or we ship it to them, we need to check in to confirm the computer works on-site. The issue is not resolved until their computer is working.
Please let me know if you have questions about this change.
Extension/AES Interviews
If you are helping a remote Extension or AES customer and decide that their computer needs to be rebuilt, please do an interview!
If you are working with a remote customer who is bringing in their computer for a rebuild and you see that we don’t yet have an interview, do an interview!
If you see a ticket for a remote customer whose new computer is on-order, call them up and do an interview!
It sometimes takes us a couple of days to get a hold of customers to do an interview. That can introduce delays that could have been avoided if we did the interview while we had the customer on the phone, or were helping them in person, or were waiting for their computer to arrive.
If you have questions about how to do an interview for Extension/AES, please ask me or Ken Howard. Ken often starts by sending the customer an email with a description of our basic configuration. For an example, see: https://oregonstate.teamdynamix.com/TDNext/Apps/425/Tickets/TicketDet?TicketID=8346104
Reminders
Use Phone @Log Sparingly
When helping a customer, please make an effort to get the person’s name or OSU ID so you can appropriately associate the ticket with that person. This information is helpful for a number of reasons. The customer may call back and expect other technicians to refer to the notes from their first call. The customer may have a complaint and it would be nice for management to be able to follow up with the technician who helped them to get a fuller picture of what happened. Tickets linked to people also give us better details for end-of-year reporting.
In the past month, we had 123 tickets linked to “Phone @log” and many of those should have been linked to a user.
It is okay to use “Phone @log” when helping a community member such as the parent of a student. It’s also okay to use it when doing a referral for something non-IT-related.
See the IS Service Desk Process Guide – 3.3 Call Processing Workflow for example greetings to ask for the person’s name, and more details about information to gather when helping a customer over the phone.
Things to Know
MyBill Authorized Users Vs. Shared Credentials
The adoption of Duo has shone a light on a problem with ONID account sharing between students and their parents. We have received a number of calls where the student can no longer login because their parent enrolled them in Duo – with the parent’s phone.
Students should not be sharing their account credentials with their parents, and we should remind folks that this is a violation of the OSU Acceptable Use Policy:
https://policy.oregonstate.edu/UPSM/08-005_acceptable_use_computing_resources
“Accounts and credentials may not, under any circumstances, be shared with or used by persons other than the individual(s) to whom they have been assigned by the university.”
Many students share their credentials with their parents so their parents can pay their tuition online. However, they have the option to set their parents up as an “authorized user” on the MyBill site instead. For more information, see: https://fa.oregonstate.edu/feature-story/welcome-parents
Note: I am not aware of a method for students to grant their parents access to their tax forms at this time. The student would need to obtain that information for their parent.
Duo-Free Kiosk Issue Resolved
Last week and over the weekend we had an issue with the Duo-free kiosks prompting customers to use Duo. That issue has been resolved and the teams who support the back-end infrastructure have a better understanding of the issue and how to prevent it in future.
Two-month Grace Period on Campus Software Licenses
There have been a lot of questions lately about campus-wide software licenses that are up for renewal soon. In general, if a customer buys a license now, and it expires in July, they will have to buy it again in July. The price is not pro-rated.
However, there is generally a 2-month grace period on campus-wide software licenses, so if customers buy a license in June that expires in July, they will not need to buy the license again in July.
Questions? Ask our campus site license coordinator, Angela O’Neal. You can assign tickets or tasks in TeamDynamix to “Software Distribution”.
ONID Webmail Status
The ONID Webmail service is currently running on the Cosine Webmail server, and will be staying there for the foreseeable future. The IAM team are looking at options to move customers en masse to either Gmail or Exchange, but there is not a plan in place yet.
If customers are having trouble with the new look-and-feel of Webmail, we should help them learn how to navigate it.
If the customer is an employee and is interested in moving to Exchange, please escalate the request to CN Accounts (for CN customers) or refer them to their department IT group.
Upon request, IAM can migrate a user’s mail delivery to OSU Gmail. However, they do not currently have a mechanism to migrate the user’s mail contents. We can help them transfer their mail over by using an IMAP mail client. I am working with Jonathan Ropp to document this process.
If customers ask “why was this change made without any notice?” you can tell them that the old servers crashed and moving users to the Cosine Webmail server was a faster way to get people back up and running than rebuilding the old servers. As campus is trying to move to a single email platform, the ONID Webmail servers will not be rebuilt.
News
UIT Plenary Recording
Our provost Ed Feser gave an interesting presentation at the UIT Plenary on February 26, 2019. The recording for the plenary is available now online: https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_pu0zdpcs
Knowledge Base Updates
Search Tip
If you are having trouble getting search results in the knowledge base, please make sure you are logged in to TeamDynamix. Many of our KB articles (e.g. all of the service InfoSheets) are restricted to technicians only. If you are logged in to TDx, your name will appear in the upper-right corner of the KB. If you are not, it will say “Sign In” instead. The site is SSO, so if you are logged into any other SSO site, you will be automatically logged into TDx as well.
For more search tips, see: How to Use the Knowledge Base
New KB Articles
A few new KB articles to be aware of:
KB Edit Access
Everyone at the Service Desk has permissions in the KB to create a new article, but only a few people have edit access at this time. If you would like to be able to edit articles, please ping Kirsten on Slack.
Training Updates
Duo Support Training
Our first training module in Canvas was a complete success. Every student technician in Client Services has completed the training!
Max and I will be reviewing the quiz scores to see where the training may need to be refined. If you have specific feedback about how the training worked (or didn’t) please contact me or Max.
CN Appointment Training
I have ported this training over from Qualtrics to Canvas and am putting some finishing touches on it now. Everyone will be required to complete this training, even if you already did it in Qualtrics last year. I will send out a link to the module and set due dates shortly.
