Tag Archives: box

Service Desk Digest 8/11/2017

Collect Computer Information

When helping a CN customer, ALWAYS record the computer name, inventory ID or serial number in the ticket.

While we’re at it: always ask who the customer is, too, like this:

  • Tech: “IS Service Desk, this is <name>. How may I help you?”
  • <Listen to user request>
  • Tech: “Okay, before we get started can I get your OSU ID or name?”

(See Call Processing Workflow.)

If we don’t know who the customer is or what device they are using, it’s hard to help them properly.

Box Update

OSU has standardized on Box as the official cloud storage and collaboration platform. Over the coming months, we will be working on updating the IS web site, documentation, and apps we install on CN builds to reflect this change. If customers ask whether they should use Google Drive or Box, please advise them that Box is the preferred platform.

As a step in that direction, Client Services will be standardizing on Box as our storage and collaboration platform. You should all have received an invite today for a box folder called “ISCS All” – please let Kirsten know if you did not.

Coming Soon: Duo

Duo is multi-factor authentication that will soon be available to all OSU employees, including student employees. We will be promoting Duo during our fall engagements at University Day and other events.

The Service Desk will provide tier 1 support for Duo. For more information, see the Duo Service InfoSheet.

Coming Soon: Localist

Localist is a tool being implemented soon to replace the OSU event calendar located at calendar.oregonstate.edu. Users of the current system were contacted today about this upcoming change. If you get questions about Localist, please make a ticket and assign to Jill Swenson.

HelpDocs Moving to TD KB

Some time before fall term starts the HelpDocs customer-facing documentation site will be moved to the TeamDynamix Knowledge Base. This project is still in the planning phase.

What’s in it for you? After this change, all of our documentation – internal and customer-facing – will be in one place. I am aware that there are serious problems with the way that the search works in TeamDynamix. Part of the project involves addressing that issue, and I will post more about that later.

Status of macOS High Sierra

High Sierra has been added to our OS Life Cycle page, and an announcement is going out shortly to the CN-Announcements list about it. High Sierra is in preview, and while we are not recommending it for CN customers at this time, we will do our best to help them if they need to install it for some reason. We will fully support it for CN customers when it is released for general use in the fall.

Register Docking Stations for Wired Network

Please remember to register docking stations for the wired network. If we miss that step, customers will be connecting to the wireless network without realizing it and may have unpredictable results.

In Other News…

In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work at CERN (and I mean, really, who hasn’t?) here you go:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-CERN

Happy Friday, everybody!

Service Desk Digest – 5/24/2017

TeamDynamix Knowledge Base

We will be making some changes soon to the KB permissions on the technician security role to allow teams outside of the Service Desk to have view-only access.

Service Desk technicians will NOT have the ability to edit articles at this time, but can provide feedback on articles by clicking “Yes” or “No” next to “Was this helpful?” and entering a comment. I will be reviewing feedback comments daily.

Some of you are frequent contributors and editors in the KB; I will be following up with you in person soon about these changes.

TeamDynamix “MyWork” Removal

For Service Desk employees, the MyWork application in TeamDynamix will be removed soon. We may add this application back at a later date, but at this time it is preferred that you use either the “IT” application or a Desktop to view tickets.

We did not train on the MyWork application, and there has been some confusion about how it works. If you were using MyWork, please talk to Kirsten.

Using Box to Backup User Data

Steve Fowler has added an FAQ item with some recommendations on using Box as a backup tool for personal files.

http://box.oregonstate.edu/support-box-faq – See “Is Box a Backup Solution?”

When customers bring their devices to the Walkup for repair or reinstall, we should first help them get their data in a safe place, and Box is a good option. Please remind students that their access to Box goes away when they leave the university and their ONID account is removed.

CN customers may also use Box to store files they would normally have placed on their computer or on their P: drive. (Box is not a replacement for the P: drive; it is an additional service that they may use and is preferred to local-only storage.)

The Box FAQ also covers file size limits and security restrictions.

New Knowledge Base Articles

New technician articles added to TeamDynamix:

New customer articles added to Community Network Tech Tips:

 

Service Desk Digest 9/2/2016

Box

Reminder: the Box soft launch is September 7, 2016. Students and employees will be receiving emails about the launch, and may follow up with us if they have questions.


New CN Customers: AABC and Cultural Centers

We are in the process of on-boarding some new customers in AABC and the Cultural Centers to Community Network service. Their current DCA is Guy Boulanger, and the projects team are working with him on the transition of admin privileges.

A local admin password for the AABC computers can be found in KeePass (search for “AABC”). Also, all CN field techs and Client Services full-time staff have access to zone.mu in Cyder now.

Until on-boarding is complete: If you get a request from an AABC or Cultural Center customer, do your best to help them. If you run into permissions or access issues that prevent assisting the customer, please let me know.

More information to come.


Know Thy Customer

You can learn about the County Extension sites by visiting http://extension.oregonstate.edu.

Baker County Extension is located in Baker City, in the North-East corner of the state. There are 6 Community Network customers at the site. Carole Smith is the regional administrator, and Jayne Kellar is the office manager and CN LRP.  In the past year, we have had 38 tickets from Baker County Extension.

Learn more about Baker County Extension on their website.

beef-barn


Customer Service Tips

A few customers have complained recently about being kept on hold for a long time, or being put on hold without being told first. Please remember to treat customers as you would like to be treated: tell them when you are going to put them on hold and ask if that is okay. If you are going to be more than a couple of minutes, tell them that. They may want to ask you to call them back later instead. They may not want to be stuck on the phone for a long time while you research a problem.

Related: you should exhaust all resources you can to solve a problem or answer a question, BUT it is also okay to tell the customer you or another tech will get back to them later. If you are completely lost and can’t find any documentation or someone who knows what to do, the problem needs to be escalated to the call mentor on duty, to Max Cohen, or to another full time tech.


Labor Day

Monday is a holiday. The university is closed. Don’t come to work!


Metrics and Feedback

I haven’t had time to put metrics together lately. Also, I’ve had a bit of a rethink about what I want to collect and report on. So, no metrics for you all this time, but I would like to share the following customer survey comments from this week:

“Had to spend some time to figure out what was wrong. Was very polite and finally able to fix the problem and get it fixed.”

“Job well done. Tech had excellent patience and was not in a hurry to get through my requests.”

“talk a little louder, hard to hear you sometimes”

“Problem got fixed in a timely matter.”

“Russ Born was very patient with this vexing problem and he didn’t give up until it was fixed.”

“It was a simple fix but really helpful to have your service readily available.”

“Very quick response and solution!”

“The technician who helped me was wonderful but it took over 2 weeks for a response from the folks that they refered me to. This posed some inconvenience for my job. But I want to reiterate., the technician who initially helped me and continued to follow up with me once you outsourced by issue was wonderful!”

“Vu was fast and knowledgeable. He solved the problem.”

“Excellent assistance and he gave me a different option to use – very friendly!”

“Steven was awesome. He was very thorough and made sure all was well before he left. He also gave me a few tips unrelated that will save me time in future. Thanks a million!!!”

“They resolved the issue that our entire class was experiencing in an expedited fashion”

“Max Cohen and his team went out of their way to accommodate our time critical and complicated requests. As a result, our out of state employees are well equipped for another year recruiting the next class for OSU.”

“Give Josh 2 hours paid lunch every day and a 15% pay increase. He’s the man.”

“It would be helpful if they would have let me know they were going to put me on hold.”

“Was able to get the problem fixed.”

“Great Job!!!”

“I am very impressed with Kirsten Petersen’s attention to my computer issues. In this case, she was responsible for Jon Dowd contacting me. Jon explained wonderfully what was going on and gave me a few solutions. I now understand something that had been bugging me for a while. Thank you very much, Jon and Kirsten.” (Gosh, I never get one of these!)

“Wonderful! Came to my office quickly ( as the issue could not be resolved over the phone).”

“Many Thanks!!!!”

“He was very patient with me”

“No suggestions – the tech was helpful as always!”

“No suggestions – the techs ROCK!”

“THANKS!!!!”

“He was courteous and knowledgeable”

“I appreciated getting a very speedy resolution to my issue as I had to be on an important business meeting via google-hangouts and the technician made sure my equipement was set up properly.”

“Thank you!”

“My issue was resolved very quickly. Thanks!”

Box Institutional Folders

Institutional folders are a key feature of Box. If a folder has been made into an institutional folder, the contents will not be lost even if all of the co-owners leave and their accounts are removed. (This has been an issue in the past with Google Drive and Office 365 OneDrive.)

To make a folder an institutional folder, the owner can follow these steps. We need to be prepared to help walk our users through this process.

  1.  Log into Box and Create a folder that you would like to make an institutional/organizational folder.
  2. After creating the folder click on  the box with the three dots (the ellipsis) to the right of the folder name.
  3. In the menu go to Sharing and then Invite or Manage Collaborators.
  4.  Invite the OSU Folder Admin to be a co-owner.  This account will auto accept the invite.
  5.  Next make sure you have at least one other co-owner on this folder.  Note: Once you transfer ownership to the OSU Folder Admin, you will become an Editor and only another co-owner can reinstate you as a co-owner.
  6.  Go back to Manage Collaborators.
  7.  Select OSU Folder Admin and change its permissions to Owner.
  8.  Click Okay on the “Change Item owner” dialog that pops up.  This is just a warning telling you that your account will be changed to Editor permissions.
  9.  If you wish to be a co-owner have the other co-owner change your permissions from editor to co-owner.

Ways this process could go wrong:

  • All collaborators on the folder who were not co-owners will lose access to the folder. Permissions for Editors, Viewers, etc. will need to be re-instated by one of the co-owners.
  • The owner following the steps above will be changed to an Editor and will need another co-owner to restore their co-owner access level. We will not have rights to make that change on their behalf.
  • The person following the steps above might forget to add another co-owner. Once ownership is changed to OSU Folder Admin, they will be stuck, and we will need to escalate to Box tier 2 for resolution.

Service Desk Digest – 8/16/2016

Customer Service Training

On Tuesday 8/9, all full-time staff in Client Services attended a customer service training provided by Kristen Magis from HR. The goal of the session was to work through the training modules and customize them to our needs. Kristen will also be helping us turn this into a Canvas module so that student workers can do the training ad-hoc.


Box Training

Box is slated to be made available to all students and employees in a soft launch on September 7. The Service Desk is the tier 1 point-of-contact for Box support.

All Client Services staff and student workers (everyone who is here this summer) should be able to login to oregonstate.box.com now. If you had trouble accessing the training before, please try again via this method:

  1. Login to oregonstate.box.com.
  2. Click on “Get Training” on the right.
  3. If this is the first time you have gone to the Training site, wait 1 day before doing the next step.
  4. Search for “Helpdesk Essentials”, click on it, and choose “Launch”.
  5. If that doesn’t work, click on your profile at the top-right, then choose “Transcript” – the training should be listed under “Active”.

Walk-up Moving to Milne

There is a project underway to move the repair and tier 1 services of the walk-up desk from the Library to Milne before school starts in September. The checkout and production services will stay in the library. If this move happens, it will be during early to mid September.

The project team is: Andrew, Kirsten, Max, Samuel, Jeff, Richard, Ed. Ping one of us if you have questions or concerns.

I am currently working on the communications plan and CAB request for this change.

Walk-up folks please note: Community Network customers will also be able to bring their OSU-owned computers to the walk-up for assistance, but we will not be promoting this service until later in Fall. For now, if a CN customer comes to the walkup, please DO NOT TURN THEM AWAY. Ask for their ticket number, or look them up in RefTool to find their ticket, and call the 78787 number if you are not sure what to do.


New IS Website

The Information Services website is being redone, and the new one should be going into production either late August or early September.

You can view the dev version of the new IS site here. I am still working with Sher Fenn to update much of our content.


Apps.oregonstate.edu

Citrix XenApp (apps.oregonstate.edu) has replaced RemoteApps. The Service Desk is the tier 1 point-of-contact for all Citrix requests. Escalate issues to the Campus Labs queue in Coho as needed.

The InfoSheet for Citrix is in ITKnows.

The name of this service may change, but for now we seem to be calling it “Citrix” or “Apps”.


OSU-Cascades New Building

The grand opening for Tykeson Hall is September 13. Greg Chilcote and Shannon Osborne were busy last week getting things ready.

With things being very busy in Bend and with OSU-Cascades expanding to more locations, we are encouraging CN customers at OSU-Cascades to call the call center for support rather than arm-grabbing Greg and Shannon for everything. Always make note of where a customer is located when talking to them on the phone. We can send Greg and Shannon to field appointments in Bend just as we do with field techs here in Corvallis. Max C. is working on getting travel time information to assist us with scheduling.


New Email Address for Service Desk

Beginning with promotional events this Fall and with changes to the IS website, I will be promoting a new email address for contacting the Service Desk.

The official contact information for the Service Desk is as follows:

IS Service Desk

Phone: 541-737-8787 (Corvallis/Statewide),  541-322-2051 (OSU-Cascades)

Email: Service.Desk@oregonstate.edu

Walk-up: Valley Library, main floor lobby area (until this changes)


Fall Service Desk Hours

With the move of the walk-up to Milne, we will be syncing up the call center hours with the walk-up. Our fall hours for walk-up and call center will be:

IS Service Desk Hours

Monday-Friday: 8am-7PM

Saturday/Sunday: 3PM-7PM


Team Dynamix Update

We are getting ready to reboot the project to roll Client Services to Team Dynamix, our new ticketing system.

Lucas Friedrichsen will be heading up this effort, with Paul Bunn as the project manager.

I can’t give an exact time frame yet, but if all goes well, we will be migrating the Service Desk from Coho to Team Dynamix in mid-to-late Fall term.

We will address other groups who use Coho after the Service Desk operations have moved.