To Automate or Not To Automate: Building Your IT Department’s Self-Service Helpdesk

Featured article by Maxim Emelianov at HostforWeb

In some ways, your role as an administrator has never been more difficult. Shadow IT has overtaken your organization, and employees are using SaaS apps left and right instead of literally anything approved by corporate. Secretly, you long for the days when your department had total control over device and application provisioning – the days when you could dictate and mandate exactly what apps employees could and couldn’t use.

But those days are behind us. They aren’t coming back. And so instead of looking wistfully towards the past, it’s time to turn our gaze to the present and future.

The fact that employees are now so empowered is a blessing in disguise, at least as far as your workload is concerned. See, if you’re clever enough, you can turn that empowerment to your advantage. You can automate the majority of support requests and issues, leaving your staff free to focus on only the most serious.

Here’s a bit of advice to get you started down that road:  

– Deal with password reset requests. Without a doubt, password resets are the most common helpdesk request. By automating them – allowing employees on an approved, provisioned company device to run through the process of resetting forgotten passwords on their own – you can save your IT department a huge chunk of time.

– Set up self-service device provisioning. If your business makes use of a CYOD, COPE, or COBO deployment model, you can easily configure a self-service portal that allows employees to handle device provisioning on their own (assuming you’re using EMM software that allows for that). Not only will this allow your IT department to focus its attentions on more productive matters, it’ll also help new users get to work far quicker than might otherwise be possible.

– Establish a regularly-reviewed knowledge base. Common support requests, frequently asked questions, and common issues should all be present on this internal KB.

– Create a mobile-friendly support portal. This portal should be intuitive enough that users can easily self-provision the solutions for the issues they can handle on their own, and submit support requests for the ones they can’t.

– Automate ticket management. Opening, closing, and tracking tickets is traditionally one of the most gruelling tasks of any support desk – yet it’s also one you no longer need to concern yourself with. With the right helpdesk software, tickets can automatically be assigned an owner, due date, and priority.

– Configure SSH. Sooner or later, a ticket is going to come in when you’re away from your desk. By setting up your service portal so it can be quickly and securely accessed by mobile devices no matter their location, you ensure you’ll always be available to help when you’re needed.

Your role as an administrator may have been made more difficult by mobility and cloud computing – but both technologies have the potential to make it far easier, as well. By following the steps outlined in this piece, you’re all set to empower your employees to handle user support on their own. And for those technical issues they can’t deal with, you’ll be ready and waiting to assist.