1. 1
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
About the Technology Help Desk*
*but were afraid to ask
Help Desk
ESPRIT - 2010
2. 2
ESPRIT - 2010
Outline
• What’s a help desk anyway…?
• Functions
• Help desk structure
• Benefits of a Help Desk
• User and Roles
• Client/Server Architecture
3. 3
ESPRIT - 2010
Introduction
• The spread of information technology and
change in society
• Many questions/Same answer
• Knowledge is not shared
• Need of a centralized portal to handle this issue.
4. 4
ESPRIT - 2010
What’s a help desk anyway…?
• Help desk is a broadly applied term referring to
a staffed resource—often, an actual desk, or a
telephone service—that can help persons answer
questions or to use resources such as audio-
visual or computer resources.
5. 5
ESPRIT - 2010
Functions
• A typical help desk provides the users a single
point of contact, to receive help on various
computer issues.
7. 7
ESPRIT - 2010
The Three Service Levels of a Help
Desk System
• End User
• Hotline (Level 1)
• System Administrator, Application Specialists
(Level 2)
• Maintenance and OEMs (Level 3)
12. 12
ESPRIT - 2010
Application team
• Development of any in-house software
• Software bugs
• Requests for new features or capabilities to in-
house software
13. 13
ESPRIT - 2010
Technician team
• Solve many help desk issues from another
location or their home office
• Audit workstations
14. 14
ESPRIT - 2010
Benefits of a Help Desk
• Technicians do not have to re-derive solutions to
problems
▫ This wastes company resources
• Attribute Value Pair
▫ Good for answering trivial question
▫ Good when users of the help desk system are
inexperienced
15. 15
ESPRIT - 2010
Kinds of Cases
• Approved cases
• Opened cases (everyone can see)
• These case are separated into a case buffer
(opened) and a main case base (approved)
16. 16
ESPRIT - 2010
User and Roles
• Help desk operator
▫ Lowest access rights
▫ Use application on a regular basis to solve problems
▫ Case retrieval and case acquisition
• Experience author
▫ Responsible for case maintenance and case approval
▫ Checks for redundancy and consistency
• Experience base administrator
▫ Creates and maintains the domain and case model
▫ Administer users and access rights
17. 17
ESPRIT - 2010
Client/Server Architecture
• Allows all users to get the same up to date
information
• Eases the maintenance of the domain model and
the case base
20. 20
ESPRIT - 2010
Summary
• Help desk systems
▫ help solve problems faster
▫ give more people more knowledge
• Building
▫ long and difficult
▫ need to convince people go give up their
knowledge
• Maintaining
▫ Requires constant maintenance
21. 21
ESPRIT - 2010
• Thank you for joining us for this presentation
today…