Help Desk Industry Blog

The question of “How much data can you afford to lose?” is one we must answer when we setup a backup and maintenance plan. Data management is important in whatever business you are in. We feel compelled to mention a few recommendations to consider when addressing your own data concerns.

The most important aspect of any data maintenance plan is data backup. One must consider server backups as well as database backups. For server backups, we do recommend at least one backup per week is sent off-site for disaster recovery purposes. When implementing a server backup plan, make sure that all of your critical data is being backed up. For IssueTrak this means both the database and the website directory. This should be done at least once a week or more frequently depending on how much data you can afford to lose.. File system backup is especially important for IssueTrak due to the attachments, kb attachments, and embedded images.

When considering the plan for your database, there are many factors to consider. One nice thing about Microsoft SQL Server is that when installing it, you can choose the option of installing the SQL Maintenance Plan Wizard. In many cases by simply following the defaults in this wizard, your SQL maintenance plan will be setup and ready to go. If you prefer to do things manually, the greatest focus for SQL would be on regularly backing up your database and maintaining your transaction logs. When considering the plan for your transaction logs, consider shrinking and truncating your logs. In both cases, this can be done by setting up a SQL job at a frequency that you have determined. One other important setting for transaction logs is restricting the transaction log growth size. This setting is very important as without this setting, your log will grow really large.

Once your backup plan is setup and everything is working as it should, you will need to have a plan to regularly verify that the backups are running and operational. With SQL, you can verify that the database backup is good by setting up a test database and restoring the backup to this test database. This plan should also be monitored and updated periodically as priorities and resources may change. As your use of IssueTrak increases, disk space also needs to be part of your plan. On the database side, your database continues to grow with every new issue, note, user, organization, asset, audit, or survey along with the storage needed for backups and log files. On the web server, it is also important to consider the space needed for attachments, scheduled reports, kb attachments, embedded images in addition to the website files.

We do have a couple of great features within IssueTrak which assist with archiving data. This is done through the ability to archive issue audits and the ability archive asset audits.

As you can see, taking care of your data can be a very complex process with many factors to consider. The above information is merely a guide with some things to be considered while examining the way that you handle your data. We would recommend that you consider evaluating your plan frequently to determine if any changes need to be made. When evaluating your own maintenance plan, it is important to always remember the 5 Ps. Proper planning prevents poor performance. As stated earlier, any of us looking at setting up or reviewing our own maintenance plan need to ask the big question: “How much data can you afford to lose?” as this will help us determine the best path forward.

When troubleshooting any Web application, there are times where you may receive a generic error message like HTTP 500. While this may be “friendly,” it is not informative.

HTTP 500 is a generic error message that Internet Explorer sends for many different reasons, and it is not helpful for debugging and troubleshooting. Unfortunately, the HTTP 500 message causes grief to those unfamiliar with troubleshooting Web applications.

If you want to see the specific error message and troubleshoot the root cause of the issue, it’s as simple as updating a setting within the browser. From Internet Explorer, simply go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced.
Then go down under the “Browsing” category and uncheck the option labeled “Show friendly HTTP error
messages.” This option will be checked by default.

Once this option has been selected, the real error message will come up when the Web page is refreshed. From this point forward, debugging your Web application will be much easier.

For a complete list of HTTP status codes, please refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes.

At a past HDI conference, I listened to a presentation on Net Promoter Score (NPS). It is an intriguing idea — companies that do well on a one-question survey have better customer relations, grow faster and are more profitable than other companies in the same industry that don’t score as well. Companies using NPS include General Electric, Dell, Intuit and American Express.

Sometimes the NPS question is referred to as “the Ultimate Question”.  The question is: How likely would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? (on a 1 to 10 scale, where 10 is extremely likely) Based on how this question is answered, a score is calculated that takes into account promoters (high scorers) and detractors (low scorers). For details, take a look at www.netpromoter.com.

Our Customer Care Manager, Chris Thompson, is tasked with contacting customers, asking the NPS question, and following up to address any concerns customers might have. For example, Chris went through a period where several customers gave us a score of less than 10 because our report writer could not produce some of the reports they wanted. Chris organized a conference call between those customers and LaDonna Beauregard, our Vice President of Development. Based on that call, LaDonna increased the number of fields available for reporting. 

We find that using the NPS methodology serves as a mechanism for us to unearth problems that we might not hear about otherwise. It also gives us a baseline to see if we are improving over time or not. As we grow, it is a challenge to maintain the same level of quality customer relationships when we were much smaller. NPS is one tool we use in our efforts to stay in touch with our customers.

“Help Desk Software” is a particularly hard term to rank for in the search engines. The competition is fierce and getting harder and harder to get results on the front page of Google. With the great help of my superior at IssueTrak, we finally managed to reach the first page of Google about 8 months ago. We paid attention to the best practices of SEO and put great text/content on the front page. We also paid attention to the number of back links to the IssueTrak web site. Not to mention a lot of researching the competition. That’s how we made it.
And from there, reaching the front page of Google, you think we could stop and breath a sigh of relief and spend some time congratulating ourselves and reveling in our Google glory; but, not so much. If anything, the pressure is turned up to KEEP us on the front page. There are only 10 coveted spots on the first page and MANY companies trying to SEO  their page just right to get you “knocked off” so they can “step in”.
At the time of this writing, we are number 7, out of roughly 7,030,000 results for the term “Help Desk Software“. Not too shabby… But by no means any reason to rest.

If you are seeking information about the help desk or customer support industry, you are in the right place. This blog was created to be a source of information and knowledge sharing for the help desk industry. Members of this industry, from support analysts to CIO’s, are encouraged to share their ideas and seek information about new tools, resources, common issues, processes, news and more on this blog.

Please register and contribute posts and comments as often as you would like. Keep in mind, all content should be generally related to the help desk or customer support industries.

We look forward to hearing what you have to say and are excited to help you share your thoughts with others. Get started by registering and then write a post or add a comment to an existing post.

In a recent Help Desk industry newsletter Douglas Christian, IssueTrak COO tried to dispell some of the myths about ITIL. Here is the first part of his article… 

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library and represents a collection of best practices aimed at delivering business value from IT service management.  According to the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management worldwide.  That being said, there is still a lot of confusion around ITIL.  I often hear from companies that are looking to purchase an ITIL certified application so that their company can comply with the ITIL standard. This statement contains two widely held myths.

The Truth About ITIL
Because ITIL is a best practice, and not a standard, compliance is not an attainable goal.  The best one can hope for is to implement processes that are consistent with ITIL best practices. Service management standards do exist. ISO/IEC 20000 is an international standard on IT service management. ITIL is closely aligned with this standard and can be used to help companies that wish to comply with the ISO/IEC 20000 standard.

Applying Best Practices
ITIL offers certification for individuals who wish to demonstrate their knowledge in the various aspects of ITIL.  A number of us at IssueTrak are ITIL certified. ITIL does not offer a certification for applications. There are third parties that attempt to verify that an application will support one or more ITIL best practices. This third party verification is often misrepresented as ITIL certification.  ITIL is meant to be adapted to meet the needs of your business. Because each ITIL implementation will look a little different, flexibility is an important consideration when evaluating an application to support an ITIL implementation.

At IssueTrak, we focus on ease of use, and flexibility. Because of this IssueTrak works great for tracking issues of all kinds. We don’t mind if they are called incidents, problems, or change requests.

Creating Value
If you are trying to get more value from your IT service management function, ITIL is a great place to start.  ITIL covers a lot of ground and is best tackled in pieces.  Where you start is up to you. A logical starting point for me is incident management, problem management and change management.  The return on investment for these processes can be high.  They are easily measured and can be used to build momentum before tackling the heavy lifting in processes like configuration management, capacity management, and SLA management.

Implementing an application isn’t enough to get you to an ITIL end state. A successful IT service management strategy hinges on the effective application of people, processes, and tools.  (In that order) Start with sharp people and invest in them so they have a solid understanding of both their technical responsibilities and the business you are in.  A systems administrator should understand the impact of taking down the order entry system for maintenance at the end of a quarter.

Next, take a look at your processes.  An effective process accomplishes the end goal in a way that can be measured.  The measurement allows for improvement. Common measurements include speed, accuracy, customer satisfaction and cost. ITIL won’t lay out a process for you to follow, but it will provide a description of what the process should accomplish and the key performance indicators to watch along the way.  The processes should be tailored to meet your business. Molding your business to meet a cookie cutter process might be tempting but could have negative side effects.

Once you have the right people and effective processes in place, it is time to consider a tool to help you execute that process.  The tool you chose should enable your processes without getting in the way.  It should be flexible, powerful and easy to use.  Also, look for reporting features that make it easy to track and report on your progress. IssueTrak has been designed with these ideas in mind and is a great place to start your search.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. IT Infrastructure Library® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce.

We are pleased to announce that IssueTrak 8.0 is here and it is loaded with all kinds of new features. Along with an updated user interface, here are some of the new capabilities you will find in IssueTrak 8.0.

• Issue Classes – classify your issues into categories such as incident or change request and view dashboard counts and reports for each issue class
• Filtered Issue Types, Subtypes and Quick Picks – limit to specific organizations and/or groups
• Organization Administration Role – categorize your users into distinct organizations and then assign an administrator to create and edit users and groups within their organization
• Screen Pops – locate current caller and any corresponding issue information when call information is routed to a special URL
• Automatic Installation – install and upgrade quickly and easily
• Knowledge Base – allow anonymous access to your Knowledge Base by allowing any user to search and view public articles without logging in
• Tasks – cancel remaining tasks after a defined response and send email notifications to groups and/or individuals
• Asset Management – archive audit records, automatically match and assign assets to IssueTrak users
• Password Reset – allow users to define their own challenge questions for use with IssueTrak or Active Directory password reset
• Out of Office – issue automatic assignments based on time and day to accommodate separate shifts within your organization’s hours of operation

Upgrade to IssueTrak 8.0 Watch for an email containing your download instructions or check our support site (support.issuetrak.com) for a link to download the upgrade.

One of my favorite features in IssueTrak is Recurring Issues, which can be used to earmark matters that occur daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannually, annually or just once at a future date.

These issues function much like normal issues. Email notifications can be sent, end dates can be set; a recurring issue can be part of a project and can also carry tasks using the task manager.

Anything that needs to get done on a regular basis is a great candidate for a recurring issue. An example of a recurring issue might be routine maintenance on servers or equipment. These maintenance items can be set up once in IssueTrak as recurring issues and the necessary steps can then be documented by adding tasks. If you combine recurring issues with tasks, you have all of the ingredients necessary for a successful maintenance plan. The recurring issue can include the steps necessary for successful completion of tasks, which can be automatically assigned based on your preferences. When the maintenance is complete, the closed issue can serve as a maintenance record.

This article is a little delayed, as the new Apple iPhone hit stores several months ago, but it still worth a quick read for help desk managers who are considering mobile devices with internet browsing capability…

IssueTrak is just as excited about the new Apple iPhone as all the apple fans and techno-junkies out there. The iPhone’s top-notch web-browsing capabilities, an entirely new level compared to the web functionality of other cellular phones, bring IssueTrak to a whole new level. IssueTrak users have always been able to access IssueTrak with their web-enabled cell phones and other hand-held devices, but the quality and ease of use has always been lacking. Now with the iPhone, users can access IssueTrak to submit and check the status of their issues without missing the quality and ease of use they get on a full size computer monitor. We have always said that IssueTrak is accessible anywhere, anytime from any Internet browser on your computer…now it truly can be accessed anytime, from anywhere in the world. You could run a help desk from your lounge chair at the beach!  With an iPhone, service desk managers and their support staff are capable of doing the tasks they used to do from their desktop, from anywhere they desire. These tasks include:

submitting an issue
searching the knowledge base
checking the issue queue
assigning issues to technicians
adding notes to issues causing emails to be sent to the relevant parties
searching and closing issues
creating tasks
monitoring the status of a project

The iPhone is more than just a toy. It has large implications for the corporate world as well. Numerous corporate Web applications that were not easy accessible with other cell phones are now possible thanks to the iPhone. Up until now, there hasn’t been a good interface for the pocket computer. Now there is. As I think about it, there could be a ton of practical uses unleashed for the iPhone since it has made a major leap in usability for handheld devices, regardless of songs and photos and phone calls. Simply having a truly useful Web browser that fits in your pocket is a breakthrough.