Business Case

Help Desk Ticketing System in SharePoint 2010

Business Case /
Implementation of help Desk Ticketing System with MS SharePoint 2010
Version 1.0 /
3/4/2011 /

Contents

Why Help Desk System?

Help Desk Process

Comparison of Help Desk Softwares

Feature Checklist for a good Ticketing System

Help Desk in SharePoint2010

Why Help Desk System?

A Help Desk System has multiple benefits – a properly configured and utilized has a positive influence on the end users or clients, employees, the support staff and the management as a whole.Help desk automation also eliminates the communication bottlenecks that cause issues to be mismanaged or "dropped". And, it can significantly reduce the costs associated with service and support operations.

Below listed are some of the key benefits for users, support staff and the management.

Help Desk Process

The help desk process is initiated when a request is logged in the system by a customer. This can happen in 3 ways:

  1. The customer calls and a request is logged in by the Support Staff
  2. TheCustomer sends an email to the support (say, ) and a request is logged by the system automatically.
  3. The Customer logs in the portal and creates a request by filling up all the details.

A request in the system has the following fields:

  1. An auto-generated ticket number
  2. Subject
  3. Creation date – System date to be taken automatically
  4. Category ( drop down list )
  5. Priority ( High / Medium / Low)
  6. Request description with provision for attachments
  7. Project name ( to populate automatically if the request comes through the portal)
  8. Ticket status ( Open / in Progress / Resolved / Closed / Re-opened)
  9. Computed Columns – Age of request
  10. Computed Columns – Last modified date

The request should also have activities/ history tab that have the following fields:

  1. Date of activity
  2. Description
  3. Logged by

Once the Request is logged, it is available in the list of open tickets for the Support to pick up. Depending on the nature of the request, it can either be resolved then and there by the support team or can be assigned to the relevant team. The status of the request is then changed to “In Progress” and the client is notified of the expected timeline for resolution. Once the solution is delivered by the team, the case is put in “resolved” status and the client receives an auto generated notification. Once the client is satisfied with the solution, the case status is changed to “closed”. It can be “reopened” if the same issue comes up again. All the activities history for the particular ticket is logged against the ticket id with date, User name and Description.

Definitions of the Priority Fields:

  • High: These issues are considered urgent and are addressed immediately.
  • Medium: The issues are considered after the High issues have been addressed and have a timeline of 24 hours for an Initial Response. The resolution time for the request would depend upon the nature and complexity of the request.
  • Low: These issues are considered low priority and are addressed after all priority 1 and 2 issues have been addressed. Low priority issues have a workaround to the problem and are often cosmetic or design issues that cause a small or no inconvenience.

Comparison of Help Desk Softwares

There are numerous ticketing systems available in the market. While many of them are proprietary, there are others that are available for free. There are hosted or pay-per-use models available too, but they come with the risk of increasing costs as more and more projects / users get added to the already existing list. There are few reasons why MS SharePoint was chosen over others:

The organization has already a road map in place for implementing MS SharePoint 2010, which makes the Ticketing System almost free!

MS SharePoint 2010 comes with a template for Ticketing Systems which has most of the required features; hence implementation of the same should be easy and less time consuming.

SharePoint uses .Net technology and future customizations and enhancements (if required) can be done in-house.

Pros and Cons of other leading Help Desk Systems:

Name / Provided By / Pros / Cons
Numara Footprints / / 1.Extensive features, web based interface and easy to use intuitive interface
2. Excellent Reporting capabilities
3. Smartphone compatibility / Expensive; Enterprise Edition costs close to 4000 USD.
Autotask / / 1. Robust SLA Automation
2.Built in Knowledgebase
3. Smartphone compatible / Hosted solution for $ 29 per month per user
Zoho Support / / 1. Workflow Automation
2. Module for Contract management
3.Integrated Account management and Knowledgebase / 1. Hosted solution for $ 25 per month per user
2. Restrictions on number of SLA rules etc per project
SysAidIT / / 1. Free Edition available for upto 100 users
2. All required features, including good dashboard and reporting capabilities
3. Smartphone compatible / 1. Cannot add more than 2 admin and 100 users
2. Not open source, need to pay for customization requests
Open Source Softwares / Spiceworks, Request Tracker, Kayako, HelpSpot / 1. Free, Open source and thus can be customized
2. Feature rich / 1. Developed mostly in PHP and MySQL
2. No support available

Feature Checklist for a good Ticketing System

These are the basic functionalities of the help desk system, arranged according to the module.

Module / Functionalities / Present in SharePoint
Request Management / Dashboard with visual indicators as well as lists for opened tickets etc / YES
Supports submission of requests via web and email and auto-generation of a ticket id / YES
Ability to filter by different fields , e.g., requester, priority, type etc / YES
Support automatic work escalation based on user-defined rules, time limits, priorities or other criteria
Support automatic notification of overdue work orders or call tickets. / YES
Provide option to leave status of call ticket or work order open until satisfactory completion is verified by requester. / YES
General Functions / Provide ability to customize tracking fields, screens and toolbars / YES
Support e-mail notification functionality from within the help desk software. / YES
Integrated Knowledge Base / YES
Support entry and maintenance of Service Level Agreements (SLA).
Reporting / Standard Reports and graphs for open issues, time taken to resolve, density of issues and escalations etc / YES
Flexible query or reporting tool to retrieve data with user defined criteria
Provide ability to create reports and graphs to analyze trends

Help Desk in SharePoint2010

There are site templates available for MS SharePoint 2010 for a number of applications; Help Desk is one of them. Application templates are out-of-the-box custom scenarios tailored to address the needs and requirements of specific business processes or sets of tasks in organizations of any size. They also provide a starting point for partners and developers looking to build deeper SharePoint-based solutions. The templates compatible with SharePoint 2010 are available on

Below is the screenshot for Help Desk Home page.