The ALMA Helpdesk: news, updates & reminders. Suzanna Randall, ESO ARC

Transcription

1 The ALMA Helpdesk: news, updates & reminders Suzanna Randall, ESO ARC

2 Basics Helpdesk is the only official interface between the ALMA project and its users it consists of a public Knowledgebase and a ticketing system for registered users only In EU we receive tickets only from European users, but the Helpdesk system is shared with NA and EA, with the software development being done by NA Triage of tickets is performed at the ESO ARC by a small subset of staff according to a weekly rota Tickets requiring specific local expertise or concerning f2f visits will be assigned to the relevant ARC node > e- mail alert sent to the ARC node account Observing programmes tickets assigned to individual Contact Scientists -> sent to individual account

3 Basics You can access a Ticket assigned to you simply by clicking on the link in the alert You can access the Staff Helpdesk login page at All tickets assigned to you that have not been closed yet can be viewed under My tickets We aim to provide the users with an initial response within 2 working days normally, this will not have been done by triage, so nodes should arrange their own staffing rota

4 Basics If you can immediately answer the Ticket: post reply, set status to Resolved If you need more information from the user: post reply, set status to Pending If you are unable to answer a ticket, return it to triage, with a note explaining why If the solution to the Ticket may be of general interest draft a Knowledgebase article

5 News: re-shuffling of triage staff Maria and Evanthia on maternity leave until ~October/November 2013 Claudia Lagos (ESO Fellow) has kindly agreed to help out with triage/admin during their absence Any questions/remarks/comments should be sent to - this address will be staffed by the triage person on duty

6 News: upgrade to Kayako 4 In December 2012 Helpdesk was upgraded to the latest version of Kayako; this was necessary for technical reasons The new Helpdesk has a different interface both on the staff and the user side; also some functionality changes Main changes: alerts now set up exclusively by triage, pre-defined reply is now called a macro, you can watch a specific ticket A further upgrade to Kayako 4.5 is planned, but the look and feel should not change significantly

7 News: failover server During the last year we had a couple of cases of Helpdesk being temporarily unavailable due to the server in C ville being down (due to e.g. storms) A failover server has now been installed in Socorro and can be quickly switched to in the case of an issue with the main server The Helpdesk functionality on the failover server will be the same as normal, except that users that register during the downtime period will not be able to submit Helpdesk tickets until the main server is once again functional

8 News: intermittent problems with e- mail notifications In some isolated cases it appears that notification s are getting lost (in other cases, the recipient s spam filter rejects them; this is out of our control) An alert has now been set up for triage to be notified whenever this happens Please triage if you have reason to believe a notification to you or the user has been lost; we are tracking and trying to solve the problem

9 Cycle 1 Observing Programme tickets Previously opened by the Contact Scientist Now opened by triage using a macro and assigned to the Contact Scientist when they have been determined; the CS then takes control of the ticket Observing Programme Ticket status: initially: open when waiting for PI reply: pending when all SBs of a project have been approved: on hold when all SBs have been delivered, or it is clear that no more data will be taken/delivered (e.g. end of cycle): resolved

10 Change request tickets New ticket (independent of observing programme ticket) to be opened by PI, and dealt with by triage Triage is responsible for communicating the outcome of the request to the PI, with cc to the CS (current procedure to be discussed)

11 F2f visit tickets New ticket (independent of observing programme ticket) to be opened by PI, assigned to relevant node by triage All arrangements for the visit should be made on this ticket, status set to Pending until the end of the visit At the end of the visit go through the ARC node visit checklist and set the ticket status to Resolved

12 Helpdesk help New Kayako 4 version of the Staff Guide (v2.7) available on Staff login page Helpdesk for CS in a nutshell available at view/phaseiisupport/helpdesk Helpdesk instructions for f2f visit requests can be found at view/f2fsupport/webhome Any problems: please me and Claudia!

13 Some statistics (June 2012 now)

14 Reminders Staff replies to tickets should be courteous, professional and written in English Please do try and use Helpdesk for all communication with PIs/users. If this is not possible, please paste any /verbal correspondence (or a summary) into the relevant ticket If users report problems with Helpdesk please e- mail triage so that they can be solved! Please do not assign yourself tickets, but wait for triage to do so, even if this may require patience

15 Reminders Please do not reply to a ticket that is assigned to somebody else, even if you are convinced you know better Hitting Reply will create a message that is visible to the user for any internal comments please create a note for the ticket. An alert will be (by default) received by triage and the ticket assignee, but this will be invisible to the PI! Change request tickets are handled by triage the Contact Scientist will be notified of the outcome but should not become involved in the change request ticket

16 Reminders Observing Programme tickets will be assigned to the Contact Scientist rather than the ARC node generic account. The CS assumes responsibility for these tickets. CS, please check for open/pending Cycle 0 tickets! Helpdesk is intended for communication between the project and the PI not for inter- ARC communication. It should not be the main form of communication between ARC/node staff.

17 Discussion Helpdesk related points Observing Programme tickets Change request tickets: upon resolution put a note on the Observing Programme ticket? Who tells the P2G? How can we ensure the fastest possible communication between the OSF (JIRA) and the PI (Helpdesk) for observing programme related issues? How do we deal with QA3 issues? New ticket opened? New special department? When can Helpdesk be used for inter-arc communication? How should we communicate when not?