2011 International Conference on Business and Economics Research IPEDR Vol.16 (2011) (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore Analyzing Helpdesk Operation for an IT Function A Case Study of a Private University in Malaysia Nor Izzati Hanifi, Dr. Marini bte Otman and Aliza Abdul Latif Abstract. This paper discussed the current situation in helpdesk unit at one of the university in Malaysia. It starts by describing the meaning and the need of having good helpdesk operation in handling and monitoring the IT processes and resources in the institutions, followed by the background of helpdesk unit in one of IT department in a university. The study performed will investigate and measure the current level of services in helpdesk operation and will recommend a possible best helpdesk framework in order to ensure that the flow of activities and operation in helpdesk become more reliable, efficient and effective in delivering their services to all IT user in the university. Keywords: Helpdesk framework, Incident reporting & auditing. 1. Introduction Computer is an electronic device that processes raw data into meaningful and useful results. It helps in making our lives better by solving our problems and has efficiently managed our daily works. When everything on computer functions correctly, easily and properly, everything will be running smoothly. Should any error occur, it can drive people crazy as not every person has knowledge of how to fix the IT issues. In this case a technical support is required. Certainly people can fix the minor errors, but with major failures technical expertise should be required for urgently. In this time, people need to contact the helpdesk of any organization or even institution, especially for people in corporate company. The helpdesk operations will vary depending on the size of user base. Larger organization or institution will naturally have more sophisticated operations than a small company that only has just a few people. The more people use IT services, the more possible problems or errors related to IT will occur. That is why the operation of helpdesk is necessary in helps to handle and solve the IT services problems. In a business enterprise, a helpdesk is a place that IT user can contact to get help for a problem. In many organizations, a helpdesk is simply one person with a phone number and a more or less organized idea of how to handle the problems that come in. In larger companies, a helpdesk may consist of a group of experts using software to help track the status of problems and other special software to help analyze problems. Typically, the term is used for centralized help to users within an enterprise. Some common name for helpdesk includes computer support center, IT response center, Customer support center, IT solutions center, Resource center, information center, service support center, and technical support center. Basically, in helpdesk operation there are three channels of communication which is through phone calls, email, and ticket/docket assigning. 1.1. The basic channels of communication in helpdesk operation The common channel of communication that has been used in helpdesk operation is: Email, Email has traditionally been an effective tool for communication. It has become an absolute necessity for organizations to support email based communication with the IT user, IT providers or even with the client/vendors. When the IT users have a problem, they can just send an email to complaint/inform about the problems without to hold over the phone to issue the problem occurred. 23
Phone call, A phone call is more reliable and easier communication rather than to write an email. Here are, got a certain problems that hard to be explained by email or in written form, therefore the IT user can call a helpdesk and then can explain the problem clearly. Through a phone call, the user can explain the problem in two way communication to the helpdesk person simultaneously then the helpdesk person can guide and consult the user in the same time. So the communication will be more effective. Ticket/Docket, User can inform the helpdesk about their IT problem using a problem ticket/docket. They just need to raise a problem ticket to helpdesk. Usually, there is software that needs to be used for raising a problem ticket or assigning a docket. It depends to the organization itself on what type of software that they want to use for helpdesk. Basically the IT user will assign a ticket/docket about their IT problem, and then, the respective person will review on the ticket/docket assigned and they will analyze what is the problem raised by the IT user. [2] Voice mail, This is quite similar with phone call method which the user needs to use the phone to make a report. However this method is a bit different whereby the user just needs to leave a message on the helpdesk voice mail without talking or communicate with the helpdesk person/operator. Later, the helpdesk person will review and hear the voice mail message then trigger the problem raise by the IT user. However, this channel is not widely used by the organization because is less practical and not so reliable if compare to phone call and ticket/docket assigning. 2. Background of helpdesk operation at ITMS. All of the students and staffs in this university are using IT services in delivering their work and to assist them in daily routine. There are a few units in ITMS such as Hardware & network operation, application development, multimedia & printing operations, web & portal development, and database administration. Due to a lot of services and applications in this university, therefore it is a big possibility to have a lot of IT related problem. Therefore, the helpdesk operation is necessary to handle all the IT related process in term of being a medium for IT user and respective units to communicate to each other. Helpdesk should be act as a filter between IT user and respective unit whereby, the helpdesk person need to trigger and identify every cases/problems that come in / issue to the helpdesk before escalate the cases to the respective unit accordingly in order to make the problem/case issued can be solved and settled by the correct unit/person in timely manner. 2.1. Helpdesk communication channel used at ITMS At ITMS, there are three channel of communication used in helpdesk operation. Those three channels are discussed below. Docket- When a user has an incident related to IT, they just need to report the incident by using a system called i-care. The system will assign a docket to the helpdesk, after the user submitted the incident by filling in the docket form accordingly. Then, the helpdesk person will review the docket and escalate the problem to the correct unit. The problem will be resolved by the respective person assigned by the first level operator. Figure 1: The interface of docket used by the user to issue the problem 24
Phone call- IT user also can issue their incident through a phone call that will be answered by the helpdesk person/operator. The operator will answer the phone and identify caller s issues and their identity. Then, the call and issues description by the caller will be recorded and they will try to resolve the incident if they can. If the incident could be resolved, the action taken will be recorded and the call log will be saved. If it is unresolved, the operator will generate a docket to the responsible unit for further action. Walk in- This type of communication is informal whereby the users just come to helpdesk and inform ITMS about their IT problem. Then, the helpdesk person will take a note of the issues and try to resolve the incident accordingly. 3. Issues in implementing helpdesk operation in the university Figure 2: Activities involved in helpdesk operation As shown in Figure 2, the IT user will include both staffs and students. The unit responsible for helpdesk operation is the Helpdesk Unit, which reported to the IT Manager. The helpdesk process starts when any users raise an incident through the docket system or phone calls. If the users send the incidents through the automated system, the helpdesk unit will pass the incidents to the correct department for solution. There is no specific policy or manual for the helpdesk staff to escalate the problem to the right unit. They act on ad-hoc and informal basis by forwarding the incidents to any unit that they think may be able to solve the incidents. If the incidents are informed through phone calls, the helpdesk person will answer the calls and will identify the incidents raised by the IT user. The helpdesk will try to solve it, do a configuration and will record action taken and save the call log. If the incidents could not be resolved, the helpdesk person will generate a docket to other responsible person/unit for further action. This has clearly shows that the university does have a few common tools to assist in incident resolution, but there are no clear policies or instructions to help them in classifying the incidents. The first person to respond to the incidents will be the one responsible in providing the resolution, either by forwarding the incidents to the correct unit or to resolve the incidents themselves. The IT users were not briefed or informed on any policies that concern the helpdesk operations. The most common way for the users to report any incidents is to get help from colleagues or to call the ITMS, which is considered as an IT function for the university. This showed that the users have not receive clear communications on where and how to report on problems and incidents. 4. How does ITIL help in managing operation of helpdesk? ITIL is a set of concepts and practices for IT service management, IT development and IT operations. ITIL provides a practical framework to identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to the business. ITIL advocates that IT services must be aligned to the needs of the business processes. It provides guidance to organizations on how to use IT as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth. Adopting ITIL can offer users a huge range of benefit that include improve IT services, reduce costs, 25
improve customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery, improve productivity, improve use of skills and experience, and also improve delivery of third party service. The ITIL V3 comprises of 5 volumes that suitable to be adapted in the helpdesk operation; ITIL service strategy (SS) which cover the strategy planning of service management as well as provide guidance on value creation and structure of services, ITIL service design (SD) is function to outline the design and development of service management process, ITIL service transition (ST) is to illustrate how the requirements of previous stages are realized and how capabilities for the ongoing delivery of service can be maintained, ITIL service operation (SO) covers the effective and efficient delivery as well as support of services, and ITIL continual service improvements (CSI) cater for the ongoing improvement of the services. For the formulation of helpdesk framework, the first step is using SS, whereby this services cover the strategy of the helpdesk operation in terms of what the best process a helpdesk should has in order to solve any particular problem. It may includes who should be responsible for any particular problem, what is the benchmark or target in solving the problem issued by the user and also what types of services including IT structure that are provided for IT users in the university. The second service is SD, which can be used in helpdesk as to outline the design & development of service management in the helpdesk such as service catalogue, service level management, and information security management in order to deliver good services to the IT user. Then, the next service is ST that can be used by helpdesk to illustrate the transition planning and support, change management that responsible to any changes related in the university (handled by change management in helpdesk operation). The fourth service is SO that can be used to provide a benchmark or target for the helpdesk and also provides references to operational activities in other processes. Then the last service is CSI which cater the ongoing improvement that need to be done by the helpdesk. It is used to ensure the operation for the helpdesk can satisfy all the IT users by ensuring that all the services can be delivered effectively and reliable. [4] 5. Recommendation of having a proper governance strategy for helpdesk operation in university There are two sets of IT Service Management that needs to be considered in the development of a proper governance strategy for establishing a helpdesk process. The two sets are service support and service delivery. This both set of services is related to each other and it is a must for IT service management. The next section will further explain about the service support and service delivery in IT service management respectively. 5.1. Sets of IT Service Management Service Support- Focus on the IT user and it concern with ensuring that user have access to the appropriate services to support the business functions. The user get involved in service support by asking for changes, needing communications and updates, having difficulties and queries, and real process delivery. A chain of processes in service support are incident management, problem management, change management, release management, and configuration management. Those chains of processes is tracked using the Configuration Management Database, that is a repository of information related to all the components of information system, which records each process, and create output documents for traceability. Therefore, the good helpdesk operation should have all these service support, however the important support are incident management and problem management, used to handle all the issue related to IT incident and problem respectively. The second important team is change management whereby it functions to handle and manage all the changes related such as change request to change the username/id for the email and so on. Service Delivery- The service delivery discipline concentrates on the proactive service that IT must deliver to provide adequate support to business users. It focuses on the business as the customer of IT services. The discipline consists of service level management, capacity management, IT service continuity 26
management, availability management and financial management. This service is focus to service management in terms of the delivery of IT services to the user. [5] The operation in helpdesk must ensure that the services are delivered with effective, efficient and reliable. For service level management, helpdesk need to have a level of services by separating the categories and priority of each of the issues. For example, the incident related to the server or network may fall under level 3 of ITIL and should have a high priority compare to the other process. Therefore the timeline need to be set for this kind of issues and need to be monitored by the helpdesk person while solving the issues. In the case study, this university is using a concept of Priority Matrix for incidence resolution. The priority of the incident is based on the types of incident, the urgency and the impact of the incident. Table 1 shows the priority level 1 is a critical and the response time for the incident is just 3 hours, the shortest compare to the others. Then the lowest priority is level 5 which require at least 5 working days to the responsible person/unit to response. Table 1: Priority matrix for incidence resolution used in the university. Priority Level Response Time Service Level Agreement 1 (Critical) 3 hours (Immediate Response and Resolution) 2 (Important) 8 hours (Same Day Resolution) 3 (Normal) 36 hours (1.5 Business Day) 4 (Mediocre) 72 hours or 3 Business Days 5 (Low) 160 hours or 5 days (Same Business Week Resolution) 6. Conclusion The helpdesk is such a fundamental need for the university. It exists to bring current and future information changes to the user. Due to the job nature of the helpdesk team, which will probably communicate with every IT user in the university at one time or another, the helpdesk person is well positioned to take the pulse and temperature of the university flow on a daily basis. They are the first ones to notice a change or shift in the university composure. Thus, the helpdesk team provides the foundation that keeps the business running smoothly. However, there are other things that also need to be considered which is the structure and framework of IT helpdesk to ensure that all the IT services and application can be delivered properly, more reliable and more effective. A better management of helpdesk can be designed for the university by assessing the current maturity level of the helpdesk operation with any of the best practices framework, which may include ITIL or COBiT. The result of the maturity assessment then can be used to plan and design a well-executed helpdesk and incident management process. 7. References [1] Fry, M. Building an ITIL-based Service Management: Helpdesk & incident reporting auditing, Nov 2010. [2] Multi channel communication: Documentation and tips and 10 tasks you should complete. Support center plus, Customer support software & helpdesk software, ZOHO corp 2011. [3] Helpdesk Software: Helpdesk reporting and auditing, Data-loads.com Quality Software Solutions, 2008 [4] ITIL training.com, ILX Group: Information technology infrastructure library, V3 Foundation, 2011 [5] The network for technology professional: Why implement ITIL? by Internet.com, 2011 [6] ISACA.org: COBIT framework for IT Governance and control, 2011. [7] Carnegie Mellon. Software engineering institute: CMMI Overview, February 2011. 27