Information Systems Management Greenwich University

A

COURSE WORK REPORT

ON

ECAR Case Study on University of Alberta: Using Online Help Desk Tools to Enhance

Client Service and Department Operations

Submitted in partial fulfillment for the

Award of degree of

BECHELOR OF SCIENCE

IN

BUSINESS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

(2011-12)

COURSE: COMP1486

INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT

Submitted By:

MD. MAHMUDUR RASHID

Student ID: 000708229

Submitted to:

Mr Andrew Stanley.

Greenwich Coordinator

B.Sc. Hon’s in Business Information Technology 1

Information Systems Management Greenwich University

Table of Content

Section Page

Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3

Description of the organization and the environment --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3

Explanation of the reasons -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4

Summary of the operations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4-5

Critical analysis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5-7

Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8

Bibliography ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9

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Introduction:

For completing this course work I have found and select a case study on ICT organization of the University of Alberta which is published by EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research in 2007. Author of this case study are: Judith Pirani (EDUCAUSE) and Donald Z. Spicer (University System of Maryland).

"This case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Mark C. Sheehan, Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education, which examines the state of higher education help desk organizations, services, tools, resources, and management practices and how these and assorted other measures are related to desirable help desk outcomes. ECAR undertook this case study of the University of Alberta to examine how its IT help desk uses online tools, and how the use of those tools impact the overall IT organization operations.”

Source:

http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/UniversityofAlbertaUsingOnline/162410

Date Visited: 08/11/2011

Description and environment of the organization:

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) organization of the University of Alberta

established in July 2004. It focuses on long range information and communications technology strategy

by providing IT services to the university community. This ICT organization has two distinct divisions:

Administrative Information systems (AIS) and Academic Information technology (AICT).

The main focus of my study on the AICT helpdesk services that manages ICT for the campus community.

To access central university services by student, faculty and staff members AICT creates U of A’s campus

computing identification (CCID). The core data for using these services is supplied by AIS.

The head of this division is, Marika Bourque, executive director and associate chief information

technology officer (CITO). The AICT Helpdesk consists of about four full time and 10 part-time staff

members, including students. Each shift is running with three or four help desk analysts to respond to

client inquiries, freeing up the on duty staff members to work on projects. There is no time limit for a

client session, yet helpdesk analysts report that call queues are infrequent, unless a major IT situation

occurs on campus.

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Reasons for developing end-user services:

Based on this case study I have identified several reasons for developing the end-user services provided

by the AICT Helpdesk. These reasons can be explained like that:

AICT want to create a client centric help desk which will be delicately service clients problems

via analyze their needs.

Because of today’s students are of mature kind of IT user, so the helpdesk has to reflect this

change. For example it should be turn from an old fashion to walk to a desk to get an answer for

a question. Now a day’s students want to go online and explore the latest tools. So the helpdesk

need to develop such appropriate online help tools as their habit changes to respond their

needs.

By directing the users to resolve their routine problems via online may help the helpdesk’s

analyst to use their time more effectively such as they could continue to invest their time to

solve some critical problems or for developing more online tutorials and tools.

People actually like to contact helpdesk in different ways. So there should be a range of different

medium via which students and staff can contact with the helpdesk to solve their problems. This

array of contact vehicles will increase the accessibility of the helpdesk among the user

community.

To track with user needs via using analytical tools to understand what the user actually want to

get.

To make an environment of collaboration and cooperation among the helpdesk staff to

encourage new ideas for support helpdesk activities and to give a platform where they can share

their experiences and skills to make the helpdesk more and more effective.

Summary of how the end user service operates:

The primary goal of the AICT helpdesk is to support university students to resolve their problems as well

as it provides first line support for faculty, staff and department administrators. For students AICT

helpdesk operates a range of various services like troubleshooting and resolving user problems in

specific areas such as CCIDs, WebCT, internet and email applications and disk storage. In the case of

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Information Systems Management Greenwich University

inability for solving any problems AICT helpdesk analyst upgrade or redirect the call to the appropriate

department to get more help. Thus the AICT helpdesk enhance the flexibility of assistance.

People can get help form AICT helpdesk via numerous avenues like: via walk in or telephone inquiries,

via e-mail and chat, or via using a range of online self-help tools.

The helpdesk provides a strong and adequate designed knowledge base to be accessible and to gain

additional information quickly for routine questions without taking any staff time.

The helpdesk also provides a numerous kind of flash tutorials to instruct the users on how to setup some

AICT services themselves. With the help of these tutorials users can enhance their ability by knowing

how to use its services.

The helpdesk maintain an analytical tool to investigate and analyze user interest in the context of their

provided tools and services. It also helps to reduce investing time on analysis on such factors for staff

backend.

Several diagnostic tools enable the Helpdesk services to incorporate with the day to day activities to

make these smooth and frequent to the staffs.

Chat services enables user as a new option for getting instant helps from the helpdesk in real time

problem situation. Users can link them to this service via the helpdesk website. In home page there is

link by clicking which a user can take part in a session of text chatting with a helpdesk staff.

Critical analysis of the end user services:

When Borque arrived at AICT four years ago, she and her directors found a siloed and internally focused

organization, where department worked relatively independently causing discouragement of the

exchange of ideas and the reinforcement of and enterprise work perspective. In this situation the user

community was almost an afterthought in project planning. They have realized that, all the department

needs to work with a collaborative nature to get robust and efficient services from the helpdesk. Then

she and her directors initiated a realignment plan based on the feedback gaining from the staffs and the

campus community. After that this realignment plan of AICT turned naturally to its primary client

interface Helpdesk for enhancing its customer services as a core goal and the development of helpdesk

functionalities begun.

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Information Systems Management Greenwich University

Source: Selected Case Study<http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/UniversityofAlbertaUsingOnline/162410>

(See Bibliography)

After analyzing and investigating the case study I have found the end user services and operations

greatly affected due to the development of new features and options both in staff and client areas.

Online tools review:

The helpdesk online tools significantly impact in the working area of the help desk as well as make an

innovative fosters for helpdesk’s analyst and application developers. People now can get help more

rapidly and effectively by using these tools. These tools also help analysts to filter out user needs and

suggest the appropriate one. Because of these tools helpdesk analysts can spend their time more on

develop new ideas and services as a part of their day to day works.

For example students can now get help of their own by using help desk knowledge base and flash

tutorials tools to solve their routine problems without interrupting in staff time. If they can’t make it

from these tools then there are also other several options opened to make it better such as they can

participate in phone calls, email to the staff or can chat to get more help. This widened open nature of

the helpdesk increase the accessibility of services provided by the helpdesk. The helpdesk’s analytical

tools and feedback improve the overall AICT services, too.

Helpdesk internal operation review:

After the development of helpdesk services, it introduces a collaborative and innovative environment

within the organization. This new environment encourages ownership of products, group work and

empowerment fosters that create a culture to experiment with new ideas. Students who worked as a

part time worker treated as an equal team members by the other full time worker to encourage

contributing their ideas on projects. The helpdesk reduce its amount of workforce by providing more

and more online tools and services developed by the staff and part time student workers. The enhanced

collaborative and communicating nature impact heavily on the day to day working environment of the

organization as the staff can share their experiences and ideas to solve client’s problems which act as

group work and are very effective. Various diagnostic tools are available to enhance analyst’s

troubleshooting capabilities.

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Information Systems Management Greenwich University

The helpdesk also enhance collaboration between the helpdesk and the other service groups. These

types of collaboration make the help desk faster in providing services and increase the productivity of

the staff. Any helpdesk analyst is now empowered to get direct help from the appropriate AICT staff

member about a potential problem beyond to following the chain of command.

Today’s AICT helpdesk introduce a facilitating factor where a diverse set of talents of the team members

combined synergistically to support the helpdesk’s development functionalities.

Staff recruitment for the help desk has been impacted as it is now give a scope for part time student

worker to gain skill and develop online toots combined with Helpdesk’s laidback atmosphere. They are

treated as client’s representative. The entire “student friendly” online tools are developed by the

assistance of their direct input and feedback.

From the above sections of analysis and discussion I have come into this point that the reasons for

developing end user services have been almost achieved according to its realignment plan. Although

there can be some factors that needs to maintain by the AICT to maintain its services smooth and

efficient such as proper training should be given to the staff so that they can cope with the environment.

Regardless all these types of factors AICT help desk seems to be a successful organization to make a new

era of servicing.

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Information Systems Management Greenwich University

Conclusion:

After undertaking this assignment I have gained a strong knowledge about the end-user services

operate by a helpdesk. It helps me also to know about the development procedures and criteria to

develop an end-user service like that. At last I appreciate the University of Alberta’s AICT

departments work on using online help desk tools to enhance e client service and department

operations.

B.Sc. Hon’s in Business Information Technology 8

Information Systems Management Greenwich University

Bibliography

Case Study Source:

Judith Pirani (EDUCAUSE) and Donald Z. Spicer (University System of Maryland), ECAR Case Study 8, 2007, EDUCASE center for applied research, viewed 2 November 2011,

<http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/UniversityofAlbertaUsingOnline/162410>

Organization of the case study:

http://helpdesk.ualberta.ca/

Other:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Help_desk

B.Sc. Hon’s in Business Information Technology 9