Pulaski County Schools

“This is our school’s second year in using the everything HelpDesk® product and we have no problem getting our end users to stop sending emails and leaving voicemails and just enter in a help desk ticket online.”

Dianne Dripps, Pulaski County Schools

The Problem

“Our tech department didn’t have the greatest reputation in the county. It wasn’t because of lack of effort, we just didn’t know what needed to be done,” said Dianne Dripps, Help Desk Manager for Pulaski County Schools. Dripps wanted that to change, and she knew that the chief complaint was a lack of reporting on the status of service tickets.

The Pulaski County Schools IT staff had come to the point where voicemail and email was to hard to track in responding to service requests, and the current database that housed those tickets could not generate the reports that were being requested.

Principals and county officers needed to update their staff on the status of trouble tickets but they couldn’t get the information they needed when they needed it from the IT department.

With the problem clearly identified, Dripps and her team set out to find a help desk solution that could grow with their county and provide them with the reports and service support their users wanted.

Helping schools maintain a budget and provide world class support

The Solution

The everything HelpDesk® solution by GroupLink® was a product that Pulaski County Schools had heard about from other K-12 schools in the area. As the IT staff at Pulaski County Schools evaluated and then implemented the software, they quickly found out how simple it is to use and how easy it is for end users to submit help desk tickets.

“This is our school’s second year in using the everything HelpDesk® product and we have no problem getting our end users to stop sending emails and leaving voicemails and just enter in a help desk ticket online,” Dripps said.

With tickets now being reported and not being missed, Dripps is able to gather the information and easily pull the reports that her principals and county officers had been asking for.

Reports that are requested most from the IT department are charts and graphs on trends in the school district’s new computer labs. Also, county officers want to see who received the latest training on the new phone system.

These reports are now simple to run and to have automatically sent to the individual requesting them. Additionally, the individuals are now able to view the reports on their own, without Dripps spending time gathering the information and manually delivering the requested report.

“When the principals and county officers look at the help desk reports we publish online, they see exactly when the last ticket was submitted, who is working on it, and what is the current status of that ticket. No more phone calls saying we ‘dropped the ball’ because they can see for themselves what is taking place in the school district and in the county. It also helps them understand that they are not the only user we support.” Dripps commented smiling.

The IT team themselves have also benefited from using the software to track average work time spent on a ticket, who is submitting the most tickets, and who is closing the most tickets. “Reports have made the difference. We have now changed from being the bad guys, to the guys they love to see coming,” Dripps stated.

Conclusion

Because of an outdated and inefficient system, the Pulaski County Schools IT team was falling behind on work orders and was not able to keep users up-to-date on the latest requests. By purchasing a help desk solution that allowed the end users to have a simple form to submit tickets and enable the technicians to quickly update those tickets, Pulaski County Schools now has the reports that make a difference in its schools and the county.