Q3

Q3 Fiscal Year 2009 (Jan 2009 - Mar 2009)

Accomplishments:

• Student and faculty support for new version of Stellar course management system and Touchstone collaboration accounts rolled out
• Ramped up support for new 802.11n wireless network as campus footprint of new network is increasing
• Improved input of data as well as understanding of data collections and reporting tools such as RT, Warehouse, eOn call tracking metrics
  • Began generating reports on breakdowns of Service Center and Call Center tickets across platforms, products/services, and sharing within the team
  • Began regular sharing of data extracted from eOn using those to improve our on-duty scheduling, and our call handling practices
  • Began collecting, collating and sharing daily trend reports with rest of IS&T
• Encouraged active use of Hermes across the Help Desk, IS&T and Institute colleagues
  • Ran training sessions for DITR, IT Partners, Sloan STS, VPF staff
  • Moved large amount of content from private "Help Desk only" space to public space for self-service; (bdoyle getting me some specifics)
  • Met with Libraries who will begin using Hermes for technical content and update Libraries-specific information already in Hermes
• Reviewed, clarified, and improved our processes for monitoring and responding to the more challenging network issues that cross between Help Desk, Telephony Support and OIS
  • Cross-group discussions to review and revise documented escalation procedures and make updates in Hermes
  • Formation of Help Desk subteam to focus expertise on network issues
  • Creation of a network special tag in RT to enable appropriate ticket monitoring
  • Creation of saved RT queries to monitor network tickets that remain in Help Desk queues as well as those that we escalate out
• Drafted high-level plans for Telephony and Computing Help collaboration
  • Began holding regular combine Telephony/Help Desk staff meetings
  • Began involving Help Desk staff in monitoring Telephony VoIP help requests
• Started Service Center redefinition and consolidation
  • Initiated process to move printer repair work from Service Center to outside service provider
  • Established clear work processes and process leaders for both Hardware and Software repair functions
• Began to think about ways to estimate unit costs for services provided by the Help Desk
  • Shared estimates as well as context for estimates with email/calendaring and MITBI support planning efforts
• User Accounts
  • Completed annual account deactivations in 2nd week of January
  • New student class of 2013 and graduate student account registrations and mailings completed
  • Sponsored account cleanup completed
  • Accounts support for Touchstone Collaboration Accounts rolled out
• Athena/Academic
  • ACCORD / IS&T / Libraries MIT video strategy project for MITCET started
  • Athena 10 early release rolled out to 50 public student systems
  • Development and delivery work on track for summer 2009 campus-wide release
• FS/ILG off-campus network installations nearing completion
• VoIP transitions continue at accelerated pace
• Printing and Athena cluster data collection and assessment work to support Education, IT@MIT, and Energy Task Force efforts
• ACCORD sponsor meeting and change in leadership (leadership transitions from OEIT to Libraries)

Challenges:

• Managing anxieties as we are on the verge of some much needed internal restructuring post layoffs and as we rethink our priorities.
• Determining pace and appropriateness of exploring right sourcing of Help Desk services.
• Continuing to be hampered by a lack of robust and reliable tools for managing tickets, facilitating data mining, managing billing and financial oversight.
• Record number of wireless cases to deal with on RCC side, some related to new network deployments, some related to increased use of wireless, and some related to new threats to stability (trojan-caused or user-intentional local routers and DHCP servers, private access points, etc.)
• Softphone client delays due to chaning client space; no available multi-platform (Mac & Windows) softclient solution – redefining project scope and goals to look at single-platform solutions and accommodating new goal of substituting a softclient as an option for a normal business phone transition

Goals:

• Implement organizational changes affecting the Help Desk and other areas of CSS
  • Address moving staff to new roles, under new leadership
  • Identify and address gaps in this new structure
  • Plan for business continutity across these changes to ensure handoffs and escalations continue to go smoothly
• Make progress on CSIR project to look at alternative sourcing models for Help Desk services
• Continue to integrate and cross-train Telephony and Help Desk staff
• Cross train hardware and software repair staff to facilitate more efficient workflow for client issues requiring both hardware and software repair
• Upgrade hardware and software in public student computing environment
  • Deploy Athena 10/debAthena
  • Cross-grade remaining Solaris hardware and legacy HP hardware to current Dell hardware
  • Fall Readiness (be ready)

Q2 -- already submitted

Q2 Fiscal Year 2009 (Oct 2008 - Dec 2008)

-->Accomplishments:

• Accounts: Annual account deactivations (technically complete 2nd week of January but all work happens in Q2)
• Business Help: Open Enrollment planning and support.  Smoothest OE ever from a Help Desk support perspective. Worked with staff in HR Payroll and VPF to improve and make more consistent escalations and communications around customer support.
• Tools: Hermes IT community knowledge base released.  All Help Desk content migrated over as well. Completed project with Sloan Management Review to begin using RT for their customer communications and subscription management
• Athena/Academic:  Athena 10 testing, development, and support planning (jdreed, alexp from CSS heavily involved).  FS/ILG off-campus network installations and upgraded (peloquin, abonvie).   GIS planning group sponsors faculty advisory board luncheon (othomas is IS&T rep but aside from that all Libraries folks).  Participated/consulted on Dewey Library 2nd floor renovation and technology spaces (space opened January 2009, othomas)
• Service Center:  Service center upgrades and improvements include standardizing staffing schedule for software repair, adding clear status information to RT tickets to improve management of customer expectations, organizing software work stations and shared resources, and exploring options for improved security in Service Center room. Dell printer hardware service level improvements (several meetings with deep Dell printer engineers, resources for Russell and service center)
• Telephone and network:  Kicked off VoIP softphone release project (still ongoing). 802.11n / Cisco wireless network testing (othomas, peloquin heavily involved)
• Staffing and Resource Management: Developed Help Desk Resource model for a shared understanding of how resources are currently being spent. Sponsored 3 Sloan freshmen exploring operational efficiencies for Prof. Graves' freshmen seminar. Transitioned a long term temp into a regular hardware technician staff position. Managed long term family medical leave of key team leader by adjusting some roles and responsibilities and hiring and training a qualified temp to cover Call Center hours. Began dialogs to determine overlaps and collaboration possibilities between current HD and other IS&T teams starting

Challenges:

• Managing lots of change, and lots of anxiety about more future change.
• Determining pace and appropriateness of scaling up help services to be more expansive and inclusive.
• Being hampered by a lack of robust and reliable tools for managing tickets, facilitating data mining, managing billing and financial oversight.

Goals:

• Improve our abilities to mine and share useful data and metrics from RT, eOn.  Barbara Johnson taking the lead.
• Encourage active use of Hermes; Aim to move more and more content from private Help Desk only space to public space for self-service.
• Improve our processes for monitoring and responding to the more challenging network issues that cross between support and OIS.  Establish clear Help Desk/OIS liaison to assist in gathering, documenting and updating information we can use to manage customer issues.
• Draft proposals for Telephone Help / Computing Help collaboration, and for Service Center redefinition and consolidation.
• Begin to tackle challenge of identifying basic unit costs for services provided by the Help Desk