ServiceDesk Plus - Helpdesk

ServiceDesk Plus - Helpdesk

ServiceDesk Plus is a web-based helpdesk software that helps you manage all your communications from a single point. It offers an integrated Request management (Trouble Ticketing), Asset management, Purchase order management,

Contract Management, Self-Service Portal, and Knowledge Base. ServiceDesk Plus packs all the modules at an affordable price.

Choose A Helpdesk

ServiceDesk Plus offers you a Standard Edition with all the helpdesk features to manage your requests and incidents.

• Helpdesk – Create and manage requests from multiple sites, automatic dispatch of requests to appropriate category, subcategory and items using Business Rules, prioritize your request and define the resolution time through Service Level Agreement, assign the request to a request owner or a group, improve the quality of support offered through user satisfaction surveys.
  
  
• Self-Service Portal - Enable login for users with Active Directory and Windows synchronization using SSO, provide a knowledge base for the users to search for available solutions and submit their trouble ticket, help the users to check their request status and minimize the incoming call volume from the users.
• Knowledge Base - Create a web-based knowledge-base system which helps technicians in searching the troubleshooting docs for a faster request-resolution. It helps the users to search the answers for their incidents or queries from the self-service portal before raising a request and thus reduces the inflow of incoming requests.
  
  
• SLA Management - Define your SLA and set different escalation levels for the SLA violations to meet a proper SLA compliance. This helps in giving the solution to a request within the defined resolution time and improving the customer satisfaction.
  
  
• HelpDesk Reports - Get your helpdesk statistics reports based on the Request-status, SLA-violation and many more from the list of default reports or by creating your own custom reports. Get a consolidated view on what is happening with your helpdesk on a single report-view using the New Flash Reports.
  
  
  

Configuration Management Database

Configuration Management Database

CMDB is a centralized repositary that holds all the information about all the assets. Each asset is uniquely identified and tracked as a Configured Item. CMDB also manages the relationship between the CIs.

Discover Assets:
ServiceDesk Plus helps you to discover all your IT assets such as workstations(windows, Linux and apple Mac), printers, routers, switches, and access points and get all the asset and asset details in one place. ServiceDesk Plus helps you to assign asset id and asset name to uniquely identify assets.

Detailed Asset Inventory

The detailed discovery provides detailed information such as model number, asset state, and detailed asset configuration and inve

ntory

Software Library

ServiceDesk Plus discovers all software installed in your organization and builds a software library to track licenses. It allows you to ge

t quick reports on purchased versus installed

software and rarely used paid software that helps you streamline software license management

Asset Relationships

ServiceDesk Plus helps you to define and manage relationships between assets. ServiceDesk Plus offers three type of relationship that you can use to denote relationship between assets.

Change Management

Change Management

The goal of Change Management is to control and manage approved changes with accepted risk.

ServiceDesk Plus allows you to implement a comprehensive change management system that allows you to handle pre-approved changes and changes with complete approval cycle.

Change Management Workflow

• Initiate Change Request
• Change Plans and CAB (Change Advisory Board)
• Approval from CAB Members
• Co-ordinate Change Implementation
• Post Implementation Review
• Change History

Initiate Change Request

You can initiate New Change Request or initiate a change from one or more Problems. The Request for Change is considered based on the Business Impact, Urgency and Priority. The Change plan is formulated to get started with a the change process

The Change Plan needs to have complete details about the reasons for considering the change, how this change can impact business. The Change Planning stage needs to have following information so that Change Managers and CAB has all the detailed to make informed decisions.

• Impact Analysis - risk involved in implementing the change
• Rollout Plan - how the plan will be implemented
• Back out Plan - plan to restore things to back to original state if plan fails
• Checklist - List of mandatory items required for the plan to succeed

Change Advisory Board

ServiceDesk Plus enables you to create CABs. Based on the defined change type, you can choose to send the change plan for approval to CAB members.

Approval from CAB Members

The CAB Members meet once in two weeks or once in a month to discuss the changes that are submitted for approval. Based on the change plan and the risk analysis, the CAB Members take a unanimous decision to Accept or Reject a Change Plan.

Co-ordinate Change Implementation

• Forward Schedule of Change (FSC)

All Approved Changes have to be implemented with minimal service downtime. ServiceDesk Plus gives you built-in reports based on Priority, Urgency, by Incident, and Problem counts that helps Change Managers to prioritize and schedule changes.

• Change Calendar

Based on the changes considered for the next implementation, the changes are scheduled and published. The Change Calendar keeps everyone informed when a particular service will be down for maintenance and when it will be restored.

• Implementations

ServiceDesk Plus helps you keep track of important tasks involved in implementing an approved change. The task delegation helps Change Managers to assign tasks to technicians, schedule the task and track task status. The Task works like a simple to-do list and are child request to the change.

Post Implementation Review

The Post Implementation Review helps Change Manager to keep track of the rolled out change to

• Capture the glitches that happened during the change
• Track KPI to measure the effectiveness of the change
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  Keep Track of the Change History:

  As Change Management involves key business, it is important to maintain clear documentation about the change. ServiceDesk Plus keeps track of the complete change History. This helps to audit changes and get all the information such as, when the change plan was edited, when it was approved, who approved it and what time. The Property View helps you keep a record of all changes for auditing purposes.

  

Problem Management

Problem Management

The goal of Problem Management is to find the root cause of incidents and reduce the impact on business. Problem Management is a proactive approach that prevents recurrence of incidents.

Problem Management Workflow in ServiceDesk Plus:

• Problem Detection & Classification
• Problem Priority
• Problem Analysis
• Solutions, Work Around, and Known error record
• Problem Closure

Step 1: Problem Detection & Classification

Various reports in ServiceDesk Plus give you a clear picture of what should be identified as a problem. Proper classification (Category > Sub Category > Item) will help the technician to qualify the problem. Multiple incidents can also be associated with a single problem.

Step 2: Problem Priority

Depending on the Urgency and Impact level of the problem, the priority can be set for the problem.

This prioritization will help the technician to assess the various problems and take necessary action, focusing on the critical problems first.

Step 3: Problem Analysis

The technician can analyse the root cause and impact of the problem and attach the same in SDP as part of the problem. This helps in giving a one stop understanding of what may be cause of the problem and solution or work-around that can be given.

Step 4: Solutions, Workarounds and Known Error Records

Solutions are permanent fixes to the problems raised. Workarounds are temporary solutions that can be used by the technician till actual solution is ready. Optionally, you can also add Tasks that need to be done to clear the Incident.

Step 5: Problem Closure

You can set rules for problem closure in Admin > Problem/Change Management > Problem Closure Rules. Only if the mandatory fields are completed can the problem be closed.

Incident Management

Incident Management

An incident is disruption of normal service that affects user and business. The goal of Incident Management is to restore normal services as soon as possible with workarounds or solutions to make sure that it does not affect business.

Incident Workflow in ServiceDesk Plus

• Incident Detection
• Record the Incident details
• Classify Incident
• Provide Workaround or Solution
• Escalate / File a new problem or associate to an existing problem
• Incident Closure

Step 1: Incident Detection:

When a Request comes in, ServiceDesk Plus helps you to define the Request Type. When the Request reports about an outage or a drop in the Quality of Service, the Request is classified as an Incident. When the request requires a New Service to be setup, it is classified as a New Service Request.

Step 2: Record Incident Details

When a new Incident is detected, it is important for the helpdesk technician to qualify incident.

Helpdesk technicians can qualify the incident by asking the right questions that will help Level 2 technicians to resolve the Problem faster. ServiceDesk Plus helps you record all the incident details.

Step 3: Classify the Incident

Helpdesk technicians can classify the incident while creating a new Incident or update
Category > Sub Category > Item in an incident raised by the user. Incident classification is very important to understand the source of all your incidents.

Step 4: Provide Workaround or Solution

Helpdesk Technicians can search for existing workarounds or solution from the request and get back to users immediately.

Step 5: File a new problem or associate to an existing problem

Helpdesk technicians to group similar incidents together that point to the same Category > Sub Category > Item and file a new problem or associate to an existing problem . Once a Problem is created Level 2 technicians or problem technicians take control.

Step 6: Incident Closure

Helpdesk technicians as the Single Point Of Contact for the users, updating the users when a new solution is available. Tracking the status and making sure that all incidents are responded to and closed.

Inventory Management

IT Asset & Inventory Management

ServiceDesk Plus offers an integrated IT Help Desk and Asset management solution to help technicians associate the problems with the respective workstations easily. With the complete history of the workstation in hand they will be able to solve issues easily with very less downtime.

ServiceDesk Plus offers accurate IT asset management & network inventory tracking functionality covering both hardware and software, across Windows and Linux workstations. You can scan Windows domains or individual sub-networks and auto-discover workstations.

Using an agentless architecture, ServiceDesk Plus provides complete and in-depth hardware & software inventory reports. Using scheduled audits you can track asset changes over time.

Features

• Complete hardware inventory covering computer, CPU, hard-disk, peripherals, ports and NIC.
• Lists all installed software packages.
• Windows and Linux support.
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• Ad-hoc and scheduled asset management audits.
• Audit Diff Report showing New and Missing software.
• Ability to attach assets to scanned workstations.
• Ability to manually add missing software.

Benefits

• Automatically track all hardware and software across Windows & Linux machines (complete network inventory management system).
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• Enhance HelpDesk productivity by presenting accurate inventory information.
  
• Identify unlicensed software installations.
• Know who is running prohibited software.
• Generate web reports that can be printed or emaile

Manager Integration

Manager Integration

Proactive Help Desk Management

Monitor your entire IT infrastructure using OpManager, a powerful Network Monitoring Software that is tightly integrated with ServiceDesk Plus.

OpManager detects fault and performance problems in your network and through integration with ServiceDesk Plus, enables automatic creation of incidents based on pre-defined error conditions. This alerts the appropriate ServiceDesk Plus technician to take corrective action.

Proactive Features

• Auto ticket generation on failure of network devices or notifications sent by any application.

• Automatic case routing to the appropriate technician.
• Centralized tracking of all network failure related tickets.

• Instantaneous notification of network failures enables IT to ensure maximum Infrastructure availability.

Proactive Benefits

• Ability to create Ticket Profiles that can be applied to several devices.

• Ability to specify category, severity and technician information at the time of creating the profile. This eliminates the need for the Help Desk analyst to manually look at the ticket and then assign it to the appropriate technician.

Product Catalog

Product Catalog

A typical network can have a number of product types. Each and every product like say, a printer can be from a different manufacturer. Maintaining such a heterogenous inventory can get out of hand if it isn't tracked properly.

ServiceDesk Plus allows you maintain a clean and neat catalog of your varied inventory.

roduct Catalog

Features

• Build a detailed and indepth catalog of all inventory.
• Assign a product type to all incoming inventories even as the PO is being raised.
• Add on new product types as the catalog grows.
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Product Catalog

Benefits

• Get to know instantly all the types of products in your network.
• Plan to upgrade or make obsolete product types.
• Effective product management by tracking who owns which product.

Contract Management

Contract Management

One of the essential activities of IT Asset Management is to monitor contracts with vendors. Generally, administrators sign support contracts & Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMCs) with software & hardware vendors.

Keeping such contracts tracked & managed using a specialized software is an industry best practice. ServiceDesk Plus offers you with an extensive Contract Management feature set, out of which some are listed below.

Contract Management

Features

• Maintain all your support/maintenance contracts in one place.
• Track contract vendors and their contact details.
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• Know which assets are covered in your contracts.
• Set up email notifications to renew contracts before expiry.
• Query from a searchable Database of Contracts.
• Include softcopies of actual contracts as attachments.

Purchase Order Tracking

Purchase Order Tracking

Any organisation, large or small needs to know what is being purchased, the price being paid for the purchase and the vendors from whom products are being bought. With this information in your hands, you can easily identify areas to reduce spendings, enforce policies and eliminate redundancies. ServiceDesk Plus offers you a rich set of features for handling purchase orders.

Purchase Order Tracking Features

• Maintain a complete product catalog based on product type, that lists all assets owned by your organization.
• Maintain a group of vendors for any product along with price.
• Create Purchase orders for a vendor and automatically convert PO items into assets.
• Auto-populate PO fields like Organization name, Billing address, shipping address, tax-rate etc.
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• Keep track of outstanding POs and completed purchases.
• Query from a searchable database of POs
• Analyze purchasing trends to leverage negotiations with vendors.

Purchase Order Tracking Benefits

• Centralized purchasing avoids duplication and makes tracking of POs easier.
• Compare prices from different vendors before placing a purchase order.
• Email the POs to vendors thus eliminating paperwork.

Software License Tracking

Software License Tracking

ServiceDesk Plus offers an integrated IT Help Desk, Asset management & Software license management solution to help technicians associate the problems with the respective workstations and their softwares easily. Understanding software license compliance and the use of unauthorised softwares in the organization will help them to act proactively to curb illegal usage and problems associated with it.

A recent study by Gartner warns that software license prices can go up by 50% evey year. It goes on to add that "the big organizations will be less exposed, but the ones really exposed are the small and medium businesses". Its always prudent to be proactive in a sensitive, legal issue such as software licensing and in view of such a trend being forecasted, its all the more important that you track your software licenses properly. ServiceDesk Plus offers you a compulsive offer by tracking software licenses and letting you know the number of over-utilized or under-utilized licenses across your organization.

With ServiceDesk Plus,

• Track your company's software licenses to maintain compliance
• Plan and optimize your software license purchases and
• Re-use unused software licenses

License Tracking

End users install software themselves, share software with colleagues and download files from the Internet.Combine this with decentralization, multiple software versions and varying types of license agreements, tracking software license compliance can become a nightmare. With ServiceDesk Plus, track all the software across your organisation and find out deployed unlicensed software.

Software Licensing

Knowing the number of copies of a software that are installed across your organisation versus the number of copies you have purchased are the two vital points needed for software license optimization.Combined with this, a knowledge about whether the software installations are growing or shrinking and whether your end users are becoming more or less dependent on a particular software can help you a lot in optimizing your software purchases. ServiceDesk Plus discovers and lists all the instances of a particular software across your enterprise.

Software Licenses

Re-use Unused

Most of the time, a person involved in some specific work may need a software for some amount of time. Once her work is finished, the software lies unutilized in her machine. Using ServiceDesk Plus, redeem such unused software now & redeploy it in machines where required. You can cut costs by reusing such licenses and not buying new ones.