This document provides an overview of technology help desks, including their functions, structure, benefits, users and roles. A help desk is a centralized resource that helps people answer questions and use computer and audio-visual resources. It provides a single point of contact for various computer issues. Help desks have different service levels and teams that support desktops, networks, servers, telecom, applications and more. The benefits are that technicians don't have to re-derive solutions and it is good for answering trivial questions.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
About the Technology Help Desk*
*but were afraid to ask
Help Desk
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Outline
• What’s a help desk anyway…?
• Functions
• Help desk structure
• Benefits of a Help Desk
• User and Roles
• Client/Server Architecture

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Introduction
• The spread of information technology and
change in society
• Many questions/Same answer
• Knowledge is not shared
• Need of a centralized portal to handle this issue.

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What’s a help desk anyway…?
• Help desk is a broadly applied term referring to
a staffed resource—often, an actual desk, or a
telephone service—that can help persons answer
questions or to use resources such as audio-
visual or computer resources.

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Functions
• A typical help desk provides the users a single
point of contact, to receive help on various
computer issues.

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Help desk structure

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The Three Service Levels of a Help
Desk System
• End User
• Hotline (Level 1)
• System Administrator, Application Specialists
(Level 2)
• Maintenance and OEMs (Level 3)

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Deskside team
• Desktops
• Laptops
• Peripherals
▫ PDAs.
▫…

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Network team
• Network services
• Network software
• Hardware
• Infrastructure
▫ Servers
▫ Switches
▫ backup systems
▫ Firewalls.

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Server team
• Servers within the organization
▫ Active Directory
▫ Network Shares
▫ Network Resources
▫ Email accounts
• Advanced services
▫ SQL
▫ Microsoft SharePoint

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Telecom team
• Phone infrastructure
▫ PBX,
▫ Voicemail
▫ VOIP
▫ telephone sets
▫ modems
▫ fax machines

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Application team
• Development of any in-house software
• Software bugs
• Requests for new features or capabilities to in-
house software

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Technician team
• Solve many help desk issues from another
location or their home office
• Audit workstations

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Benefits of a Help Desk
• Technicians do not have to re-derive solutions to
problems
▫ This wastes company resources
• Attribute Value Pair
▫ Good for answering trivial question
▫ Good when users of the help desk system are
inexperienced

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Kinds of Cases
• Approved cases
• Opened cases (everyone can see)
• These case are separated into a case buffer
(opened) and a main case base (approved)

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User and Roles
• Help desk operator
▫ Lowest access rights
▫ Use application on a regular basis to solve problems
▫ Case retrieval and case acquisition
• Experience author
▫ Responsible for case maintenance and case approval
▫ Checks for redundancy and consistency
• Experience base administrator
▫ Creates and maintains the domain and case model
▫ Administer users and access rights

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Client/Server Architecture
• Allows all users to get the same up to date
information
• Eases the maintenance of the domain model and
the case base

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Demonstration

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Summary
• Help desk systems
▫ help solve problems faster
▫ give more people more knowledge
• Building
▫ long and difficult
▫ need to convince people go give up their
knowledge
• Maintaining
▫ Requires constant maintenance

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• Thank you for joining us for this presentation
today…