Good Computer Guy Help Desk

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Good Computer Guy Help DeskTags:
Iwanted to take a couple minutes to review my HelpDesk, which hasnow been in operation for four months with great success.

The Help Desk, which canbe reached by my website, www.goodcomputerguy.com, is the fastest, best way to get in touch with me and report a problem. Once on the web site, click on Help Desk in the top menu. There are two choices on that screen, Submit a new ticketand Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail, which I will explain below.

If you have any technicalissues at all, please submit a ticket with as much information as possibleabout the problem.  At the bottom of the ticket is a place to attachup to 2 files.  Most of the time these will probably be used for screenshots, which can greatly help diagnose a problem, but it can be anythingyou think you need to attach.

After you click Submit Requestyou'll immediately get an email with your ticket number and a link backto the ticket.  You can use that link to check on the progress andadd more details as necessary.  When your ticket is updated, witheither questions from me or a resolution, you'll get another email witha link back to the ticket so you can read the response.

The last response from memight just be some documentation on the technical issue - there's no needto respond with "thanks" or anything like that, in fact thatwould just reopen a closed ticket.  Also, please limit each ticketto just one issue.  If you have multiple things to report you cansubmit multiple tickets.

If you lose one of your ticketnumbers just click on the Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail linkat the bottom of that first page.  You'll immediately get an emailwith links to ALL of your tickets.  (If you are a company owner oradministrator you also have access to the company Master Ticket, whichshows all the tickets submitted by everyone in your company.)

SCREEN SHOTS
A little aside about screenshots: please don't paste a screen shot into a Word document.  A muchbetter way to is to paste into Microsoft Paint, which is included withevery copy of Windows, then save that picture onto your desktop (or whereveryou want) and attach it to the ticket.  To make a screen shot, hiteither ALT-Prt Scr to get just the window/program in question, orCTRL-Prt Scr to get your entire screen.  Once you have whatyou want, simply paste into Paint.  You can even use Paint to cropdown the screen shot to just what you want to show and annotate as necessary.

WHY USE THE HELP DESKINSTEAD OF EMAIL?
Email is great for communication. But email threads are disorganized and tend to get jumbled, confused,and lost.  There's no easy way to track issues and problems and lookback at history.  Email threads also tend to creep into other topics. With a help desk ticket, issues are well defined and both of us canlook at the same ticket to see the conversation, progress, and resolution. Later on if a problem comes up again we'll have good history to lookback on.  Even quick questions are better off as a ticket rather thanan email.  More often than not, what starts out as a quick email questionend up going back and forth multiple times and morphing into somethingbigger.  It's better to just start as a ticket, with all the informationin it (please don't link a ticket back to an unrelated email.)

WHY NOT JUST CALL?
The Help Desk is the fastestway to report a problem too me.  Unfortunately I can be in only oneplace at a time while juggling about 16 things, and that 17th one is adoozy.  When a new ticket comes in it's easy for me to quickly assessthe problem and get back to you as soon as I can, sometimes immediately. Phone calls should be limited to only extremely critical issues orInternet outages when you can't reach the help desk (common sense prevails.) I'm often working with other people, and just like you wouldn't likeme to be interrupted while I'm working with you, they don't want me tofield phone calls while I'm working with them.  If the phone ringsand I can't get it, it may be a while before I'm able to listen to a voicemailand know what is going on.  I can usually get to tickets in the helpdesk much faster.

Finally, on both the phoneand email issue, I occasionally have colleagues cover for me.  Theynever have access to my voicemail or email, but do have access to the helpdesk.

WHAT SHOULD I USE THEHELP DESK FOR?
Everything.  Really,even if you have just a minor problem and you're pretty sure I'm goingto be there tomorrow anyway, go ahead and submit a ticket.  It's veryhelpful to me to know about everything that happens with your computeror network.  Also, there's a chance that some minor problem you'reseeing is also being reported by other people on your network - that canbe very helpful for me to quickly be aware of issues that could blossominto something bigger.  Or it may be possible that I just resolvedthe same minor issue for someone else and can instantly fix your problemtoo.  A help desk ticket should be the first place you turn.

WHEN SHOULDN'T I CREATEA NEW TICKET?
If there is already a ticketfor your problem please just update the existing ticket rather than creatinga new one.  A new ticket on an existing problem just slows down myresponse as I will need to combine the tickets and delete the extra ticketfirst.

YOU WERE JUST AT MY DESK,WHY SHOULD I CREATE A TICKET?  Or, YOU'RE IN MY OFFICE TODAY,CAN'T I JUST GRAB YOU WHEN YOU WALK BY?
See the juggling commentup above - by the time I get across the office and 4 people have grabbedme to ask about a new issue I've forgotten the first one and can't prioritize(OK, OK, I know YOURS is the most important problem, but I still have todeal with everyone else too!)  After I resolve even a quick issue,I'd still like a ticket in the system to track what's going on, what hasbeen done, what changes have been made, etc.  It can help diagnosefuture issues down the road, and also is a good record of what I've beendoing for you.

WHY DO YOU WRITE SO MUCH?
I think it's related to mymother.  Boy, that woman can talk.  I set out to write a quickreminder about the Help Desk and ended up with this.  Sorry... extrapoints if you actually made it this far.  And I look forward to helpingyou with any issues that come up!  Ticket away....Posted by Bill Greenberg On 02/24/2010| Digg This | Permalink

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