From yellow stickies to the world-wide web

Abstract

In 1990, IT Technology Support Services (TSS) was formed by combining several IT support departments. Cases were distributed to the four or five support people by the simple expedient of putting sticky notes on their office doors. A support person would return from an office call to find his/her office door covered in sticky notes. Missing cases, lost phone numbers and angry customers were common events. With an enrollment of 30,000 students and rising, something had to give. A variety of solutions were tried. First we had a VMS based system called Tracker. Stalker was next which proved to be much more flexible and paved the way to our current setup. More than anything else, using Stalker helped us begin to train ourselves to use an electronic tracking tool. Finally, we purchased Remedy for both helpdesk and account management use. Many internal and external departments have partnered with TSS to use the system. Now integrated with AskShasta our customers are able to submit their own cases via the web. This allows customer problems to enter the department's workflow directly, which greatly speeds time to resolution and provides the best service possible while reducing the need for new FTEs.