Module 4: Reactive Processes

Service Desk

The roles and responsibilities in a service desk are described in the table below. The roles will be assigned to members of the technical support team or administrative staff and to technical support management in the school.

Unless you have a large school with a large number of incidents being reported daily, the roles should not require full-time effort, but they formalise the activities that should be carried out by the service desk. The characteristics described aim to guide you when you assign the roles to the people who will fulfil them.

Role

Responsibilities

Characteristics

Service desk owner

  • Is responsible for the implementation and operation of the service desk
  • Maintains and improves the service desk procedures
  • Authorises changes to the service desk procedures

  • Will be at a management or supervisory level in ICT
  • Will need in-depth knowledge of the service desk aims and responsibilities
  • Need not have technical knowledge

Service desk administrator

  • Liaises with end-users about incidents
  • Takes details of incidents and passes them to technical staff
  • Maintains a log of details about incidents
  • Produces incident reports
  • Maintains a log of details about problems
  • Produces problem reports
  • May be asked to take part in other FITS processes as appropriate (examples include co-ordinating requests for change, updating the configuration management database and producing service reports)

  • Will have administrative skills
  • Need not have technical knowledge
  • Should be familiar with ICT services available and end-user requirements

Identify who will staff the service desk

  • The person staffing the service desk needs good interpersonal skills.
  • The person staffing the service desk should not be the person providing technical support (because they will be somewhere providing technical support)
  • The person staffing the service desk does not need to be technical but does need to be organised.
  • The service desk could be part of another role performed by an existing member of staff identified by the school.
  • Remember the service desk will enable the person providing technical support to concentrate on that work and not the details of how to log a call.


Single point of contact

    Where schools do not provide a single point of contact this can create problems when teaching staff and technicians need to discuss the incident or request. School staff reporting an incident may not always be available when the technician arrives to fix it, which can create delays.

    Therefore, schools should provide a single point of contact that has knowledge about an incident when registering a support call with a technician or third-party provider. This is most important where technical support is external to the school – that is, it is provided by the LA or a third-party support company.

    1. Agree how calls will be recorded.
    2. Decide how much extra work is involved in recording details of incidents and requests.
    3. Decide which role in the school provides access for teaching staff and those providing technical support and can accommodate the additional work of maintaining the call log.
    4. Ensure that the technical support providers and school staff know who the single point of contact is.

    The role of single point of contact could be an additional function to the following, but this decision is best left to the school to decide:

    • school administration staff
    • ICT co-ordinator
    • teaching assistant
    • nominated teacher
    • network manager (not ideal)
    • technical support staff (not ideal)
    • other nominated staff.


    Identify the users of a service desk
    Anyone who comes into contact with using computer equipment or the results of using it is potentially a customer of the Service Desk. This would probably include:

    • teachers
    • teaching assistants
    • students
    • administration staff
    • technicians
    • head teachers.

    You also need to think about others who might benefit from being able to make requests or log incidents through the service desk, such as:

    • technical support staff
    • governors
    • caretaker
    • cleaners.

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