Setting up Evernote as a Helpdesk.
There are many parts to being an IT Technician in any environment. You have to be knowledgeable, you have to be able to stay cool under pressure, you have to be able to find information quickly when resolving problems and be able to work through logical processes in order to come to a resolution. These are all very important parts of being a good technician. However there is one other part which is often overlooked. Good customer service skills.
I have seen many Network Managers who get so caught up with making sure the system runs perfectly and so caught up in always making sure they use the latest technology etc.. that they sometimes forget that a crucial part of the job is good customer service. Even though I work in a school and I know all the users I view them all as customers. This allows me to maintain a high level of service by imagining that customers can leave you, and go elsewhere where as colleagues can't.
With this in mind I have been looking for a new helpdesk for a while. I currently use Spice works and with the introduction of ipads around the school and staff using their ipads and phones for lots more tasks now I find that using the web based ICT portal on Spice works to be a little prohibiting. All staff have their school email attached to their PC's their iPads and often their phones. This means that emailing a ticket to the helpdesk would be the best way. Also, I wanted a helpdesk which would integrate with the way I work better rather than it being a separate application. This is when I thought about using Evernote.
I use Evernote for everything work related. I use it to manage quotes, audits, projects, day to day tasks aswel as interesting things that I'd like to go back and look into more detail when I have time. I had an idea. If I could get staff to email a support ticket into evernote and have it stored in a special notebook I would be able to see jobs coming in and deal with them much quicker as I always have evernote open on my 2nd screen.
As many who use Evernote will already know you get an evernote email address which you can use to email note to your account. It's not a very easy to remember email address but that doesn't matter for what I'm going to do. We use Google Apps for education here so I have set up a new email address helpdesk@*******.sch.uk with forwarding set up to my evernote account. I am going to get staff to email the helpdesk account which will auto forward it into a notebook I have set up, in evernote called Inbox.
From there I can move the note into Helpdesk - open and deal with the request. Then, once it's completed I can update the note with any information I feel is relevant and email the note back out to the end user by sharing the note via Email. The end user will then get an email like this:
I can then move the note to Helpdesk - Closed. This will allow not only staff to keep a record of jobs completed but also allow me to create a record of what I do day to day. I'm going to get staff to start using this new 'helpdesk' from Monday morning and see how we go. If it works well and staff adopt the new set up well I'm getting the school to upgrade my account to Premium which will allow for more security features and higher storage and bandwidth.
Hopefully this new helpdesk will allow me to be even more productive than before and continue to give a high level of service. The fact that I can also view these helpdesk tickets from home also means that I can sit, in the morning, whilst having breakfast, and see if anything has come up that will need dealing with that day. I can plan for what's coming and be more prepared.
