BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

16Mar/180

Tickets!

SO, we've finally started using a new ticketing system at work.

I love it.

It's SOOOOOO awesome.  I love metrics and tracking things... And ticket numbers.

Here's my thing.  For years now, we never had a tracking system.  I've been using my own personal rudimentary ticketing system to track things.  It was just outlook tasks, and an autohotkey script.  It was trash.

We recently hired a new guy at my job as a new position, a net admin/sys admin.... Oh gosh, he's AWESOME.... Like, all the projects we've had on our list to get done for years... He's already started working his way through some of them.

And he just cuts through them like a knife through butter.

The thing is, he's just a super smart guy, and he's super nice too.  I like working with him a lot...

One thing he did, is he has a dry erase board in his office, and he has like notes and lists on the board in a project management based layout.

I love that crap.  It's just so awesome.

Oh and we've started having 2 meetings a week... Also great.  It's helpful to have the meetings.

Anyway, so one of the tasks this new guy did was help setup this ticketing system.  Now we're tracking everything using a ticket numbering system.  Which I've wanted for years.

I love the idea too that we'll be able to show reports and trends, we can see repeat issues, look at things in a more fundamental way and figure out how to prevent problems in the first place.

We can hopefully respond better and be more informed.  I like that the system shows history for people who have submitted before, so you can see if someone just keeps having the same issues over and over again.

We can build a knowledge base... It's just really good stuff.

We can also assign tickets to one another... and see who has what ticket.

It's just so much more organized.  I hate when things aren't organized and are chaotic.  I like when there's processes and procedures in place and things are done according to the processes.

This guy is all about designing and implementing things better... He came from a corporate environment, so he kind of gives a different perspective.

One of the best phrases that was said in one of the new weekly meetings by a different guy, not the new guy, but one of the people who has worked with us at the college for over 10 years is "Accounting is accounting.... Best practices are best practices... An accounting department is run the same at every organization, so should an IT department".  I agree.

This other guy (again, not the new guy)  is kind of part of our IT team now too.  He didn't really used to be... But now through some restructuring he was kind of thrown into IT off of administrative software...  I've known him since the first day I started working at the college... He's pretty good peeps.

His ideas are good too... He basically interacts with other colleges a lot because he runs our portal software so he talks to all these other colleges and the other portal admins, so he's along the line of thought that is... There isn't a "personalized" way to do stuff.  I agree.  It's universal.  Air is air.

An IT department is the same no matter where you work.  Best practices are best practices.  Just like an accounting department is an accounting department.

If you don't have a ticketing system, it's not best practices... You need a ticketing system.

It's not "that's just the way we do things around here..."

Instead... It's just, wrong.  Basically.  It wasn't that we were doing things all along with "our own flair"...

No.

We were just doing them wrong.  All along.

Plain and simple.

And I basically was just like.... Oh my god FINALLY someone else agrees with what I've been TRYING to say for YEARS...

But no one would listen to me.

Sigh.

No one ever listens to me really... it's okay I'm used to it.

Haha.

Anyway, I don't have to be an unheard voice anymore... There's no subjective way to run a helpdesk.

There are global IT standards and best practices.

We're brining in this IT auditing company too to go around and look at every part of how we do things....

Again... FINALLY.

Accounting is accounting...

Anyway I love tickets.

Here's why.... People can basically say anything they want.

So, I mean, someone can state any fact.

With a ticketing system, we can then say... Okay hold on, let me go look that up.

SO, someone could say... "I have had this same problem with my PC 10 times in the last year!"

We've had people say stuff like this.

Before, we couldn't really say much because we never tracked anything... So, we just have to kind of react to that person without any solid data driven based decision.

It's a terrible way to work.

Now, we can say, okay, let's look at your ticket history.

And now you can say... "According to this, you had 2 requests... and one wasn't related to your PC at all..."

Accounting is accounting.

It's all really coming out of the portal systems.  So, the guy who we now have within IT has some really fancy reporting where he can look up things like vendor billing...

Someone the other day actually pointed a bill at us and said... "You guys have always paid this..."

The portal admin was just like... Let's have a look!

He made a report, and... We never paid it.  It had always been paid by someone else.

Data.  Facts.

There's no "personalized way"...

Track it.  Run reports.

Show people that the statement they made is either correct, or incorrect.

Accounting doesn't lie.  People do.  I have no time for people who don't cite their statements with a source.

Again, accounting doesn't lie.

Neither does a ticketing system.

Anyways, so it's amazing.  I look forward to more of this... My only hope is that we keep going in this direction.  I hope that we don't start to go back to how things were before where it was just like... everyone kind of running around not knowing what the left hand or the right hand are doing...

HOPEFULLY, it's a change that sticks around for a while...

Everything gets entered in the ticketing system.  Everything gets tracked.

Nothing is done "on the side".

It's not a "personalized touch"... It's just wrong.  There's a right way to do IT, and a wrong way... There's no, "this is just how we do things around here".

It all starts with a ticketing system and tracking every request that comes in and logging it all, and then running reports to analyze the reports.

Anyway, so I'm excited!

DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS!  TICKET HISTORIES!  REPORTING!

Yes.  Doing things in an industry standard way.

Oh, back to the new guy real quick... I'm also learning a LOT of new things from this new guy... He's just an all around really knowledgeable guy and he's also really cool to be around.  He's very empirical.

Like, he won't say... "I hate that".  He leaves his personal opinions at home.

He just states facts.  I love that.

As far as I'm concerned he was a solid hire.

Especially now that the new ticketing system is all setup.

I think one of the VPs at the college had the best wording the other day when she was commenting on the ticketing software... "You're finally coming into the 21st century".

I was just like... "Yes we are.  Yes we are."

What's sad about it is when I worked helpdesk when I was a student in college, we had ticket tracking software... at that college...

In 2004.

It's 2018.

Soooo, 14 years later just to get back to where I already was 14 years ago.

But hey, better late than never.

My only fear is that we have some friction and resistance to trying to make things better.

People don't really like change.  So, it's hard when change happens.

Just have to stick with it and show that there are benefits to doing things best practices and industry standard instead of the previous way.

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