UCT heats up IT support

HEAT has been installed at UCT`s Personal Computing Services (PCS) department, a division of UCT`s Information Technology Services (ITS). ITS employs over 100 qualified technicians and IT specialists who support operations and users of UCT`s distributed IT infrastructure - from desktop installation and support to network administration, communication, central data-processing, information services and Web hosting.

Desktop support manager Kira Chernotsky says the challenges of maintaining an IT support department in a large academic institution are unique. While many boil down to budget constraints and legacy standards, the fact that there are hundreds of departments spread out across a wide geographic area also presents challenges.

"We support 5 000 PCs and 6 000 staff across the university`s main campus and satellite campuses in Cape Town," says Chernotsky. "Our `customers` are members of the university community; students, lecturers, professors and support staff. We can`t define service level agreements in the traditional sense because our response priorities are different."

ITS had been using Support Magic for its helpdesk, but the product lacked key features and functionality.

"Support Magic was not Y2K compliant, and we needed greater depth of management information to track and report on support calls," says Chernotsky. "Remote access to helpdesk resources, built-in escalations, asset tracking and local support for the software were also high on our wish list.

"HEAT gave us the features we wanted without the overkill of more expensive products," she adds. "We didn`t want an enterprise management system with dozens of features we`d never use, but rather a scalable solution that would grow with our needs and extend the helpdesk concept to other university departments."

Since its first-phase implementation in September, HEAT has been programmed with over 50 escalation options based on the nature and urgency of the logged call. It has also been customised to accommodate PCS`s unique data entry fields.

"It is important that with only 32 licences in place, all IT support staff and their managers across campus can be reached by the helpdesk, so the e-mail escalation feature is imperative."

HEAT is in its second implementation phase, integrating the various escalation options into the customised shell that went live in September. A third phase, introducing advanced escalations and a Web-driven helpdesk interface, is planned for the near future.

"We gauge our performance by how long it takes us to close calls to the callers` satisfaction," says Chernotsky. "Currently over 35% of all calls are closed within seven hours of the call receipt, and we`re working to improve on that by storing existing solutions in a cross-linked reference database."

Stanton Jandrell, GM of Ixchange`s Cape Town office, says: "As part of Ixchange`s contribution to the education sector in the Western Cape, GoldMine has, in addition to UCT, structured deals with University of Western Cape and University of Stellenbosch that enable these academic institutions to benefit from using HEAT at a significantly discounted rate."