Buying buses without drivers - and computers without support

Our local group of K-12 technology leaders shared some interesting numbers this past week about how many devices each one of their technicians usually supports. The numbers were very telling, especially when looked at in the light of the increasing spend on educational technology, which topped out at over $13 billion this past year, up over 11% from the past year.  Several districts shared that their technicians were now supporting between 1,100 and 1,300 devices each.  By any measure, this is a daunting workload for one person. One district shared that its workload for each technician was more than 1,900 devices. This monumental workload is only being increased as schools increasingly turn to technology for almost all back office functions and instructional use. 

 

Can we really expect that teachers and students are getting the attention they need and work-order turnaround times they deserve, when they rely so heavily on technology? In what other industry should a professional have to wait a week to have his or her technology operational again? Yet in K-12 this happens all the time, as schools buy more software and hardware, yet fail to fund the personnel needed to ensure high availability and quick repair times. 

 

Many technology departments have even faced personnel cuts, as budgets have been tightened. Is this really setting K-12 up for success in implementing technology, or is this a recipe for disaster? What district would add 100 buses to its fleet without more mechanics and bus drivers? Of course this would not be done, as it is plainly ridiculous. Nonetheless, districts do this with technology every day, without assessing the real impact on teachers and students of having poorly supported technology.

                    This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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The best purchase we have made in recent years – iSupport. Taking help desks to another level

In a previous post I mentioned the need for overworked school IT staff of a top notch help desk system.  I also laid out what my staff and I felt were the major features we needed from a system to help our staff provide better and more efficient service to our customers.

I usually shy away from writing outright product recommendations, but given how great of a product we ended up with, I wanted to be sure and share this with other school districts and any other growing IT department that has needs that go beyond a basic help desk ticketing system.

After many months of requirements gathering, web research, and product demos, we ended up selecting our new service desk, iSupport.  iSupport is only in the business of selling and supporting their awesome help desk offering.  They do  one thing and they do it extremely well.  And lest you think they stole the name from that other “i” company, iSupport has been in the help desk business a very long time and focuses on making a very good product better with every release.

I am not going to get into the feature set of the product – let me just say it is robust and more configurable than almost any product I have ever seen.  There is almost always a way to make this system fit your needs and processes.  And if you can’t figure it out, the BEST tech support I have received is just a phone call away.  If you want to know about features and functions, try visiting their site, requesting a trial, or perusing some of their Youtube videos.

Our implementation of iSupport is not done – we have a great start with incident management, a parts store, parts charging, knowledgebase, end user portal, automated reporting, and several custom incident templates, email notifications, and more.  Next up we are looking to roll out a service catalog and purchasing handbook.  The great part is that we are able to move almost all of our customer interaction right into iSupport, so that they only have one place to go when in need of assistance.  At the end of the day, proving our customers the best service possible is our goal, and iSupport is helping us to do that better.

This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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Help us help our customers please!

While this may seem a mundane topic, I want to talk about the stalwart backbone of most IT departments:  the help desk.  The busier my wonderful IT staff gets, the more devices and schools they support, the more we are increasingly needing a robust system that can support the increasing demands placed on our busy staff.

Like many schools IT departments, we never allocated a lot of budget funds to the help desk.   We have used a few different systems, which to some extent always seems to be just OK or good enough.   Maybe we got a deal on the software, maybe we could not afford something better, or in the case of our current system, the help desk came as part of a larger software bundle.  It was easy to justify using something that we basically got free as part of another department’s larger software bundle purchase.  But at the end of the day, we now know that the software indeed was a very small insignificant part of the software package.  It has basically been ignored by the company for years, in spite of many customers’ requests for features we feel are needed for increasingly hard pressed IT staffs.

After doing some looking around at what is being offered currently in the help desk market, there are clearly a lot more players and options to choose from, then there were ten years ago.   SaaS and the cloud have had a huge impact on this market.  There are many very affordable cloud based systems available that might be a great tool for IT departments.  Here is a decent (but by no means comprehensive) list of some cloud based systems: http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/communication-roundups/10-online-support-and-help-desk-apps/ . There are still many traditional hosted systems as well, which still can be very attractive offerings and competitively priced.

And from my research, cloud does not at all necessarily equate to a help desk being inexpensive. One of the most comprehensive help desk systems I have seen, which offers a plethora of advanced features for change management, etc. is incredibly expensive and probably not within the reach of most school IT departments.

So what does our IT department need in a help desk?  Well….good question.  I have started a long list of what we would like to see.  While the list is not done, it gives a pretty good idea of what we are wanting.  And my guess is, that many other IT departments, in schools and other industries, would probably like an affordable help desk systems that offers these same set of features.  The features list is available on my CTO Technotes blog at: http://ctotechnotes.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-requirements-list-for-solid-it-help.html

This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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My requirements list for a solid IT help desk

After looking for a while at many help desk systems available, I have been refining a requirements list for a new system for our IT department.  This list is not complete, but I have the feeling that if an affordable help desk system can meet these requirements, we will be very likely to take a serious look at the system and give it a thorough test drive.

1. System should offer robust API access, ODBC access to data, OR direct access to SQL tables.
2. System should offer possibility to manage IT equipment orders with associated tickets needed for setup, installation, etc.
3. System should have Active Directory integration to handle user data and authentication.
4. System should be browser based and works in all modern browsers.
5. It should also should work on mobile phones, tablets, etc.
6. System should allow option to utilize SSL security.
7. System interface must be simple and intuitive.
8. System should feature a Quick ticket for phone support - ie one screen problem and resolution recording for phone support.
9. System should feature end user ticket creation through web, email.
10. Help desk staff should be able to update tickets through email.
11. System should feature automated email notification of user on tickets creation, updates, and closure.
12. System should intermediate all email between help desk agents and end users - and keep all communication fenced within the ticketing system.
13. System should offer comprehensive/customizable customer satisfaction survey at the closure of every ticket.
    1. Satisfaction data should be exposed through the API.
14. System should feature a method for recording of how the ticket was created (web, email, phone).
15. System should allow creation of FAQs/Knowledgebase - this should be categorized and searchable
    1. Should allow tickets to be converted to FAQs.
16. System must allow for unlimited end user web access (no licensing or limits for end users.)
17. System must allow for concurrent agent licensing - OR preferably unlimited  agents.
18. System should allow linking of individual help desk tickets to global issue, allowing resolution of global issue to update/close all linked tickets and send corresponding email notification(s).
19. System should feature a Global Notification Banner or method to inform users of issues or outages.
20. System should have ticket categories.
21. System should have configurable, rule based SLAs.
    1. They Should be able to be tied to ticket categories.
    2. SLAs should adhere to business hours, holidays.
    3. SLAs should allow to for certain statuses to not affect SLA(ie awaiting parts.)
    4. Should readily show technician which ticket(s) are in danger of not meeting the SLA.
22. System should support custom work-flows based on categories and for approvals as needed.
23. System should allow for multiple service/help desk projects to provide functionally separate service/help desks – i.e. one for Human Resources and another for Technology Support.  These should have separate queues, but allow for tickets to be reassigned across queues.
24. System must offer robust customizable reporting capabilities in both text and graphical formats to track trends, call volumes, technician totals, category totals, average service times by category, average service times by technician, SLAs met, etc.  
    1. Reporting data should be exposed to the API.
25. System should support automatic rule based escalation - this may be tied to SLA rules.
26. System should have configurable tickets statuses.
    1. Statuses should allow for creation of statuses that do not count against tickets resolution time.  
27. System should allow for file attachment to ticket by users and/or agent.
28. Add multiple users to a ticket.
    1. Any ticket email notifications should go to all users on ticket, once added.
29. System should allow for two way email communications within the system - no end user ticket replies should ever be sent to the agent's personal email - they should go directly into the system.
30. When looking up users with identical names, we should be able to see distinguishing data from Active Directory (title, location, etc.)
31. System should support configurable locations that can be part of a ticket.
    1. Reporting should report on location.
32. System should have ticket agent collision detection.
33. Allow tickets to be emailed by agent.
34. System should track a parts inventory with pricing information.
    1. Parts should be able to be added to tickets and provide a cost on the ticket.
35. System should allow for ticket escalation based on time.

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Staffing for the back to school tidal wave

Very few if any school technology departments are staffed to the levels seen in most companies of similar size.  By most measures, school technician staffing is at levels unheard of in the private sector.  Numbers like one technician per 500 or 1000 computers are rampant in K-12 institutions.  Other measures that look at how many FTEs (full time equivalents) the average technician supports are equally skewed; one technician often serves many hundreds of employees.  And these numbers don’t even take into account the huge students populations and enormous device count supported in districts. 

These numbers point to vastly overworked technical staffs at most K-12 institutions.  I would argue that many of these departments are slim staffed during the best of times, such as November and December, when typical K-12 workloads are about as light as they ever get during the crazy cyclical K-12 calendar.

When August hits, most school technical staffs are stretched beyond belief.  In what other industry do IT staffs face thousands of returning users in a just a couple of weeks.  Staffs have to cope with many routine items, such as disconnected equipment, accounts, forgotten credentials and the like.  These are often compounded by roll-outs of new technology and systems over the summer, much of which is guaranteed to result in more help desk calls and/or technician visits.

There are many strategies that can be implemented to at least help with some of the back to school crush, and many of us keep asking for more support staff to cope with the workload, but this often does not meld well with economic realities.  So after losing technical staff to budget cuts, while servicing an ever expanding student and device population, this year we decided to try a different strategy, often used in the business world, during cyclical peak periods. 

This year we budgeted for and are hiring multiple temporary technicians to service back to school work orders and to assist with the always ringing help desk phones.  And to further save funds to allow more technicians to be hired, my staff went the extra mile to hire their own temps, rather than rely on an outside agency.  This strategy will allows us to increase our technicians by at least 60% for up to three months, at about 55% of the cost of one FTE.  While we have yet to see how this will work out, we think this strategy will be much more economically palatable, while allowing us to offer up much quicker turnaround time to our customers.

We know there are dangers.  Our biggest fear is that these techs will lack the institutional knowledge of common issues and normal procedures.  We are hopeful that we can hire ones with good personalities that will keep our very high standards of customer service, but we will have to watch this very carefully for sure.

This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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A good forecast for successful cloud purchases

At this point in time, I would guess that every organization has at least some experience using the cloud.  But often, as IT leaders, we are often either bypassed or an afterthought, when other departments and leaders can purchase and turn up a cloud service, quicker than you can say purchase order.  Yet not having IT involved in cloud decisions can certainly negatively impact an organization.  Cloud purchasers often forget to ask about user and data management, and integration with existing systems.  An adopted  cloud system which does not play well with other systems, which has its own separate user repository, or for which security is an afterthought, can quickly turn into an nightmare for IT or for the adopters who did not know what questions to ask the provider.

Just the other day I was speaking with a small cloud provider, who had pretty good answers for most of my questions, but what was unsaid was the fact that this was the equivalent of a mom and pop cloud provider, which was most likely one car accident away from dissolution of the cloud company.  That could pose a big risk for our organization, especially if this was a critical cloud service.

An IT director in Schertz, Texas, Myles Clauser, recently shared a list of questions to ask cloud providers, before deciding if their service is right for your organization.  This is a pretty tough set of questions and you may be willing to accept a variety of answers, depending on what the particular service is, nonetheless this is a great set of questions to help vet the rapidly expanding list of cloud services:

Questions and considerations for using cloud providers:

1.       Ownership of all data must be spelled out. Many cloud providers specify that using their services means relinquishing ownership of the data.

2.       What format is the data stored in at the host site?

3.       Where is the live data actually stored? Where are the backups stored? (Are all sites within the continental US?)

4.       Is it encrypted – either in transport or in storage. This includes backups.

5.       Is there any possibility for vendor staff to review / copy / duplicate the data (with the exception of routine backups) without our knowledge?

6.       Is the data / information we contemplate storing in the “cloud” subject to any relevant Federal, State or other privacy requirements or agreements already in place? (i.e.: PCI compliance, HPPA, FIPS, CJIS, etc.) If so what documentation can the vendor supply that ensures that their storage and delivery systems comply with those requirements?

7.       Are there any limitations regarding access to the data – i.e.: are we notified in advance of planned downtimes, etc.

8.       Are there any QOS provisions in the agreement – i.e.: the data will be available 24/7, 7 days / week with a guaranteed minimum response time from their system based on agreed-upon criteria.

9.       If we delete data from a system what proof do we get that the data has been removed from backup systems, disaster recovery sites, etc.?

10.   What formats can we use to retrieve any and all data – i.e.: what utilities exist that will allow us to archive data in industry-standard formats for later retrieval by City staff without having to work through or with the vendor’s proprietary format.

11.   Since this is a web-based system can the vendor provide certification that their systems are updated regularly? This includes patches, antivirus systems, backend databases, web interfaces, etc.

12.   How often does the vendor perform security audits on their systems and when was the last one done? Can we see the results?

13.   What is their policy regarding informing us if a data breach occurs? Are they liable to us for any damages, remediation costs, etc.?

14.   If the vendor is contacted by an outside party (i.e.: subpoenas, open records requests, etc.) to provide information contained in one of our documents, how do they respond? If we are required to hold data for litigation purposes do they have a mechanism / system in place to do so or are we on our own?

15.  What provisions have been made to protect our data if the vendor closes its doors or is sold

This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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The Technology Quick Fix

After the marathon season of conferences and presentations, I have succumbed to an unexpected mid-summer illness.  Maybe this was a random occurrence or my body’s way of letting me know you have been pushing too hard too fast for a while.

All the presentations I have given and the conferences, meetings, and seminars I have attended speak to my need to learn and share with others, as well as the need for those of us in the technology world to try to get some feeling that we are somehow keeping up with the monumental shifts that technology is bringing to education and elsewhere.  I have learned a lot and then again I have learned that there are a host of great tools and technologies out there, and they are getting better every day.  But I have also never been so clearly a believer that, as these technologies improve, they will somehow transform an under-performing school or teacher into the best of their breed. 

The more I see great presentations on new technologies, systems, and devices, the more I worry that these are often bought as a quick fix for low performance, bad leadership, or other struggles that school systems and teachers face.

Yes many of these incredible technologies have great promise – but as school IT leaders we must always be willing to have some tough conversations with those we work with about making sure that these technologies are brought in not as a fix for bad teaching or leadership, but as a way to make great teachers and even better teacher.  This is really that only way that these technologies can really help schools excel in the long term.

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What should we measure in our technology departments?

It is very easy to assume things are working well and that our IT departments are functioning excellently.  But if we really want to confirm that, what metrics should we measure?

There may not be a one size fits all answer on this, as there are so many variables in the equation, but ultimately there are a few key things that most of us should be tracking, to help us gauge workloads, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

At the core of many IT departments, sits a help or service desk. If we don’t have a handle on these numbers, then that is the place to start.  The service desk is a window into our IT operations that can shed a lot of light on our operations.  

There are lots of things to measure – time to resolution, technician workload, technician efficiency, recurring problems, and more.  Most of us strive to turn around trouble tickets as fast as we can, while at the same time making sure the customer is satisfied and received excellent service.    So I would start with measuring these numbers.   If you do not have a way to measure customer satisfaction with work performed, then it may be time to shop for a new help desk.

Going over these numbers regularly with your managers and staff helps promote an efficient service oriented operation.   If staff is thinking about how their work is perceived by customers, then they are likely to provide better service.  Bad service ratings and customer satisfaction may be meaningful indicators of a serious IT problem that is not resolved, or they may indicate an overworked staff or even possibly show an employee issue that needs to be addressed.

At the end of the day, tracking many of these service desk related metrics should help us better understand the work our staff is performing and hopefully allow us to improve our operations and our customer service.

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Sweat the Small Stuff

Photo by See-Ming Lee http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/3921035528/

I read a very interesting blog post on Linked In by Jon Steinberg.  In his post, he acknowledges that while there is value and a time and place for long term strategic thinking, the real work gets done when we focus on the details at hand.  As he states, “The real work gets done day in day out operating a little bit better.”

In K-12 technology, many districts spend a lot of time devote to creating a technology plan, often driven by the necessity of having one for receiving priority two eRate funds.  These plans can add a lot of value to our organizations, but at the end of the day they can be meaningless if we cannot get our day to day activities right.  Better yet we should always be focused on ways to improve what we do, and how our organizations operate.   If we can’t master the details of the here and now, how are we going to achieve the long term goals in our technology plans?

Too often, I see colleagues, business partners, and other schools miss little details or worse yet, not even worry about the details. Not worrying about the details can make you and your organization look inept and worse yet, can cause projects to miserably fail.  All of this cascades and eventually destroys credibility and ability to execute goals and plans.

In our IT world, with tens of systems being more interdependent each day and thousands of staff, students, and parents relying on us, the details are becoming more important than they ever have been.  Missing a step, forgetting a small piece or data, or misunderstanding system interdependencies can all lead to huge problems, and slow down projects, kill systems, and ultimately put a bad light on IT.

So there may be good reason why we wake up at 3am sweating the small stuff; that small remembered detail can mean the difference between success and failure.

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The human side of IT management - Go ahead and hug your IT team today

There are so many times in technology where our teams are under immense pressure; there is the start of school with what seems to be an insurmountable mountain of work orders, the stress of a system failure, or the worries for a smooth system implementation. All of this takes its toll on our employees, and sometimes I wonder if as IT leaders we do not spend enough time doing simple things to make our staff’s work lives a little bit better.  

 

This is my cutest blog post ever.....

IT staff often have incredibly difficult jobs, but sometimes we need to be IT coaches and let our team members know that they did a good job and give them a pat on the back. It’s the little statements that we make that can show our human side and help make our employees feel valued. Maybe school's IT departments can’t offer free employer-provided meals, ping pong tables, and break rooms with TVs and sofas, but we can show our human side now and then.

 

Employees need encouragement and praise when things are done well. Don’t forget the value of a simple good morning, a thoughtful hello, or a chance to laugh with our coworkers. Sure, I wish I had some of the flexibility for rewarding my staff that my colleagues in the private sector have, but we do have things we can offer too. As school leaders we can often offer better work hours, a generous set of vacation and days off, and what can arguably amount to a better work/life balance than the private sector. 

 

In the end I know that I always need to work on letting my employees and coworkers know that we are on a team, that I value them, and that I am here to work with them and for them. This is not an easy task, nor is it one that ever ends. So this coming year, hopefully all of us can strive to show our fantastic IT staff how much they mean to us by being just a bit more human and taking a moment to show we care.

This blog is cross posted at SchoolCIO - at http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&entryid=5164 

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Documenting work to ensure consistency & sustainability

Technology personnel tend to love new projects, challenges, and the fun of learning and implementing new technologies, but much like any profession, there are necessary duties that tend to get put off for a less busy day or because there is other work that is more interesting. Documenting tasks, processes, and systems tends to fall into the less interesting work category, but it is vital that it be done well, as the number and complexity of IT systems is growing.

 

There are few employees that can remember every step taken and every configuration option selected when setting up a new system, so documenting as the work is being done has to become a part of a culture of a technology department. The other part of this equation is that IT staff tend to be highly mobile, and school IT staff are no different. Most can work equally well in or out of education, which means that school IT departments will have periodic staff changes. But what happens when the new staff member needs to upgrade a system or fix one that has failed? If the staff member that setup the system is no longer around and there is no documentation as to what was initially done, this can lead to extended down time, funds spent on consultants, and so on.

 

As technology leaders, we need to look closely at our internal processes and documentation and decide if we are doing the best job at documenting what is being done by our IT personnel. If it is not being done, or not being done well, then it is time for us to start planning a new year’s resolution and make documentation a year long push for our staff. It will take this long and, truthfully, longer. Once basic documentation is done it will still need updates, changes, etc. And new systems will be added. So once started, the impetus to keep documenting must be sustained.

 

Find a standardized place to house the documentation for your staff. At our district, we chose a private wiki that is housed on our corporate intranet. It is quick and easy to search for and to add information, which makes our staff more likely to use it. Do not ignore this factor, since if it is a pain to use the documentation system put in place, people will most likely not use it.

This blog posting is cross-posted at SchoolCIO at http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=5112

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We closed another work order, but does anyone know if the customer's happy?

With school budgets being filleted and diced year after year, many school districts’ IT departments have spent a lot of time trimming fat, cutting products, and squeezing budgets and employees for efficiency. One of the big dangers of all this cutting is that we will lose sight of the end goal—keeping our customers happy.

 

This year in our IT department we wanted to step back and look at how our customers perceived our day-to-day work. So we embarked on creating a simple tool to measure how well we were doing for every work order we completed. Every day, we send surveys to customers when their work orders are closed. The survey simply asks customers if their problem was solved and five questions about our service.

 

 An interesting by product of this measurement is that we now have a way to identify customers who had a bad experience, and we can try to go back and work on making the issue right or reopen a work order if their problem was not solved to their satisfaction the first time around.

 

Each weekend, all help desk technicians (all of our IT staff) get a report showing how they did for the week. They also get a list of free-form comments left by customers, both happy and unhappy. Additionally, each staff member also gets to see where they rank in relation to their colleagues. The openness of this data has certainly caused many of us to step back and think about how we are interacting with those we serve. It may be simple courtesies while on the phone or writing out our work-order solutions with correct grammar in complete sentences, but either way the end result should be a better customer experience. 

 

In the end, paying attention to the many details is what builds a great team and great customer service, which we do not want to sacrifice, even in the name of efficiency in lean times.

This blog is cross posted with SchoolCIO at http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=4981

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Stretching Technology Dollars - Being Leaner and More Efficient

I was recently asked about how school districts can stretch tight technology funds - here is my quick 2 cents:

Given that many districts are struggling to retain staff, pay for fuel, deal with increasing student enrollment etc,  many of us are certainly struggling to pay for what we would not consider ambitious projects.  Or said differently, we can all think of more grand plans for times when budgets are not as tight.  That being said, there are a lot of ways to try to stretch funds:

1. Local desktop virtualization (such as Fiddlehead, nComputing, etc)
2. Server virtualization
3. Look at VDI (virtual desktops) and calculate TCO for your organization.  We reused old PC's as endpoints and disaster recovery NOC with underutilized computing power, so VDI did make financial sense for us.  
4. Leverage eRate discounts for telecommunication costs and for matching funds on network equipment
5. Start using eForms for faster routing and less paper usage
6. Leverage power management on your computers - I estimate we saved $120,000 in four years doing this
7. Try to consolidate servers and the product lines you support (of course BYOD changes this)
8. Eliminate inffective applications or one that are little used
9. Leverage BYOD - you may be able to cut some capital expenditures
10. Renegotiation of contracts
11. Sign longer contracts for larger discounts with trusted partners
12. Competitively bid large purchases
13. Buy used/refurbished equipment
14. Automate identity management and application user provisioning
15. Deliver apps via the web and get away from software installs when feasible
16. Leverage smart fleet management with desktop management products

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