Overhaul your helpdesk ticketing system

Before implementing the Footprints helpdesk ticketing system MassArt had a homegrown system that was not user friendly and therefore by and large, unused. Does this sound familiar? The college needed a comprehensive, centralized, and customizable solution for issue tracking and technology requests. The new system was implemented in August 2006 and now ten months later we have closed over 1700 helpdesk tickets. This paper will cover the following: * evaluation of products * initial installation, setup, and implementation * learning curve for staff and users * initial problems and training * tweaking the system * working with the vendor * steps to succes. The package that we implemented at MassArt was Unipress* Footprints 7.0 (Footprints), we have since upgraded to 7.5 and have worked closely with Unipress to customize the product to our needs. Footprints is linked to our LDAP server for authentication, has a dynamic-link address book, and has built-in reporting and survey tools. We have been able to track issues very closely as well as increase productivity and accountability of work with this new system. The software is 100% web-based and runs on a Windows 2003 Server. The customer response has been 99% positive and we are very happy with our system thus far. This presentation strives to answer any questions that there may be about implementing a new system like this. The target audience is IT staff who either do not have a system in place or who are looking to implement a new system.