anyone who has gone through the painstaking process of setting up a help desk system know that setting up a help desk support department is not easy, it is great think through process that involve researching, and implementing the right software for the task. the first step often taking when setting up a help desk system is discovering the needs, and resources available to accomplish such task. sometimes the need is only to support a handful of people, in this scenario a free help desk software of an open source script can do the job. in other occasions the need requires to support hundreds of people, on that regard robust well supported help desk software is recommended.

A good Help Desk Application normally have the following options:

1. reliability and flexibility. spending too much time on backups and maintenance is not acceptable

2. friendly User Interface ” when users and technicians cant find things to do their jobs they become frustrated – that sometimes contribute to failure sometimes

3. users need to be able to submit their tickets from anywhere ” that could be email, phone or an easy to access web form

4. Have a help desk ticket history ” the software needs to keep records of active tickets, completed, and new tickets. on a help desk system sometimes you need run reports from the past, to discover trends, and sometimes to justify new staff.

5. have a good reporting feature ” you need this to identify issues

6. keep a database of computers and other devices. technicians need to be able to see whats running on the defective device

7. Remote Access for technicians ” this is not critical but very useful. this allow technicians to troubleshoot problems quickly without visiting everyones physical locations. now operating systems have this feature built-in but requires other modifications and permissions. it will be much better if a help desk software provide this by default.

Nowadays most help desk software applications provide these features, but to guaranty that you will get the best software to cover your needs, spend sometime demoing and reviewing as many applications as possible ” this will insure surprises in the future when it comes to scalability and expandability.

the steps on setting up a help desk system are as follow:

1. identify your needs and budget ” your needs could be : how many people you need to support, who are these people? where are these people, how these people will communicate with you, how many staff you have etc. then comes the budget, can you afford a commercial help desk app with many premium features, or you better off with a free help desk software because you dont have enough money? those questions need to be answered before start looking for a help desk software.

2. think for the future. when choosing an application make sure is well supported, or in the case of open source, it hasnt been abandoned by its developer(s) . also if its open source make sure it has an active community. think about growth, you dont want a software to become obsolete or not compatible with new OSs.

3. Now that we arrive to this step is time to start the process of finding the right help desk application. dont do the mistake of many inexperience people that just type a keyword on a search engine like Google and make their decisions on the first few results that come up. slow down, thats why you planned. in the vast sea of help desk application available today, you will be amaze how much time and money you will be able to save by adopting the right software by doing the right research.

4. at last you need to plan the availability and reliability of the help desk system , allocate the right resources for the software. if the requirements recommend such and such, do such and such, and then more. you want your help desk system to be available as much as possible and be reliable as well. now how you are going to build the credibility and trust from users that is longed in many IT help desks.

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