Good Computer Guy Help Desk
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I wanted to take a couple minutes to review my Help Desk, which has now been in operation for four months with great success.
The Help Desk, which can be reached by my website, www.goodcomputerguy.com, is the fastest, best way to get in touch with me and report a problem. Once on the web site, click on Help Desk in the top menu. There are two choices on that screen, Submit a new ticket and Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail, which I will explain below.
If you have any technical issues at all, please submit a ticket with as much information as possible about the problem. At the bottom of the ticket is a place to attach up to 2 files. Most of the time these will probably be used for screen shots, which can greatly help diagnose a problem, but it can be anything you think you need to attach.
After you click Submit Request you'll immediately get an email with your ticket number and a link back to the ticket. You can use that link to check on the progress and add more details as necessary. When your ticket is updated, with either questions from me or a resolution, you'll get another email with a link back to the ticket so you can read the response.
The last response from me might just be some documentation on the technical issue - there's no need to respond with "thanks" or anything like that, in fact that would just reopen a closed ticket. Also, please limit each ticket to just one issue. If you have multiple things to report you can submit multiple tickets.
If you lose one of your ticket numbers just click on the Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail link at the bottom of that first page. You'll immediately get an email with links to ALL of your tickets. (If you are a company owner or administrator you also have access to the company Master Ticket, which shows all the tickets submitted by everyone in your company.)
SCREEN SHOTS
A little aside about screen shots: please don't paste a screen shot into a Word document. A much better way to is to paste into Microsoft Paint, which is included with every copy of Windows, then save that picture onto your desktop (or wherever you want) and attach it to the ticket. To make a screen shot, hit either ALT-Prt Scr to get just the window/program in question, or CTRL-Prt Scr to get your entire screen. Once you have what you want, simply paste into Paint. You can even use Paint to crop down the screen shot to just what you want to show and annotate as necessary.
WHY USE THE HELP DESK INSTEAD OF EMAIL?
Email is great for communication. But email threads are disorganized and tend to get jumbled, confused, and lost. There's no easy way to track issues and problems and look back at history. Email threads also tend to creep into other topics. With a help desk ticket, issues are well defined and both of us can look at the same ticket to see the conversation, progress, and resolution. Later on if a problem comes up again we'll have good history to look back on. Even quick questions are better off as a ticket rather than an email. More often than not, what starts out as a quick email question end up going back and forth multiple times and morphing into something bigger. It's better to just start as a ticket, with all the information in it (please don't link a ticket back to an unrelated email.)
WHY NOT JUST CALL?
The Help Desk is the fastest way to report a problem too me. Unfortunately I can be in only one place at a time while juggling about 16 things, and that 17th one is a doozy. When a new ticket comes in it's easy for me to quickly assess the problem and get back to you as soon as I can, sometimes immediately. Phone calls should be limited to only extremely critical issues or Internet outages when you can't reach the help desk (common sense prevails.) I'm often working with other people, and just like you wouldn't like me to be interrupted while I'm working with you, they don't want me to field phone calls while I'm working with them. If the phone rings and I can't get it, it may be a while before I'm able to listen to a voicemail and know what is going on. I can usually get to tickets in the help desk much faster.
Finally, on both the phone and email issue, I occasionally have colleagues cover for me. They never have access to my voicemail or email, but do have access to the help desk.
WHAT SHOULD I USE THE HELP DESK FOR?
Everything. Really, even if you have just a minor problem and you're pretty sure I'm going to be there tomorrow anyway, go ahead and submit a ticket. It's very helpful to me to know about everything that happens with your computer or network. Also, there's a chance that some minor problem you're seeing is also being reported by other people on your network - that can be very helpful for me to quickly be aware of issues that could blossom into something bigger. Or it may be possible that I just resolved the same minor issue for someone else and can instantly fix your problem too. A help desk ticket should be the first place you turn.
WHEN SHOULDN'T I CREATE A NEW TICKET?
If there is already a ticket for your problem please just update the existing ticket rather than creating a new one. A new ticket on an existing problem just slows down my response as I will need to combine the tickets and delete the extra ticket first.
YOU WERE JUST AT MY DESK, WHY SHOULD I CREATE A TICKET? Or, YOU'RE IN MY OFFICE TODAY, CAN'T I JUST GRAB YOU WHEN YOU WALK BY?
See the juggling comment up above - by the time I get across the office and 4 people have grabbed me to ask about a new issue I've forgotten the first one and can't prioritize (OK, OK, I know YOURS is the most important problem, but I still have to deal with everyone else too!) After I resolve even a quick issue, I'd still like a ticket in the system to track what's going on, what has been done, what changes have been made, etc. It can help diagnose future issues down the road, and also is a good record of what I've been doing for you.
WHY DO YOU WRITE SO MUCH?
I think it's related to my mother. Boy, that woman can talk. I set out to write a quick reminder about the Help Desk and ended up with this. Sorry... extra points if you actually made it this far. And I look forward to helping you with any issues that come up! Ticket away....
I wanted to take a couple minutes to review my Help Desk, which has now been in operation for four months with great success.
The Help Desk, which can be reached by my website, www.goodcomputerguy.com, is the fastest, best way to get in touch with me and report a problem. Once on the web site, click on Help Desk in the top menu. There are two choices on that screen, Submit a new ticket and Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail, which I will explain below.
If you have any technical issues at all, please submit a ticket with as much information as possible about the problem. At the bottom of the ticket is a place to attach up to 2 files. Most of the time these will probably be used for screen shots, which can greatly help diagnose a problem, but it can be anything you think you need to attach.
After you click Submit Request you'll immediately get an email with your ticket number and a link back to the ticket. You can use that link to check on the progress and add more details as necessary. When your ticket is updated, with either questions from me or a resolution, you'll get another email with a link back to the ticket so you can read the response.
The last response from me might just be some documentation on the technical issue - there's no need to respond with "thanks" or anything like that, in fact that would just reopen a closed ticket. Also, please limit each ticket to just one issue. If you have multiple things to report you can submit multiple tickets.
If you lose one of your ticket numbers just click on the Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail link at the bottom of that first page. You'll immediately get an email with links to ALL of your tickets. (If you are a company owner or administrator you also have access to the company Master Ticket, which shows all the tickets submitted by everyone in your company.)
SCREEN SHOTS
A little aside about screen shots: please don't paste a screen shot into a Word document. A much better way to is to paste into Microsoft Paint, which is included with every copy of Windows, then save that picture onto your desktop (or wherever you want) and attach it to the ticket. To make a screen shot, hit either ALT-Prt Scr to get just the window/program in question, or CTRL-Prt Scr to get your entire screen. Once you have what you want, simply paste into Paint. You can even use Paint to crop down the screen shot to just what you want to show and annotate as necessary.
WHY USE THE HELP DESK INSTEAD OF EMAIL?
Email is great for communication. But email threads are disorganized and tend to get jumbled, confused, and lost. There's no easy way to track issues and problems and look back at history. Email threads also tend to creep into other topics. With a help desk ticket, issues are well defined and both of us can look at the same ticket to see the conversation, progress, and resolution. Later on if a problem comes up again we'll have good history to look back on. Even quick questions are better off as a ticket rather than an email. More often than not, what starts out as a quick email question end up going back and forth multiple times and morphing into something bigger. It's better to just start as a ticket, with all the information in it (please don't link a ticket back to an unrelated email.)
WHY NOT JUST CALL?
The Help Desk is the fastest way to report a problem too me. Unfortunately I can be in only one place at a time while juggling about 16 things, and that 17th one is a doozy. When a new ticket comes in it's easy for me to quickly assess the problem and get back to you as soon as I can, sometimes immediately. Phone calls should be limited to only extremely critical issues or Internet outages when you can't reach the help desk (common sense prevails.) I'm often working with other people, and just like you wouldn't like me to be interrupted while I'm working with you, they don't want me to field phone calls while I'm working with them. If the phone rings and I can't get it, it may be a while before I'm able to listen to a voicemail and know what is going on. I can usually get to tickets in the help desk much faster.
Finally, on both the phone and email issue, I occasionally have colleagues cover for me. They never have access to my voicemail or email, but do have access to the help desk.
WHAT SHOULD I USE THE HELP DESK FOR?
Everything. Really, even if you have just a minor problem and you're pretty sure I'm going to be there tomorrow anyway, go ahead and submit a ticket. It's very helpful to me to know about everything that happens with your computer or network. Also, there's a chance that some minor problem you're seeing is also being reported by other people on your network - that can be very helpful for me to quickly be aware of issues that could blossom into something bigger. Or it may be possible that I just resolved the same minor issue for someone else and can instantly fix your problem too. A help desk ticket should be the first place you turn.
WHEN SHOULDN'T I CREATE A NEW TICKET?
If there is already a ticket for your problem please just update the existing ticket rather than creating a new one. A new ticket on an existing problem just slows down my response as I will need to combine the tickets and delete the extra ticket first.
YOU WERE JUST AT MY DESK, WHY SHOULD I CREATE A TICKET? Or, YOU'RE IN MY OFFICE TODAY, CAN'T I JUST GRAB YOU WHEN YOU WALK BY?
See the juggling comment up above - by the time I get across the office and 4 people have grabbed me to ask about a new issue I've forgotten the first one and can't prioritize (OK, OK, I know YOURS is the most important problem, but I still have to deal with everyone else too!) After I resolve even a quick issue, I'd still like a ticket in the system to track what's going on, what has been done, what changes have been made, etc. It can help diagnose future issues down the road, and also is a good record of what I've been doing for you.
WHY DO YOU WRITE SO MUCH?
I think it's related to my mother. Boy, that woman can talk. I set out to write a quick reminder about the Help Desk and ended up with this. Sorry... extra points if you actually made it this far. And I look forward to helping you with any issues that come up! Ticket away....
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