As a follow-on project to the McHenry County Intranet recently completed by Risetime (see related success story – McHenry County Reaps Benefits from SharePoint 2007), McHenry County chose to leverage their investment in the SharePoint 2007 platform for the new Help Desk application.

Solution Overview
The new Help Desk application features seamless integration with the McHenry County SharePoint Intranet. This is a critical aspect of the solution since it provides employees with a familiar user interface and makes it easy to electronically submit requests for assistance. The new Help Desk application integrates with Active Directory and automatically populates each Help Desk request with identifying information (e.g. name, department, and extension) of the submitting employee. In addition, the new application’s search module allows IT staff members to search the legacy application’s database as needed. McHenry County now uses the SharePoint Help Desk solution to support the county’s 1,400 employees and its IT infrastructure.

Technical Overview
The new browser-based Help Desk application is built on McHenry County’s SharePoint 2007 platform, with .NET extensions that utilize SharePoint and its list functionality for data storage. The application also takes advantage of the SharePoint Object Model, saving significant development effort and allowing seamless integration with the existing SharePoint Intranet. In order to provide the IT Help Desk staff with a way to refer back to issues logged in the old system, SharePoint’s Enterprise Search component was configured to index and retrieve issues from the legacy help desk application and allow them to be viewed inside SharePoint. By using SharePoint “Features and Solutions”, Risetime was able to effortlessly deploy the web application without requiring the purchase of additional licenses or hardware. The solution also takes advantage of the security model and configuration of the McHenry County SharePoint Intranet.   

Value Measurement
The new SharePoint-based Help Desk application allows McHenry County to realize numerous benefits:

• By building the new Help Desk solution on their existing SharePoint platform, McHenry County was able to save on costs related to the acquisition of new hardware and licensing of new software.
• Since the new Help Desk application is browser-based, McHenry County is now free of the worries related to ongoing maintenance of a thick desktop client application, as well as annual software maintenance fees.
• The employee self service features reduce the number of phone calls required to log issues and check on the status of issues.  This is a time-saver for each employee and each member of the Help Desk support staff.
• Efficiency gains in the support process have freed up IT staff members to work on other IT initiatives.
• Dashboards allow the Help Desk support staff and managers to visually track metrics with ease and improve their ability to keep their support activities organized.
• A simplified help desk resolution process has reduced confusion, thereby reducing the number of people who must get involved in the resolution of issues.
• The searchable knowledge base increases the speed and accuracy of accessing the repository of resolved issues.
• The application is intuitive and very easy to use.  Extensive training was not necessary; most system users are able to perform system activities after reviewing the quick reference guide that was delivered as part of this solution.

To learn more about SharePoint HelpSmart, Risetime's service request solution for SharePoint, contact us now.