# Presentation: 895432

## Computing DivisionHelpdesk Activity Report

- Rick Thies
- October 10, 2006

## DOE Certificate RA’s

- Helpdesk staff are Grid Registration Authorities (RA’s) and approve DOE Grid Certificate requests for FNAL and OSG Support Centers at Fermilab.
- Approval process for each request is usually ~5 minutes varying on how many databases need to be searched.
- Some requests for experiments (i.e. CDF and DZero are sent to a local mail list may take a few days for a responses.
- The Grid affiliation PPDG began phasing out in August, replaced by OSG.
- OSG metrics show granular detail of Helpdesk approving certificates. *(see next slide)*

## DOE Grid Certificate Approvals 2006

## OSG Support Center

- On the OSG front CD Helpdesk is listed as contact for several support centers.
- FermiGrid and USCMS support centers have been active for sometime.
- SDSS, CDF and DZero support centers are just getting started.
- The support centers have other groups that triage and fix problems.
- Through Remedy automation Rick has setup the assignment of problems to the various Grid Support Centers.
- Other than Grid certificate approvals, Helpdesk staff to date are quite immune to Grid issues.

## OSG Support Center

- There has been activity creating Remedy accounts and training for people at FNAL and ~9 universities.
- These people are working with tickets relating to Grid issues.
- Most recently trained people are Shaowen Wang and company at the University of Iowa, working with USCMS.
- Others that have been trained range from Caltech to MIT and University of Wisconsin to University of Florida.

## OSG Support Center

- In 2005 there were 89 Remedy Grid tickets.
- This calendar year there has been 207 tickets to date.
- Remedy (FNAL) and FootPrints (OSG) activity.
- Last year the first phase of pushing our Remedy tickets to the OSG FootPrints tracking software was completed.
- May/June 2006 work was completed where tickets from either software are pushed to create, update and set to resolve tickets in both directions.

## Remedy/Footprints Metrics

## Tel*Assist Answering Service

- Tel*Assist has been serving after hour’s Helpdesk calls for 2 years 3 months.
- Service keeps up to date pager schedules and contact numbers as backup
- 362 Remedy tickets have been created since starting for after hour’s calls.
- Though many of these calls have gone well, those that haven’t rise up and cause flurries of extra work.
- Two major problems with off hour calls are;
- Clients difficulty reporting what is wrong
- Time for service to take action.

## Tel*Assist Answering Service

- In September the after hour process changed
- Phone tree/messages were simplified
- Calls involve answering service passing info to Helpdesk on-call, where the on-call calls the client, determines action and takes action (normally creating ticket to start notification process).
- This is an interim plan while configuring a new process that will work well
- Early results indicate ”happy clients” as Helpdesk staff calls the user within a few minutes of clients initial call
- Helpdesk staff involvement takes less time and improves routing of issues

## Remedy and Remedy Metrics

- Added phone functionality to Remedy/TelAlert for notifications
- Work at the Helpdesk (to date 10/06)
- 4.3k tickets new accounts, PW changes, principles, email accounts, etc.
- .7k Account requests from Off-site visitors
- 1.9k Hardware service requests
- .6k Walk-ins
- Windows Desktop issues
- Patches, Spyware
- Remedy tickets from automation 1.4k (NGOP, Network, MSS, BSS tape mounts, etc.)

## Remedy Metrics (Source)

- 2005 54% more tickets
- Automated tickets +13%
- Manual Email tickets –17%
- Number of phone calls doubled
- Walk-ins +64%
- This year 14,153 tickets (2.5 months to go)

## Remedy Metrics 2005

## Remedy/Misjob Metrics 2005

## Tasks to work on .  .  .  .  .

- BCM400 Helpdesk phone switch
- Setup web server for reports
- Get Unified Messaging to run again
- Remedy
- Automate process for pager schedule entries
- Automate metrics to monthly statistics
- Off hour support
- Process for system administrators to enter/update systems and services
- Hardware Service call automation

## Helpdesk Time Consuming Chores

- Remedy and other manual tasks consume work cycles
- Staff spends a lot of time cutting & pasting data
- Maintaining Remedy forms for systems, pager schedules and staff changes.
- Client and CD staff email
- Accounts (Kerberos, mail, windows, crypto cards, etc.)
- Validating individuals
- Verifying and entering Database information and forms to complete new accounts
- Databases & forms accessed & updated for accounts CNAS, UserDB, Crypto Card Excel spreadsheet, CMS special principle, etc.

## Helpdesk Time Consuming Chores

- Remote Account Request Form
- This process is tightly tied to Users Office due with ID #’s.
- This added cycles to helpdesk work where there was previously no involvement.
- Hardware Service
- Additional time used when Misjob data is not up to date
- Waiting on task numbers, location, serial numbers, etc.
- Checking system warranties
- Keeping NGOP/Remedy in sync

## Remedy
Leverage all CD staff to use forms
Have client email replies directly update tickets
Revamp Remote account request form
Process to automate and have system administrators maintain systems, pager schedules and staff changes
Accounts (Kerberos, mail, windows, crypto cards, etc.)
Develop plan to automate process
Pre-certify clients have accounts available when clients start 

- Leverage all CD staff to use forms
- Have client email replies directly update tickets
- Revamp Remote account request form
- Process to automate and have system administrators maintain systems, pager schedules and staff changes
- Accounts (Kerberos, mail, windows, crypto cards, etc.)
- Develop plan to automate process
- Pre-certify clients have accounts available when clients start

- Helpdesk Time Consuming Choresand *possible* ***Remedies***