A help desk is intended to resolve routine needs quickly, be well informed regarding other support points, and be able to connect users with those support points when the issue at hand is not routine. Several units maintain help desks. These help desks work together to some extent, but it is not clear that such working together has been made a formal job expectation. Help desks are costly to maintain, and finding people with the right combination of interpersonal and technical skills is a challenge. Sometimes units choose to expand their help desk availability with student employees.
Help desks represent an intense and demanding job, and help desk staff struggle with burn-out.
Academic units report a reliance on a variety of centrally-provided services. Other central services mentioned by one or more academic units include Unix support, UCInetIDs, Adcom's online financial and HR services, the modem pool, the UCI Computer Store, NACS' Workstation Acquisition Service, central help desks, software distribution, and mailing list services. The most common needs expressed by the academic units were for additional staffing and technical training activities. The next most urgent request was for substantially more effective communications among the schools and between academic units and central support organizations. Desires for computer system repair, volume purchase agreements for PC systems, reduced cost of NACS-DCS Unix support services, and loaner or demonstration systems were also mentioned.