Download this log to track and analyze your help desk activities

by Toni Bowers | Nov 05, 2002 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Toni Bowers

Takeaway:

Your help desk is responsible for resolving a multitude of IT problems to the clients’ satisfaction. Keeping track of these issues and their resolutions is a key factor in determining where IT spends its time and resources. There are a lot of expensive call tracking and problem resolution tools on the market that can help you track and analyze what’s going on in your department. But why spend the money when you can download this Excel spreadsheet that will do the same thing—for free?

This tool was developed by TechRepublic contributor Michael Sisco, who is the CEO of MDE Enterprises, an Atlanta-based IT management training and consulting company. The directions for using the download are as follows:

Review the template and modify the column heading reasons for help desk questions that you want to track and measure. Every time a support request is called in, log the item in the appropriate column and identify the source. Use the same name for your sources, such as an office name or department name, and you will be able to sort your data and analyze the recurrence of support issues by source. Simply add "1" to the appropriate cell for each new occurrence.

The key is to create the categories that you want to monitor and add them to the column headings. As time passes, you can modify the headings to track new issues, and even project issues, to help you monitor the effectiveness of project implementations. Analyze the data by sorting the Location column. If you’ve used consistent names for your locations, you’ll be able to see trends by location as well as by cause. Seeing the trends will help you identify preventive actions that can improve IT support for the company. You can also create a spreadsheet and track the problem reasons by month to monitor whether your efforts are paying off.

Monitoring and analyzing help desk activity can help you zero in on where IT is spending its time and monitor the effectiveness of your project implementations.

Print/View all Posts Comments on this article

Like this would work? MrsPost | 11/05/02

yes but... jenniferN | 11/05/02

Bad data or no data? MrsPost | 11/06/02

Ditto above - it might work for really s mark.tomko@... | 11/06/02

It has worked for us psbkp | 11/06/02

Here's another free option - That works ppoteete | 11/07/02

Database needed davec@... | 11/12/02

Freeware Access DB? pentonville@... | 04/01/03

Freeware Helpdesk DB Libby.H@... | 04/30/03