HELP FOR THE HELP DESK

Information technology organizations at colleges and universities are beleaguered by the increasing demand for desktop client support. In the past five to ten years the "computer center" migrated from an "end-of-the-line" support unit into the forefront of the organizational communications infrastructure, adding thousands of clients to institutional campus networks and to the Internet.

This paper will provide a useful guide to the strategies used by colleges and universities to meet the growing demand for desktop client support, including proprietary and locally developed Help Desk software and intranet-based "self-help websites". Benchmark data are included by institutional control, size and type for Help Desk staffing, average number of clients per FTE staff member, and average number of calls per client per month.

Sometime in the past five to ten years the "computer center" migrated from an "end-of-the-line" support unit into the forefront of the organizational communications infrastructure. The computer center made a transition from being like the print shop, where clients dropped off "jobs" for processing and picked them up later, to being like the telephone switch at the very center of the campus communications infrastructure. Electronic mail, Intranet, and World Wide Web access for all faculty, staff, and students are now expected on most campuses. An increasing number of classes utilize electronic mail and internet access as a routine aid to the instructional process. Much of the business of the institution is transacted electronically over the campus network, and an increasing amount of external business will follow. Many government agencies already accept reports over the Internet, and in the very near future some will require this method of communication.

While some institutions are still in the process of providing a networked desktop computer for every faculty and staff member, most are well along the path to accomplishing this goal, and are now struggling to support those computers. Almost every issue of the higher education related publications now contain announcements from one or more campuses that have decided to provide a computer for every student. The need for substantial technology assistance inevitably follows this massive rush to the campus network. In survey after survey college and university representatives identify providing adequate support for campus computing during a time of "increased expectations" by students and faculty members as one of the top technology issues is.

To assist institutions in addressing their support expectations the author conducted an electronic mail survey of over 1,400 colleges and universities to gather some data about their Help Desk operations. Specifically the survey requested the following data:

1. The number of Full-Time Help Desk Employees.
2. The number of Part-Time Help Desk Employees
3. The approximate number of clients on the institutional network
4. The approximate number of Help Desk calls per month
5. The name of any proprietary Help Desk software used, or
6. The name of any in-house software used for the Help Desk, and,
7. A link to any web-based Help Desk FAQ or similar capability.

Over 300 institutions responded to the survey, providing several interesting insights into how colleges and universities are addressing the need for desktop computing support on campus. Appendix A shows the distribution of responding institutions by institutional control, size, and type. As might be suspected, more public institutions responded, and about 60% of the responding institutions were universities. The distribution of responding institutions by size was reasonably representative. It is likely that there is some "halo" effect of one institutional category on another, for example over half of the responding institutions are universities, and most of those are public as well as large institutions. Still, the benchmark data should be helpful for chief information officers as they compare their individual situations.

In recent years there has been considerable discussion about institutional standards for networked desktop computing, but visits to about one-third of the websites listed by the institutions responding to the electronic survey indicates this discussion is essentially over. From the hardware perspective almost all of the institutions support both Intel and Macintosh client computers. This issue was best paraphrased from one recent comment on the EDUCAUSE CIO Discussion List. "CIO's do not have to make this decision. The market will decide; both platforms are currently present on most campuses, and therefore require support. If Apple survives, continued support will be required, and if not, then support will not be required."

From the software perspective, most of the campus websites visited support the most popular web browsers, Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and one or two common electronic mail packages such as Eudora and web browser based mail. Practically all of the sites visited support Microsoft Office, (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and many also support one or more other word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation packages. The larger the institution, the more likely it will be that multiple software packages are supported.

Some recent articles published by EDUCAUSE indicate that the process and the forum for coming to agreement on which desktop hardware and software to adopt as a campus standard is at least as important as the final selection.

The Help Desk has been defined as a central point of contact in an institution where students, faculty, and staff can turn for solutions to technology related problems and questions. Most institutions use either a proprietary software package, or a locally developed application to assist the staff of the Help Desk manage their activities. Typical features of both the proprietary and local packages are:

1. Request tracking & fulfillment
2. Work order history files
3. Desktop computer hardware inventory and configurations
4. Desktop computer software inventory and licensing information
5. Regular status reports of fulfilled and outstanding requests
6. Client access to request status and work order history files
7. Solution inventory for frequently asked questions (FAQ)
8. Links to "tip sheets" and other self-help documentation
9. Links to information technology policies and procedures.

Many of the Help Desk proprietary and local packages are migrating to the institutional Intranet to provide the entire client community access to support information through the use of their favorite web browser. As with all applications, the Help Desk software continually improves with experience, gaining additional capabilities on a regular basis.

There were 44 different proprietary software packages mentioned by 179 responding institutions, and the full list appears in Appendix B. Eight different packages were mentioned by five or more responding institutions, and that list also appears in Appendix B, along with the location of the corporate headquarters for the appropriate vendor. The two packages mentioned the most number of times were HelpDesk by Remedy and HEAT by Bendata. These two packages accounted for over one-third of the entries. It was surprising that no web response was available for one of the eight packages, and for another all of the material available on the web was in German, with no English version. One can only assume that the institutions using that package do have documentation written in English. Seventeen of the responding institutions mentioned that they were currently evaluating Help Desk packages.

About 40% of the responding institutions mentioned the language used for locally written software used to support their Help Desk. The list of these packages appears in Appendix C, along with a table of the following five specific languages mentioned:

1. Microsoft Access
2. FileMakerPro
3. Oracle
4. Visual Basic, and
5. Web-based.

Microsoft Access was the dominant language mentioned, accounting for almost one-third of the responses. Only 27 institutions did not list either proprietary or in-house software used to support their Help Desk, including the 17 currently evaluating packages.

A majority, almost sixty percent, of the responding institutions list a link to an institutional Help Desk website, but upon examination there were a variety of links given. About one-third listed links to actual web-based Help Desk sites, and those ranged from a simple screen supplying the telephone number for a voice or voice-mail Help Desk to full searchable databases of answers to frequently asked questions. Many of the Help Desk websites provided a categorized list of answers to frequently asked questions.

Only 4% of the Help Desk listed Intranet sites available only for on-campus access, and some of those required a login and password. A few institutions indicated that their Help Desk website was "under construction," and only three provided links to external websites as their primary source of help. Another small group of institutions indicated either a link to a general information technology departmental website or to the institution's general website. A check of these few links did not reveal an obvious link to a web-based Help Desk of any type.

The data on Help Desk staffing is particularly interesting. Appendix E displays the summary data both in tabular and graphic formats by institutional control, size, and type. The charts show that there is very little difference in Help Desk staffing between public and private institutions, and there are the expected differences by institutional size. The one surprise is that there is little difference in staffing level between the medium and medium-large institutions, indicating a probable "fixed cost" staffing level for institutions with enrollment from 2,000 up to 18,000 students. As might be expected, Help Desk staffing levels for universities are much higher than for four-year colleges, and both are much higher than for the two-year colleges.

Significant differences emerge from the survey data in the area of the number of clients per full time equivalent (FTE) Help Desk staff as shown in Appendix F. Each Help Desk staff member in public institutions supports more than twice the number as their counterpart in private institutions. Similar differences are apparent by institutional size, with the medium-sized institutions showing the best level of support with 333 clients per FTE Help Desk staff member. It could be expected that universities show the largest number of clients per FTE Help Desk staff member, since they tend to have more technologically self-sufficient clients. Institutions with websites for the Help Desk tend to have a heavier client load FTE Help Desk staff member than those institutions with none, indicating that web-based help does reduce Help Desk staffing requirements.

The data on the number of clients per FTE Help Desk staff member differ sharply with the levels of support sometimes reported in the trade press. Industry publications regularly mention one FTE Help Desk staff member for each 50 to 100 clients, and these data indicate that colleges and universities are supporting between 300 and 1,800 clients per FTE Help Desk staff member.

On a final dimension, the average number of Help Desk calls per client per month displayed in Appendix G indicates that clients in private institutions call the Help Desk more often than those in public institutions. The average number of Help Desk calls per client per month varies inversely to institutional size, with three times as many calls per client in large institutions than in small institutions. The same differences are apparent between universities, four-year colleges, and two-year colleges, and the professional and medical schools top the list with over five times as many calls per client per month as the universities.

The expectations for technical support for the use of desktop computers in colleges and universities is increasing faster than the central information technology organizations can respond. This may be a temporary phenomenon, but it appears that it will last longer than anyone expected.

In the early 1900's the telephone was a simpler device introduced into a simpler society, whereas the computer is a more complex device introduced into a more complex society, but there are some interesting parallels. In both instances the rate of absorption was more rapid than the population was prepared for, creating the need for technological education. It is reported that when the Bell Telephone Company first introduced the dial telephone they conducted seminars on its use for sixth graders. They judged that the students were old enough to understand the technology, and they would go home and teach their parents how to use the device.

Just recently Information Week carried a brief article about the technology Help Desk at the Pike County School System in Kentucky. All 33 employees are high school pupils, and they serve some 11,000 students and teachers countywide. As these students move on to colleges and universities, they will arrive with a wealth of valuable experience. The alert chief information officer will be able to capitalize on this resource. Several institutions reported that student employees handle the majority of their Help Desk consulting.

As thousands of students, faculty and staff move onto the campus networks and the Internet in the next few years, colleges and universities are clearly going to have to invent new technology support strategies. One strategy is to change the technology support culture from the "teaching" mode to the "learning" mode where individuals take responsibility for "self-help". Several institutions have highly developed "web-based expert systems" available on the campus Intranet to aid students, faculty, and staff members in solving their own desktop computing problems.

Perhaps these technology support issues will abate when the desktop computer becomes as commonplace as the telephone, and possibly even as easy to use.

APPENDIX B Proprietary Software in use for Help Desks (continued)

Institution Size (students)	Count	Pct	Full-time Staff (avg)	Part-time Staff (avg)	Total FTE Staff* (avg)
Small less than 2,000	48	15%	1.43	3.07	2.96
Medium 2,000 to 7,999	107	34%	2.18	6.72	5.54
MedLarge 8,000 to 17,999	75	24%	3.18	7.06	6.71
Large 18,000 and over	46	15%	5.58	14.21	12.68
Uknown or None	36	12%	3.51	3.54	5.29
Total	312	100%	2.96	7.00	6.46