Support Desk Mobile Application: Technical Report

The IT Support desk in McCann FitzGerald is currently operating at high capacity, the statistics which are generated for management are seen as very important. Company management want the service desk responding to over 80% of tickets immediately. The service desk is currently operating well below this level. To improve service the chief information officer (CIO) has requested that the support desk now concentrate on email’s instead of answering the phone. Ringing the support desk is to be used as a last resort and in an emergency. This in itself poses its own problems. The problem that currently generates the most tickets per day is issues relating to Microsoft outlook & internet explorer becoming non responsive. As users as working on thin client PC’s which operate via the citrix environment these process must be shut down remotely by a support analyst. However with the new email only policy in place it raises the question of how, if the phones won’t be answered does a user contact the support desk? Most people would suggest to email via your mobile device, however only 60 employees out of 400 have access to their work email on their mobile device. Furthermore during an IT systems outage, currently the only means of communication are IT staff on the floors and advisory posters outside all lift entrances in the building. This isn’t a viable approach to a systems outage. This is where the mobile application comes in. The CIO requested that a mobile application be developed to solve the above problems. I was given the project to complete as part of my 4th year project. The McCann Fitzgerald IT Support Application will allow users to log into the app via two factor authentication. There they will then be able to send a ticket to the IT Support desk with a description of their issue. As the user needs to log into the application, all of their details will be display to the IT support desk. This will increase response time as the analyst will have all of the user’s details available to them. Furthermore the application will be a key element of communication during a systems outage. The application will be able to send a push notification to the user’s phone informing them of the systems outage and provide regular updates until the issue is resolved. This will allow IT staff to concentrate on fixing the problem at hand rather than performing floor walks, this will have a positive effect on the service restoration time. The application will be of benefit to the company and also of benefit to myself as it will improve my coding skills. Coding is an area I feel I lag behind in. This challenge is the ideal chance to improve my skills while producing something practical that will be used.