Helpdesk Software, ITIL Ready SupportDesk

Pink Elephant is the world leader in IT management best practices, offering conference, education and consulting services to public and private businesses globally, and many listed in the Fortune 500.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both quality and value, in a financial sense, in IT operations. These procedures are supplier independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations. ITIL is published in a series of books (hence the term Library), each of which covers a core area within IT Management.

ITIL is not a formal standard and organizations cannot be certified or comply with ITIL, however, it is supported by a comprehensive qualifications scheme for individuals, accredited training organisations, implementation and assessment tools and verification for software applications (via Pink Verify). SupportDesk is verified by Pink Elephant which is the world leader in IT management best practices.

Main Features of the ITIL Ready Option.

ITIL Ready SupportDesk contains all of the features described in our other non hosted solutions. Extra features include:-

Advanced login Permissions

Options to extend the already powerful user control within SupportDesk

Multiple Data Dictionaries

Enhance the usability of SupportDesk through multiple Data Dictionaries

Multiple Folders

Broad separation of calls into the ITIL approved Incident, Problem and Change

Urgency Category

An ITIL indicator of how quickly an incident should be dealt with

Search & Link Inventory CI's

Judge the impact of CI failure by viewing linked inventory items

Asset Depreciation

Calculate and store asset depreciation.

Consultancy Pack

ITIL Consultancy from certified consultants, plus Project Management Services.

Over and above the existing user control that is within SupportDesk the ITIL Ready pack allows discrete permissions to be set for each user against SupportDesk Database Tables and/or Folders. As can be seen above discrete permissions can be set - Create, Read, Update etc.

Multiple Data Dict's

All prompts and field settings in SupportDesk are controlled through the Data Dictionary. This allows the user to change prompts for the fields, make them mandatory, hide them, audit them , and many other configuration options. Through use of the Data Dictionary SupportDesk becomes one of the most configurable software solutions on the market. The ITIL Ready option extends this functionality by allowing users to create multiple Dictionaries, thus each folder can have its' own prompts and behaviour making it easier to use and allowing customisation to an even greater degree than normal.

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Multiple Folders

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For years, the lifecycle of receiving, recording, resolving and reporting on issues or requests was referred to as problem management’. The ITIL framework makes a useful distinction between two related processes, previously lumped together under the problem management banner.
Incident Management refers to the calls or requests that your service desk deals with on a day-to-day basis. Problem Management in contrast is to do with the resolution of underlying issues that may cause some of your day-to-day incidents.
Having a dedicated Problem Management Folder separate from Incident Management allows us to monitor these records’ differing life cycles more effectively; but we can also link incidents and problems together to closer monitor the cause and effect relationships that may exist between these call types.
ITIL best practice makes another distinction between the tracking and resolution of Problems and the characteristically more rigidly structured processes of Change Management. Hence the Change Management folder.

Urgency Category

The SupportDesk ITIL pack comes with a preset SLA structure based on ITIL’s suggested Impact + Urgency = Priority model.
Priority will automatically adjust depending on the sum of the former two fields:
Impact: measure of the significance of this issue to the business
Urgency: measure of how quickly this issue should be dealt with
Priority: rank giving an indicator of the order in which issues should be addressed.
As with all categories within SupportDesk the flexibility provided by the Data Dictionary allows you to decide which are mandatory and which aren't. Workflow rules can also be imposed making the options available to the user pertinent to the Type of call.

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Configuration Items (CI's)

As a result of Requests for Changes "RFCs" often relating to the physical IT environment and possible repercussions of a change therefore, RFCs need to be able to be related to multiple CIs. The Change Management Folder therefore has special functionality to enable Changes to be raised relating to more than one CI <Inventory> or User <Customer>.
By selecting multiple CIs and then selecting New Change Request from the QuickCalls! menu, it is possible to launch a Call in the Change Request folder that is linked to each of those CIs via Activities.
ITIL also impresses the need to utilise a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and specifically the cause and effect relationships between incident, problems, change requests, customers and CIs. Central to this is the idea of linking records together to represent these relationships. In SupportDesk ITSM it is possible to link incidents, problems & changes, CIs and Customers in numerous combinations.

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Asset Depreciation

SupportDesk with the ITIL Ready option allows the calculation and storage of financial depreciation data for your assets. With Depreciation Types of Declining Balance or Straight line and optional percentage per year, the simple ready reckoner allows depreciation values to be calculated based on the method your company chooses to adopt.

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Consultancy Pack

House-on-the-Hill Consultants are all ISEB qualified in IT Service Management and know the House-on-the-Hill Software suite intimately. They have a wealth of experience with other customers and are able to help you configure SupportDesk to operate to ITIL practices. House-on-the-Hill is also able to offer Project Management Services to ensure that the installation of SupportDesk proceeds in a professional and structured manner.

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Helpdesk Software since 1993

House-on-the-Hill Software was established in 1993 with the aim of developing helpdesk software to improve the productivity and effectiveness of the IT help desk and Customer Service department.

The latest major release of the software - SupportDesk Blue - was officially unveiled at the HITS 2005 show in April. This release was developed with customer feedback as the driving force, improving upon Service Level Management, Call Escalation procedures, the fault logging and tracking process, comprehensive reporting capabilities, and web-enabled functionality.

Based near Manchester, UK, House-on-the-Hill Software has a large and diverse customer base spanning over 40 countries. We have longstanding relationships with our customers throughout the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and the UK, who appreciate our prompt and friendly support.
Features helpdesk software & IT help desk software solutions to improve the productivity and effectiveness of the IT help desk and Customer Service department. We also provide helpdesk software for Call Centre Tracking & Monitoring in UK.