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Why call the Help Desk

This morning you left voicemail and email with your favorite ITSS staff member asking for help, but you haven't heard from them yet. You're not an impatient person, but it's taking longer than you expected to get help.

What can you do? Call our HelpDesk at 726-8847 or send e-mail to helpdesk.

We recommend that you make our HelpDesk your first contact when you need help with your technology applications. The desk is staffed Monday through Thursday from 8:00AM until 10:00PM, Friday from 8:00AM until 4:30 PM, and Sundays 4:30 to 10:00 PM. Staff are able to either answer your questions immediately or promptly redirect the problem to other staff who are available and likely to be able to provide the help you need. Be sure to leave a message if you don't get an answer right away, because we're probably on another line, and we'll return your call as quickly as we can, generally within 30 minutes.

Although ITSS doesn't provide around-the-clock support for most services, we often have staff monitoring our systems and HelpDesk voicemail during off hours. That means if you leave a message during these times, there is a chance that we can solve your problem before the next working day. At the very least, a problem reported during off hours will get prompt response the next time the HelpDesk is staffed.

If your call is referred to another ITSS staff member, it is logged in our HelpDesk database, and tracked to be sure it doesn't slip through the cracks. Difficult problems, especially those that involve several ITSS staff, can sometimes get stalled, and our tracking system helps us keep focused on solving your problem as quickly as possible.

Calling the HelpDesk before trying to get help from a particular ITSS staff member helps us spot patterns of trouble. For example, we may be able to quickly determine that printing service is failing or that the network is down in a particular part of the campus. When we receive multiple calls reporting what appear to be related problems, HelpDesk staff will escalate problem resolution immediately so that the service can be restored with minimal impact on our customers.

Our ITSS web pages provide information and help for many aspects of our services, and you might be able to find what you need without contacting the HelpDesk. Take a look at our our homepage to get an overview of our services and to locate the information you need. To do a quick search for information on a specific topic, try the search feature at the bottom of this web page.

Routine services such as network connection installation or desktop computer software installation can be initiated without calling the HelpDesk by using our ITSS Service Requests web page. Using these service requests ensures that your request gets properly scheduled, and that we have all the information that we'll need to do the work for you.

If you have comments or suggestions for how we can improve our HelpDesk services, please give us a call.

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