The third SharePoint site template reviewed in our series is the Help Desk Template which helps an IT organization manage Help Desk Requests including Accounts, Leads and Opportunities.
The site includes the following lists Out of the Box:
§ Service Requests – list of Help Desk tickets with fields for Details, Customer, Priority, Assigned to Rep, lookup to Keywords (for categorizing tickets), Status, Resolution Type, Resolution Date, lookup to Related Articles
§ Support FAQs – list of quick answers to common issues including fields for question, answer and lookup columns to Related Articles and Keywords
§ Experts – list of contacts to assist in determining the best resource for an issue including fields for First and Last Name, phone and email address and lookup column to Keywords
§ Keywords – list of keywords available for use in Service Requests, Knowledge Base articles and Experts
§ Knowledge Base – document library using Wiki format allowing for creation of articles related to Help Desk topics
The Help Desk template also includes two custom pages that provide a dashboard for different Help Desk metrics by Role. The first page is the Service Representative Manager page which includes web parts for Overall Service Request Status and Priority, the Average Resolution Time and links to several views that further filter and group Service Requests.
The second page is the Service Representative page which includes views of Unassigned (New) service requests and My Assigned Service Requests.
It is important to note that there will be configuration needed to make this template fit your help desk process including modifying priorities, creating keywords, modifying statuses and creating Resolution Types. NOTE: Some modifications can result in breaking the Data View Web parts and Workflow so planning out the changes and reviewing the impact to the custom pages is essential.
