92Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0

number of protocols supported. For example, you may choose to only support OWA as the means of access outside the firewall.

Not all of these problems are necessarily client issues. End users will be directly affected by problems at the server level. The main difference is that client issues generally affect small numbers of users, whereas server issues normally affect larger numbers of users.

Whatever the end-user support issue is, an effective support team will ensure the following:

Problems can be reported easily

End users are notified quickly that their problem is being investigated and are kept informed of the status of their problem

Problems are resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible

The result of all this should be to ensure that service is restored as soon as possible in accordance with the SLA.

Problem Reporting

Problems will typically be reported in one of two ways: as a result of your extensive monitoring (see Chapter 5), you may receive alerts that warn you of a problem; or a user may report a problem.

The sooner you can receive an accurate report of a problem from a user, the earlier you can begin to solve that problem before it becomes an issue for the organization at large.

You may want to consider using Exchange itself as the basis for your Service Desk applica- tion. You could create a custom form for Service Desk requests, which would be routed to a public folder. The Service Desk staff would examine these requests as they came in and either reroute them or deal with them. As the requests are being dealt with, further infor- mation could be added to the form. Then, when the request is resolved, this information could be routed to a second public folder and could form the basis of your internal knowl- edge base.

Note: There is risk to using Exchange Server as the basis for your helpdesk application, as a widespread Exchange outage will affect your ability to resolve problems.

Of course, you must not use the e-mail system as your only means of receiving user notifica- tion of e-mail problems! Ensure that there is a telephone support line which can be used as an alternative method of reporting problems. If you have a support-related web site, consider adding a problem reporting page.

Page 100
Image 100
Microsoft 1 manual Problem Reporting