Need Help??? Guess Who to Call... The IT Help Desk

By Sabrina Warrington , Manager, IT Help Desk

Well, the IT Help Desk has really changed this past year. In addition to the staff, we've also added quite a few bonus services for the campus community's benefit.

First of all, I'd like to formally introduce the IT Help Desk staff. As lead consultant, we have Kami Amir-Heshmat. Farhad Mansouri, Juana Henry-Turner, David Cho, Fred Ocampo, Glenn Masuda, Ben Bodnar and Ernest Ikner are the staff that you'll most likely find coming to your desk to help you. Joli Brown is our in-house consultant who primarily answers the calls you place on the hotline. And if you haven't gotten the opportunity to meet the staff, please feel free to stop by our office in Welch Hall 370.

Now on to the very exciting things that have happened in the past semester on the help desk. We are now in the process of rolling out 84 new Dell computers and 15 new iMacs to the college faculty. This replacement project has also given us the opportunity to relocate some of the replaced computers to offices having even slower ones.

A great new service that we offer on our Web site, http://www.csudh.edu/helpdesk/, is a quick link to submit your help requests via the Web. This link has been upgraded to automatically log your request in our system to speed up response time. We encourage everyone to use this link, especially for non-emergency requests.

Another recent change is that we are now utilizing an ACD (automatic call distribution) system on our telephones. This allows us to have multiple consultants able to take your calls. In the event that all of the available agents are busy, you will be allowed to hold or to leave a voice mail. If you do elect to leave a voice mail, please know that your call will be logged as soon as the agent is off of the current call.

Many of you have inquired about the use of Windows Vista on campus. At this time, due to hardware incompatibilities as well as some software issues, we're holding off on proceeding with a campus upgrade. If you have purchased a new computer for campus use and chose Vista, we will still attempt to help you, but it should be noted that some issues may have cumbersome work arounds at this time.

Online chat service is available on our Web home page at http://www.csudh.edu/helpdesk/.

Microsoft Work At Home software is still available for faculty and staff for only $20 per title! Check our Web site for title availability. We can accept cash or a check with university identification.

I'd like to extend a personal thank you to everyone who has responded to our customer satisfaction survey; your feedback is greatly appreciated and welcomed. Any time you would just like to rave about the excellent help you received or have suggestions for the help desk, please give me a call at x2736 or e-mail me at swarrington@csudh.edu.