it-Service-Desk-SOP May 8.docx
Purpose
The purpose of this standard operating procedure (SOP) is to establish clear guidelines and procedures to all employees of Pueblo County Information Technology Services in matters related to the IT Service Desk and incident and request Management.
This will enable the IT organization to effectively monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the IT Service Desk’s operation as agreed to in the service level agreements and objectives (SLA, SLO) with the business.
This SOP will be adhered to and applied by all relevant IT personnel involved in service desk operations that provide technical support to the end users and customers of Pueblo County Information Technology Services The management of service requests and incidents logged with the IT Service Desk team include, but are not limited to the following technology categories:
Any IT staff that receive requests generated through other means must educate the end user of the correct process and route all requests through the IT Service Desk. This will enable IT services to monitor and report on the effectiveness of our current process and how we are appropriately acting upon incidents and service requests.
All incidents and requests generated through the IT Service Desk will be classified, prioritized, and assigned to the correct team for resolution.
Ticket Handling Guidelines
All incidents and service requests will be managed in the IT Service Desk System and all incidents and service requests must have an associated ticket created prior to work commencing. This data is critical to analyzing workload balancing, identifying trends and patterns, and forecasting volume.
A ticket is properly handled when:
It is acknowledged and assigned appropriately and in a timely manner.
Ticket contact information is reviewed to ensure correct contact information is shown.
The customer is kept informed of the progress of the ticket.
The ticket is updated with all relevant information prior to being escalated to another team for resolution.
The ticket is resolved and closed with resolution documented.
The customer and the service desk agree that the incident or request has been solved or fulfilled.
The ticket category reflects the ticket’s resolution, not the initial category it was reported on.
Each ticket type is associated with different classification, prioritization, routing, and service levels. We separate them to allow for more robust reporting and to ensure the appropriate steps are taken when delivering the service.
Pueblo County ITS prioritizes tickets based upon impact and urgency. Urgency is the time it will take for an incident to have a significant impact on the business, and the Priority determines the amount of time that is allotted for resolution. Severity levels are then assigned to notify the IT organization of the correct incident process to trigger and the level of effort that is required from them.
Incident management is the process responsible for resolving all events causing an unplanned interruption to an IT service or a degradation in its quality.
The objective of incident management is to restore IT services in the most efficient manner. This includes:
Resolving a service interruption as quickly as possible.
Minimizing adverse effects to business operations.
Establishing and communicating a consistent set of procedures for all incidents.
Incident Process Workflow
Critical Incident Management
Critical incidents, such as security incidences or wide outages, will be escalated immediately to the Network Team and to the ITS Department Deputy Director, and IT Managers.
Where outages are detected by network and application monitoring tools, the network team must notify the Service Desk if the issue will not be resolved within 30 minutes. If the outage affects multiple county departments, ITS Managers may notify county users of the outage. This notification will enable the IT Service Desk to correctly respond to users and manage call volume.
It is important that stakeholders are informed during outages. Communications during a critical incident will include:
Service Desk notifies affected users:
A service request is defined as a request where nothing is broken or impacting a service. The request typically comes from the user or on behalf of a user looking for information, advice, or access to a service, application, or equipment.
Pueblo County ITS distinguishes the differences between standard requests, non-standard requests, and projects. Technicians and Service Desk Managers need to understand the definition of each to make sure the right process is followed, and tickets do not move into the backlog.
The ITS Deputy Director will analyze non-standard requests on an annual basis to evaluate if the service can be offered as a standard request in the services portfolio.
Standard Request Attributes:
Very common requests, delivered on an on-going basis
Defined process
Measured in hours or days
Uses service catalog if it exists
Formalized and should already be documented
The time to deal with the request is defined
Non-Standard Request Attributes:
Higher level complexity than standard requests
Cannot be fulfilled via service catalog
No defined process
Product or service is not currently offered, and it may need time for technical review, additional approvals, and procurement processes
Distinguishing Factors & Thresholds