Realising our digital ambitions

ICT Service Desk 1st Line Support Leads, Jeff Wiltshire and Paul Burkett, are not just the friendly voice at the end of the phone line when you have an IT issue, they are leading the way in customer support and they are always looking to make your experience better with efficiency savings and innovative solutions.

At a recent Show and Tell session Paul and Jeff demonstrated a great solution for not only saving our ICT staff time, but improving response rates and service satisfaction for staff and students using lecture theatre AV and campus computers.

Jeff said, “Our goals were to; free up our Analysts’ time, improve the Service Desk efficiency and staff satisfaction, and to ensure that campus computer rooms and lecture theatres were consistently ready for use”.

A cluster f**k?

Part of an Analysts role is to check the status of student (cluster) machines on campus AND ensure the Audio Visual (AV) systems are always operational in lecture theatres.
The challenge with this work is that it can be very time-consuming and a very inefficient process of manually checking the big data platform, Splunk, on a daily basis for cluster computer issues and then logging 100s of identified faults in our ASK ticketing system ready for actioning.
For the AV checks our Analysts had to manually review a Daily Checks Excel file and create tickets for the120+ room each day.

Jeff explained, “This manual element of the process significantly impacted productivity, requiring one analyst to dedicate half a day to checking Splunk and logging faults! The process also made accurate reporting difficult and delayed issue resolution, as many problems could not be fixed remotely.”

From tedious tasks to seamless solutions

To address the issue, Paul and Jeff spoke with stakeholders to understand the specific challenges and requirements. The team physically checked all cluster rooms to ensure that the information in Splunk matched what was found in the rooms.
They then went on to develop an internal application called the ‘Campus cluster checks analyser’,  using Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VB.NET) and WMI queries to automate the remote checking of cluster computer machines and a questionnaire for the AV rooms. This tool was designed to verify the availability and functionality of computers without manual intervention.
Additionally, Jeff implemented a feature that automatically logs tickets in ASK for any identified issues, eliminating the need for analysts to manually create them.
The tool was tested successfully in the Development (DEV) environment of the room and timetabling system, Celcat, before preparing it for live deployment.
To fully optimise the process, the team requested read-only API access to Celcat’s live Production environment (PROD). This enabled Jeff real-time retrieval of room availability data, ensuring minimal impact on the live timetabling system.

A sense of achievement

Jeff said, “The best part of working on this solution was seeing the immediate impact of automation on analyst productivity and service efficiency. By eliminating repetitive administrative tasks, analysts could focus on resolving issues rather than logging them, improving overall service quality.

“I enjoyed the collaboration with stakeholders, and the opportunity to develop a custom tool tailored to the Service Desk’s needs was highly rewarding. Successfully testing the tool in the Celcat DEV environment and preparing it for live deployment provided a sense of achievement, knowing it would directly improve staff satisfaction and user experience.” Jeff Wiltshire

Time to Splunk

One of the biggest challenges the team faced was the amount of time required to manually check Splunk and log tickets, which initially made it difficult to allocate time for developing the automation tool.
Ensuring that the tool could accurately detect issues remotely and log tickets correctly in ASK required extensive testing and debugging.
Another challenge was obtaining API access to Celcat PROD, as this required coordination with external teams, compliance with data access policies, and ensuring the integration had minimal impact on the production environment.

Zeroing in on success

Jeff and Paul are proud of impact they have had and the overall outcome has been a significant reduction in manual workload for their Analysts, improving efficiency and response times.

Jeff suggests they have realised their goals as the automation tool now:

• Saves Analysts half a day checking Splunk and logging tickets.
• automatically logs issues in ASK, reducing ticket creation time to zero.
• improves reporting accuracy, as faults are logged consistently without human error.
• frees up Analyst time to focus on higher-value tasks, rather than repetitive administrative work.
• enhances service efficiency and user experience by ensuring AV rooms and cluster machines are ready for use.

Ongoing improvements

Once Paul and Jeff get the read-only API access to Celcat PROD the tool will be able to retrieve real-time room availability data, further optimising the booking process for exam room cluster checks. This will ensure faster response times, more accurate bookings, and an overall more efficient Service Desk operation.

Well done team!