SOU wanted an On-Premise helpdesk to support its community

The Challenge

Around six years ago, the team at Southern Oregon University began looking for an alternative On-Premise software after being let down by their previous solution. SOU’s Infrastructure and Network Services Manager, John Stevenson, explained why they decided to migrate to a new helpdesk. “We were being forced to move to a cloud-based system that wouldn't work exactly the way we wanted it to.” David Raco, the Systems Administrator, also mentioned that “the cost shot up quite a lot” alongside this change.

The coming changes meant the team at SOU would have been unable to provide the necessary IT support to the University’s community, “When they went to the Cloud, they took some important features away that were foundational to what we needed.”

The Solution

When the team first tested Deskpro, they found it was the best solution for SOU and they were won over by the cost in comparison to other helpdesk and ITSM solutions. “What we like about Deskpro is the cost. We feel like the ticketing aspect of it works really well, and it’s not as expensive as other solutions.” This allowed SOU to migrate to Deskpro’s On-Premise deployment and retain the features they needed to serve their students and faculty.

The Benefits

One of the benefits of Deskpro for the Southern Oregon University team is “the user-facing Help Center, we leverage the knowledgebase pretty heavily, and have some integrations that pull from it and put it onto our more central portal where everyone logs in.” Being able to quickly direct students to published content on the Help Center helps the university handle queries more efficiently.

While it’s not the most-used channel, the agents also really appreciate having Live Chat available on the Help Center. Gordon Carrier, SOU’s Client Services Manager, outlined how “Chat is important to us, just to have the availability for students to ask questions quickly.”

The team at SOU also takes advantage of several other features that Deskpro offers. David discussed how some of the automation features make daily workflows more efficient. “Snippets are really handy; we do a lot with the ticket snippets.” He explains that he also finds Follow Ups useful as they automatically remind agents of ongoing tasks.

The Future

Now the team at Southern Oregon University is preparing for their eventual migration to Deskpro Horizon; this involves some consideration about their current deployment with a potential move towards Deskpro Cloud with the new version. John explains why they feel this would be a good move, “We would be interested in a Cloud-based deployment because it’s less for my team to have to worry about.” A Cloud deployment would offer John and his team a fully featured helpdesk solution that requires less manual work leaving them more time to focus on supporting the community of staff, faculty, and students at SOU.