Hello All,
I am grappling with the best way to allow users to submit requests for Tessitura data - acknowledging that the end product may be a custom report, a list/output set, a T-Stats report, a Dashboard, and the user with the request may be familiar with the full suite of tools or really know what will best suit their need.
Would anyone else be willing to share their intake process for requests such as this? Do you have a group of admins who review requests to make an initial recommendation? Do all requests get funneled to a single person (your DBA or someone in a system manager role?) Who ultimately fulfills the requests?
Thanks,
RhondaLeigh
We co-opted the IT ticket system for the Data Team. The CSO has a Data Team that is responsible for fulfilling just about all data request. Some users can do basic list and reports, but we do the majority of the data work for the org. Tickets are sent in via our intranet and then I (director) farm them out to the appropriate person on my team. The ticket process is simple. There are some basic fields the requestor fills out; name, due date, project name, and then the description of what they need. My team of three supports the entire org so we ask for a three business day turn around a request. We don't accept emails, phone calls or verbal request, we will ask you to submit a ticket. It's the best way to keep us on track and meet our deadlines.
We currently have no official system in place and it is HORRIBLE. Requests can come in from email (preferred) or a phone conversation or from a meeting or even second (or third) hand from someone else that doesn't know all of the details. Sometimes the wrong people are involved and sometimes the right people are completely left out until the last minute. It really is a headache.
My IT manager wants to install a new ticket support sometime soon-ish and I've already told her I'd like to piggyback on it. Our dream is that all IT related requests will come in via a ticket that we can all see (there are 3 of us in the IT operations dept; each with very different duties). At that point the appropriate person will take on the ticket and get the request done. I'd like to see all requests come in with a priority level and a requested deadline (although we will make it clear that not all requests can be high priority due tomorrow ). I would also love to see some basic reports come from this system. How many outstanding requests? How many historical at each priority level? How many from each staff member? How long does an average ticket take to complete? Though, that is all moreso for my own curiosity than anything else!
Hello!
I too had the same issue. I'm the sole sys admin for all (Marketing, Box Office, Development, etc) and the box office manager for a venue that does a tad over 365 performances a year and so grateful to be in a consortium!
After being literall buried in requests I created a help portal using the free version of Spiceworks. It's a great to test the waters. I process on average 323 requests every 45 days.
Requests include: List pulls, extractions, promo codes, comp, house and special seating requests, etc. Just about anything you can think of, I've set up in the portal and aside from a few hiccups here and there, it's been a life saver!
The reporting is not as robust as I'd like, but it's also the free version so I can't complain. We will soon be moving to a server side solution in time for our new season.
Michelle Wiesel
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
We have SpiceWorks as our Help Desk system, but ultimately people just email me with what they want/need and then I meet with them to discuss it and decide on the best way to get them the data they need.
If it does turn out to be a report that they will need to run regularly, I ask them to fill out a Report Request Sheet, which makes them think about which Parameters etc. they want to run the report on and I also ask for them to put some of the data into Excel with Headers, so I can see what they expect the output to look like.
I do know that lots of venues are using Atlassian tools for their Help Desk System, code repository etc. to help co-ordinate requests, so that may be something to look at.
Caryl
SpiceWorks or Liberum. Both work well.
https://www.spiceworks.com/it-articles/online-help-desk/
http://liberum.org/
When I was working at the Sydney Opera House on the Data & Insights team we used Smartsheet (it's basically Excel on steroids). We needed something quick and easy to setup and cheap and this achieved both of those goals. We created a web form which we put up on the company interweb where users could fill out the various form fields, include attachments and submit the data request. Our team got email notifications of new submissions and logged into Smartsheet which was web based and allowed multiple users to manage and update at once. We could also email back through smartsheet to request additional information which kept the full dialogue in one place where the whole team to could access it. This also worked great to assign the work to the analysts and track the progress and print a quick report of work in the pipeline.
Chuck Buchanan / New York Philharmonic
To tack on to the list of technology to check out, Google Sheets and Forms have been useful to us in the past, and I recently discovered Airtable, which is kind of like a relational google sheets.
We don't have too much of a problem with list request volume, but we did implement a process for all marketing lists that documents the desired list spec and result in our knowledgebase (Atlassian Confluence). We have a template to create a page for a list request, and then the requestor and Tessitura folks can bounce specs and #s back and forth, and then all the info is archived if we want to refer back to it in a following year.
It hasn't always been so, but we now insist that all data requests come in through our internal IT support ticketing system. We use OSticket:
http://osticket.com/
Thanks everyone.
It sounds like we may be on the right track here, then. We have started developing a report request form and we have been using Trello to track a variety of requests/projects that our admin team is working on.
The biggest struggle for us here right now is that our admin team is made up of staff from all of our major stakeholder areas - Ticketing, Membership, Development, DB Marketing, and IT - and everyone has some capability to fulfill a request depending on how complex or technical it is.
So the question we are struggling with is who should that initial request be sent to for initial review? It sounds like many of you have a single point person, or a small group, who reviews and either fulfills or delegates the work back out - so that just might be the direction we need to go in too.
Does anyone have a process by which the type of data being requested determines to whom the request is submitted? For instance, if you are in Development and looking for Dev data, send your request to the Dev admin. From there, the Dev admin will do an initial review and escalate to the whole group when additional resources or more complex needs exist (custom output element, custom report outside of Dev admin's capability, etc.)
JAMIE O'BRIEN
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICESTHE NEW 42ND STREET229 W 42ND STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10036JOBRIEN@NEW42.ORG646.223.3063WWW.NEW42.ORG
We currently have no official system in place and it is HORRIBLE. Requests can come in from email (preferred) or a phone conversation or from a meeting or even second (or third) hand from someone else that doesn't know all of the details. Sometimes the wrong people are involved and sometimes the right people are completely left out until the last minute. It really is a headache. My IT manager wants to install a new ticket support sometime soon-ish and I've already told her I'd like to piggyback on it. Our dream is that all IT related requests will come in via a ticket that we can all see (there are 3 of us in the IT operations dept; each with very different duties). At that point the appropriate person will take on the ticket and get the request done. I'd like to see all requests come in with a priority level and a requested deadline (although we will make it clear that not all requests can be high priority due tomorrow ). I would also love to see some basic reports come from this system. How many outstanding requests? How many historical at each priority level? How many from each staff member? How long does an average ticket take to complete? Though, that is all moreso for my own curiosity than anything else!From: RhondaLeigh Dauphinais <bounce-rhondaleighdauphinais8247@tessituranetwork.com>Sent: 4/18/2017 12:22:38 PMHello All, I am grappling with the best way to allow users to submit requests for Tessitura data - acknowledging that the end product may be a custom report, a list/output set, a T-Stats report, a Dashboard, and the user with the request may be familiar with the full suite of tools or really know what will best suit their need. Would anyone else be willing to share their intake process for requests such as this? Do you have a group of admins who review requests to make an initial recommendation? Do all requests get funneled to a single person (your DBA or someone in a system manager role?) Who ultimately fulfills the requests? Thanks, RhondaLeighYou have received this message because you subscribed to email alerts of postings on the Tessitura Network Town Hall forum. You may modify your subscriptions on tessituranetwork.com.
From: RhondaLeigh Dauphinais <bounce-rhondaleighdauphinais8247@tessituranetwork.com>Sent: 4/18/2017 12:22:38 PM
I’m enjoying hearing about all the solutions others are using!
As the master licensee of the consortium, we provide support for seven organizations, including help with lists, extractions, and reporting as well as the complete gamut of Tessitura and RAMP questions and issues.
We started out using Spiceworks a couple of years ago, but moved to FreshDesk last month and have been really happy with it so far.
The key, whatever tool you’re using, is to have a standard set of information that you’re requesting – whatever it is that you need in order to fulfill the user’s request without a lot of back-and-forth. Some of the help desk solutions will allow you to customize the request forms based on the request type, too.
I’m off to check out SmartSheet!
Best,
Stacey
From: RhondaLeigh Dauphinais <bounce-rhondaleighdauphinais8247@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 4/18/2017 12:22:38 PM Hello All, I am grappling with the best way to allow users to submit requests for Tessitura data - acknowledging that the end product may be a custom report, a list/output set, a T-Stats report, a Dashboard, and the user with the request may be familiar with the full suite of tools or really know what will best suit their need. Would anyone else be willing to share their intake process for requests such as this? Do you have a group of admins who review requests to make an initial recommendation? Do all requests get funneled to a single person (your DBA or someone in a system manager role?) Who ultimately fulfills the requests? Thanks, RhondaLeigh You have received this message because you subscribed to email alerts of postings on the Tessitura Network Town Hall forum. You may modify your subscriptions on tessituranetwork.com.
From: RhondaLeigh Dauphinais <bounce-rhondaleighdauphinais8247@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 4/18/2017 12:22:38 PM
You have received this message because you subscribed to email alerts of postings on the Tessitura Network Town Hall forum. You may modify your subscriptions on tessituranetwork.com.
This has been a really interesting thread. I have contemplated doing something like Freshdesk as a way of managing requess, but given that I'm the only Tessitura person, I'm not sure if that's overdoing it.
I think the problem - regardless of the technological solution - is how you make people appreciate that there is a queue of things to be done and how do you stop queue-jumping?
The biggest problem I find is that you can never attack things sequentially. There is always something that comes along that must be delivered this week because it's due for an important management meeting, etc. Finishing things is tough!
I'm actually recently back in the office after a year away and there's been some shakeup while I was gone. So this may no longer be how things really work here.
But before I left, we had a Power User team comprised of one person per department. These users were given a little extra training and they were expected to be the first point of contact for their department for any kind of request (ex. pulling a list/extraction, finding an appropriate report, etc). The power users do not have administrative access or the ability to access system tables, the database, or the servers. If the power user was not able to help then they would contact me for elevated assistance.
Once we have a more formal Help Desk system in place I think we would still encourage people to contact their Power user directly (probably via email - depends on the system we get) for their more minor requests when possible (just to keep the backlog down for super simple things). Anything more than a very minor request would be submitted through the Help Desk for our 3 IT members to review and either take on or delegate where appropriate.
That's how I envision the submission process anyway and how I would answer your question of "who should that initial request be sent to for initial review". We may change our minds when the system is actually put in place.
Matthew,
Having a system to track request is never overdoing it. When I was a one person show, I had paper forms people had to fill out before I would start work for them. You have to establish a way to work that makes you efficient and effective, people should realize that and respect it.
For us it's just reminding them to put in a ticket when they forget. We explain it that it's for their benefit, not ours. With a ticket we can provide them with the best service because we can track their request in one place.
Trying to get people to think ahead is a little is harder. We ask for three day turn around, knowing that isn't always going to be the case. If we have someone who continually puts in last minutes tickets (that aren't emergencies) I remind them that to get the best possible work we need time to pull stuff together. I also remind them that other people are in line berfore, also with deadlines, who put in tickets in a timely manner so they get their stuff first. We are a team of three servicing around 35 people, they don't realized that we get 15 tickets a day, they only care about their ticket so I try to frame it as "We want the best for you."
Melissa