REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. - A combination effort by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command G-6, or information technology branch, has led to a decline of customer helpdesk tickets of more than 50 percent.
In October-November, the helpdesk received an average of 700 tickets, and that number has now been reduced to about 300.
"By using modernization money provided by the command, we replaced IT customer facing equipment that was more than three years old and backend equipment that was more than five years old," said Monica Booher, helpdesk and software development branch chief, G-6, located at SMDC's Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., location. "The newer equipment provides more reliability and better performance to reduce the number of issues experienced by customers."
Thin client network computers, laptops, desktops and some printers were included among customer facing equipment items replaced, and the backend equipment included infrastructure such as servers, routers and switches.
"The modernization efforts allowed the helpdesk to standardize the baseline configuration to better support our customers and implement better equipment to meet their needs," Booher said.
In addition to hardware, a few other changes have been made that might also lead to an additional reduction in helpdesk tickets.
"The helpdesk has implemented an IT news section on SMDC's internal website," Booher said. "Here we communicate with customers about any upcoming changes, such as Enterprise E-mail. We also publish to this page whenever we experience a network- or server-related issue that impacts the command.
"We hope to make this the first place a customer goes to learn about anything related to IT within the command," Booher continued. "There is a customer survey link where customers can submit feedback to helpdesk management. The more feedback we get from our customers, the better we can support them."
Bobby Everetts, information technology specialist and helpdesk lead at SMDC's Redstone Arsenal location, said a new thin client server farm and the new Army Enterprise E-mail are some other areas where the G-6 is moving forward.
"We are currently in the process of standing up a new thin client server farm," Everetts said. "This will prepare the command for the (Army's) Enterprise E-mail migration and provide more stability and reliability for thin client users."
The Army's conversion to Enterprise E-mail began in January. Instead of accessing e-mail through local e-mail servers at each installation, users will reach through the network to access e-mail services from centralized servers known as the Department of Defense cloud. SMDC plans to begin conversion in June.
"SMDC has a worldwide operational mission supporting deployed Warfighters, and we must approach everything we do with that same operational mindset," said Col. Bennie Pokemire, SMDC's deputy chief of staff, G-6. "One of my priorities for the G-6 is to expertly manage resources. These upgrades and improvements in the helpdesk and software development branch make the exchange of critical information in support of our mission much more efficient for the customer. I'm proud of the strides we've made thus far, and I look forward to many more accomplishments this year from the outstanding G-6 team."
The G-6 office currently operates and sustains more than 3,000 workstations and almost 300 servers.
Social Sharing