I have been there and done that. Always searching for solutions to run a department better. Searching for the best help desk software review to determine the legitimacy of the help desk software and whether it will work for your needs is no different. This is a common task that all IT professionals will do daily, especially if you are the department Manager or Supervisor. In my previous role at the communications company where I worked, a part of my duties was the daily management of the help desk team employees and incidents.
Managing the help desk team was no easy task because you had to deal with individual personalities and requests from the different departments in the company for service. What compounded the issues I experienced managing this team of employees and their personalities was the constant interference of the manager above me. And not having the proper help desk software in place compounded the issue even further. Of course, that was before we acquired the help desk software.
As a manager or supervisor, you are expected to develop solutions to help your department function better. Imagine a help desk with no help desk software. Chaotic is one word that can best describe the ugly situation you will go through daily without help desk software. A phone queue is good for receiving service calls, but you need somewhere to record the requests that come via phone calls and emails. Otherwise, you will be unable to handle the calls in the order of priority they were received.
As an IT Professional of over twenty-five years, I was always in the market searching for tools and solutions to help me do my job better. In any business with an in-house IT help desk, you will need help desk software to organize and manage the day-to-day request for services from other team members of your organization.
After researching several other help desk software, our company decided to go with a product named Service Desk Plus by ManageEngine. Below you will find my honest review of this product and why the company decided to go with this product based on my professional recommendation.
Honestly, this is the only service desk software you will need, regardless of the size of your organization. Compared to other help desk software products on the market, the simplicity of this software is impressive. The learning curve is exceptional, and anyone can learn to master it in the shortest possible time.
Best Help Desk Software Review
Name: Service Desk Plus
Website: Visit Website
Owners: Manage Engine
Free Trial: YES
How PRODUCT_Service Desk Plus Works
Once you purchase Service Desk Plus, you can access modules like Incident Management, Asset Management, Project Management, and even their Change Management module, Just to name a few. All of these modules can be purchased in separate software packages as well. At my previous establishment, the Change Management module was used extensively to manage changes to the IT infrastructure. No change was performed without first getting approval from management to do the change. Doing a change without approval can get you fired quickly.
Service Desk Plus help desk software can either be used directly from the cloud, or you can download the software to install on any windows’ base server with OS Windows 2012 or above. The windows’ server should have a minimum of 12MB of ram and at least 4 cores minimum. Disk space should be at least 2TB SSD for best performance. Dell or HP Servers can be used, but my preference was HP. We used HP because that was our standard in the data center. Furthermore, HP provided assisted setup using their build- in smart start program. Dell had a similar software-assisted installation program as well.
You can also use any Linux server running a flavor of Ubuntu 14.0 OS or Cent OS 8. You can use the software directly from the cloud without worrying about expensive hardware like a server or ram. All you will need is a good working internet connection. Using the software from the cloud will eliminate having to install the software and configure it on a physical server. This would save funds you can use in other needed areas of your establishment.
At my previous establishment, Service Desk help desk software was installed on a virtual server since we had the resources available from our VMware platform. The beauty of using a virtual server is having the ability to recover from a system failure faster than if you use a physical server. With a physical server, you will have to rebuild the server from scratch if you have a failure.
Get Service Desk Plus now and eliminate your day-to-day help desk administration problems immediately.
Training Quality Section
Once you purchase Service Desk Plus, you can organize a webinar with their support team to better understand the software. Before buying the software, I organized a session with the support team and the internal help desk team members so they could receive a good overview of the product and its available options.
Resources like white papers, videos, webinars, and training guides are available on the site to help you set up the software on a physical server. The guide can also be used to understand the software better, whether running on a physical server or from the cloud. Case studies are also available of companies using the software and their success.
Service Desk Plus Endorsed by Gartner
Have you heard about Gartner? It is one of the world’s leading IT research and consultancy companies. If Gartner endorses your product or service, you can be assured of the quality of that product or service. Service Desk Plus has been a part of the ITSM tools for consecutive years. During my tenure at my previous company, I attended several conference sessions with Gartner. It was one of my best conferences.
Conclusion
Using Service Desk Plus as your Help Desk management software will ease the pain of your daily administration of incidents.
What I love about the product is the extensive reports that it provides. The reports helped me tremendously in daily and weekly meetings to communicate to management what was happening with our incidents and their status.
This software changed my life. It eliminated the stress of managing and administering incidents. Whenever a user called in asking about the status of their incident, information was readily available to comfort them in knowing that their issue was being worked on.