I have spent my spring semester of 2015 as an intern for Information Technology

Services. ITS enables student, faculty, and staff using IT devices campus-wide by providing

system support and maintenance. ITS handles a wide variety of technical issues with services

like payroll, accounts, networking, laboratories, mainframe, software services and more. Serving

the information technology needs for most of students, faculty and staff is an integral part to

LSU operations.

My position requires me to rotate between three locations throughout the week, each

being slightly different in the way I interact with users. These locations are the Middleton

Library, the Frey Building walk-up counter, and the Frey call-center. In the library, I assist users

via walk-ups only. Working at the counter in Frey, I assist users via walk-ups and instant

messaging. In the call center, I answer phone calls and screen-share to assist users.

As a Help Desk Agent, my role is to provide frontline support for these wide varieties of

issues experienced by faculty, staff, and students at LSU. I perform troubleshooting techniques

for problems I encounter. If I am unable to effectively solve the problem at hand, I write a report

of the incident with a detailed description of the situation the user is experiencing, the steps I

have taken to solve the problem and pertinent information.

In order to address situations, I have access to resources that help me diagnose problems

and identify solutions. These resources include the GROK knowledge base, the internet at large,

mainframe, a representative console for screen sharing, FootPrints (ticket managing system), a

notebook containing key mainframe and contact information, and of course, my co-workers and

analysts.

Mainframe is the starting point for most phone calls and walk-ups. Mainframe is software

that provides useful capabilities for help desk agents and other staff and faculty as well. For help

desk agents, Mainframe is useful for finding identifying users, verifying user emails and

performing some basic troubleshooting for printers in the mainframe system. Help desk agents

are able to access a user’s logon id, date of birth, 4 digits of the user’s social security number,

department, major and other information that may be relevant to solving problems. Help desk

agents do not have access to information such as billing statements, or grades.

The GROK knowledge base is a database of articles for various issues concerning IT

administration, IT issues, and it contains general IT knowledge. GROK becomes useful during a

phone call with a user for quickly looking up information. GROK is especially useful for looking

up information for specific LSU IT knowledge. For a help desk agent, the GROK database is an

extremely useful tool when trying to troubleshoot IT problems.

Sometimes users call with issues that are not easily diagnosed over the phone and are also

not standardized enough for a GROK article to have an easy solution. In these cases, it is helpful

to have the user do a screen-sharing session. This allows the user and help desk agent to

communicate the problem much more effectively. Screen sharing is also a good way for a help

desk agent to assist users that are less technologically inclined and it is great for documenting

problems to be relayed to a specialized department if necessary. A disadvantage of screen

sharing is that it is unable to be used when the user does not have an internet connection. Screen

sharing is an advanced method of communication, troubleshooting, and problem resolution.

. Sometimes while working it is important to communicate between analysts and other

coworkers without being face to face. Pidgin is used by everyone in ITS to communicate via

instant message. This becomes important for walk-in password resets, sharing links and

communicating important information.

After every phone call, or walk-up appointment, a ticket is submitted. Tickets can be

either open or closed. If the ticket is closed, the problem that the help desk agent was working on

got resolved with the help desk agent. If the ticket is open, the help desk agent is submits the

ticket with key information about the problem and all the troubleshooting techniques used to

attempt to solve the problem. When writing tickets, there are some templates available that make

it easier to gather the information requirements for particular issues. There are templates for open

and closed tickets, but it is especially helpful for writing open tickets because the templates lay

out exactly what information the next department will need when reviewing the ticket.

Sometimes there are no quick templates for a particular problem. In that case, the help desk agent

will have to fill out the form and carefully gather the necessary information and label the ticket

properly. For help desk agents, the goal is to submit tickets for one hundred percent of the phone

calls you take. Below is a blank footprints incident ticket with the drop down menu to select a

quick incident displayed.

A wide variety of problems present themselves throughout working at ITS with most

situations fit into a few broad categories. These categories include accounts, software,

mainframe, Moodle, network, printing, and hardware. While these categories are not all-

encompassing, they do represent a large portion of the situations that ITS deals with. We receive

calls for service requests, transfers to different departments and many other issues that may not

be able to be predicted ahead of time. Because the issues experienced by users vary so much, the

ability to trouble-shoot and recognize relevant information is critical to success. It is also

important to be ready to learn because an unfamiliar issue will eventually arise.

Of the major categories of issues ITS handles, account management is the most common

reason for users to access our support. In general, people tend to have many accounts for various

purposes in their lives. ITS supports many different accounts related to the university, each of

which serves a different purpose. These accounts include Moodle (for students and teachers),

Tigermail, LSU mail, MyLSU, and mainframe. There are many possible reasons for users to use

our support while using and accessing their accounts and each of these accounts experience

different technical issues, or have different techniques for troubleshooting those issues.

The primary account held by students, faculty, and staff is their MyLSU account. This is

the account that manages many services and offers many resources for students, faculty and staff.

MyLSU is where students access their financial services (billing statement and scholarships),

registration services (scheduling classes), student services (accessing degree audit, final grades,

and other information), and computing services (accessing software downloads). Faculty and

staff use MyLSU to access financial services (for tax documents and direct deposit) and

employee resources (for payroll deposit slips and employee information). Each MyLSU account,

regardless of the type of user, also offers a personal preferences option used for changing

passwords for their accounts and changing directory information, such as home address. MyLSU

also offers a campus community resource where users can review the academic calendar and

GROK, and a library resource that allows users to quickly manage their library needs. These

capabilities make MyLSU one of the most widely used accounts on LSU campus.

Mainframe is primarily used by LSU faculty, staff and graduate students for many

various purposes. In order to obtain a mainframe account, the potential user must request an

account. Mainframe is used for looking up course information, looking up student information,

printing, administration and many various purposes. It is used by student workers, department

counselors, financial services employees, teachers, and more. Over the next 18 months, LSU will

be trying to modernize mainframe by changing the user interface because it is a bit dated.

Tigermail and LSU mail are the email accounts offered to users on LSU campus.

Tigermail is the email account offered to students and LSU mail is the email account offered to

faculty and staff. Both accounts are powered by Gmail.

Moodle is the means by which teachers post assignments, grades, syllabi, and other

course content for their students. This provides easier access to course materials for students.

With each of these accounts, users often have trouble accessing their account. The

primary reason for this is because the users have trouble with their password. When users run

into log-in trouble for any of these accounts, they contact ITS. Password management represents

the largest percentage of problems that ITS handles and fortunately the steps to resolve this issue

is often very straight forward. However, the resolution for this issue varies slightly from account

to account and sometimes becomes a bit challenging because in order to gain access to

mainframe or the email accounts, the user must have access to his or her MyLSU account.

There is a very straight forward way to handle issues concerning passwords and it is

something that every Help Desk Agent must be familiar with. Usually when somebody contacts

us to change a password, it is by phone. The first step is to acquire the user’s MyLSU username.

After that, the user will typically say something that will indicate to the help desk agent that the

user is having a problem accessing one of their accounts. After determining which account the

user is having trouble accessing, it is time to determine which process to employ. If the user is

having trouble accessing an LSU email account or mainframe account, the next step is to guide

the user through resetting their password through their MyLSU account. All a user needs to do in

this case is log into their MyLSU account, go to the password management link and type in a

new password. If the user is having trouble with their MyLSU account password, the process is a

bit trickier, but still very straightforward. The first step is to ask the user if she has tried the

forgot-password link. If the user is able to use the forgot-password link and reset the password,

the call is finished. Otherwise, the next step is to check and see if the user is on campus. If so, the

user is directed to one of our locations where she will be able to bring a photo ID and have the

password reset by an analyst. Otherwise, the agent will verify the user’s identity by asking for

her birthdate and the last 4 digits of her social security number, verify that the user can access the

email account we have on file, and then retrieve a contact number for the user. Once that process

is complete, the help desk agent fills out a ticket to be submitted to an analyst. The analyst will

then send a temporary password to the user, so that the user can access her account and change

the password.

An example of a rare MyLSU problem is broken links on the page. One user was

experiencing problems with two of her links in MyLSU. Every time she would click on the links,

it would bring up a new tab with an error message. Many troubleshooting steps were taken. I had

the user clear the cache from her browser. I tried opening the same links under my account, and

tried using a different web browser. None of these techniques resolved the issue and the user was

unable to access her billing statement and class scheduling. When writing the ticket, I made sure

to accurately describe the situation, explain all of the troubleshooting techniques already

attempted and take screenshots. The ticket was then sent to a specialist group for further review.

Issues also arise with users and their email accounts. Common problem users have with

their email accounts is being unable to send or receive emails and being unable to perform an

operational task. When a user calls in unable to receive emails, the first step is to have them

check their spam and trash folders for the email. If the user is having trouble sending an email,

the first step is to check the sent folder and try sending a test email to a help desk email account.

The next step is to have the user clear the cache from the web browser (this is a common step for

attempting to resolve many issues). If the issue persists, it is time to use the bomgar screen-

sharing tool for the help desk agent to look at the problem first hand (some help desk agents use

the bomgar tool as a first step). If the help desk agent is unable to find a solution to the problem,

the next step is to start writing a ticket. The key information for a ticket like this is the user’s

logon ID, an explanation of the problem, any retrievable information for the specific emails that

are missing, and a contact phone number for the user. Bomgar becomes very useful for recording

information at this point. It is sometimes useful to capture a screen shot of the user’s issues and

include that in the ticket. If however, the problem is resolved, the ticked will be written as closed

and much less detail will need to be provided.

Students and teachers are the primary users of Moodle accounts and both contacts ITS for

Moodle support. Students commonly use our support because they are unable to see Moodle

content, such as a grade or a course. Teachers commonly use our support because they are unable

to complete a task such as adding a teaching assistant or posting grades. Usually, our help desk

will refer the user to the Faculty Technology Center to handle Moodle issues, but sometimes we

are able to handle issues at the help desk. Bomgar and GROK become especially useful for

helping teachers perform a task in Moodle. When a teacher calls in to add a teaching assistant,

for example, the help desk agent can look up a GROK article on how to do so and then use

Bomgar to either instruct the user, or perform the task for the user. If a student is having trouble

viewing a course or grades, the common resolution is to have the user wait, or contact the

professor of the course. If the problem persists and other students are able to see the content at

hand, it may be necessary to write an open ticket for the Faculty Technology Center to review.

Moodle issues typically arise in high volume in the beginning of each semester and reduce

significantly as the semester moves on.

Dealing with issues in mainframe is similar to dealing with issues in other accounts.

Mainframe users often times get frozen while trying to perform tasks, have trouble printing from

mainframe, and sometimes other, more complex issues arise that are beyond the scope of the

help desk position. If a user calls in with a complaint about a mainframe freeze, the most

common solution is to kick them out of mainframe and have them log back in. Help desk agents

have this capability with their mainframe accounts and the process to do so is contained in a

notebook placed at each phone station. If the problem is not resolved, it may be necessary to start

a bomgar screen-sharing session to seek a solution or gather information for an open ticket.

Other possible solutions will usually consist of operational advice, such as keyboard shortcuts.

For problems users have with printing from mainframe, there are two major troubleshooting

techniques available for help desk agents. First, help desk agents can print a test page to see if

there was some basic user error. Second, help desk agents are able to recycle printers, which will

typically solve the problem at hand. Help desk agents also have access to information about the

printer such as its status, or its network/mainframe luname. The process for testing a print page

and recycling printers are available in the notebook for reference. If neither of these techniques

resolves the issue at hand, the next step is to begin writing an open ticket. Fortunately, there is a

quick incident template that lists all the information needed for the next group to fix the issue.

For more complex issues that are beyond the scope of a help desk agent, an open ticket will need

to be submitted. When submitting a ticket, it is up to the help desk agent to gather the appropriate

information and accurately explain the problem that the user is having. Relevant information

may include the mainframe ID, contact phone number, the goal of the user; the page in

mainframe the user is having the problem in, error messages, and relevant screen shots.

Another common category of issues that ITS handles is software support. All students,

faculty and staff have access to many software programs through tigerware. ITS supports the

uses of software by helping users install, activate, and use the programs. Common software

offered to users is Microsoft office, Windows operating systems, VMWare, and Symantec.

Along with these common software programs, tigerware offers software for many other

functions, such as statistical processing, software development, database applications, utilities,

science software, multimedia, note-taking tools, and many others.

The two most common reasons for a user to call in for software support are to install, or

activate software. GROK comes in very handy for these types of phone calls because there are

many articles that explain the process of installation and activation in great detail. Microsoft

office is the most common software that users install and some of those users go to ITS for help

installing it. In order to install Microsoft Office, the user must log into MyLSU, go to tigerware

and search for Microsoft Office (it is usually on the front page). The user must then choose the

correct download type and then run the installation process. After running the installation

process, the user must go to ‘On the Hub’ to get an access key in order to activate and use

Microsoft Office. Some users require guidance through this process. Another facet of managing

Microsoft Office is that it needs to be reactivated periodically. In order for Microsoft Office to be

activated, a user must connect to the campus wifi periodically or through a virtual private

network.

Sometimes users require help with software that our help desk is unable to support due to

potential liability. These areas include the installation of operating systems and virus removal.

We do offer support for some of these processes, however. Our help desk agents can guide users

through the process of finding the operating system on tigerware and burning the software to a

disk or a bootable hard drive. We are unable to install the new operating system to a machine.

When users contact us in need of virus removal, we are unable to remove the virus directly, but

we can take steps to help. Often times, it may seem that a user’s machine is infected with a virus,

but it is actually infected with an adware extension. The process for removing these is to delete it

from the browser and uninstall the program that it comes from. If the user has a virus or

malware, however, we are unable to attempt to remove the program, but we can recommend

Malwarebytes and Symantec endpoint protection. If neither of these fixes the problem, we

recommend local PC repair shops that might be able to take further steps.

There are many other software programs that we support as well. Most of these are

similar in the way that they are installed and activated. There are other programs that require

extra steps such as VMWare, but the majority of software follows similar steps and these steps

can usually be found in GROK.

The last major area of support the help desk offers is in networking and printing.

Students, faculty and staff receive free access to LSU wifi. The most common location to deal

with wifi issues is in Middleton, but sometimes we receive calls in the call-center. For

troubleshooting network connectivity issues, Bomgar is ineffective because the user must have

an internet connection in order to access the screen sharing function. The wifi name is eduroam

and the credentials to access it are the users’ MyLSU credentials. The major issue with

networking is users being unable to connect to the campus wifi. There are a variety of reasons

why users find themselves unable to connect to the wifi and there are a few simple, but effective

troubleshooting techniques that help desk agents must understand in order to solve connectivity

issues. The first two checkpoints are the user’s domain and password. LSU recently changed the

logon ID requirements from just the user’s ID to the user’s ID with the domain “@lsu.edu”. This

is a common mistake for users to make when trying to log in and it is very simple, so that is

generally the first question to ask users. The next thing to ask users is the status of their

password. If a password was recently changed and the user’s computer tries to automatically log

in with the old password, there will be an error. The next line of troubleshooting is

forgetting/deleting the account and re-attempting a log in. If this does not work, we can try

restarting the machine or changing potentially interfering wifi settings. If none of these

techniques solves the issue, it may be time to write an open ticket. For a wifi ticket, the relevant

information will include the user’s ID, the troubleshooting steps taken, any error messages that

appear, and possibly the MAC address or the IP address. Writing open tickets for wifi issues is

very uncommon, but does happen occasionally. The major issue that the help desk supports for

printing is helping users print from their own machine. This process requires users to go to

GROK and download the printing package for LSU. After the package is installed, the user can

select campus printers when trying to print. For MAC operating systems, the printing package

must be run at startup, so the MAC machines must be restarted before the printing package takes

effect. For other issues dealing with printing, the print desk in the library is where users are

directed.

Working at ITS has taught me a lot about the user support side of the information

technology industry. I have had a chance to gain some experience in front-line support where I

was able to solve some problems and witness problems that I may solve in the future if I decide

to pursue a career in user support. One key concept that I have gotten to experience firsthand is

the 80-20 rule. This basically means that 20 percent of the work is 80 percent of the stress. At

ITS account management is the most common issue that arises, but it represents 20 percent of the

stress because the solutions are very simple. More difficult issues dealing with software, or

mainframe tends to represent 80 percent of the stress because it is possible to see a problem that

you have not seen before. Overall, I believe that this is a great starting point for me as I pursue a

career in IT. I now know that I enjoy working with information technology and I am curious to

learn more.