What Do People Say?

We started using bigWebDesk to fill our need for a helpdesk ticketing system, and it worked well for us in that role. When they added the asset manager portion, the benefit was exponential. We now look at bigWebDesk as our asset manager tool that has ticketing capabilities!

Robert Lucas, Supervisor of Instructional Technology
Chehalis School District, WA

It is working great. This is something that has been so hard of us at the beginning of the school year. My department is trying to get classrooms and teachers setup. The students just sign up in dorm office. This way, our student techs get an email, setup a time to meet with the student that made the request. It is all done in an orderly fashion—no pick and choose type thing. It is working great. I can not say thank you enough for the Employee and the separate Student Helpdesk. It is wonderful.

Ann Caldwell, Director for Technology
Mississippi School for Mathematics & Science

Thanks for all you do for us!!! It is so nice to work with a product when we get such awesome support!

We had a recent situation where the bigWebDesk reporting helped us with an Administrator at one of our schools! We received a call that a computer had never been “fixed” and they wanted to know when we were going to come take a look at it.

We were able to go into that school's support tickets and show that the request for that computer had not been submitted for us to see! We then printed the report of all posted tickets (open, closed and on hold) and took that to the administrator of the school to show that we had not been notified of an issue for that computer the entire school year. We then proceeded to enter the ticket and quickly fix the problem for them.

It was great to be able to access that information quickly and have it support us!

Thanks again for all the help!

Teresa Freeman
McDowell County Schools

I can honestly say, (bigWebDesk) is the only program we have used consistently that I really like—support and software!

Terri Burnham, Director of Technology
Gulfport School District

BigWebDesk has allowed us to conquer several aspects of managing school wide needs. First of all, we've set the Helpdesk up to manage both Maintenance Department and Technology Department related services. Additionally it has been a great source of managing and facilitating timely work orders at AWS. Our technology department specifically appreciates the ability to communicate (within the context of the BigWebDesk interface) with the person(s) in need of service, as the ticket remains open. What's more it has significantly cut down the number of nitpicky or unnecessary support issues because we now have a formalized process for submitting work orders.

From the staff point of view, they've enjoyed the ability to easily navigate the web interface. I have used other Helpdesks before that are overly convoluted in terms of the information requested and the way it must be submitted via the form. Additionally, the staff really appreciates that they can select from a list of potential support providers and that they get email verification when tickets are closed.

Administratively speaking, BigWebDesk was incredibly intuitive, making it easy to customize it to the needs of AWS. I'm looking forward to including in our support monitoring next year parts and labor aspects of the database so that we can work to manage costs and time.

Eric Fredericks, Director of Technology
Annie Wright School, Washington

bigWebDesk has been a great asset to our district. Before bigWebDesk, we managed user's computer repairs and questions with faxes. Keeping up with the masses of paper was overwhelming. bigWebDesk allows me to customize specific classes, problems, and concerns. With a quick glance, I can see the problems and assign them to the correct person to address. I can be out of my office and still see what is going on in the district. bigWebDesk also allows me to track problems by location. I can then use these reports to show administrators exactly what is going on in their school as well as across the district. bigWebDesk is a great value for the money and has been a tremendous time saver for our district.

Paula Yohe, Director of Technology
Dillon School District Two, South Carolina

First, I will say that bigWebDesk has certainly helped with our technology work orders. It helps our technicians manage their time better and staff knows that if they do not fill out a work order they won't get any service. We especially like the feature of technicians being notified via email when they receive a work order, that we can then send an email to the end user about when we will addressing their work order and that email is sent to the user when the work order is complete. We have been asked to respond to users within 24 hours. A response can simply be a call back. A phone call is usually not feasible because it is difficult to reach teachers in their classrooms but they do read their email. So the email notification is very important to us and works great. The reporting feature is also very helpful. It keeps track by technician, site, month, total summary. This information I can take to either my supervisor or board not only as evidenced of our workload but to use a justification the need to hire additional staff. I would recommend this product to any company looking for a management system for work orders, services, etc.

I would also like to say that your company has been excellent to work with. (They are) very responsive to customer needs and are always available when I call. Email is OK but sometimes it is nice to talk with a real person.

Caryl Kempfer, Director of Technology
Redmond School District 2J, Oregon

We now have close to 850 closed tickets. Oh by the way we hit the 1000 mark yesterday for tickets issued. I waited for sirens and balloons to pop out of the computer or a free ticket to famous island, but nothing. Never thought when we began this last spring that 1000 tickets would be issued this quickly. This software and your company has made a huge impact on our helpdesk service. Thanks for your continual help to making our service to our district more efficient.

Virginia Glass, Technology Coordinator
Berkley County, Michigan

I've watched bigWebDesk develop from some of its earliest versions and have been impressed with the progress. Although the initial versions did not fit the needs of the Walker County School System's Science and Technology Center,

I was impressed enough with the effort and personal service mentality of the makers of bigWebDesk that I continued checking up on the product. In late spring/early summer of 2002, we requested a demonstration of bigWebDesk and tested it in our largest school replacing our traditional paper and in-house web database Technology Requests. BigWebDesk's representatives worked diligently to understand our work process and helped us tailor the system to our needs during the demo period and we were pleased enough with the results that we proceeded with purchasing the service.

One key factor in our decision to go with bigWebDesk over other products was the price. While it may seem cheaper and more cost-effective to purchase software that will be installed locally on your own servers, the long-range expenses often equal or exceed the cost of a bigWebDesk subscription. Instead of becoming a slave to upgrade cycles where you must purchase a new version of server software, perform the upgrade, and constantly apply security and bug-patch updates, I prefer to subscribe to the bigWebDesk service with a reasonable per-user license cost. Upgrades, updates, and enhancements are all handled by bigWebApps and result in minimal interruption of service.

Extra features don't cost extra with bigWebDesk. With some other solutions, you have to pick a pre-packaged set of features and risk not having all the features you really needed (unless you pay an additional premium to have a full-featured version of that competitor's product). With bigWebDesk, if a new feature is added, everyone benefits. This feeds the strong customer-driven development cycle of bigWebDesk perfectly. I feel that I, along with other customers, have the power to improve my own user experience through feature suggestions. Many of my own suggestions have been implemented, some within a few days.

Service availability has been above average throughout our experience. In fact, most times when we have suspected a bigWebDesk service outage, it has actually been the result of a failed ISP DNS server. Maintenance periods are usually announced with ample planning time and unexpected outages are handled in an expedient manner.

One problem that bigWebDesk helps us with is demonstrating the workload of our department. With the previous hybrid paper/in-house web database system, we found that our schools did not make much of their requested work 'official' by putting in a Technology Request. Instead, they would pull a Technician aside when they saw them in a hallway and then ask them to do the work, never documenting the work requested. BigWebDesk has made the process of submitting a Technology Request so easy that within the first six months, we saw an impressive spike in inbound requests... and the numbers have remained high since then! Also, with the Reports available, we are able to demonstrate trends by location and by technician and predict needs, thus allowing more effective distribution of resources.

Other problems bigWebDesk helps with are:

• Accountability—every communication is logged on the ticket, showing who has said and done what
• Timeliness—Ticket age timers, follow-up dates, and due dates encourage more efficient use of technician time
• Regular Maintenance reminders—automatically generated tickets remind techs of repeating maintenance needs
• MTBF Estimation for Problem Equipment—if a piece of equipment is entered into the Assets section of the system, it becomes easier to plan preventative maintenance rather than responding to break-downs because you can see that equipment's history

Even after a year and a half, there are still a few features which we have not implemented, but that is the beauty of bigWebDesk... we can implement almost any feature with a click of the mouse.

Our Maintenance, Facilities and Administrative Services Department has just recently also decided to use bigWebDesk for their technicians as well. Just as when our Technology department first signed on, bigWebDesk was able to send a trainer out to demonstrate the system to the technicians and administrators.

Overall, I would say that the recommendation of bigWebDesk is one of the best decisions I have made since I have been working at the Science and Technology Center. I can see the results every day in my own ticket list.

Curtis Faulkner, ACTC
Walker County Schools, Georgia

bigWebDesk is the best thing that has happened to our department in a long time.

(I) Just can't tell you how much your product has helped with the daily job we have of too much work for too few people. My staff and the teachers (computer coordinators at each site) have been helped by the increased communication.

Kathy Berryhill, Technology Coordinator
Sapulpa Public Schools, Oklahoma