Keeping track of your network

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wavewerx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 8, 2008
Messages
284
I'm working in my dad's small business (25 people) and am the go-to-tech guy.

What kind of day to day activities do y'all keep track of and how? Installing a ticket helpdesk system seems like way over kill... I'm just looking for like an Excel document to track troubleshooting problems (My outlook is working offline, I can't move my mouse, my computer froze) and hardware changes (Recently I had to install two video cards into some Dell Vostro machines for dual monitor capabilities)

I monitor our three servers often and make sure we're good on space and what not but what else should I be tracking?

tl;dr: What do y'all keep track of at your office (hardware change logs, minor troubleshooting, backups)? How do y'all keep track of it (Excel - what are your column headings?, Program suite, pen/paper)?
 
Not really any easy way to do this for 25 users, you can try spiceworks though. Its a free service desk tool
 
By chance, Small Business Server running the show there? If so, there's a little helpdesk feature built into the intranet portal.

For a network of just 25 though, yeah just MS Office tools would suffice.
 
If you design a template, I would keep track of the date in, user, machine s/n, issue, resolution, and date out, at a min. and then evolve from there. I would create a form template, and then save that as a PDF, have it available online. The user will download the form, fill in the user info, machine s/n and issues and then email the form to the help desk's email. You give it a ticket number and perform your diagnosis, then fill in the rest. Print out a copy of the form for hardcopy records, and save another somewhere on a server as backup, maybe by ticket number.

Devise a ticket number based on date or something that will help you in the long run. 102809-1 for todays date, first ticket recieved.
 
I'm in a similar boat.

Depending on the severity of it, I toss it in our CRM software, otherwise, if it was via email, I have a seperate folder I dump it do.
 
J-Will said:
If you design a template, I would keep track of the date in, user, machine s/n, issue, resolution, and date out, at a min. and then evolve from there. I would create a form template, and then save that as a PDF, have it available online. The user will download the form, fill in the user info, machine s/n and issues and then email the form to the help desk's email. You give it a ticket number and perform your diagnosis, then fill in the rest. Print out a copy of the form for hardcopy records, and save another somewhere on a server as backup, maybe by ticket number.

Devise a ticket number based on date or something that will help you in the long run. 102809-1 for todays date, first ticket recieved.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's just my OCD, but I'd use 20091029001, 20091029002, etc for the tickets. this creates a nice, easily-sorted list.
 
berky said:
Maybe it's just my OCD, but I'd use 20091029001, 20091029002, etc for the tickets. this creates a nice, easily-sorted list.
Click to expand...
My SQL OCD is screaming to separate that data. Table fields for each piece of data; YEAR, MONTH, DAY, TICKET#. I would also toss in SEVERITY, OWNER and ENABLED.
 
While the ticket system is nice most of the problems people just IM (we use yahoo for IM in the office - i'd like to change that to a private IRC) call me, or walk into my office and say Hey man my shit ain't working.... I do like the concept of adding specific numbers per "ticket"... but I think asking them to email / fill out a form is to much of a hassle...
 
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