Like any large corporation, Vallentyne.com has a vast IT organization. I recently had cause to call the help desk here at Vallentyne.com and it really made me think; most people don’t know the intricate processes and systems at work here. So I thought I would illustrate some of the processes for you, it’s quite fascinating.

Here’s a sample scenario based on a ticket from just last week:

An end user (me) notices a problem with one of our many systems. He/she calls the help desk (I think to myself, I should fix that) and opens a ticket (Yep, I really should fix that). The help desk takes basic information about the problem (I scratch my head) and routes the ticket to the appropriate queue (I scratch my head some more). The second level queue manager picks up the ticket and performs basic system checks (I take a sip of coffee). If all seems in order, the ticket will be escalated to third level engineering (me) for resolution. The third level engineer (me) determines the probable cause of the problem (the server is powered off) and provides a solution to second level (me) and also contacts the operations manager (Nikki) to inform them of the issue. The operations manager (Nikki) confirms the source of the problem and makes the necessary changes (powers on the server) and sends an incident report to second and third level for entry into the support knowledge base (calls me to say it’s back on now).

Now that’s a finely tuned customer support machine.