Sub-service desk within a service desk?

[Souljah_boi]

Is it ideal or possible to create a sub-service desk within a service desk in a company?

Here is the scenario:
We have a Global Service Desk within our company which serves as the single point of contact for all of our departments.

One of the departments called construction and logistics wants to monitor and assign work orders to their staff in the field internally. So they are thinking if they can use our current tool HP OV OpenView SD but it will have a different database and will be used exclusively for their department.

Is it ideal / possible? any suggestions on how the department can do to assign and monitor work orders to its staff internally?

Your answers would be utmost appreciated. thanks!

[UrgentJensen]

Souljah_boi,

This is entirely possible.

In reality what you appear to be providing is system or rather, a service.

Some ticketing tools give you a lot of freedom to creat new views and therefore they are using your services to provide a 'new' application and database, just like you do in other aspects of your daily IT life.

If you have a separate app and database for them then there's no cross over with your Service Desk data. You just need to help them understand how they want to categorise work types, priorities, assignment groups, escalations, reporting... this is starting to sound familiar isn't it?

I've done it on a small scale, where we had separate queues for 'cottage IT' teams who for political reasons had to be kept separate from the main IT department.

Hope this helps,

Urgent

[Mark-OLoughlin]

Hi,

In Openview have you looked at using "Folder" to seperate out the other department. You assign rights to the folder for the people that you want to access the Service Desk data only and then rights to the other folder for the other group. If you have a reporting tool like crystal then this could report from both "environments". Have a look if you ar ok with this or if you need to "restrict" the views in the reporting tool.

Using seperate databases and the same OVSD application servers wont work.

The answer to your question si yes you can have one service desk facilitating many customers on the same or different tools etc. The logistics or "how to" will need to be looked at for all aspects.
_________________
Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

[Souljah_boi]

Thanks for the wonderful answers you gave..Btw, we are using HP OpenView SD Tool. We are also using folders for example to separate / group some configuration items. As per your statement it is possible.

But my concern is the intended users for the sub-service desk is Construction and Logistics Department. As we all know they are not an IT related department. The main reason that they want the tool is just for the purpose of assigning work orders to their person in the field, and monitor its progress / status.

Is it the right tool? I think it can be useful if there will use the cmdb..

Actually the scenario will be that the department would have an own Global Service Desk which purpose is to assign work order to construction staff in the field. It would be separate from our current Global Service desk which serves as a SPOC for reporting IT related incidents, request etc..


Does the use of OpenView for the construction department is ok? if not, what tools can you suggest?

Thanks so much! Sorry im just new in the field

[UrgentJensen]

Given the scenario you've explained I think you have to stay clearly focused on what you're trying to achieve: you're not providing a 'service desk' service, rather an 'workflow management' service.

So think about these questions:

What are their exact requirements for functionality?
Does HP allow sufficient customisation of views/folders to represent and track the data they want to capture? Some products allow you to change field names and data types and ranges. Think about the impact on backend tables too...
If HP doesn't, have you looked around for construction-specific tools?
If HP does, do you have the money and skills available to do this?

As I mentioned before I did this on a small scale with another product but there's no point mentioning it because you need to really establish all of your customers requirements first and that will include it's operation support and development too.

Good luck,

Urgent

[Souljah_boi]

[UrgentJensen]

I've been told product recommendations are not allowed on this site, which I completely understand (ironic as recently a lot of people are asking about products now!).

Even if I were able to tell you what I used there we some serious downsides to using that company and therefore I'd probably not use them again!

Best to check Gartner/Forester for 'best fit' products that allow plenty of customisation. There's no silver bullet though as 'customisation' can translate into 'resource intensive'.

What I can say is that if you want multiple databases then go for something that uses a straightforward SQL type backend so it's simple enough to configure users pc's subject to what they need to see.

Good luck,

Urgent

[UKVIKING]

UrgentJensen

It is one thing to say... i have used this tool - insert name - i felt it met my needs when a question about a tool comes up

it is another to say

'Use insert name to solve your itil problem' I did

The first is an opinion based on someone ELSE asking for it. Some other posted asked what the forum people thinks of a tool etc...

That's opinion

the other is advertising/spam/ etc

The latter is frowned upon

The former should not be...

There is a fine line between opinion and being a shill for a product

Frank while he has a company/product tries his best not to shill his own product... he does a pretty good job - most of the time. (grin)
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[UrgentJensen]

John,

I posted a product name into a post suggesting it suited my needs and it was removed and I got a stern email from the moderator...

UJ

[ITILadmin]

[UKVIKING]

And I think I called it spam too !!!


or was it another post
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[Souljah_boi]

Thanks for all the answers. I really appreciated. With regards to the products. My apologies ITILadmin I will gonna check the requirements so we could evaluate if the tool will be suited or be customized based on the needs of the customer..tnx a lot!