School help desk software refers to the portal where users go to request technical support, as well as the tools technicians use to address those requests.
Any medium to large-sized organization should use help desk software to ensure that their users have immediate access to technical support, and that IT technicians have the means to keep these requests prioritized and organized.
K-12 school districts use help desk software like countless other organizations—but their needs are inherently different from what a standard help desk software usually offers. From their devices being in the hands of young learners, to a limited budget, K-12 IT leaders face a different challenge altogether.
What is school help desk software?
School help desk software is a software platform that connects staff with their district’s IT team to create help tickets and receive support for their district devices.
For instance, a student who was issued a district Chromebook with a malfunctioning screen will need to contact the school’s IT department to replace the broken device. The student (or teacher, parent, guardian, etc) will use their school’s help desk software to submit a help ticket and receive technical support for the Chromebook.
School help desk software is incredibly important, as it serves as the first place students or staff go when their devices are malfunctioning. Chances are, your district uses a huge amount of technical devices—from your students’ school-provided Chromebooks to in-house technology like PCs, printers, Smart Boards, and so on. While you can manage tens of thousands of district assets with school asset management software, school help desk software should serve as the one-stop-shop to address technical support issues around all district assets (both fixed assets and student devices) that are on the move.
School help desk software encompasses all technical concerns around your district’s assets, whether it’s on campus or in the students’ homes.
IT support in schools
In the last few years, schools have rapidly adopted technology into their classrooms. With many districts still employing remote or hybrid learning, your IT teams may still be adjusting to new demands on their time—especially if they are in charge of successfully managing and maintaining 1:1 device initiatives in your district.
That’s where school help desk software comes in. It is designed to reduce administrative overhead, provide users with rapid technical support, and ease the burden on your technicians’ shoulders.
Help desk software ensures that help requests don’t fall through the cracks. Teachers and staff now have a way to submit data-rich help requests using forms that can populate the request with user and device data from MDM and SIS integrations. This gives technicians the detailed information they need to work a request, while minimizing the burden on the user asking for help. Minimizing spur-of-the-moment requests in the hallway is a win-win for K-12 staff and technicians alike.
Additionally, school help desk software can dramatically increase district access to technical support. Staff have round-the-clock access to the help desk, so they don’t have to wait for proper school hours to submit a help request.
Instead, your district’s staff can log in to the software and begin a customized ticketing process to repair their device. IT teams can format the help ticket submission form by using custom fields with mandatory information, such as device information, location, and type of problem. This reduces back-and-forth communication between the person requesting help and the IT staff member, and gives IT teams enough information to resolve the ticket as efficiently as possible.
Why do educational institutions need their own help desk software?
School districts have different concerns from businesses that use industry-neutral help desk software. K-12 IT teams are dealing with thousands of devices not in the hands of employees, but rather in the care of young learners. These devices are always on the move between home and the classroom, and frequently fall victim to various forms of abuse and neglect that enterprise devices rarely see.
With that many devices at play—and the mission-critical need to keep remote learners connected to the classroom—it’s undeniable that districts need a tailored platform to support K-12 assets.
Help desk software lets IT teams be more efficient with their time, leveraging features like automation to better organize incoming requests. For instance, IT teams can automatically route tickets according to location, issue type, device type, and more, depending on what works best with their established workflows.
Additionally, help desk software helps improve accountability. Detailed asset histories help districts identify students that frequently damage devices. Reliable ownership records allow K-12 districts to assign the same devices year-over-year, which can help encourage students to take better care of their device, since they know it’s the same device they’ll be seeing the following year.
With MDM and SIS integrations, IT staff can track changes to ownership, location, hardware internals, and other crucial asset data. That data-rich help ticket empowers support teams with the data they need to rapidly address a help request, without having to juggle various software platforms and account permissions.
Help desk software tailored for K-12 school districts ensures that your district is supporting teaching and learning through easily available support channels and rapid responses for critical issues.
What to look for in a help desk solution provider?
When considering a help desk software solution for your K-12 school, there are a number of factors to consider before finalizing a deal.
One major aspect to consider is the ease and accessibility of the help ticket process for everyone in your organization. In short, is there a quick way to submit data-rich help tickets in a convenient location for teachers and staff? You’ll want to investigate each software to see how intuitive the solution is—if it’s easier than sending an email, there’s a good chance staff will catch on and start using it. If not, then staff will likely stick to their old ways.
Another aspect to examine is how the software is optimized for your IT teams. Incident IQ makes it simple to provide data-rich tickets by automatically populating requests with relevant user, asset, and location data.
Help desk software is just the beginning
Now that you understand the importance of school help desk software, you should consider what an ideal solution might look like in your K-12 district. Help desk software built for K-12 schools should work with and be part of your larger support infrastructure. K-12 technology is too critical to rely on bare-bones ticketing software or manual spreadsheets to manage inventory.
By combining asset management and help desk ticketing, Incident IQ gives everyone in your K-12 district an easy way to reach out for help, while giving your IT team powerful, time-saving tools to get help requests closed fast.
Ready to learn more about ticket management? See what Incident IQ can do for your district.
