Background
New Hanover County Schools is a North Carolina school district encompassing 43 schools and almost 25,000 students. When their IT and facility support needs outweighed their current tech stack, they worked with Incident IQ to get their support teams on one unified platform.
Incident IQ worked with New Hanover’s IT and facility team to address their needs—district-wide visibility, clear ticket routing, and efficient asset management that supported their 1:1 device initiative.
Standing Up A Dedicated Asset Management System
Amy York, New Hanover’s Technology Help Desk Manager, observed the immediate benefits of using a dedicated support platform like Incident IQ.
“We couldn’t do a lot of things with [our old system], so Incident IQ has been a huge help for us,” said York.
Before Incident IQ, New Hanover’s previous asset management system couldn’t connect specific devices with help tickets, and they struggled with monitoring and deploying student devices. Today, the North Carolina district enjoys efficient asset deployment/collection, data-rich integrations with their MDM and SIS platforms, and accurate auditing tools.
“Being able to bring those assets in and manage them is very helpful for our teams,” York said.
Being able to tie devices to users, location, and help tickets brings a new level of visibility to New Hanover’s support teams. Now, IT technicians can find a device’s location, view recent logins, and obtain detailed device metadata from a single platform, minimizing the need to switch between systems to hunt for relevant information.
New Hanover’s onsite technicians also manage backup devices with Spare Pool by Incident IQ. “We have loaner devices to give out to students and teachers when their device is being repaired,” said York.
Spare Pool from Incident IQ enables users to create and manage groups of dedicated loaner devices throughout the district. This app allows New Hanover’s IT team to assign spare devices from a help ticket and keep accurate records of device swaps.
“Incident IQ has definitely simplified things for us,” said Amy York.
Establishing Advanced Help Ticketing Tools
Another major headache for New Hanover’s support teams was how help requests were gathered and sent to the appropriate support team.
“We have so many devices of different types, and so many people in the technology department,” York recalled. “With [our old system], everything was all jumbled up, including maintenance work orders. It was not customizable, and nothing was automated. It wasn’t in the same ballpark as Incident IQ.”
Incident IQ features automations that sort and route tickets based on factors such as issue type, SLA agreements, and more. New Hanover has several teams dedicated to specific support needs: from AV, Networking, Client Services, Media Specialists, to Facilities, Maintenance, and Operations. It was critical for New Hanover to get data-rich help requests assigned to the proper agent.
According to Amy York, Incident IQ’s automations have definitely impacted productivity across the district.
“Being able to customize the rules to have specific tickets go to specific people has been a really big help. It’s not just going in one giant pool, where you have to go wade through it and figure out which ones are your tickets. That’s been very helpful,” said York.
“Incident IQ is also helping [facilities teams] stay on top of work orders. With the old system, a lot of stuff was getting lost or forgotten. Now they’re able to send out stale ticket reminders, and that’s really helped them a lot to keep up with everything. Maintenance and operations has so many different shops and they weren’t able to [route tickets] before.”
Getting help requests to the right people is a huge factor to closing tickets more efficiently. New Hanover saves valuable time and energy by utilizing Incident IQ’s advanced support routing tools.
Supporting Teachers, Staff, and Students with a Unified Platform
At the end of the day, Incident IQ and New Hanover both have the same goal: to support teaching and learning. Incident IQ’s workflows have not only let New Hanover’s support teams work more proactively than ever, they’ve also given students and teachers a quick way to submit data-rich tickets.
Amy York worked with teachers directly so they could understand Incident IQ’s workflows and use them for their specific needs.
“I looked at it from the teacher’s side,” said York. “I’ve worked in schools before, and I understand the frustrations teachers have. They don’t have time to scroll through a million things, so I made it as simple as possible.”
Incident IQ has a host of features that minimize the support burden for teachers. From easy access to classroom assets to submitting a ticket with relevant MDM and SIS information already populated, Incident IQ streamlines the help request process so teachers can focus on what matters most—classroom instruction.
To help close help requests faster, New Hanover has brought in high school students to assist with technology support operations. With only one onsite technician at each school and their 1:1 device initiative, Amy York’s team was having a hard time keeping up with the amount of help tickets—until they established the student tech team. Using Incident IQ, IT staff and student volunteers are able to respond quickly to IT support issues.
“We were able to train our student help desk on how to help another student put a ticket in or how to issue a loaner through Incident IQ, and that was extremely helpful. Both students and teachers have used it quite a lot,” said York.
Incident IQ’s streamlined help submission makes it easy for teachers and students to submit help requests, while also providing IT teams with data-rich tickets in their inbox.
See What A Unified Tech Stack Can Do For Your District
Establishing a dedicated solution that encompasses several district support teams can go a long way to improving visibility and closing help requests quickly and accurately.
Incident IQ was specifically designed to solve the problems of today’s K-12, and we are eager to showcase the advanced toolkit that helps school districts resolve help requests easier than ever before. See for yourself by scheduling a demo today.