Background
Located in the San Francisco Bay area, Union School District teaches over 5,000 students from preschool through eighth grade. Before the start of the 2021 school year, Union School’s support teams were having a difficult time managing their increasing district assets and subpar help ticketing system.
“Everything was isolated within each school,” said Jenny Torres, Union School’s Solution Support Specialist.
Between Union School’s 8 school buildings and 2 district offices, their support team wasn’t able to find important data about district devices and their performance.
“Everything was separated out. Our site technicians kept track of inventory, but at the district office, we couldn’t access that information. Each inventory was kept individually at each site, and we wanted to centralize that,” said Torres.
What’s more, Union School’s help ticketing system was also creating challenges for the support team.
“It wasn’t giving as much of a record as we wanted to have There were no integrations with support tickets or device management. If we had a broken Chromebook that was broken six times, we had no way to track that because [the previous system] couldn’t accomplish that at all.”
With Incident IQ’s tools, Union School’s overcame their IT support struggle with a combination of detailed asset management and advanced help ticketing workflows that manage devices and quickly close help requests.
The Ease of Data Importation and Moving to A New Support Solution
Once Union School decided to move to Incident IQ, Torres and her team prepared for the data importation process—something Torres normally referred to as a “bear” of a project. But with Incident IQ’s streamlined data mapping program, Torres and her team found that the challenge wasn’t so difficult after all.
“The import process with Incident IQ is the best I’ve seen,” said Torres.
“It’s super simple to import data. It takes you through the entire process. If you’re missing data and it doesn’t match, it takes you to those mismatched things. That in and of itself has been huge for me, because I’m a data person.”
Torres needed to pull information from a variety of sources and platforms, but Incident IQ’s importation process made it easier than ever to upload large amounts of information.
“I was able to download and upload it into Incident IQ really seamlessly. It was super easy to do and super straightforward. That was definitely a plus,” Torres said.
“[With our previous software], I would experience something I called a dead import—there was no interaction. If it failed, you just had to go back a step and if you forgot to back it up, will be to you. But with Incident IQ, it takes you through the steps of the matching process, so you know if there’s data that’s not quite right or data that’s missing. It was great to be able to do that.”
Incident IQ was already streamlining Union School’s workflows, and it was just the beginning of the process.
“It’s taken some time, but it’s really been a good experience, and much better than what we had—100% better than what we had,” said Torres.
Improve Ticket and Device Data Visibility Through Better Integrations
After incorporating all their data into Incident IQ, Jenny Torres and the rest of Union School’s IT team were ready to see how their asset management and help ticketing would improve with Incident IQ’s toolkit at their disposal. They instantly noticed the difference API-driven integrations gave their workflows by hosting critical data on one platform.
“Incident IQ gave us a way of integrating our assets with our MDM platform and the Google Admin console, which let us access real-time information without having to compromise the security of our devices,” said Torres.
“We can see what version the devices are on, which student is attached to it, and who’s signed into the device because that information is tied together with the Google Admin console. That has been huge, and made [our work] much easier. To have all that information readily available and in one place has been great.”
Providing clear and relevant data is the way Incident IQ helps school districts improve communication and visibility across the entire district. Torres appreciated the detailed ticket timelines for each help ticket, which helped teachers and students see how the IT team were fixing their devices in real-time.
Additionally, the granular level of detail for district assets and help requests provided Union School with critical reports and analytics, which helped the district save money on faulty devices.
“With Incident IQ, everything was centralized on one platform. We were able to easily identify issues that were reported for specific models of Chromebooks, and Acer was willing to send us screens and help us with things because of that data. It saved us a lot of money,” said Torres.
After seeing all the benefits of a centralized system, Union School moved their facilities team to Incident IQ. Having multiple support teams on a unified platform streamlined workflows for several departments and improved visibility and communication for the entire district.
“People are on board with Incident IQ, and the app is super easy to use,” said Torres.
Incident IQ Mobile is used by the IT and facilities teams to work and resolve help requests on-the-go. “Our facilities team is always moving around, so the app works really well for them,” Torres reported.
Incident IQ’s unified platform smoothed the rough edges in Union School’s various support workflows. From asset management and help ticketing to facilities maintenance, Incident IQ empowered Union School’s support teams to better support the needs of their classroom.
“Incident IQ does bring people together. It’s all in one place. I can look at a facilities ticket, technicians can see all the tickets at their sites, and we can track emails better than going back-and-forth like it was before. As far as accessing data, tracking, and visibility, it’s been huge,” said Torres.
Move Your K-12 District To A Streamlined Solution
Today’s classrooms demand interoperable solutions that help K-12 teams work and resolve issues fast. If you’re looking for a support solution that is designed for the K-12 experience, reach out to us. Incident IQ has award-winning tools that refine support workflows across your district.