Understanding the Basics of a Web-Based Help Desk Ticketing System Using Jira
Ticketing systems are essential for any help desk position as they allow IT support to track, manage, and efficiently handle incidents. The purpose of this home lab was for me to familiarize myself with these systems before starting a help desk position.
Part 1: Basics of Creating a Ticket
When an end user is having an issue, they would typically be the ones to create these tickets. Within this ticket, they would be able to describe the problems they are having and attach any useful files necessary to resolve them.
The user will select an issue type from the drop-down menu below to help keep things organized and efficient. For example, they could type in the name of their program here if it was an option to ensure the ticket makes it to the support team for that specific program.
Once the issue type is selected the summary can be written which is essentially the title of the ticket for Jira, and then a long description can be written out below.
If the end user is savvy, they can also select the components drop-down menu to choose the specific technology they are having an issue with like Jira, or the VPN Server.
There may also be an option for the assignment of the ticket if an admin was creating it, but the end user creating a ticket would not see this option.
We also have the priority option, to ensure we are servicing the most important issues first. For example, a server being down is probably more important than someone's second monitor not working. It’s affecting more users and the user with the monitor issue can continue to work with one monitor in the meantime.
Part 2: Working a Ticket
Now that my ticket was created, it was time to assign it to myself and work it! In the image above I highlighted in Jira where you can assign the ticket to yourself or select someone else if you have the permissions to do so.
Time to work with a new ticket. I chose one with a display issue I felt I knew how to fix and assigned it to myself.
Step 1:Replying to the customer
The first part of working on a ticket is communicating with the end user. Now is a great time to ask questions to gather more information, use your knowledge base and research skills to troubleshoot for people, and solve the issue while providing great customer service.
Now that I replied it was time to leave an internal note, one that the end user could not see but the rest of the team could.
After the issue was resolved, I created another internal note and marked the status of the ticket as resolved.
Once the ticket is resolved it’s also best practice to take note of how the issue was fixed so if it ever occurs again in the future, you and your team know how to handle it.
CONCLUSION:
It’s essential to understand how these ticketing systems work to be successful in a help desk position. Although it was a simple lab, it was crucial for me to improve my understanding of how these systems work and how to navigate them properly.
