Adding the Help Desk Template

The Help Desk can be a top-level site or a subsite of another site.

The Help Desk application template can be used to manage Help Desk tickets and to look for help desk related information such as links, FAQs, and Knowledge Base Articles.

To add the Help Desk template

1	Open Sites and workspaces in SharePoint.

2	Click Create on the toolbar.

3	Complete the site information and select the Help Desk Site template under the Custom tab.

4	Click Create.

Next, you must configure the group for the help desk users.

To configure the group for help desk users

1	Open People and groups in SharePoint.

2	Create 4 new groups (3 new groups if you have already created an Administrators group) and assign members to these groups.

•	Administrators — The members of this group can see the Administration Pages panel in the panel menu.

•	Help Desk Users — This is the group for a regular user. Regular users can create a ticket and track their existing tickets. They can also lookup the resources in the site.

•	Help Desk Technicians — Help Desk Technician can do everything that the Help Desk User can do. Also, they can assign a ticket to themselves or other technician and working on the ticket.

•	Help Desk Supervisors — Help Desk Supervisor can do everything that the Help Desk Technician can do. Also, they can administer the list of help desk technician and add FAQ, and Knowledge Base articles.

If you do not log in as a member of Help Desk Supervisors, open another window and log in as a supervisor.

Select Supervisor | Administrative Page in the menu. At a minimum, you must fill in the Help Desk Technician information and the Supported Products. You can also create other information such as Announcements, Help Desk Links, FAQs, and Knowledge Base Articles in this page.

After the setup is done, anybody can start using the site. The first thing that the user can do is to create a new ticket by clicking the New button in the My New or Unassigned Tickets view in the home page. After a ticket is created, the owner of the ticket can keep track the life cycle of the ticket by clicking the Active Tickets, Resolved Tickets and Closed Tickets links in the panel menu.

Help Desk Technicians can login to the site and look for newly created tickets using the New or Unassigned Tickets page. The link to navigate to this page is available in the panel menu. Somebody must be a member of the Help Desk Technicians member to be able to see this menu. Help Desk Technicians can also see any tickets that are assigned to him/her, resolved by him/her or closed tickets that are resolved by him/her by clicking the appropriate links in the panel menu.

Any user can look for information such as FAQs, discussion board, Knowledge Base Articles, by clicking the links in the panel menu. Only a member of Help Desk Supervisors group can create FAQs, Knowledge Base Articles, by using the administrative page.