What does the Support group do and how does it benefit Trinity?
You have almost certainly come across Central and Distributed Support already…if you’ve ever logged a Service Desk call, used the Microsoft365 software we licence or looked something up on our IT Services website - then we were there for you. It’s Support who manage the security for your PCs and laptops and ensure everyone who connects to the College Network has all your Windows updates and your Anti-Virus is always keeping you safe.
Photo: IT Service Desk team (by Brian McGovern)
We’ve very likely engaged with you and your team to help resolve support calls, changed your password and if you need to buy a new Desktop or Laptop then these will be available with the right-spec and the Trinity image that we have created in partnership with Dell. If you have read an email from IT Services Messages or if you’ve taken an IT course, visited the Microsoft365 Roadmap or used Cyber Crime Watch Hub…yep, us again. Did you ever answer one of the IT Satisfaction Surveys? We make this happen too.
Photo: Training and User Communications team (by Brian McGovern)
Put simply, Support connects staff and students with the IT they need to work. IT services only deliver value when they are simultaneously provided and consumed – so a problem on either side means that the wheels are spinning but all to no avail! The IT Service Desk are often the first point of contact when an IT service is not working properly – we gather information and engage relevant teams to fix it. We help people to develop their digital skills, so they know when and how to use IT to get their work done efficiently, securely and repeatably.
We rely on our Service Delivery function to ensure that IT Services are proactive in continuously improving the IT systems and applications we provide for you, and we closely monitor the service levels of the support we offer. We keep a service catalogue up-to-date with all the services we provide and manage for you. Our most recent survey shows 100% would wish to engage with us for future Service Level Agreements when rolling out new IT applications – this is a really fantastic vote of confidence for us.
What are the big challenges for Support?
One of the biggest challenges with being a point of contact for over 25,000 staff and students is that our workload can peak very quickly and severely. Some of these are more-or-less predictable, such as increased calls each September when the new academic year starts and calls to the IT Service Desk hit 9550 for that month in 2022, compared to 5000 per month at any other time of year.
Other times an increased workload for Support just comes out-of-the-blue, such as the unexpected logon incident that primarily affected Trinity’s VLE, Blackboard, in February 2023 which triggered around 1000 additional Service Desk calls on a Monday.
Of course the other big challenge is just the sheer diversity of what all the calls can be about to the IT Service Desk on any given day – we can always rely that staff and students will have an almost infinite variety of questions for us all year round.
What are Support’s current priorities and what’s next?
We have lots of exciting initiatives underway including:
- Wi-Fi experience– we’re improving the students experience of Wi-Fi connection in Trinity ready for the start of the next academic year in September 2023.
- Digital Trinity IT Service Management - we’re well into a project to select a new IT Service Desk management system to improve the speed of response and resolution for support calls. Our next phase will be the roll out a new, easy to use system for dealing with all the incoming IT support tickets and requests through a new self-service portal. The main aim is to make our provision of IT support more efficient & our Trinity users happier and more productive.
- IT Services Website move to WebCMS – we’ve migrated over 230 webpages to Trinity’s new Web Content Management System and created a new User Knowledge Base website with over 380 articles. The Knowledge Base is a service to help staff and students find the answers to their IT queries and it directs them towards information they need 24/7.
- Digital Trinity Powering the Hybrid Future – work is progressing on the project that will allow the on-boarding and secure management of PCs and laptops being used in our new blended working environment, better supporting the needs of next-generation teaching and learning, and enabling staff to get setup and working fully from any location.
- IT Services | Quarterly News Digest – this is a new communications initiative for 2022/23 and we have created and are circulating it to all staff in Autumn, Winter, Spring & Summer. News is still published from IT Services to our users every week, every month but the digest is to ensure no one misses the information on services or changes or developments that you or your team might benefit from in your work.
How do we know Support are making a difference?
Support services live on the boundary between IT Services as a service provider and the Trinity community who are service users. We have a unique and unfiltered view of how IT services are perceived through day-to-day interactions with users, by running the IT Service User Group and engaging in Service Management activity in delivery of our Service Level Agreements. We use our specialist skills to create a positive connection between people and IT.
We regularly receive feedback from people who have used our services. When there has been a problem we follow-up directly, so the work to improve things is highly visible. However, the majority of comments received run along the lines of “The IT Service Desk person that took my call was most professional, friendly and efficient” - customer satisfaction ratings are running at 80%.
In addition to the work done by staff across the group, the support team also get to see changes and developments that our teams across IT Services are leading out on. These improve our services and engagement, continuously responding to feedback and ensuring that we adapt to changing needs or improve the quality and quantity of what we’re already doing.
Finally one of the delights of working in support is contacting someone in the University and being told – often right away – about how pleased they were following a recent contact with our Service Desk, support teams, or wider IT Services staff. This tells us that we’re making a positive difference, and that people recognise this all around us.
Contacting Us
For a technical or support query please contact our IT Service Desk - .
- Phone: x2000 or +353-1-896-2000
- Email: itservicedesk@tcd.ie
- Portal: ask.tcd.ie
- Visit us in person: IT Service Desk, Ground Floor, Áras An Phiarsaigh
Visit us online at: IT Services - Trinity College Dublin (tcd.ie)
Follow us on: Twitter and Instagram for updates and news