The Future of Service Request Integration

by Kenton Gray on October 2, 2014
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How many times has this happened to you? You’re hard at work on a last-minute deadline with no room for error, when all of a sudden your computer freezes. Nothing works. That sinking realization that you may have just lost hours of work begins to set in. Frantically pressing every button on your keyboard, clicking your mouse buttons, and begging your computer to work do not seem to make much of a difference. So what do you do? Make that frantic call to your trusty IT Help Desk, they log the issue in their help desk platform to place it in a queue, and then assign someone to save the day. It works great, right? For a growing number of companies, this is why they also are moving to use the same system to handle their facility’s service request needs. But does this make the most sense for your facility? 

The Problem

Before you answer, consider for a moment why IT help platforms work so well. They are designed with a very specific audience and function in mind. So while it might work great for one environment, it might not translate well to another. As an example, say your company uses a singular ticketing system that encompasses all aspects of your facility.  IT tickets and facility work orders are entered and placed into the same queue, with tickets being dispatched to the appropriate parties for fulfillment.  However, the tracking and fulfillment of these requests are vastly different.  Facility service requests require collection of a wide range of transaction elements that are not a component of IT help desks.  This makes it challenging for you the FM to track critical information to effectively manage and report on your operational activity, performance and cost.   However, there is a benefit to using one system. The workforce can access one system to submit all their service needs, which is enormously beneficial. How do you make this work for all parties involved?

The Solution

The solution? Interfacing your IWMS or facility management software with the IT Help Desk. The customer can access a single platform to submit any kind of ticket, which minimizes end-user confusion and encourages use. IT is able to continue to use the system that is best for their environment, but through the interface, the facility team can receive requests into their tool of choice so that their environment can be managed with the appropriate details. How is this possible? 

iOffice has developed API’s that allow help desk systems to easily interface with both our service request and move modules. API stands for Application Program Interface, which establishes predefined functions that allow you to interface with our software. So we do not have to build anything from scratch, making the interface easy and available to any system. As a result of the API configuration, if tickets for facility requests or moves are made through the help desk system, these tickets are automatically populated in either the service request or move module for fulfillment and tracking. 

So if you like your current ticketing system, but wish you could tailor it more to the needs of your facility, just know that iOffice has tools that are ready to help. You don’t need a cape or an ‘S’ on your chest to be a facility manager superhero. Let’s keep it simple. Just give us a call.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenton Gray

Kenton joined iOFFICE in 2002 as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and now manages a team of ten developers and programmers. When we develop a new module or do a major upgrade, Kenton is the one who envisions the project and designs it from scratch.

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