Monthly statistics for April show a welcome decline in requests when compared with the overwhelming demand for services usual around the beginning of Semester, and fewer jobs are outstanding at the end of the month.
We now have four years of statistics and were the TSU to continue to operate the data would have given us a clear idea of the “seasonal” demand for IT support to better inform resource planning.
A record number of Divisional Helpdesk jobs were outstanding (incomplete or pending) at the end of March, according to the March Stats. While it is not unusual to have a high number of jobs outstanding at this time of the year, it was a record and needed to be investigated.
Analysis of the jobs outstanding doesn’t reveal any particular pattern: there is a lot of work coming in and possibly some jobs are taking longer than normal to resolve (difficult to judge with any accuracy since time to resolution isn’t a statistic with any reliable historical data with which to compare current activities).
I’m also trying to track the number of staff (and staff-like entities: those people the TSU supply staff services to), but the data is unreliable at the moment. We are looking at making this more reliable as time goes by, but we don’t have direct access to the authoritative source for the data (Alesco) and have to relay on ICT Services’ scripts which for some reason include and exclude people apparently at random each day. For what it’s worth on 31 January 2007 the figure was 491, on 28 February it was 458, 5 March it was 435 and 6 March 524.
Monthly activity for the Technical Services Unit is reflected in the latest statistics to the end of November, 2006. Typically demand for support decreases towards the end of the year, and this pattern is reflected in this month’s statistics.
What is of concern is the increased number of jobs outstanding. Normally we would expect these to be declining around this time of the year, but not this year. It has been a particularly busy semester for the TSU with record numbers of emails to cehelpdesk indicating increased demand over previous years.
Our capacity to deal with the requests coming in is finite so with more jobs to do it takes longer to get through the queue to resolve them. Should this pattern continue in 2007 we might need to employ additional casual staff in the helpdesk team to meet acceptable response times.
Last month incomplete data for February 2005 was provided: below the figures are updated. While the graph demonstrates the amount of requests dealt with by the TSU in February, we have been more diligent recently in adding requests to the system so that we can better manage the requests.
TSU statistics including final February 2005 figures
We have also added some features to make adding and tracking jobs easier, including a web form where users can add their requests to the database directly without sending an email. The webform is at http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/tsu/staff_add_request.cfm
New online form to request TSU services:
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/tsu/staff_add_request.cfm
The Technical Services Unit HelpDesk tracks jobs, those that can't be dealt with summarily, using a Web-based tracking system. Requests for support come in a number of forms: email, phone and personal contact. From the table below, it can be seen for example that in May 2004 the cehelpdesk email account received almost 450 emails but there were less than 150 jobs added to the system. No statistics are kept on the number of phone calls for assistance received by helpdesk staff, nor personal requests, unless they are added to the system.
The following statistics are therefore incomplete and based on only those jobs that required managed planning and tracking to resolve.
Note that the Feb 2005 figures are not complete: the statistics for February 2005 were gathered on 21 February 2005 in the morning and except for emails the figures already exceed those of a year ago (including the number of outstanding jobs).
While by no means complete these figures demonstrate the yearly cyclical nature of the demand for TSU support: with the period around the beginning of Semester 1 the period of greatest demand. Demand tends to drop off during breaks, and taper off over the year.
The graph should not be taken as an indicator of TSU activity: break times are the busiest period for the TSU for jobs like clearing out older facilities, installing new laboratories, rolling out software and hardware updates and other activities that aren’t reflected in the helpdesk statistics (the helpdesk statistics are just the jobs other people want the TSU to do).
Response times
Last year (2004) the comedu helpdesk system recorded 1,243 jobs. Of the jobs completed (98.8%), the mean time to complete was 10.2 (calendar) days, the median less than 5 days, and the mode 1 day. 17.5% of jobs were completed in a day or less, 36% in less than 2 days, and 68% in less than a week.
Problems raised via the helpdesk
The following chart shows the breakdown of requests by category over the past four years. Further analysis of the data show trends down in the proportion of support requests for Printing, Email, Software, Systems, Hardware and Development, and up in Media, Assets, and unfortunately Other (indicating that a better categorisation of requests is needed, or that the helpdesk is doing new and different things compared with when the tracking software was first developed in 2000). ‘Other’ requests have more than doubled from 11% of requests in 2001 to 22% in 2004.
The helpdesk support application has not been used to report statistics before, and was not developed or managed with a view to reporting data in the form above. There have been no reporting metrics proposed or agreed, so these statistics should be considered with that in mind.
Three years ago the Division had around 400 computers listed in the Asset Register. That figure today is around 800, although it includes a number of machines waiting to be written off. 548 computers have been purchased from IT Loan funds since 2001 (others have been bought from Research and Consultancy funds), and best estimates put around 681 computers currently in active use in the Division (including servers, desktops, portables and lab computers). It is difficult to be accurate about the numbers since they change constantly as computers are upgraded and new ones commissioned. Old computers never seem to die: there is always someone with a use for a recently retired computer it seems. The AUVA computers are not being returned to service on desktops because of the failure rate among hard drives and power supplies, but even some of these have been pressed back into service to give some Macintosh users better access to Callista.
Overall the trend is for more computers, but with the same number of permanent Technical Service Unit staff positions supporting them. While there is a constant search for more efficient ways to manage the installed based of hardware, and casual staff are being employed to ease the load at busy times, the increasing load is having an impact on the service that can be provided.
Development support
The TSU does not have the developer expertise to help the Division to fully exploit the resources available to it as a result of the National Institute of Language Learning (NILL) infrastructure grant, in particular the Video on Demand (VoD) server and associated off-air live streaming, recording, and streaming on demand capability.
While all of this is possible to do manually, it would be much more efficient to automate the process of taking requests for recordings, transcoding recorded programs and preparing them for on-demand streaming (including generating the code to be inserted in WebCT pages), and moving the media files to the correct place on the server.
All the hardware is now available to deliver the solution, which can be automated if we had the expertise and the time to do it as it was first intended. A proposal for funding some contracted support to help the Division realise the potential of the VoD server is being prepared.
