It’s no secret that organizations are working tirelessly to integrate cloud solutions, interactive devices, legacy on-prem solutions and more for a cohesive end-user experience. To meet this growing demand, many organizations are investing in iPaaS – Integration Platform as a Service. The use cases are endless – allowing anyone to connect people, processes, data and technology without any need for coding or scripting. A simple integration platform and visual flow builder make it all possible.
Using iPaaS to Automatically Create Tickets for In-Person Support
Like many schools, Colorado School of Mines is finding new ways to support a hybrid learning/working model as students and faculty continue to work and attend class both virtually and in person. As such, they’ve had to adjust their IT support model which had previously relied on in-person support.
“Our service desk was designed to operate with an in-person support model,” TJ Tremblay, senior manager for IT management, said. “When we moved to support a more hybrid model, we needed a way to track utilization through all channels of support.”
For support requests coming in through their portal, Tremblay said they tracked tickets, along with logged calls and chats. But for in-person support, they needed a way to track these visits without it requiring too much from the end-users or the technicians at the service desk.
“We knew the easiest way to track would be to create a ticket within our ITSM platform, but we didn’t want it to be a big ask for either the end-user or the technicians. Our staff is segmented (some working remotely, some in person) so we can be short-staffed at times – the solution to this challenge needed to be one that was easy to do.”
Using iPaaS to Capture ID Device Data and Send to ITSM Platform
To accomplish this, Tremblay used iPaaS to create a workflow that kicked off when a person scanned their Blaster card (an ID everyone uses on campus) at a scanner located at the help desk. Data gets pulled from the card, checked across systems and verified, and then automatically gets pulled into a ticket in TeamDynamix. Neither the technician nor the customer needs to fill out any information.
“This really frees up our technicians to jump in and start addressing the issues right away, it saves valuable time especially when we are short-staffed,” Tremblay said.
Now, the tickets created by the scan of the ID card can be tracked with the other tickets from the portal, the call logs and the chats – this type of tracking will, in the near future, give administration a full and comprehensive IT utilization report.
“There’s not been a lot of push back because it just creates the ticket, there’s no form to fill out for the customer, they just swipe their card,” he said. “By creating a ticket this way, we can better track utilization as a whole across all channels of support.”
“This really frees up our technicians to jump in and start addressing the issues right away, it saves valuable time especially when we are short-staffed.”
No-Code iPaaS Allows Organizations to Stay Nimble
iPaaS is built with both IT professionals and business users in mind. Its no-code functionality means anyone can connect systems with pre-built connectors. Enterprise teams can take advantage of the full suite of features provided by iPaaS including visual workflow building, API management, real-time troubleshooting, scalability, security, and governance. Your team will not need to build custom integration code.
By using a platform like iPaaS you can empower both your developers and lines of business throughout your organization to leverage hundreds of connectors to integrate systems within a single hub for easy oversight and auditing.
Common systems that can be integrated include SIS, CRM, ERP and more – for instance, many organizations have an ecosystem of systems that sit around core platforms such as Workday, Banner, Office365, DocuSign, Salesforce and more. With iPaaS, the ecosystem can easily be connected to help synchronize data and create workflows to prevent manual processing and redundant data entry.
To learn how other organizations are using iPaaS to reduce resource drain and save time check out: