Thursday, October 4, 2012

Getting the Undergrads Connected

The HelpDesk Technical Assistants and iT staff assisted over 170 students to "Get Connected" with the various wireless devices brought to campus between August 24 and Sept.2.
While this is approxiamately 15% of our undergraduate campus enrollment, it also indicates that processes and procedures but in place by iT and HelpDesk staff allowed the majority of students to "Get Connected" on their own with limited or no assistance from iT and HelpDesk staff. This really helped iT staff focus on the above 170 which in many cases had issues that needed intervention as the device owner could not resolve the issue themselves. This led to many learning opportunities and system and process improvements as well.
Many of the issues, once recognized, were Closed on First Contact in subsequent contacts during the next several days. Many of the issues involved third party software problems, corrupt or missing file issues, and general issues with the operating system itself. As these were worked through iT appreciated the patience the students afforded us in getting the issues resolved. We may not be able to fix or resolve all issues by we try our best to at least get an answer for the customer to contact the tech support for their system.
As of October 3, there are about 1600 indiviual users and over 3100 devices that have authenticated or registered on the SMU Wireless or ResNet. There are also over 600 other devices that have not yet authenticated or registered to the network.
Thank you to everyone for being patient during the first, very hectic, weeks of the academic year.
Brian Behling
HelpDesk Manager

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