This next part will dive into the organisational policies and procedures can have on the provision of technical support; this will cover the Organisational Guidelines, Reporting Faults, Internet Use, Security, Service Level Agreements (SLA), Confidentially, Constraints, Cost of Resources, Time, User Expertise, and Out Scouring Of Support Services.
Organisational Guidelines – The Organisational Guidelines would reports any and all faults, this is because if there are any issues in the system then it will either be manually alerted to the problem or on an automatic system elsewhere. The purpose for internet use in the organisational guidelines, is so that the company can track what each employee is searching during work hours
Recording Faults – If you can catch faults early when using a computer as there will always be faults that need specialist attention, the quicker it is sourced the sooner it is fixed and data is banked. When a company has issues to be taken care of the scale of how important they are to least important, the most important will be dealt with first and as quickly as possible then the minor ones will be sent out to people lower in the company of technicians to solve the minor ones gaining experience
Internet Use – Company computers are meant to be used only for work purposes within the company be it looking at research into work done, companies must make that the workers are complying with work guidelines not ensuring things unrelated to the company e.g. illegal sites, people have also been playing games which shouldn’t be done when deadlines are needed to be done and it’s a waste of the internet usage.
Security – Every company has some sort of anti-virus software to help enable routine checks on the server and computers to make sure no harmful viruses or malware has affected them. If so the virus or malware must be purged from the systems so it does not damage anything else if it has damaged anything at all, this is also to keep the security level high otherwise other viruses and malware might use the same path to get the stored information. Back-up, every company must do this or the information that they are producing and it must be stored not just on the computer but on the servers so if something happens to the information on the servers has an up-to-date copy of the information and then it can be restored and work can continue as normal.
Service level Agreements (SLA) – A service level agreement is a contract between a service provider this can be either internal or external and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service from the service provider. SLAs are output-based in that their purpose is specifically to define what the customer will receive.
Confidentially – confidentially is protection of personal information e.g. address, contact information. Confidentially means keeping a client’s information between you and the client, and not telling others including co-workers, friends, family, etc. examples of this are keeping individual flies and locking and securing them.
Sensitivity of Information – some information requires special care and handling, especially when inappropriate handling of the information could result in penalties, identity theft, financial loss, invasion of privacy, or unauthorized access by an individual or many individuals. Some information is also subject to relegation by state or federal laws and require notification in the event of a disclosure.
Constraints – The constraints programming is a programming paradigm wherein relations between variables are stated in the form of constraints. Constraints differ from the common primitives of imperative programming language in that they do not specify a step or sequence of steps to execute, but rather the properties of solution to be found. This makes constraints programming a form of declarative programming.
Cost of Resources – it’s important to keep records of faults attributes to hardware. If a particular choice of hard drive, for example, is found to be unreliable, this will inform the next round of purchasing, with software, the buyer will need to know exactly how many personnel require access to particular packages and to ensure site licenses are purchased accordingly. A record of what software is installed on each computer is taken then need to be maintained so that can be shown that the terms of the licence have been broken.
Time – Prioritisation is key in IT support, as the bigger jobs needs to be done first in order for everything to work. Having a log or spreadsheet to keep everything can really help you out on time as you don’t have to think about what needs to be done. Having the correct equipment can also save you time, for example, if you have a really slow PC to do a job on, it will take considerably more time to get a job done obviously.
User Expertise – when it comes to It technical support having someone who knows what they are doing is always a bonus. If the employee is asked a question by the customer, but he cannot ask it due to not having the knowledge, he customer will potentially lose that customer, therefore, the company will lose out on profits, and that customer will probably ask for help elsewhere. When it comes to the maintenance of the PC, having someone who knows about the problem in hand will help you dramatically to the best of their abilities and will not waste as much time as someone who has to research the problem to find out how to fix the problem.
Out scouring of support services –Is having an out sourced company to do IT support for you may have its benefits, but it will also have its downsides. Having a company that specialise in IT support could mean that they can get the job done faster, they have all the necessary tools required to do the job, etc. the downsides from this is that the outsourced company is representing your company so if they mess up, it will look bad on you. Also, it will cost your company a fair bit of money depending on who you go with.
IT Technical Support 