Background

The school has around 700 PCs and makes good use of ICT both in the curriculum and for school administrative functions. The vast majority of PCs run Microsoft Windows, and approximately 300 software applications are available on the school network, most of which are proprietary software.

The school uses OSS for some general administrative web applications, in particular for helpdesk tracking and for booking resources such as rooms.

Helpdesk tracking system

The decision to install a helpdesk tracking system emerged from a need to prioritise and monitor more effectively support requirements for the school ICT. With requests coming in by phone, e-mail and visits to the ICT office, the network manager Victor Freeburn wanted to ensure that

·         problems were dealt with strictly according to priority, also encouraging staff to think about the priority of support requests when they submit them;

·         problems did not get overlooked;

·         he could monitor accurately how much effort and time was required to deal with queries – helping him to track what his staff were working on, whether additional resources were needed, and how well his team were meeting the school’s ICT support requirements.

Helpdesk support systems are widely available, but as Victor says, proprietary ones can be very expensive.

“I had looked at various proprietary helpdesk solutions prior to making the decision to implement OneOrZero Task Management System. A couple of the proprietary solutions that come to mind are TrackIT and Grouplink. These solutions are developed in a modular way, with a helpdesk module, an asset management module, and so on.

However, these are sold for hundreds of pounds per module for a very limited number of users. As there are potentially hundreds or thousands of users, this route could be extremely costly. These solutions are tailored in a way to try to cater for many different business requirements; however, they tend towards overkill at the best of times, and certainly for us.

As they are covered by licences that prevent the end users from making changes to the underlying code, you are stuck with what you got at the point of purchase. The code itself is protected and not accessible for any alteration by developers.

On the other hand, open source provides developers with a base product for no charge. Any developer can download, customise, develop, and improve the product to suit their own purpose, and then pass their improvements back to the open source community. Someone else can pick it up, apply their own improvements, circulate it back to the community, and the development cycle goes on and on.”

All ICT-related developments in the school are tested and evaluated by a selected group of department representatives who then report back on outcomes to the Senior Management Team. The group is chaired by an Assistant Head (Victor’s line manager).

Following Management agreement, OneorZero was downloaded, configured and installed by Victor who confirms that it was easy to set up and install, and is easy to manage. It runs on one of the Linux servers at the school, and has been in use since 2006. It was initially just for Victor’s own department task management purpose and not at the time for whole school use. Teachers and students can now access the service from any PC in the school, and from home (for example for teachers using laptops), and submit a support query which the team will then action according to priorities. When the problem is fixed, the “support ticket” is closed, but not deleted, so it can be reviewed subsequently as part of the monitoring process.

Victor is positive about his experience of OneorZero.

“The system is usable from the base installation with minimal customisation or technical knowledge. It is extremely well documented and straightforward to follow. It meets our need very well as I’m able to customise it easily to suit our requirements. I have made some minor amendments to the default install, mainly to integrate with other internal systems and customise the look and feel to match our Intranet. OneorZero does provide free online support, and for more complex requirements you can pay for two levels of annual support.”

Resource booking system

The school uses the MRBS web server for booking meeting rooms and other resources, such as specialist equipment. Like the helpdesk tracking system, this is also accessed over the school intranet and by external users. It provides an easy administrative approach to the time-consuming business of booking rooms, and simplifies the annual timetabling process.

MRBS is a simple room and resource booking system that does not require a great deal of technical knowledge to customise. Like OneorZero it is usable when first installed with minimal customisation. However, any major change does require some understanding of PHP scripting.