The Office of Technology Services Introduces 24/7 Technical Support Service

This semester, Concord’s Office of Technology Services has implemented a 24/7 technical support service through Blackboard, Inc. From the same company running the Blackboard Learn software students are familiar with, this new service will allow students and faculty to access technical support at any moment of the day. 

While the technology services department will continue to handle all emails, phone calls, and work orders during business hours (8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday) through the same means of contact as before, any support needed past these times and on weekends or holidays will be directed to a Blackboard Support Advisor who has been trained to provide assistance across a wide array of systems and software, including Moodle.

 Help Desk Manager Tyler Webb assures this new system will allow work orders to be processed much more quickly than before. “In the past, users that submitted tickets after hours and weekends would have to wait until the following day, now it will be addressed at the time of the call or email,” Webb said.

If for some reason the Blackboard advisor is unable to meet the request, the work order will be directed to Concord’s Office of Technology Services to be handled the next work day. Additionally, users can opt to chat with a Blackboard advisor any time of day over contacting Concord’s Help Desk. 

“The addition of this service will benefit everyone involved, but particularly those students who have full time jobs [and] need support during the night and weekends,” Webb says. “Many students have full time jobs and kids they need to take care of, and it leaves very little time during the day to contact someone if they are needing help. Now we are able to provide them a way to get help any hour or day.” 

“And with online classes becoming more popular, we feel this service will be highly utilized in the future,” Webb adds.

Along with this new service comes a revamped work order system. It allows students, faculty, and staff in need of assistance to create work orders detailing their problems and then afterwards to track the order’s progress to completion. This website also provides a means of finding a solution to many technical issues via a knowledge base of articles answering frequently asked questions and addressing other frequently occurring issues, effectively reducing the amount of people contacting support services for help with more basic issues.

“Our hopes are to have a very in-depth knowledge base of information that will allow users to visit and solve their issue through one of the articles,” says Webb. “This knowledge base will include everything from instructions to resetting a password to assisting students/faculty members with Blackboard.” Webb says this knowledge base will be continually updated with additional articles providing any information users may need.

As people begin to use this new system, the Office of Technology Services is hoping to shut down the old SysAid technical support service. They now ask that all users issue work orders through the new website at ithelp.concord.edu. Based on the amount of use the new system is receiving, Webb expects the old system to be completely phased out soon. 

 “We just launched the system at the beginning of the new year and are at the beginning stages of implementation, but so far it seems to be working out well,” Webb says. “With any change like this, it will take time for everyone to adjust, but I don’t think it will take long before it’s being fully utilized.” 

 For any questions about this new service or for any technical assistance, contact Concord’s Help Desk by calling (304) 384-5291 or emailing cuhelpdesk@concord.edu, or access the new support website at ithelp.concord.edu.