Using Jitbit as a Service Desk

We get a lot of questions, can our help desk software be used as a "service desk"?

First off, what is a "Service desk" exactly and how is it different from a "help desk"?

Service Desk typically includes problem management, release management, change management, asset management, incident management and a knowledge base.

While Help Desk - is just incident management and nothing else.

Using Jitbit as a service desk

Jitbit Helpdesk does have a built-in Knowledge base. It also comes with the Asset Management module, so you can link "assets" to "tickets", and even add an unlimited number of "custom fields" to your assets (just like you do with your tickets). Say, you have a "server" asset, so you can add fields like "Operating system", "Administrator name", "IP address" etc.

Regarding problem management and change management - this is where Jitbit's "ticket categories" come handy. As you probably know, unlike most help desk systems, not only Jitbit has ticket categories, but also allows controlling permissions to these ticket categories, both for "creating" new tickets and "viewing" those tickets.

Lets take change management as an example. You basically create a ticket category named "Change management" that is visible to administrators and respective IT-guys only, so your end-users are unable to "submit support tickets" into it. Then whenever you need to, say, replace a database server:

1. You create a ticket in this category, named "replace database server".
2. You optionally add a "link" to a previous ticket that described the "problem" (like "server goes down every 12 hours") so the two tickets become "linked", this way you link your "change" to a "problem".
3. You link the ticket to the corresponding "asset" - the database server that needs replacement.
4. Optionally you can also add custom fields to this ticket category, like "change cost", or "change date" etc.
5. There's also the automation module, where you create rules, like "notify database administrator whenever a new database server change-request comes in" etc.
6. Add custom statuses to this category to extend the workflow. In addition to the default "new - inprocess - closed" you can add "planning - pending approval - testing" for example.