Service and Support Considerations for a New Service

This article contains a list starting list of questions that should be answered and documented that will be used by the Service Desk in order to build a comprehensive support model. These do include Q&A and process questions that will help guide the creation of internal and client-facing support articles, process documentation, TdX Work Management forms, and/or Conversational AI intents.

This is not intended to be a complete list, and some questions may not pertain to some projects. This is just an idea of what should be answered.

General Information

• What is the name of the service or application?

  • What other names may this be referred to by?

• What is the purpose or use of the service?

• What are the key features and functionalities of the service?

• Are there dependencies on other systems or services that are critical to this service?

• What department(s) will use this service/application?

  • If it isn’t everyone in these departments, who will be using it specifically?

• Is there training required by the customer, and if so, who provides it?

  • If new employees come on board, who provides training to them once the application is established?

Access and Permissions Information

• How does someone gain access to the service?

• Is there someone specific who needs to create accounts within the service?

  • Is this done within IT and if so, who or what group does it?

  • If it is outside of IT, is there a specific person or role that provides the access?

• Does it use a process like SCIM where an account is created in the app when a person is given permission through Okta?

• Does this service use Okta or are accounts internal to the app only?

• What is the process of obtaining access?

• Are there permissions or approvals that are needed before someone can get access?

• Are there different levels of permission within the application that need to be requested?

  • If there are different levels, how does someone request access to various permissions?

Software Information

• Is the service an application and does it need to be installed on a computer or is it web-based?

  • If installed, what are the supported operating systems?

    • Where are the installation files located?

    • Is it known if the application can be deployed using industry standard services like Jamf Pro or Microsoft Intune?

    • How does patching work? How often? Is it automated or manual?

    • Are there periodic upgrades that need to be taken into account?

  • If web-based, are there specific supported web browsers (we support Safari, Edge, and Chrome generally) and are there specific plugins that are required or that interfere with the service?

  • Does it connect to data on campus and therefore need VPN to access from off campus?

  • If it's an installed app, is there a database that it needs to connect to?

    • If so, what is the database and the database connection string?

General Support

• What are the common issues or questions that a customer might have about this service?

  • We want to leverage both KB articles and Conversational AI intents to encourage self-service support.

    • What are the anticipated frequently asked how-to questions for this service?

    • Are there specific types or things the customer may ask for in a service catalog?

    • Are there specific issues or troubleshooting articles and/or intents that need to be created, what are they, and what are the answers?

• Are there pre-written FAQs or troubleshooting guides available?

• How would a client request support for this service if not the Service Desk?

  • NOTE: All IT support should start at the Service Desk, where the issue will be triaged and escalated to the appropriate person or group, as needed.

• What are the escalation paths for issues not serviceable by the Service Desk staff?

• Who are the key contacts for technical or administrative support?

• What are the expected SLAs for this service (response time, resolution time, is this a service that can be called in after hours and expect a response?)

• Are there third-party vendors providing support?

  • If so, are they in addition to or in replacement of our internal Service Desk?

    • Has this been communicated with the customer and documented not to contact the Service Desk for support?

Incident, Change, and Major Incident Management

• Is there already a way that issues (incidents) are expected to be handled?

• What types of requests should customers be able to enter or call in on their own?

• Are changes going to be tracked through IT’s normal change management process and at what level? (every single application change or only larger, more impactful changes?

  • Who communicates these changes, and how?

• If there’s a service outage, are they to be communicated via StatusHub?

  • If so, who is responsible for creating that service notification?