Help desk changes speed up response times

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Scott Campbell
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) --  Response times to communications outages are now almost immediate after the 386th Expeditionary Communications Squadron here made changes to their help desk operations.

The rapid response is the result of fixes that emphasize command-and-control in help desk operations. Most visible is the consolidation of the squadron’s customer service centers at one location. The single center features a new monitoring capability for all critical communications systems.

“(Response) Times went from 15 or 30 minutes to almost instantaneous. We’re responding as soon as the technicians see the outage on the overhead screens. In many cases, technicians are on-site before the user even knows there’s a problem,” said Capt. Jeff Devine Jr., the squadron’s information systems flight commander.

The new monitoring system consists of numerous screens visible to all help desk technicians.

“A lot of places, you’ll get one big plasma screen and you’re limited to what you can display. By breaking it down like this, we can put all our different tools up [at once],” said Tech. Sgt. Jim Esparza, NCO in charge of the help desk.

The new system allows technicians to monitor several systems at the same time instead of just one individual dedicated to each task.

“We had it all across these desks and this individual had to watch this and that individual had to watch that,” Sergeant Esparza said. “If they stepped away, then people had to switch between monitors to be able to check the other. It saves space and frees people up to help with systems upgrades around base.

“If we really needed to, one person could stay in the office, where as before, we needed more people in the office to monitor everything,” he said.

The situational awareness from being able to see all the critical systems at once also makes it easier to diagnose outages.

Captain Devine said there was an incident when the command post could not talk to anybody via radio so they had all the aircraft on the flightline halted because they couldn’t control movement. At the same time, the help desk started getting calls from other parts of the flightline and base.

“All these different things were going on, and we had three different teams dispatched out,” the captain said. “These guys [in the help desk] were able to finally correlate that it was a single cable that had been broken and it was affecting all these different things.”

Repairing the cable brought all the systems back on line and aircraft were able to resume their missions transporting troops and supplies into and out of Iraq.

The new changes have also allowed help desk technicians to broaden their knowledge of communications on the base.

“It’s kind of tough because we’re not experts in every field. For us here, it’s been a learning experience learn what tech control does, what small computers does, what system administration is doing, telephone, cable -- all those guys,” Sergeant Esparza said.

“At first, I’d get a question and for the first couple of weeks I’d be, ‘let me find out for you,’” he said. “With these tools and the interaction with the guys in the back shops, the commander just has to come here and ask. And most of the time, we can get him an answer right away.”