Working in IT - Insider Tips for In-House Roles

So you’re looking to work at an in-house IT Department… What do you need to know?

Working at an internal service desk for IT issues can be a tough gig. You’re the first port of call for any technical issues, you need to keep the systems running smoothly, man the internal ticketing system, and often take on IT department projects at the same time.

If you’re one of those IT heroes who sits at an internal help desk all day, and you’re looking to streamline and optimize the way you work, you’re right where you need to be.

Improving communication with colleagues and end users

One of the biggest challenges in internal IT is communication across the business. You have a number of open items to juggle, and you’re getting calls to fight fires from all sides.

It’s 9 AM, and Mark from Accounting sends you an email that there’s a performance issue with his PC, while a WhatsApp message comes from Ashok in Sales to say that he can’t remember his password for the demo software the team relies on. You look up from your desk, and Sandy from Legal appears in front of you, reminding you about a data privacy concern she flagged the week before while you were standing in the lift between floors. You can see a notification from a third-party technology flashing in the corner of your screen. The day has hardly started and you’re struggling to stay up to date.

An internal help desk ticketing system makes all of this easier, providing a single dashboard where you can see everything that’s on your plate, or oversee a team of technicians and ensure every task has a stakeholder on the case. The best internal ticketing system will open tickets from multiple sources so that an email from a colleague becomes a ticket, as well as a chat with a user in another department, alerts which let you know something is wrong, and manual ticket capabilities when you want to jot down something ad-hoc. Your internal IT help desk becomes much more streamlined and easy to control, making sure that nothing falls through the gaps.

Adding more hours to the day for an internal IT help desk

There’s never enough time in the day, am I right? The best internal IT technology can add hours back to your working day with the help of efficiency tools. For example, at Atera you can use automation to handle manual and repetitive tasks, putting technology to work with the to-do list that keeps you from more strategic involvement in the business. Think about tasks such as:

• Reporting: Monitor technician performance, measure the satisfaction of IT users, track time spent on specific projects or departments, and search for devices by known health issues or security gaps. All at a glance from auto-generated reports.
• Patch management: Stay on top of security patches with an automated patch management process, scheduled ahead of time in granular detail for different types of devices, software, and hardware.
• General: IT hygiene: Use scripts and IT automation profiles to perform regular tasks, such as disk management, reboots, shutdowns, defragment, or even script-based tasks like auto-healing to quickly resolve common errors and handle troubleshooting hands-off.
• Pricing: Transparent and flexible RMM pricing models tailored to your organization’s needs, ensuring cost-effectiveness and scalability.

Handle work-from-home complexities with ease

Nowadays, even office workers aren’t in the office full time, with most companies adopting a flexible working environment with 1 or more days working from home. Great for work/life balance, not so easy for internal IT. Suddenly, you have dozens of sites to manage, most with home computers that are less secure, and definitely less under your control.

Add to this complexity the BYOD nature of modern work, where users regularly log in from their personal phones and tablets, and it’s a lot to manage.

By using the Atera agent, internal help desk staff can monitor any and all devices, all for a straightforward cost per technician price. That means that all devices can be monitored and managed with the same granularity, no matter where they are in the world. With the help of remote access technology, internal IT technicians never need to leave their own hot seat, and can remotely view, assess, and fix problems from anywhere. At Atera, we use AnyDesk and Splashtop for remote access, providing both attended and unattended support.

Want an extra layer of security when employees are working from home? Atera’s Work from Home is powered by Splashtop, and allows technicians to keep full control using the Atera dashboard. Employees simply remote into their work computers from the comfort of their own home, ensuring totally secure access and the same view as they would from the office.

Having all your integrations in one place

Another great use of technology for the internal IT help desk is through partnerships and integrations. When all of your tools work in tandem, it streamlines the number of dashboards, contracts, licenses, and agreements you need to stay on top of. Here are some of the integrations that could be beneficial in the best internal ticketing system, open source or otherwise.

• Warranty management: Stay on top of when warranties expire, with alerts to ensure you’re always ahead of the game.
• Antivirus: Security is heavy stakes in today’s sophisticated attack environment. The best tools will have an array of antivirus, antimalware, and anti-ransomware.
• Email security: Protect your employees from the consequences of falling for a phishing scam with inbox-level security.
• Back up: Keep accurate and continuous backups of all your essential files and folders, ready to restore if the worst occurs.

Today’s technology for internal IT makes the whole job of managing a corporate IT environment so much easier than ever before. Allow employees to work from home without losing visibility, security, or control, streamline communication through a single, efficient ticketing system, augment your IT support with the help of expert third parties, and automate the tasks which keep you from strategic conversations. It’s all possible with Atera, and so much more.

What are we waiting for? Let’s get this internal IT party started! Sign up for your 30-day free trial here.