KPBSD Support Helpdesk
The Information Services Support Helpdesk is one of the pillars of the KPBSD Support Portal, and represents your main support team for getting non-instructional technical help. (For instructional tech help, by all means reach out to the Ed Tech group, aka Professional Learning.)
Contact by phone or by Portal request
Your Support Helpdesk is available by phone, during operational business hours, at the internal extension 99-8878, or from an outside line at (907) 714-8878. The phone first rings to a primary operator (Kevin Wilmeth, currently), and if not picked up within the first few seconds, the call will expand to a larger pickup group.
The other way to use your Support Helpdesk is by initiating a ticket request through the Portal, either:
- an Issue, which is a request to fix something (rather than a request for something like software or access); or
- a Service Request, which is a fulfillment request (rather than something that's not working)
Note that there is further clarity on "What's an Issue?" and "What's a Service Request?" in this article about the Portal. The distinction will be something new for many people, since we are just starting to grow our service catalog. Please note: if there is no Service Request in the catalog to get you what you need, just proceed with an Issue instead. And, if you are unclear on how you should proceed, remember, you can always pick up the phone and ask. :-)
Sections below this bar are further context for anyone who might need it. (It's useful context, and highly recommended that you understand it!)
The phone process
When you call in and reach one of us, the first thing we'll do is determine whether we can help you directly over the phone, or if we should transfer you to a more appropriate person, or if the best thing to do is to have you put in a Portal request. Please bear with us as we try and figure that out first.
If we can help you out on the phone (our preference, if we can do it), it will help us a great deal if you have some key information already ready to go. (See the "tips" section below.) For example, on many calls, we wind up "remoting in" to your Windows or Chromebook device to be able to see exactly what you're seeing, and for this we need the Borough Number of your machine.
The ticket process
Whether you raise an Issue or a Service Request, it will become a ticket, managed by the Portal, and the Helpdesk will communicate with you about that ticket through email correspondence which references your ticket's ID. Once created, District IT may classify, assign, move, share, or collaborate on the ticket as needed, but this should all be transparent to you--you should be able to interface with the ticket through email alone. We like it to be simple for you, flexible for us.
Links to support articles. During the ticket process, we may provide links to other articles like this, in the Support Knowledge Base. We do this because we have documented a "best practice", and believe it represents the most efficient means of getting you what you need. (We use such articles ourselves, all the time, because they serve that purpose for us too!) If you find yourself tempted by the TL;DR impulse, please beware that this can represent false economy. :-)
Crush times. During the inevitable "crush times" of year, when District IT is as swamped as you are, it is our practice that anything we cannot handle over the phone, we get into the ticket system, mostly so that it can be captured (and not lost), prioritized, and triaged at the appropriate level.
Tips for getting the right help faster
The ticket system will try to "recognize" you, through your email or your current identity, and it will attempt to route/queue the ticket as accurately as possible based on what you supply on submission (e.g. certain keywords such as "iPad", "Chromebook", "PowerSchool", "Canvas", etc.). Again, if a ticket does get misfiled, we can find it and manually get it into the right place, but it will certainly be faster if you can "stack the deck" with good information from the start!
For staff, use your Microsoft email, whenever possible. This is your "email of record" anyway, and is already integrated into the system. If you use a personal mail or your District Google mail, the system may not "recognize" you, and your ticket may get misfiled until one of us can get it assigned properly.
Help us classify the ticket with key information. We cover a pretty broad range of topics, and it speeds things up a lot if we can narrow things down.
- What is the nature of the problem? Is this a hardware problem, or software, or cabling, or access?
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Who is impacted? Is it just you? The whole school? Just people using Seesaw today?
- What is the impact and time frame? Are you able to employ a workaround? If this is for an upcoming event, when is that?
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Identify involved device(s). This is a big one. Many of our primary tech devices are fleet-managed, and locating them involves identifying them within the fleet. If you don't know how to identify your device, the "about this device" article for each type of fleet-managed device, will discuss how to positively identify that device for support or repair.
Learn more