Since the first tickets began arriving in June of 2015, our team of 3 techs has serviced over 700 tickets. I was responsible for installation, configuration, management, and integration of the help desk system in addition to assisting in ticket resolution. Before installation of this system, there was no established method of reporting problems to the Sherrod Library technology team. Given the number of tickets that have been solved in the past year, it is likely that many problems were going unresolved.
Using REST APIs, I have integrated our help desk ticketing system into the main library website as well as into the discovery system, email system, e-resources system, and multiple other locations using a single, consistent interface. This allows our users to easily recognize the 'report a problem' interface at-a-glance. In addition, these integrations provide key contextual information about the location from which the API communicated, such as details from the specific resource a student was using when they encountered their problem. In the discovery interface, this will even include the article, book, or other resource they were attempting to view. This allows users to behave more naturally and prevents us from exchanging emails with the user to track down the problem area, leading to a better (not to mention faster) experience for both tech and user.
