It is well suited for a service-based department, but it can sometimes offer confusion for non-technical users because of the amount information the form fields require. Most customers don't want to write the equivalent of a book to simply say that " I want to obtain a license of Adobe Acrobat and charge it to the department."
ServiceDesk Plus is very easy to configure at the start, and then adjust the categories and rules as the implementation is refined. Its greatest strength is the ability to program without requiring a full time administrator. There is very little jargon involved. Reporting not so much. The canned reports are useful but do not always cover some of the basics. Fortunately, the user groups freely share report definitions so one could springboard from something close to your desired result.
Documentation is very important for any technology department. We can easy attach quotes, screenshots of issues, or invoices so that any one looking at the work order once closed can see that the task was completed quickly or may require more resources if needed again.
Tracking the progress of your team is also important when considering pay scales or promotions. Reports help you see which employees are going above and beyond and those that are needing extra motivation.
Universities have to work as cohesive unit to be successive. Our customers tell is us what is needed for them to do their jobs and we are able to divide the work amongst our staff to continue the quest quickly.
Ticket logging for end users, so they can see the progress on their help requests
Asset management; it has an agent that can be installed on machines which can then feed back information on installed software, active times, logged on user etc
Project management; larger projects can be managed within ManageEngine ServiceDesk as well as end user help tickets, where progress/milestones etc can be recorded
Active Directory import of users, so that it automatically updates when users are created/deleted and links their accounts in ManageEngine ServiceDesk with their email address as well to enable email alerts
Customization without the need for lengthy contacts with tech support. Non-technical team members should be able to resolve malfunctions with the interface and its components.
A mobile app would make resolving work orders in the field easier. Without the need for a PC-like device to access the program. Many times, weather conditions are not kind to tablets. A cell phone is more reasonable.
When trying to select the top row ticket, you have to be careful not to select all tickets. Happened to us twice and we assigned all open tickets to one technician. Took a few minutes to correct.
Site is sometimes a bit sluggish to respond. Don't know if that is an issue with our network infrastructure or the program itself, though.
When users send emails to the help desk, we sometimes experience delays until the tickets appear on the site for the technicians.
we are looking at other tools like Zendesk which may replace ServiceDesk. We are currently evaluating both tools to see which one would serve our needs better
It is still very cumbersome, lots of data entry on the back end to build how we want it but it is still not completely user friendly. Many functions still dont work and contacting someone for help isnt always easy or we get told solutions for issues we have just arent built yet.
Our network administrator usually gets a good response when contacting ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus customer service. They are quick to respond and so far have been able to eliminate most of our issues. We have been through several upgrades of the software over the years and have no issues to report in regards to customer service.
There has been less downtime due to incompatible upgrade elements in our environment. EasyVista is takes hours not days to troubleshoot and resolve any functionality errors. Tech Support has been more helpful and reachable.
Spiceworks was free, which obviously had both benefits and limitations - I will say that the community around Spiceworks has always been great. If we could replicate that experience with the ME user base, it would be terrific.
The tool does not scale well from an ROI perspective. As you add a customer, you must add a new instance, hence a new license.
The tool is probably on the expensive side (34,000 USD per 130 technicians per year).
There is no usage beyond incident, change, and problem management. The CMDB feature is extremely limited and cannot generate additional ROI. There is no knowledge-base or integration with other software (other than ME Desktop Central).
