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Continuous change: a help desk motto

The University of Idaho Help Desk started in October 1992 in a basement room with one full-time employee, two part-time student workers, and a Manager, Joyce Davidson. Their task was to provide staff, faculty, and students with assistance using email, connecting to the new Banner system, using the modem pool, and acquiring how-to documents for common lab applications. Jump forward 20 years and the UI Help Desk mission has grown and changed in ways that were unimagined in the beginning. New products and technologies create an ever changing support landscape, and customer needs and expectations continue to outstrip the resources we can provide. Challenges such as new facilities and locations, increasing customer base, wireless and wired networks, mobile devices, VPN, print servers, Exchange support, shared-drive permissions, student computer lab assistance, best-effort assistance on unsupported applications, and web technology assistance, as well as staff development and recruiting, are all part of everyday business. In this paper, Joyce Davidson, the original Help Desk manager, and Darren Kearney, the current manager, will review the history of the Help Desk and illustrate how far this critical service has come and where it may go. While we don't believe it is possible to clearly predict where emerging trends will take us, we will discuss how we approach these trends to help chart a course for the Help Desk going forward.