Does anybody else use Workfront as your IT Service/Help Desk ticketing system?

On Wednesday, I'm good these these pacific times: 11 - 1 and after 2 I'm in central time zone Ed

Let’s shoot for 11am pacific, thanks Adina Thanks, Josh Blackwood 770.335.6299

11 sounds good. Email me at adpierce@cisco.com and I'll send out the WebEx invite.

Since we are a global instance, we use it so that users can send us admins issues. We used Queue Topics and Topic Groups to break out the different custom forms we'd like as well as routing rules (for general bugs, we have a Tier 1 support team at the local agencies but for things like reports or enhancement requests, they go straight to us.) Since the admins are in a separate group, we did create custom systems for us. We changed Awaiting Feedback to Awaiting Requester's Feedback. It is a little more explanatory but what I love is that when someone replies, the status automatically changes to In Progress so my team doesn't need to go into all the tickets to see if someone wrote back. We also created a custom statuses "Awaiting Workfront's Feedback" which equals On Hold. Again, so that people have a better sense of what is going on when looking at the dashboard(s). We tried an approval workflow for when the status was changed to Closed where the requester would approve that it was actually taken care of, but people weren't doing it and it was causing issue.

Adina, Does your company embrace any IT management framework such as ITIL or DevOps? -Ed ext 2528

Ed, I was actually just about to ask whether any of the people who use it as a Service Desk platform heavily adhere to the ITIL framework. I was going to ask as I cannot imagine being able to use WF to do so. As a PM, I have been leading a project for our firm to move to ServiceNow for IT Service Management for the past 2 years (we moved Triage, Incident, Major Incident, Problem, Knowledge, Request, CMDB, Change, Request, and Asset Management over last year, year 2 is about enhancements and additional processes). While all of the basic abilities are certainly present in WF (taking in incidents and requests and assigning them), ITIL is so much more than just ticket management. I would love to hear how some people have accomplished alignment if they have. On the DevOps side, obviously WF can be used from a software defect management standpoint, but so much of DevOps relies on theory of automation and that isn't something I see WF doing. You could argue that the workflows you can create somewhat match that, but true DevOps would say you wouldn't have a server request workflow, a developer would log into a store front (like vRealize or Puppet) and build the server themselves, no approvals/workflows required (assuming it is a server that falls within certain tolerances). WF can do a lot to bring teams together and since DevOps does rely on bringing resources from various traditional teams (development and network operations) together, it can certainly be something to help facilitate the practices of DevOps. But, like most things, you can't say, "we have WF, now we can be a DevOps shop."

Ed - we do not use either one of those.

I know this thread is a little old now, but it is the only one I could find related to using WF as a Help Desk ticketing system. Is anyone currently using WF not only as a ticketing system, but also for the following Help Desk/Service Desk functions? Ticketing, change management, inventory/asset management, SLAs, knowledge base for users, etc. I started with a company that uses WF across the board including using it as the Help Desk ticketing system. Its basic functionality is fine, but I am wondering if it is able to be used for greater functions than just ticketing. I worry that we will not be able to incorporate the items above into a PM product. If anyone is using WF as a help desk suite incorporating the items above, I would really appreciate your input. Thank you. Greg Greg Sargent IT Help Desk Manager Diversified Communications, Inc.

Hi Greg, Over the years, we've bent Workfront in several of the Advanced Helpdesk directions you've mentioned, for a number of different customers. At one point, with an eye towards creating a deployable Helpdesk solution, we had even spun up a demo deck in PowerPoint illustrating what is possible. Around that time, however, Workfront themselves switched to a dedicated Helpdesk system (and has now gone through a couple, I believe), so we parked our initiative until (perhaps) the idea again becomes fashionable someday. As I recall, the Knowledge Base portion was the weakest link, but as Workfront's continues to improve, there might now be options to shore up that aspect. For the other items you mentioned, though, I'd encourage you to stick with it and experiment, as we did find ways of making it work (batteries not included, some assembly required). Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

Hi Greg, Yes we use WF for our Helpdesk, for Scrum Teams, for Kan Ban Teams, and for standard PM Projects. Doug is correct the Knowledge Base is the weakest link, but I can't blame WF completely. It's more a problem with our having the discipline to use it. We also use it for Change Management (in the sense that we it creates a ticket and sends a notification that we're about to deploy a fix or feature to our environment). Full disclosure we also use the API heavily to make the experience better.