IT 202 Project Two Guidelines and Rubric
Competency
In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:
· Use troubleshooting skills and techniques to solve computing problems
Scenario
You are an IT support specialist at a help desk for a large company. Recently, the company created a knowledge base that IT support specialists can refer to when a user calls in with technology issues. The knowledge base has been helpful because the help desk receives many tickets and calls for what turn out to be the same issues. When IT support specialists have documents to refer to during a call or the review of a ticket, the knowledge base increases efficiencies and provides users with more consistent and higher quality support.
As an IT support specialist at the company’s help desk, you are assigned to create documentation that will be added to the company’s knowledge base. This document will speak to the frequent issues that users have experienced within the past 30 days. To complete this project, you will review five tickets, two audio recordings of user calls, and a chat transcript from users who experienced technical issues. Then you will use your troubleshooting skills to assess the underlying causes of the users’ reported symptoms and how they should be resolved.
Directions
Given the scenario and for the purposes of this project, create a user report that describes the IT issues that users have been experiencing and the resolution, where the resolution was found, whether the help desk had to look around for a solution, or the steps that you took to resolve the issues. Then create a knowledge base document to assist other IT support specialists in troubleshooting these user issues in the future.
In order to successfully complete this project, you first must follow the troubleshooting process, which is “a systematic approach to problem solving” (TestOut PC Pro, 2020, Section 2.6.2). Within your user report and knowledge base document, you must make it clear that you have followed each of these steps based on the issues users experience in the tickets, phone calls, and chat transcript.
1. Gather information by identifying the problems that users most commonly experience and that they call the IT help desk for, given the scenario.
2. Identify what has changed in the system that may have caused each problem.
3. Create a hypothesis of what you think the probable cause for each issue is, based on the information gathered in the first step. You may want to come up with several hypotheses.
4. Determine the appropriate fixes by testing your hypotheses. You will also want to account for possible ramifications that you could cause by fixing the issue based on your hypotheses.
o Given the tickets, phone calls, and chat transcript, the IT support specialist assisting those users at the time may or may not have attempted the same fix. If they did, state that they determined the appropriate fix already. If you believe that they did not identify a probable cause, explain what you would have done differently if you were the one assisting the user.
5. Explain how you would implement the fix to verify the cause of the problem if you were the IT support specialist assisting the users at the time.
o In some cases, it could be that the IT support specialist had already implemented the fix, but explain whether you would have handled it similarly or differently.
6. Describe how you would ensure satisfaction of the user after the issue has been resolved.
o In some cases, it could be that the IT support specialist demonstrated ensuring satisfaction, while they did not in other cases. In these circumstances, explain whether you would have done this in the same or a different way.
7. Document the solution within your knowledge base document. Provide how-to’s or steps for common user issues, as well as any lessons learned from troubleshooting these issues that would be beneficial for other IT help desk support specialists to know.
What to Submit
To complete this project, you must submit the following:
User Report and Knowledge Base Document
Using the template linked in the Supporting Materials area below, fill in the content and submit your user report and knowledge base document as a Word document. Sources should be cited according to APA style.
Supporting Materials
The following resources may help support your work on the project:
Reading: Five Tickets
Before starting your project, review the ticket submissions from the last 30 days to determine the common technical issues that users are experiencing.
Audio Recordings: User Phone Call One and User Phone Call Two
Listen to the phone conversations that users and other IT support specialists have been having. During these calls, users express the issues that they are currently facing. For the purposes of this project, the phone calls do not include how the support specialist responds and their resolution.
A text-only version is available: Transcript for Phone Calls.
Reading: Transcript for Chat Box
Review an online conversation between a desktop user and an IT support specialist. Reviewing this document can help you determine what another common issue is. As in the phone calls, the chat conversation does not include the resolution.
Template: Knowledge Base Document Template
Use this template to create a knowledge base document for your team.