Help for schools

Citation

(1999), "Help for schools", Work Study, Vol. 48 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.1999.07948dab.002

Help for schools

Warwickshire Education Services (WES) has installed Quetzal v4 to run its IT support operation for 260 schools across the county. A business unit within the Education Department, WES is Warwickshire County Council's support for school services - from premises to personnel, finance, communications and information services. The Warwick-based team provides IT support for over 260 schools, including 29 secondary schools across the county. The schools operate between 10 and 25 PCs for administration purposes, using both Novell and NT networks. Primary schools have a wide range of configurations using a range of software - from word processors and spreadsheets to the main schools management information system (SIMS), Lantastic, Novell and NT networks as well as stand alone PCs. Head teachers, governors, secretaries and bursars use applications under Windows 3.1, Windows '95 and NT. Jerry Paylor, Development Manager for WES Information Services explains. "We basically support two distinct areas of operation. Schools are our external business and we have enjoyed a 100 per cent buy back from them for the four years of operation so far and, and we want to keep it that way. Calls are logged on our help desk where basic advice and questions may be dealt with. However it is more usual for calls to be logged then automatically assigned by Quetzal, depending on the call subjects, to our support desk. We now operate a two tier help desk and without Quetzal this would not have been possible." Users benefit from Quetzal's highly visual layout and "traffic lights", whereby logged calls are colour coded red, amber or green according to their status against pre-determined service level targets.