How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools?

Usually, when we think of a help desk solution, a customer support or assistance software platform for businesses would come to mind.  Or it would be a platform for employees inside a company to communicate with each other and raise tickets inside their organization. But these help desk systems can make a great impact in educational institutions too. How?

The students and parents would have many doubts related to admissions or checking exam timetables, paying semester fees, and so on. It would be great if they can use a help desk system rather than going themselves to schools or colleges, calling directly, or sending emails. And, these processes would make the administration handle each and every issue and doubts by the students one by one without any proper order. Also, there is a chance of providing late solutions to the students who had emergency issues. Or, sometimes the issue could have been solved easily rather than spending too much time on it.

Especially, during the time of new admissions, the administration team would be very busy answering each and every question and many students or parents would ask repetitive questions which would be tiring and boring for the administration team to answer. Hence, it would be easy and efficient to provide answers to the students and parents through a systematic help desk system.

But, it is not always considered a cost-effective option to integrate a tailor-made help desk system for schools and colleges. Hence a perfect solution is to adopt an open source help desk system for your institution.

Open Source Help Desk System

Open source help desk systems‘ source code will be available for the public to tweak, change, and alter the systems according to the way the user wants them. Some open source help desk solutions provide the source code to the public through online repositories and some teams themselves offer a solution to tweak the system by themselves according to the customer requirements.

So, if you are looking for a help desk system for your school or college, you can go for an effective open source help desk system. You can seek the help of a developer to tweak the code, or you can choose a team that provides the service of tweaking and building new features from their side.

Now, let us check what are the benefits of integrating an open source help desk system for schools and colleges.

Benefits of Integrating an Open Source Help Desk System for School and Colleges

There are many benefits of integrating a help desk system in school, college, or any educational institution management. It would ease the tasks of the administration as well as help students and parents get immediate solutions.

Some of the major benefits of open source help desk solution in educational institutions are listed below:

  • Students can raise complaints easily and management can take action as soon as possible.
  • Parents can raise tickets on behalf of students who are in primary classes.
  • The mails and SMS sent by parents can be converted into tickets and passed to the system.
  • Can make student groups from where students can raise questions and seek answers from other students and seniors or even from the faculty. It can be used as a forum as well.
  • Providing a proper knowledge base for students when they are trying to raise questions can reduce the number of common queries from students. 
  • Can collect fees and manage other financial transactions, etc.
  • The School administration team and faculties can create profiles as agents and take care of the tickets concerned to them.
  • Can assist the students to find their lost things from school and provide an option to publish the found things through a form, etc.
  • The administration can prioritize queries and work on them one by one.

There are so many benefits of implementing a help desk system for educational institutions. It would vary from one institution to another according to their requirements.

In this article, let us discuss one of the best open source help desk systems in the industry – Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible, and how you can implement it for your school or college.

Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible

This open source help desk system will help you tweak the system according to your profession and requirements with expert services. It is compatible with all website platforms such as WordPress, Wix, Magento, WooCommerce, etc. And, you can integrate any third-party tools or software according to your needs with the help of their team.

Moreover, you can store all your data in your own server in order to avoid security breaches and ensure data privacy. It can also be used as an out-of-the-box solution if you are satisfied with its rich features. If you have more unique requirements, you can discuss them with its team and get them done in the way you want it. There are many more interesting features of this open source help desk system. To know more about it, refer to the article – How to Set Up Open Source Helpdesk & Support Ticketing System for Your Website or eCommerce Store?

Now, let us check how you can set up a help desk management system for schools and colleges, with an example. Here, I have taken an example of a simple help desk system for a school.

How to Set Up an Open Source Help Desk System for School with Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible?

Step 1

As the first step, you need to install the plugin, WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System Plugin, which is basically a WordPress plugin. With this plugin, you can receive, manage, and solve the tickets of students seamlessly. And, you can create the agent profiles and set other triggers for the agents to ease their tasks with this help desk solution. To know more about the configuration process, you can go through its product documentation – How to set up WSDesk – WordPress Helpdesk Plugin?

Step 2

The next step is to create a form for the students or parents to raise a query. Before creating the form, you have to plan everything including how many fields should be there, what are the labels and placeholder texts, and what are the choices to be listed on each drop-down list option, etc.

Also, it should include all relevant fields and are easily understandable by the students in any class.

Check an example of a form I have created below:

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | An example of school help desk form

This is a simple form I have created for the students or parents to raise a query, complaints, or to check published details.

They can choose the category of the ticket like Lost and Found, Assignment Submission, Exam Time Table, etc., from a drop-down pick-up list. And choose a date of appointment with the department head or concerned person, if required.

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | Queries related departments

After entering the details, the students or parents can click the Submit Request button.

Check an example of a ticket raised by a student to check her exam timetable.

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | Example of a ticket

After submitting the ticket, it will reflect on the admin dashboard as in the screenshot below:

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | Unassigned ticket

The admin can open the ticket and assign it to an agent or the concerned faculty to send a reply with a solution.

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | Agent replying to student

While replying to the students and parents for their queries, the assignee can add the current status of the ticket along with the reply. Check the screenshot below:

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | setting the status of the ticket

Here, for an example, I have submitted the ticket as Solved.

The students can check the status of the submitted ticket by clicking the Check your Existing Request button.

How to Set Up a Simple & Efficient Open Source Help Desk Management System for College and Schools? | checking existing ticket status

This is how it works. You can add your unique requirements with this help desk system by discussing them with the support team.

A help desk solution gives a systematic way of assisting and supporting the students and parents better than frequent phone calls and a couple of emails to get small and large information.

Some questions would be very frequently asked and it would be a waste of time for the admins to send the same reply multiple times. This would also lead to a delay in the reply to urgent and very important queries. In such cases, you can integrate the FAQs and knowledge base articles on the support form, and also, you can list it down to the students when they are about to raise a query related to it.

There are so many ways you can give the best support and assistance to your students with this robust solution. 

To sum up,

Integrating the Open Source HelpDesk & Customer Support Ticketing System – Simple & Flexible is a great opportunity for you to provide the best support experience to your customers, students, employees, etc in the way you exactly wish to provide. If you are convinced with the existing features, you can directly integrate with it by choosing a subscription plan such as Starter, Pro, or Ultimate according to the number of tickets you would receive in a day. If you need alterations and additional features, the expert team is ready to help you at any time!

If your institution is running out of human resources to manage the help desk system, you can go for its Managed Hosting plan. With this plan, you do not need to worry about the system maintenance, version updates, server management, etc. Everything will be handled by the expert team, and your data will be safe and secure always.

 

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