DEV Community: Janet

How to Set Up an Employee Help Desk

Janet — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:12:34 +0000

An Employee Help Desk is a centralized function within an organization that aims to assist the workforce in matters relating to IT support, training, HR matters and in some cases, even customer issues. With the increase in remote working and hybrid work models, it is a useful function that provides assistance to the employees as and when it is needed.

How to Set Up and Manage an Employee Help Desk
The benefits of having an internal help desk aimed at supporting your workforce quickly outweigh any initial setup costs and difficulties you may encounter. Being able to perform with minimal disruptions not only benefits productivity, it also increases the morale of the employees, as they have less frustrations and they can feel comfortable knowing they are supported. With streamlined processes, the HR department is also able to keep abreast of issues and act quickly when needed.
An employee help desk will combine technology and human resources to create an accessible interface for employees to address their questions and workplace problems.

What does your team need to work faster and better?
You need to take into consideration what the team behind the help desk needs in order to provide a fast and useful service to your workforce. They need to have a full understanding of what is required of them, and they must have the tools to meet these needs.

Make use of automation to reduce manual processes. Implement an automated HR ticketing system that can assign tasks and send automated responses during key stages of the process. With routing workflows, there should be some intelligent routing rules that can assign tasks by capacity. Automation can help to ensure that all tasks are handled quickly and as effectively as possible.
Have clear and concise internal discussions. When it becomes necessary to consult with other team members, avoid endless threads of email that quickly get confusing and messages get lost in the flurry of back and forth.
Performance analysis. Include a tool that allows you to measure performance in real time. You can measure the average time it takes to resolve a problem; identify any bottlenecks and take action to improve - whether it’s with additional resources or better staff training.
Low maintenance. Ensure that all the tools you provide your help desk with are easy to use. Systems should help, not hinder processes. Ensure all software is compatible with existing email and HR solutions for a seamless help desk environment.

6 steps for setting up an employee help desk
While it might sound intimidating, setting up an employee help desk is not that difficult. With some careful planning, use the following steps to guide you:

The most important starting point is determining what your helpdesk will offer. It is not possible to offer everything and trying to do so will only result in failure. Consider historical data from your technical support and HR departments - what are the common areas that are often problematic? Think of issues like onboarding of new employees, registering for training or organizational benefits. When it comes to IT support, what should an employee do if they can not access the VPN, or if they encounter a security issue.
Consider the resources that you will need, and what you have available. This applies to technology and human resources. A two tiered system is often recommended, where the first tier focuses on technology issues. Provide a means for employees to search for answers using online portals or community forums and FAQ pages. Should this not suffice, the user then has the option to escalate the matter where they can interact with someone to deal with their specific circumstances. An example of such a system could be when an employee wishes to download a form to apply for training. They can simply search a repository for the required documents. However, if an employee wants to request specific training where they need to motivate for it, they can then speak to an individual to discuss the requirements.
All queries and matters should adhere to a priority system. While each person might deem their problem to be urgent, this is not always the case. All matters logged with the help desk must be addressed, but less urgent matters should never take precedence over urgent matters. Technology can be used to set expectations of the employees using the system, for example, upon logging an issue, an automated response that acknowledges the ticket, but at the same time suggests alternative courses of action while the employee waits for assistance will not only provide evidence to the user that their matter is being dealt with, but it could actually solve the problem in the interim.
Ensure that various departments agree on the standards and how responses should be personalized, especially with automated replies. These should fall within the company’s corporate identity and it should allow for addressing each employee personally, rather than a simple generic “Dear Sir”.
While technology is useful, there must always be an option to speak to an actual person. Ensure that you assign the correct resources for this. Employees may wish to speak about personal matters that can not be discussed with a machine.
In order to keep the help desk relevant and useful, you must track your key metrics. Employees may need to be reminded of the existence of a help desk. Internal memos may be needed or an alternate way of highlighting it to the staff. Also ask employees who have made use of the system to provide feedback. Use this feedback to make adjustments and improvements as required.

What do employees want from internal support?
In order for your help desk to be useful, your employees must want to use it. There are a number of expectations that employees have which you should consider when setting up your help desk:

Easy to reach Employees do not want to have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to log a problem. If they’re experiencing difficulties, another tedious process wrapped in red tape will simply frustrate them more. Make it as simple as sending an email.
Zero fuss and no unnecessary communication In most cases, the employee does not know what the problem is, nor how to fix it, they just want it fixed. Involving them in endless email chains and remote support sessions will just be time consuming and annoying. The help desk team should take care of things.
Prompt resolution If the issue is preventing an employee from continuing their jobs, no doubt they will be anxious if the problem is not resolved timeously. The help desk should be bound by a SLA to ensure they comply with realistic resolution deliverables.
Status updates Find the balance between flooding the employee with tons of emails and leaving them in the dark. Should a problem require additional time, notify the employee accordingly.

Tips for Building an Excellent Internal Help Desk Department
While a help desk for employees is a necessity, especially in larger organizations, it can quite easily become a white elephant if not used and managed correctly. There are a number of things to keep in mind:

Create a Clear Unambiguous Service Level Agreement (SLA)
The help desk is a service provider to the rest of the organization, and as such, it makes sense to implement an SLA to formalize and document the expectations from the department. This will help reduce any confusion or conflict in the long run.

Matters that should be included in the SLA:

Expected turnaround time for an issue
Communication process including acknowledgement of receipt of ticket
Escalation process when needed

Develop a Positive Proactive Help Desk Culture
A help desk is not different to any other department in that it has financial constraints within which it needs to operate. However, a help desk should never falter from providing a service due to budget cuts or cost saving. The priority of a help desk is to streamline all other processes within the company, without which, the company can not function, resulting in even more financial losses.

Hire Good Competent Employees
The success of the team is the sum of the effort and attitude of all its members. Make sure you have a team that works well together. Any weak link will cause the entire department to be ineffective. Provide training for your team to ensure good morale so that you can retain the skills you have and need.

Develop a Workflow
Make sure you have a clear and transparent workflow to prevent end user dissatisfaction. A proper workflow benefits everyone involved, whether end user or help desk staff member. Help desk team members can quickly and easily see the status of any ticket at any given time even if they were not working on it. This allows them to give prompt and accurate feedback but they can also pick up the ticket and run with it if necessary as they have all the information at hand.

Management can also get a status overview at any given time allowing them to identify any potential bottlenecks. They can then reassign or escalate matters as necessary.

Help Desk as a Partner
It’s important for everyone within the organization to understand the role of a helpdesk. The department is as integral as any other department and should be treated as such. They are not there to be abused to resolve everything that should go awry. Employees should alway attempt to resolve the problem themselves first, rather than expecting the help desk to do it.

Remote Support
Providing the help desk team with a robust remote support software solution is integral. Oftentimes, a help desk employee can simply log in remotely and resolve an issue within minutes, rather than having to try and explain over a phone call or via email to the end user.

Removing the need to travel from location to location also allows the help desk team to work more effectively and waste less time in transit.

HASP dongle emulator

Janet — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:24:54 +0000

Put simply, a USB security dongle is a small gadget you can connect to your computer’s port and instantly get access to some protected hardware or software. More’s the pity, using them on a daily basis is not free from shortcomings:

All modern computers, especially laptops, have very few USB ports. Sometimes, that’s just not enough to plug in another license key that you need to launch that app you can’t follow up with your project.
Some software distributors only supply one or two dongles with every license. If you have a sizable staff, having to share those keys will become a real problem. Plus, you’re going to spend a small fortune for replacements, every time one (or both) of those is damaged or just somehow disappears into thin air.
Accessing a USB security dongle from a virtual environment also involves some difficulties. Very few guest operating systems come with a built-in function that can help you connect to USB devices plugged into the host machine’s ports.

The good news is, all of these issues and many more can be easily resolved by applying HASP dongle emulator software.

The most convenient app for dongle emulation

If you’re after an easy-to-use failsafe dongle emulator, download Donglify. With its aid, you can make a HASP key accessible from multiple users’ PCs in parallel, and from about anywhere, as long as that place has network coverage. Best of all, dongle emulation is perfectly legal and has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of cracking or unauthorized copying.

Being a topline dongle emulator for HASP keys, Donglify creates fully functional virtual copies of a USB device you can attach to a whole host of remote operating systems, both real and virtual. Also, it is compatible with every dongle brand on the market, and specifically with all HASP security models.

Caution! Don’t risk losing your license trying to crack a security dongle or make illegal copies. We strongly encourage going with fair virtual copies, created by dedicated dongle emulsion software, e.g. Donglify.

Keep on reading and you’ll find out how easy it is to use this specific dongle HASP emulator.

Easy and quick USB dongle key emulatio

With Donglify, emulating a USB dongle key will only take you a few simple steps:

Start with signing up for your own Donglify account on the official website.
Then download the app and install it both on the machine that is directly connected to a security key (server) and on all the client PCs or virtual guest systems that you want to have an emulated copy of that key.
Run Donglify on the server and use your login credential to enter your account.
Once you click the “+” icon, you’ll see a list of shareable local USB devices. Find the security key you need and click “Share” next to its name. After that, the security dongle becomes available for emulation on every remote PC that needs it.
Now, run the app and log into your account on a client machine or guest OS. Find your key on the list and click “Connect” next to its name.

That’s it! From this point on, the dongle key appears in the Device Manager of a remote PS or the guest OS, like if it was connected to that machine directly.

Some top-of-the-league dongle options
Donglify has no limits as to the brand or model of supported dongle keys. Still and all, we’ve prepared this the best of the best list for you to start out strong.

Sentinel HL Pro

The Sentinel HL Pro is known and loved for its top-tier security level. On top of that, it comes with a read-only memory and performs onboard read/write operations.

Main specs:

Up to 64,000 AES encryption keys to use.
Over 39 features or apps can be protected with a single key.
32 and 64-bit Windows-compatible ApOnChip (with upgrades).
3 cryptographic algorithms: AES 128, ECC 163, and RSA 2048.
SmartCard chip for extra speed and efficiency.
Remote firmware upgrades for the field devices.
Complete match with the Sentinel HASP dongle emulator (i.a. Donglify).

HASP HL Pro

The Sentinel HASP HL Pro is a multi-platform security dongle prevalently used for licensed software protection.

Main specs:

Over 39 features or apps protected with a single key.
Works in Windows, Linux, and Mac.
128-bit AES encryption.
Remote firmware upgrades for the field devices.
112 bytes of protected memory with 3 config options: protected read/write, read-only, and backward compatibility.

SafeNet eToken 5110

The SafeNet eToken 5110 with its two-factor authentication is widely used by electronic commerce companies to secure their online and network assets, and comply with data security and privacy regulations.

Main specs:

No reader device is needed for portable USB tokens.
Digital signatures and pre-boot authentication for enhanced security.
2 versions: Common Criteria and FIPS-certified.
Secure access to remote digital assets.
Can be used with no technical knowledge or specific training.

CodeMeter CmStick

The CodeMeter CmStick has 328 Kb of memory and can store multiple licenses at the same time. Mostly used in scenarios when a host of license-protected apps are distributed by the same company as a package deal.

Main specs:

Infineon SLM97 smart card chip.
Hyperstone U9 flash controller for robust data protection.
Patented hymap firmware to ensure zero power loss.
Encrypted CmSecureDisk partition for software-generated and config data protection.
Full compatibility with CodeMeter dongle emulator (i.a. Donglify).

Aladdin HASP4 Dongle

Aladdin HASP Dongle was originally created for Parallel Ports (LPT) and is still extremely popular with software developers, e.g. Time Limit and Module Definition, that use those dongles as MCU chips and EPROOM.

Key features of Aladdin HASP Dongle Emulator:

Digitally signed for smooth functioning in 64 bit Windows systems.
If there is a Time Limit, it can be removed completely.
All modules connected to the dongle will be defined in the software you use.
Optional hardware reproduction. ( Hardware Clone ).
Aladdin USB dongle emulator is compatible with VMWare, Virtualbox, etc.

DEV Community: Janet

How to Set Up an Employee Help Desk

HASP dongle emulator

The most convenient app for dongle emulation

Easy and quick USB dongle key emulatio

Sentinel HL Pro

HASP HL ​​Pro

SafeNet eToken 5110

CodeMeter CmStick

Aladdin HASP4 Dongle

HASP HL Pro