The Power of the IT Work Order

My new job on the other side of the IT desk has taught me new things already. As a teacher with a tech problem I would grab the technician in the hall and tell him/her my issues and ask for them to visit my room. Or maybe I would email them with my request. If I was really friendly with my campus tech I might call or text them. They would come fix my machine and all would be right with the world. I never considered the process from their perspective.

Here are 5 things I have learned since joining the IT side:

1. Work orders help with tracking issues: If I have the same problem over and over, it needs to be addressed differently than a quick fix. It might indicate a big problem or be warning signs of a meltdown. If I just grab a tech in the hall and they fix my machine, they may not be keeping track of how often my machine has the same problem. Submitting work orders creates a paper trail for future use.

2. Work orders help in finding trends: Let's pretend I have a network issue and I tell the first tech I see. Then someone at another school has the same issue and tells the first tech they see which isn't the one I told. And what if each tech in the district heard about this same issue from one other person. In our situation 5 different people told 5 different people that they are having the same problem. To each tech it seems like an isolated incident, but if you look at the bigger picture, it appears to be a trend. Submitting work orders lets your IT department track those trends and treat them differently than if they were an isolated event.

3. People are human and they forget: We all forget things from time to time and your hardworking IT folks are no different. When 5 people tell them they need things fixed in one trip down the hall, it is easy to forget something when there is no paper trail to follow. An email can easily get lost in the shuffle and overlooked. Submitting work orders guarantees that someone in IT will see my issue and come fix it for me.

4. I get the right person for the job: Each person has their own talents. One person may be better at fixing one issue than someone else. If I grab the tech in the hall and they haven't seen this problem before, they may have to try more options. Submitting work orders means my issue can be assigned to the most knowledgeable tech on that specific problem.

5.  It makes IT's life easier: When all of the issues are gathered into one stack, they are easier to organize, assign, manage, etc. Submitting work orders helps IT be more efficient which helps my computer get fixed faster.