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 transcriipt 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 transcriipt.
Gather information by identifying the problems that users most commonly experience and that they call the IT help desk for, given the scenario.
Identify what has changed in the system that may have caused each problem.
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.
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.
Given the tickets, phone calls, and chat transcriipt, 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.
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.
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.
Describe how you would ensure satisfaction of the user after the issue has been resolved.
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.
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.
