Although the Wofford information technology system in place allowed for unaware contentment for students submitting a ticket through the portal, it was quite outdated. The office of Information Technology decided it was time to change it.
“It was not in the cloud, so we had to run a server to host it,” said Trey Arrington, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology. “The technology on it was really far behind. We just needed to move to something more modern.”
There are multiple logistics to consider when making a decision as long-lasting as this one.
Years ago, Wofford’s IT department paid a certain amount to purchase their system. Consequently, every year there are maintenance fees to be paid to keep utilizing the system and receiving updates. As is the case with many other software systems, those fees have gone up over time.
“Do we want to keep paying maintenance fees on this really old system that’s very difficult to maintain and doesn’t do what we want it to do?” explains Arrington. “Or do we want to evaluate something new?”
IT went through an extensive evaluation process before settling on Freshservice as Wofford’s new IT support system. Over a roughly six-month period they analyzed three or four different vendors and inquired about the systems colleges in the surrounding area were using.
Although the system was made public in August, IT purchased the system at the beginning of the summer, so they had time to set it up and learn how to have it work most efficiently. This way, when the fall semester began there was a new ticket system in place.
The new system utilizes artificial intelligence to review tickets as they come in, picking out keywords so the ticket can be routed to the appropriate IT adviser.
“It helps us be more responsive,” Arrington said. “We’re a small IT team, so anytime we have a tool like that, that can just sort of be almost like another teammate for us, that’s great.”
The AI component of this new system additionally allows for reviewed tickets to receive an updated response. So, someone may receive an email notifying them that their ticket has been sent to a technician and is awaiting review, or perhaps for more simple tickets the system will respond with advice on how to proceed.
This year is also the first year for a student to work in cybersecurity, sophomore Patrick Green. He had been informed that ITS had a new information security position open for students, so he reached out.
Prior to his first day with cybersecurity, Green ‘27 has been working at the IT Help Desk. Through working this year and the year before he has been able to see how the new system affects day-to-day operation.
“Last year, it’d be doing a ticket, and normally we’d have to go manually in to direct them to somebody,” Green explains. “This year the tickets that we get are the ones that we were supposed to fix, versus just having to manually do that.”
It is important to note that although this system is intuitive it is in no way going to be replacing technicians. The new system will be a more efficient way to respond and assist those who need assistance on campus. There are some applications of the system that have yet to be used but will be beneficial in the future.
“Anytime I’m looking at any type of new system, I want it to have that AI and that machine learning component because I know eventually that’s where we’re going to be,” Arrington said. “I want to select systems and applications that have those components built into them, because even if we’re not technically using it a lot right now, we definitely will be down the road.”
