Numara FootPrints — a suite of shared processes to manage IT requests, incidents, problems, changes and service-level management — is set to make its mark across campus this spring following its use in two individual departments.

Beginning Monday, Feb. 28, FootPrints will replace several ticketing systems in use across the West Lafayette campus, meeting an objective of Purdue’s Campus Information Technology Plan to reduce redundant IT services through departmental collaboration.

Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts has used FootPrints for six years and initially negotiated an unlimited-use license for the product, which has been maintained and expanded to allow campus-wide use of FootPrints. Purdue University Libraries also has been using the FootPrints software.

“Ticketing” is the process of submitting and managing user requests for technical support, and implementing FootPrints should increase the speed and improve the breadth of responses to those requests.

Among other features, the web-based service-desk software will offer:

• Greater ease of upgrade and support

• Flexibility of configuration across Purdue’s various IT systems

• Minimal training requirements, e.g., approximately two hours of training within the FootPrints environment as opposed to 30 for some previous products

• A user-friendly and intuitive interface

• Simple report creation and key performance-indicator processes

• Potential use with mobile devices

“Standardizing a campus-wide IT service-management tool offers Purdue a solution to develop and implement common processes, practices and procedures for managing IT resources,” says Dwight Snethen, director of ITaP’s customer service and quality assurance. “A committee representing numerous campus units evaluated several products and found FootPrints the best overall choice given its relatively simple upgrade requirements, ease of training and favorable preliminary pricing.”

Once it goes live, FootPrints will give support and business units the means to log and record customer issues and change or service requests as tickets. These tickets can then be used to pass information between such groups in order to find a satisfactory resolution.

Customers in all campus units switching to FootPrints will continue to submit service requests as they have in the past. However, they may notice that the emailed response may now have a different appearance and formatting.

Along with assistance on individual tech-support issues, FootPrints allows ticket managers to configure a database to track, and predict, patterns to minimize the impact of problems.

Charles DeLa, associate director for client services at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, served on the evaluation committee that selected FootPrints as Purdue’s service-management system of choice and touted that feature.

“When people alert us with complaints or questions on issues, it’s often like the canary in the coal mine. They alert us to things that are going on sometimes that we don’t know about,” DeLa says. “FootPrints lets us keep track of those kinds of dynamics, and when we see that we have a few complaints along a certain line, the system will trigger an automatic process of looking for the underlying problem rather than only solving the individual’s issues.”

Kristie Bishop, service desk manager for the College of Liberal Arts, praised the collaborative aspects of implementing FootPrints on a University-wide basis.

“If more than one IT department is working on an issue, it should be seamless to the customer,” Bishop says. “This will, in turn, improve inter- and cross-departmental communication. FootPrints also allows us to track, measure and review processes to improve technical support across campus.”

Training sessions will begin Monday, Feb. 14 and will be offered several times per week before and after FootPrints goes live on Monday, Feb. 28. Training is scheduled to run through March.

These sessions are intended only for those currently administering or managing IT requests in existing ticketing systems, such as Remedy, and who will be working within FootPrints once the conversion is complete.

To schedule a training date and time, please visit the FootPrints training page on Purdue’s Conference Division website. Applicable staff at the Ross Enterprise Center should schedule training dates and times via this FootPrints training link.

For additional information about training, please email Adam Knust, procurement systems administrator with Purdue Administrative Computing.

“Together, we’ve gotten behind one product that’s going to save us money and, on the output side, really improve customer service,” DeLa says. “I’m enthusiastic, and I think implementing FootPrints is an exciting process that will have a very positive impact on the University.”

Writer: Nick Rogers, technology writer, ITaP, 765-496-8204, rogersn@purdue.edu

Sources: Paula Kayser, ITaP project manager, 765-494-9574, pjkayser@purdue.edu

Dwight Snethen, ITaP director of customer service and quality assurance, 765-496-1035, dsnethen@purdue.edu

Charles DeLa, associate director for client services, Krannert School of Management, 765-494-9564, delac@purdue.edu

Kristie Bishop, service desk manager, College of Liberal Arts, 765-494-0123, kjbishop@purdue.edu

Last updated: Feb. 7, 2011

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