Desktop Consulting and Support Expertise

Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service
Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is intended for businesses with between 50 and 500 end users and permits your information technology team to split activity for Service Desk support seamlessly between your in-house network support team and Progent's nationwide roster of IT service technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Shared Service Desk is a joint IT support solution built around ConnectWise Manage, the industry-leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform for managing IT service calls, generating tickets, assigning responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating management analytics. The price for Level 1 IT support for Progent's Shared Help Desk service averages under $18/user/month.

Progent's Shared Help Desk Service provides a smooth supplement to your internal network support resources. End user access to the Help Desk, provision of technical assistance, problem escalation, ticket creation and tracking, performance measurement, and maintenance of the service database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are taken care of by your internal network support resources, by Progent's team, or by a combination. All end-user support requests are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 issues. Progent focuses on the service level or levels you specify (usually Levels 1 and 3). Initial support requests are routed to your in-house support group or to Progent's Technical Response Center, based on your instructions. Level 2 or 3 issues can be referred to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The escalation activity is transparent to your users. You have complete versatility to extend or shrink your part of support activity as circumstances demand. Progent takes care of startup deployment and provisioning of the professional services automation (PSA) software as well as workflow documentation, testing and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) has been providing remote technical support for over two decades and has active clients in each state in the country (refer to Progent's client testimonials.) The Technical Response Center maintains the pool of veteran computer technicians who can resolve Level 1 tickets, which make up the majority of Help Desk service requests. The TRC, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation platform to streamline ticketing, tracking progress, responsibility assignment, escalation and reporting. This prevents tickets from falling through the cracks and offers clients continual visibility of all support services provided. Progent's TRC targets 90% live answer performance and allows Progent's Shared Help Desk program to include a 60-minute service-level agreement (SLA). Support hours are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on standard work days. Extended support hours and onsite support are offered at additional cost. To learn more about Progent's Technical Response Center, visit Progent's Technical Response Center Customer Commitment.

Service Levels
Progent provides three levels of remote technical service, which are equivalent to industry-recognized Tier 1 through Tier 3 service. You can define which support levels will be handled exclusively or in part by Progent's support team and your internal resources. The depth and technical breadth of Progent's roster of subject matter experts allows fast and efficient escalation and makes it possible to count on Progent as a single source for the majority of IT problems at any Tier. Also, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer permits important service problems to migrate from higher to lower levels as solution techniques become recorded and standardized so they can be handled by less skilled and lower-cost service personnel.

Support levels are defined as:

• Level 1 Support: Filters Service Desk requests and provides basic IT help and troubleshooting, like password resets, printer configurations, break/fix procedures, ticket assignment and promotion to Level 2 and Level 3 support. A Level 1 tech gathers and analyzes information about the user's issue and determines the best way to resolve the problem. Level 1 service may also provide assistance for identified Level 2 or Level 3 issues where solutions have previously been documented.
• Level 2 Support: Generally addresses break/fix, configuration issues, debugging, application or OS installations, and hardware fixes including onsite repair or coordinating depot support. Level 2 support involves escalated issues that Level 1 personnel are not equipped to resolve. Level support will sometimes migrate to Level 3, depending on the problem and the manner the Help Desk operates.
• Level 3 Support: Debugging, setup, DBA, and fixes or updates for server, hybrid networks, messaging, file shares, and common infrastructure issues. In addition to possessing the ability to find fixes to novel problems, a Level 3 engineer typically has the most expertise.

This particular implementation of Progent's Shared Help Desk Service has a 4-stage trouble ticket lifecycle:

1. Your users initiate requests through the browser-based service portal, a dedicated phone number, or by sending an email to a designated mailbox. This immediately becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center receives the open request and determines whether it will be serviced or escalated to your in-house Help Desk.
3. Your Help Desk gets the forwarded open request and determines the best means to service the issue. If needed, your Service Desk can in turn send the open request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent receives the revised ticket request, selects the most appropriate SME from the Experts Team, and assigns the chosen SME to collaborate with your support staff until the problem is fixed or closed.

Highlights of Progent's Service Desk
Top aspects of Progent's Co-managed Call Desk offerings include:

• Pooled desktop help from Progent's Technical Response Center staff
• Level 1 remote help available 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, 60 Minute SLA
• Special hourly rate with one-minute granularity for Tier 1 desktop support for users
• Typical price of Level 1 service is around $18 montly per user
• Level 2 and Level 3 help from Progent subject matter expert provided as an option at Progent's standard consulting rates
• De-escalation permits issues that initially require Level 2 or 3 expertise to drop to a lower, less expensive Tier once solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT includes a complete version of ConnectWise Manage with secure multitenancy

• Available only in the United States and US territories
• One-time setup fee dependent on complexity of the deployment
• Beginning day one, you are assigned by Progent a Technical Resource Center (TRC) Coordinator and a TRC Service Lead to resource, appoint and communicate with your team and your users. Progent's TRC Service Lead will work closely with you to create a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate to your service group or de-escalate back to Progent's support engineers.
• Live Answer of inbound support calls to Progent Technical Response Center with a target of 90% Live Answer of all requests
• After deciding if server or networking support is required, some requests will be escalated to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All support that needs Level 2 or 3 service will be handled by a Progent consultant pending client approval
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Service is for users and applies to Windows-based systems and Apple systems
• Progent Level 2 or Level 3 support will be charged at regular hourly consulting prices
• Progent will provide resources - Technical Response Center (TRC) desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and 3 as needed
• Progent will provide a phone number and email mailbox for incoming service calls
• Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for efficient technical troubleshooting
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management services for network documentation management
• All Level 1 online support is charged at a discounted hourly rate with one-minute granularity
• All Level 1 support will be performed remotely, no onsite support included
• All on-premises support will be billed at regular consulting rates
• All onsite work will have an added fixed fee as well as any documented travel costs
• All travel expense projections will be provided and require customer agreement before support services or travel will be undertaken
• Contracted projects and separate Statements of Work (SoWs) will include their individual estimates and fees outlined and will be undertaken only after authorization by client

First Steps

• Create your custom Service Desk environment, including your internal team, service locations, and client information
• Progent will work with your service team to analyze current incoming support requests
• Configure your incoming help request system to include a mailbox, software agents, and a dedicated telephone number

• Progent provides ticket management training for your company's support team
• Jointly create basic workflow and ticket escalation procedures
• Integrate all your groups and resources that will deliver support
• Create the roll-out description and promotion of the new Call Desk environment
• Designate a specific location or small groups to onboard first
• Bring additional groups of users into the solution at a workable pace

• Study reports and system configuration for efficient information and processes
• Create additional reports or fields required to improve the identification or tracking of common issues
• Identify key information that could enable a higher resolution rate for Level 1 service calls

• All clients have been exposed to the support desk and can access it
• All required client and hardware data is populated in the service system
• You are able to exchange and manage tickets transparently between your internal support group and Progent
• You can monitor daily, weekly and monthly support performance

• Keep total control of your IT support requests: you determine what trouble tickets are escalated to Progent's service group or taken care of by your in-house service staff.
• Quick availability of additional IT service experts when you need them: Progent's professional services automation (PSA) software automatically distributes internal tickets or permits you manually forward to Progent's TRC.
• Productivity: Progent's consultants will analyze your current incoming service requests and propose missing data that would allow an improved resolution rate for typical Level 1 requests. Progent's IT support experts can also help you with tag management to expedite problem resolution.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Shared Service Desk acts as a seamless extension of your in-house support desk with unified ticketing and documentation so no ticket falls through the seams.
• Contented employees: End users are able to follow the progress of their IT support requests rapidly and easily.
• Management analytics: You benefit from the metrics, responsibility assignments, and activity reporting of an advanced PSA system to help you to build a custom Service Desk experience that delivers maximum business value.
• Concentrate on your strategic business initiatives, not IT service requests and disgruntled users: Your network managers escape being saddled with handling common support requests.

Read Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Though maintaining your own fully-staffed local IT team can be expensive from the cost perspective, plenty of companies prefer that strategy since it allows them more flexibility with their information system management. But did you realize that your business can still reap the advantages of a managed services firm using the co-managed IT support strategy. Adopting the shared model enables your company to stay in charge of your IT infrastructure while reinforcing your in-house IT services team simply and economically.

For details, see our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).

Download Progent's Co-managed Service Desk Datasheet
To download a single-page datasheet in PDF format describing Progent's Shared Help Desk, click:
Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)

Progent's ProSight Family of Managed Services
Progent has packaged the ProSight family of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to streamline critical activities associated with IT management, security and upkeep. These RMM services can be integrated with Progent's Co-managed Call Desk service by deploying agent software on machines to be monitored and managed. Notifications sent by these software agents can be routed automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center, managed through the trouble ticket and monitoring system, and triaged for Level 1, 2 or 3 treatment.

Samples of ProSight RMM packages include:

• ProSight LAN Watch: Network, Server, and Endpoint Remote Monitoring Services
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's network, server, and endpoint monitoring service that incorporates advanced remote monitoring and management technology to help keep your IT system operating efficiently by checking the state of critical assets that power your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alert is transmitted immediately to your specified IT personnel and your assigned Progent consultant so that all looming problems can be resolved before they have a chance to impact productivity. ProSight LAN Watch is National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch network, server, and endpoint monitoring consulting.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Centralized RMM Solution for Networks, Servers, and Desktops
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a centralized, cloud-driven solution for monitoring and managing your client-server infrastructure by offering tools for streamlining common time-consuming tasks. These include health checking, patch management, automated remediation, endpoint setup, backup and recovery, anti-virus defense, remote access, standard and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint profile reporting, and debugging support. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious problem, it transmits an alert to your specified IT personnel and your Progent consultant so that potential issues can be taken care of before they interfere with productivity. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop monitoring services.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is a network infrastructure monitoring and management service that makes it easy and affordable for small and mid-sized businesses to map out, monitor, optimize and debug their connectivity appliances like switches, firewalls, and load balancers as well as servers, printers, endpoints and other networked devices. Incorporating state-of-the-art RMM technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that infrastructure topology diagrams are kept updated, captures and displays the configuration information of virtually all devices connected to your network, tracks performance, and sends notices when problems are detected. By automating tedious management processes, WAN Watch can knock hours off ordinary tasks such as network mapping, expanding your network, finding appliances that need critical updates, or isolating performance issues. Learn more details about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Applications
  ProSight Reporting is a growing suite of in-depth management reporting tools designed to work with the top ticketing and remote network monitoring applications such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting uses Microsoft Graph and features color coding to highlight and contextualize key issues such as inconsistent support follow-through or machines with out-of-date AVs. By identifying ticketing or network health problems clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances network value, lowers management overhead, and saves money. For more information, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup technology vendors to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a selection of subscription-based offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS services manage and monitor your backup processes and enable non-disruptive backup and fast restoration of important files/folders, applications, images, and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets you avoid data loss resulting from hardware breakdown, natural calamities, fire, cyber attacks like ransomware, human mistakes, malicious employees, or software glitches. Managed backup services available in the ProSight Data Protection Services family include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup, ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent expert can assist you to identify which of these managed services are best suited for your network.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam filtering service that uses the infrastructure of top information security companies to provide centralized control and comprehensive security for all your inbound and outbound email. The powerful architecture of Email Guard integrates cloud-based filtering with a local gateway device to offer advanced protection against spam, viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, DHAs, and other email-based malware. The cloud filter acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks most unwanted email from reaching your security perimeter. This reduces your vulnerability to external attacks and conserves network bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway device adds a further level of inspection for incoming email. For outgoing email, the on-premises gateway provides AV and anti-spam protection, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The onsite gateway can also assist Exchange Server to track and protect internal email that stays inside your security perimeter. For more details, visit ProSight Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight MFA with Cisco Duo: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo MFA managed services incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to protect against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication. Duo supports one-tap identity verification on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. Using 2FA, when you sign into a secured application and give your password you are requested to confirm who you are via a unit that only you possess and that uses a different network channel. A wide range of devices can be used for this added form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You can register multiple validation devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity authentication services, go to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.

• ProSight Shared Help Desk: Outsourced and Shared IT Support Center Services
  Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service offers a smooth extension of your internal support group. End user access to the Help Desk, delivery of support, issue escalation, ticket creation and updates, efficiency measurement, and management of the service database are consistent whether incidents are taken care of by your in-house support organization, by Progent, or both. Your business has unrestricted flexibility to extend or shrink your part of support work as needed. Progent provides initial installation and onboarding of the professional services automation software plus workflow documentation, testing and education. To learn more about ProSight Co-Managed Call Desk, visit ProSight Co-Managed Call Desk.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Behavior-based Threat Scanning and Ransomware Protection:
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection (EPP) service that incorporates next generation behavior-based machine learning tools from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoints against modern malware attacks such as ransomware and email phishing, which easily escape traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring protects local and cloud-based resources and provides a single platform to automate the complete malware attack lifecycle including blocking, identification, containment, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key features include single-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring endpoint protection and ransomware recovery with SentinelOne technology.

• Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services:
  Progent's managed services for software and firmware patch management offer businesses of any size a flexible and affordable solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, applying, and tracking updates to your ever-evolving information system. In addition to optimizing the security and reliability of your IT network, Progent's patch management services free up time for your IT team to concentrate on line-of-business initiatives and tasks that derive the highest business value from your information network. Learn more about Progent's patch management services.