Computer Outsourcing for Mid-size Companies
Co-managed Help Desk Solutions
Progent's Shared Service Desk
Progent's Shared Help Desk service is intended for businesses with 50 to 500 end users and permits your IT staff to split activity for support services seamlessly between your internal network support team and Progent's extensive pool of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a collaborative IT service solution based on ConnectWise Manage, the leading Professional Services Automation tool for managing IT service calls, generating trouble tickets, designating responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating management reports. The cost for Level 1 IT support for Progent's Shared Help Desk service averages below $18 per user per month.
Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a seamless extension of your corporate support organization. End user access to the Service Desk, provision of support, issue escalation, trouble ticket generation and updates, efficiency measurement, and maintenance of the service database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your internal support staff, by Progent's team, or both. All end-user support calls are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent handles the service levels you select (typically Level 1 and Level 3). Original support requests are routed either to your internal support group or to Progent's Technical Response Center, depending on your preferences. Level 2 or 3 incidents can be escalated to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The assignment process is transparent to your end users. Your business has unrestricted flexibility to expand or shrink your part of technical support activity as circumstances demand. Progent takes care of initial installation and onboarding of the professional services automation software as well as documentation, testing and training.
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC)
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) has been providing remote technical help for over twenty years and has active customers in each state in the country (refer to Progent's client testimonials.) The TRC maintains the team of certified computer experts who can resolve Level 1 issues, which represent the majority of Help Desk support requests. The TRC, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation (PSA) software platform to streamline ticketing, tracking, ownership delegation, escalation and reporting. This system prevents problems from falling through the cracks and offers users continual visibility of all support services delivered. The TRC is committed to 90% in-person answer performance and allows Progent's Shared Help Desk Services to include a 60-minute service-level agreement. Support times are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on normal work days. Extended support hours and onsite service are available at extra cost. For more details about the TRC, refer to The TRC Customer Commitment.
Definition of Service Levels
Progent provides three distinct levels of remote technical support, which align with industry-standard Tier 1 to Tier 3 service. You can choose which support levels will be handled wholly or in part by Progent and your in-house staff. The depth and technical breadth of Progent's roster of subject matter experts enables fast and effective escalation and permits you to count on Progent as a one-stop source for the majority of support problems at any Tier. Also, Progent's provision of knowledge transfer permits key support problems to migrate from higher to lower Tiers as resolution techniques become recorded and normalized so they can be handled by less skilled and lower-cost support personnel.
Service levels are described as:
- Level 1 Support: Filters Help Desk requests and provides baseline technical support and debugging, such as password issues, printer set up, break/fix instructions, 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 support can also include support for identified Level 2 and Level 3 issues where mitigation solutions have already been recorded.
- Level 2 Support: Primarily handles break/fix, setup problems, troubleshooting, application or OS installations, and hardware repair including on-premises repair or coordinating depot services. This Level involves escalated problems that Level 1 support is not equipped to handle. Level support can occasionally evolve to Level 3, based on the issue and the way the Help Desk is structured.
- Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, setup, database administration, and migrations for OS and applications servers, hybrid networks, email, collaboration, and common integration problems. In addition to possessing the capability to find fixes to new issues, a Level 3 engineer usually has the most real-world expertise.
A common sample of a trouble ticket lifecycle is the case where you want Progent's Technical Response Center to triage all service calls. In this scenario, Progent may be tasked with dealing directly with all the Level 1 desktop issues your users initiate. Progent can escalate the remaining service requests to your internal network support staff. Your in-house support personnel would address the Level 2 issues they have the knowledge and availability to handle and escalate any residual requests to Progent's Experts Team.
This particular implementation of Progent's Shared Help Desk Service has a four-phase ticket lifecycle:
- Your users enter service requests through the browser-based support, a dedicated telephone number, or simply by sending a message to a dedicated email address. This automatically becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
- Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) receives the open request and determines if it will be serviced or forwarded to your internal Help Desk.
- Your Help Desk gets the escalated ticket request and determines the appropriate means to resolve the problem. If needed, your Service Desk can in turn escalate the trouble ticket request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
- Progent receives the revised ticket request, identifies the best suited subject matter exert from the Experts Team, and assigns the designated SME to work with your support staff until the issue is fixed or closed.
Key Features of Progent's Help Desk Service
Important aspects of Progent's Shared Service Desk program include:
- Pooled Level 1 help from Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) staff
- Level 1 online support provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, One-hour SLA
- Special hourly support rate and one-minute granularity for Tier 1 desktop support for users
- Typical cost 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 Level 3 support to move to a lower, less costly Tier after solutions are documented
- StreamlineIT provides a full version of ConnectWise Manage PSA software with multi-tenant security
Progent's Shared Service Desk program is intended to provide a flexible, co-operative call desk system for medium-size organizations. Specifics of these services, with Progent responsible for Level 1 support, include:
- Available only in USA and territories
- Initial startup 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 service group and your users. The TRC Service Lead will work closely with you to develop a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate issues to your team or de-escalate back to Progent's team of engineers.
- Live Answer of incoming service calls to Progent Technical Response Center with a target of 90% Live Answer of all calls
- After determining whether server or networking support is required, some calls will be passed to Level 2 or 3 support
- All support requiring Level 2 or 3 expertise will be worked on by a Progent consultant pending your authorization
- 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
- Level 1 Service is for users and covers Windows-based systems and Apple systems
- Progent Level 2 or Level 3 services will be provided at regular hourly consulting prices
- Progent will provide skilled personnel - Technical Response Center desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and Level 3 as required
- Progent will provide a phone number and email mailbox for inbound support requests
- Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for efficient IT support
- Free ProSight IT Asset Management solution for network documentation management
- All Level 1 remote support is charged at a special hourly rate with one-minute granularity
- All Level 1 support will be performed online, no on-premises work included
- All on-premises work will be invoiced at standard hourly consulting rates
- All on-premises work will have an added fixed fee as well as any specific travel costs
- All travel cost estimates will be disclosed and require client agreement before work or travel will be undertaken
- Contracted projects and separate Statements of Work will have their own estimates and costs defined and will be performed only after approval by customer
Progent's proven onboarding procedure allows your organization to migrate smoothly to a co-managed Service Desk and an advanced trouble ticket and reporting system. Major steps in the onboarding process for Progent's Shared Help Desk Service include:
First Steps
- Build your personalized Service Desk experience, setting up your in-house support group, locations, and client data
- Progent will work closely with your company's support group to analyze current incoming support requests
- Set up your inbound help request service to incorporate a mailbox, software agents, and a dedicated phone number
- Progent delivers trouble ticket management education for your company's service group
- Jointly establish core workflow and ticket escalation procedures
- Add all your staff and resources that will provide IT support
- Develop the introduction message and selling of the new Help Desk solution
- Designate a specific location or manageably-sized groups to onboard initially
- Integrate additional groups of users into the solution at determined intervals
- Study reports and system configuration for efficient information and processes
- Create additional reports or fields required to enhance the identification or monitoring of common IT problems
- Identify key information that could enable a better success percentage for Level 1 support calls
- All clients have been introduced to the support system and can connect to it
- All relevant client and equipment data is populated in the support system
- You are able to transfer and manage tickets smoothly between your internal team and Progent
- You are able to view service performance and trends
Progent's Shared Service Desk delivers an array of benefits that enable you to give users rapid and successful IT support while simultaneously trimming costs and reducing administrative hassle. Benefits of Progent's Shared Service Desk include:
- Keep complete control of your IT service requests: you choose what tickets are escalated to Progent's support desk or taken care of by your internal service staff.
- Immediate access to additional IT support professionals when you require them: Progent's professional services automation software programmatically routes in-house tickets or allows you manually escalate to Progent's Technical Response Center.
- Efficiency: Progent's Call Desk experts will review your current incoming service requests and identify additional data that would allow a higher resolution rate for typical desktop requests. Progent's team can also help you with tag creation to expedite problem resolution.
- Seamlessness: Progent's Shared Service Desk is a virtual extension of your internal Call Center with centralized ticketing and reporting so nothing falls between the cracks.
- Happy workers: Users have the ability to follow the progress and status of their IT support requests rapidly and conveniently.
- Management analytics: You benefit from the metrics, responsibility assignments, and performance monitoring of a modern PSA platform to assist you to create a custom Help Desk experience that delivers top business value.
- Concentrate on your strategic business initiatives, not IT service requests and unhappy users: Your IT managers escape being bogged down trying to manage common support requests.
Check Out Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Though supporting a self-sufficient local IT services team can prove expensive from the cost perspective, many organizations opt for that strategy since it provides greater flexibility with their information system management. But did you realize that you can still leverage the advantages of a managed IT services provider using the shared IT support model. This shared model allows your organization to keep in control over your IT infrastructure while supplementing your in-house IT services group simply and economically.
For details, read our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).
Download Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Datasheet
To download a single-page datasheet in PDF format describing Progent's Co-managed Service Desk, click:
Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)
Progent's ProSight Family of Managed Services
Progent has developed the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to streamline critical processes related to IT management, cybersecurity and maintenance. Any of these services can be integrated with Progent's Shared Help Desk service by deploying agent apps on machines to be tracked and managed. Notifications generated by these software agents can be forwarded directly to Progent's Technical Response Center, processed through the trouble ticket and tracking system, and categorized for Level 1, 2 or 3 support.
Examples of ProSight Remote Monitoring and Management packages include:
- ProSight LAN Watch: Network, Server, and Endpoint Remote Monitoring Services
ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's network, server, and endpoint monitoring managed service that uses advanced remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to help keep your IT system operating efficiently by tracking the state of critical computers that drive your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch detects a problem, an alert is sent automatically to your designated IT staff and your Progent engineering consultant so that all looming problems can be addressed before they have a chance to disrupt your network. ProSight LAN Watch is National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch network, server, and endpoint monitoring services.
- ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Centralized RMM Solution for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software delivers a unified, cloud-based platform for managing your network, server, and desktop devices by providing an environment for performing common tedious tasks. These include health checking, update management, automated remediation, endpoint setup, backup and recovery, anti-virus defense, remote access, standard and custom scripts, resource inventory, endpoint status reporting, and troubleshooting assistance. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious problem, it sends an alert to your specified IT management staff and your assigned Progent consultant so emerging problems can be fixed before they impact your network. Learn more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.
- ProSight WAN Watch: Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure management service that makes it easy and inexpensive for smaller organizations to map, monitor, optimize and troubleshoot their networking appliances like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers as well as servers, client computers and other networked devices. Incorporating cutting-edge RMM technology, ProSight WAN Watch ensures that infrastructure topology maps are always updated, captures and displays the configuration information of virtually all devices on your network, tracks performance, and generates notices when potential issues are detected. By automating time-consuming management and troubleshooting activities, ProSight WAN Watch can cut hours off ordinary chores such as network mapping, reconfiguring your network, locating appliances that require critical updates, or resolving performance bottlenecks. Learn more details about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure monitoring and management services.
- ProSight Reporting: In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
ProSight Reporting is a growing line of real-time reporting utilities created to work with the top ticketing and network monitoring applications including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and utilizes color coding to surface and contextualize critical issues such as inconsistent support follow-up or endpoints with missing patches. By identifying ticketing or network health problems concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances network value, reduces management overhead, and saves money. For more information, see ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring platforms.
- ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery
Progent has worked with advanced backup product companies to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a portfolio of offerings that provide backup-as-a-service. ProSight DPS services manage and monitor your backup processes and allow transparent backup and fast recovery of vital files, applications, system images, and virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets your business protect against data loss resulting from equipment breakdown, natural disasters, fire, malware like ransomware, human mistakes, ill-intentioned insiders, or application bugs. Managed backup services available in the ProSight DPS portfolio include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup, ProSight ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to determine which of these managed services are most appropriate for your IT environment.
- ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering service that uses the technology of top data security vendors to deliver web-based management and comprehensive security for all your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid architecture of Progent's Email Guard integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to provide complete defense against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. The Cloud Protection Layer acts as a preliminary barricade and keeps most unwanted email from making it to your network firewall. This reduces your exposure to inbound threats and saves system bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite security gateway appliance provides a deeper layer of analysis for incoming email. For outbound email, the onsite security gateway provides AV and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The on-premises security gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to track and protect internal email that stays within your security perimeter. For more information, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.
- ProSight Multi-Factor Authentication with Cisco Duo: Identity Validation, Endpoint Remediation, and Secure Single Sign-on
Progent's Duo authentication services incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to protect against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables one-tap identity verification on iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using 2FA, whenever you sign into a secured online account and enter your password you are requested to confirm who you are on a unit that only you possess and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A broad range of devices can be utilized as this second form of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can register multiple verification devices. To find out more about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, visit Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.
- ProSight Shared Call Desk: Outsourced and Shared Help Center Services
Progent's Shared Help Desk Service offers a transparent supplement to your corporate support team. End user access to the Service Desk, delivery of support, escalation, trouble ticket generation and tracking, performance measurement, and maintenance of the support database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are taken care of by your corporate IT support group, by Progent, or a mix of the two. You have complete versatility to expand or reduce your part of support activity as needed. Progent takes care of startup deployment and onboarding of the professional services automation (PSA) software plus documentation, validation and training. For more information about ProSight Co-Managed Support, visit ProSight Shared Support.
- ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Behavior-based Threat Analysis and Ransomware Protection:
ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates next generation behavior-based analysis technology from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoints against new malware assaults like ransomware and email phishing, which routinely escape traditional signature-based AV tools. ProSight ASM protects on-premises and cloud-based resources and offers a single platform to manage the complete malware attack progression including blocking, detection, containment, cleanup, and forensics. Top features include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and real-time system-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware recovery with SentinelOne technology.
- Patch Management: Patch Management Services:
Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management provide businesses of any size a flexible and cost-effective alternative for assessing, testing, scheduling, implementing, and documenting updates to your ever-evolving IT system. In addition to maximizing the protection and reliability of your computer environment, Progent's software/firmware update management services permit your IT staff to concentrate on line-of-business projects and tasks that deliver the highest business value from your network. Learn more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.
As a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner, Progent offers your users fast and convenient access to a seasoned Service Desk group ready to provide technical support. Progent has decades of background providing remote support for IT systems built on Microsoft technology. Progent's focus is on earning the Help Desk a positive image as a major factor in your organization's success. Progent attempts to resolve rather than merely monitor issues, and Progent's target for long-term clients is to fix at least 80% of Call Desk issues on the initial call. First-call success is a key driver in controlling Call Desk costs, improving the image of the IT group overall and the Help Desk in particular, and raising end-user productivity.
Get Started with Progent's Shared IT Help Desk Call Center Services
To learn additional information about Progent's Shared IT Call Center Services, phone
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Help and Support DoubleTake Carbonite Software
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Virtual Server Administration Website Professional
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