Take Credit for What You Do ..

As we all know there are loads of activities that the IT department just ‘does’. Without these daily, weekly, monthly and periodic activities a company’s IT infrastructure would quickly deteriorate to unacceptable levels in terms of performance and reliability. With ever increasing pressure being placed on departments to cut resources it is more important than ever to be able to demonstrate to the business, and world at large, the often unseen activities of the IT department.

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus offers the ideal mechanism to make tracking this type of activity a breeze in the shape of the Preventative Maintenance feature under the admin tab:

In essence Preventative Maintenance allows you to pre-define scheduled requests in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

First off, when creating a Preventative Maintenance Task in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus you will be asked to create a request template. This allows you to specify all the required elements for recording the request in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus thus maintaining consistent reporting and ensuring the technician can manage the request efficiently.

Bear in mind you could apply an existing Incident template to pre-fill the Preventative Maintenance Task or simply default the required field data. One of the other advantages of doing this is that you can also describe the activity fully, using the Description field, or attach an existing process document to the request template – ideal for technicians that are not normally responsible for the activity or for staff new to the environment.

Once you’ve completed the mandatory elements of the template you will be asked to select a suitable schedule for the activity.

All the typical schedule options are there including Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Periodic and One Time Schedule; The One Time Schedule is great for reminding you to perform an activity which might be some way off in the future without cluttering your desk with unnecessary documents. 

Once created you should see a list of your Preventative Maintenance Tasks in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus.

If you need to perform a Preventative Maintenance Task out of sequence all you need to do is press the ‘play button and the request will be instantly created outside the normal schedule.