Support

User Support Centre
The first point of call for any support query, our User Support Centre provides the axis around which our specialist support teams operate.

The USC is organised into four teams of six which dovetail to maintain extended office-based support services throughout the week, including weekends and holidays, to 9pm. Overnight, front line support is sustained by the teams working from home via a secure NHSnet connection.

E-mailed or telephone support calls are initially logged and prioritised before being allocated to a Support Technician for intervention. Priority attention is obviously given to apparent problems which seriously compromise operations at the user end. Such episodes are rare, but are managed using a well-rehearsed escalation process which quickly draws in Adastra’s own senior manager on-call and activates regional engineers.

Most support activity involves relatively minor problems, perhaps typically involving print queue management, system configuration changes, adding new users, running back-ups, help in setting reporting filters and so on. These are invariably minor issues that can be resolved by explanation over the telephone, and our support teams can (with user permission) also access the customer system remotely over NHSnet to help directly with investigations or system re-setting. All such interventions are, of course, audit-logged, and Adastra maintains very strict protocols to ensure that all its staff respect the confidentiality of patient data.

Proactive Management

Although initial management of a customer support episode may be undertaken by any of the support teams, the teams each have an overseeing interest in a specific set of customer installations. This ensures that Adastra can provide continuity in its ongoing management of support episodes as the team leaders are able to identify any problems which are recurrent or appear to suggest an underlying factor.

The USC also participates in a wider management group, supported by our engineering, training and project management teams, to evaluate support activity and identify key themes and trends where a more concerted approach to problem management may be helpful. This initiative has led to the resolution of problems more quickly and efficiently than would otherwise have been possible.

Remote Monitoring

Those customers already using Adastra to support their hardware and network infrastructure will know that we also provide a service which we call “Remote Predictive Monitoring”. This automatic background feature monitors server and network software logs and isolates and reports to our User Support Centre any messages which appear to indicate an underlying problem. Invaluable in identifying potential memory shortage, failed drives in disk arrays, and network dysfunctions, RPM contributes outstandingly to sustained up-time because we are able to head off so many IT husbandry issues which would otherwise result in a system failure.

A more sophisticated RPM capability is planned to accompany the final stages of v3 development and this will amongst other things be able to monitor the status and “health” of desktop PCs.