ITSM - Service Portal & Knowledge Base

Drive self-service adoption with a stellar portal and easy to search knowledge base; all without coding or scripting.

Did you know each support call can cost an organization upwards of $22 per call?

But, according to HDI, self-service costs just $2 per incident. In a time when resources and budgets are tight – but the need for support is greater than ever before – it is clear organizations need to push towards self-service. An IT Service Management (ITSM) platform with a self-service catalog and an easily searchable knowledge base can help you drive adoption and provide better, more comprehensive self-service solutions to your customers and employees.

ITSM - Service Portal & Knowledge Base

Drive self-service adoption with a stellar portal and easy to search knowledge base; all without coding or scripting.

Did you know each support call can cost an organization upwards of $22 per call? But, according to HDI, self-service costs just $2 per incident. In a time when resources and budgets are tight – but the need for support is greater than ever before – it is clear organizations need to push towards self-service. An IT Service Management (ITSM) platform with a self-service catalog and an easily searchable knowledge base can help you drive adoption and provide better, more comprehensive self-service solutions to your customers and employees.

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Driving Adoption of an ITSM Self-Service Portal

There are a few ways you can bolster your online portal and help drive adoption and sustainable usage. First, your portal must be easy to navigate with an ITIL service catalog. This will help users easily find articles related to what they need – it also should be highly searchable and tagged appropriately.

Second, the information should be up-to-date and thorough. And while building content can seem daunting, there are ways to do this so that over time, you accumulate appropriate content into your knowledge base. For example, most organizations leverage Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®) and use this as a framework to crowdsource and improve the content in their portal based on usage. You can learn more about Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) and best practices, here.  

Third, don’t forget about accessibility. TeamDynamix makes it easy to spin up an online portal that is WCAG 2.0 AA compliant out-of-the-box. For many organizations, accessibility is a critical factor. With TeamDynamix ITSM, the portal is inherently compliant and requires no additional work to hit accessibility standards.

Western U of Health Sciences Levels UP ITSM

Western University of Health Sciences knew they had a talented IT department but was struggling to take advantage of that talent to provide quality IT experience for students, faculty, and patients. They were too busy trying to tackle problems or tech emergencies. To remedy this, WesternU is using a single platform approach with TeamDynamix to gain a 360 view of their resources and projects – allowing them to better plan resources and provide a better, more effective customer experience.

ITSM Self-Service Portals Made Easy

A recent market study shows that 78% of IT organizations are feeling the squeeze of resource constraints. Furthermore, 73% of respondents are looking to self-service adoption as a key initiative to help combat this issue. And while that’s a good first step, what else can IT do to help with this growing problem? The answer is an easy-to-use, searchable portal with the knowledge base.

With TeamDynamix ITSM, you can easily create your own portal and knowledge base without coding or scripting – meaning your team can easily modify the ITIL service catalog, add content and publish content without the need for programmers. All branding and design are done through an online configuration window – so that you can create a site that matches your desired look and feel. The portal is WCAG 2.0 AA compliant out-of-the-box allowing you to meet accessibility standards. For organizations that want to leverage true enterprise service management for teams in HR, Facilities, and IT — or if you are in a structure where you want to have different portals for different locations, entities, or divisions – our platform supports the use of multiple client portals.

TeamDynamix also fosters the use of Knowledge-Centered Service — by allowing you to continuously iterate and improve your knowledge base using actual end-user and technician experience, you can drive increased adoption of the portal. If you want to learn more about knowledge base best practices, you can read our blog on key tips for improving your ITSM knowledge base.

Getting started is easy

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s IT maturity, reduce bottlenecks and give vital IT department employees more time to work on high-priority projects, you need to include more self-service options in your client portal. And here’s why – organizations that optimize client portals for self-service allow users to resolve more IT-related issues on their own with limited or zero involvement from IT staff.

Simplicity is key when designing the layout for a client portal. Users shouldn’t have to scroll or navigate extensively to find what they are looking for, nor should it take them longer than a few minutes to get the answer they need. Information written in clear, concise, understandable language is essential to encouraging self-service. With TeamDynamix you can deploy an ITIL service catalog that will assist in organizing information in a way that’s functional and easily searchable.

Over 90% of respondents have a great experience with their TeamDynamix solution and trust the vendor to address and contribute to how they can further improve and innovate using their solution.

– Info-Tech ITSM Rankings

Building out your ITSM knowledge base

When it comes to stellar IT Service Management (ITSM) delivery – many organizations will point to a need for improved resource optimization. Knowledge Center Services (KCS) is a service method that focuses on the implementation of knowledge within organizations to improve service delivery.

KCS stipulates that the creation and maintenance of knowledge must be fully integrated into the most important support operations. Support documentation and knowledge base articles can be generated by technicians or end-users, and then staged for review and approval. The benefits are far-reaching:

Helps to continually lower inbound call volume.
Increases customer satisfaction.
Provides customers with the answers they need when they need them.
Crowdsourcing knowledge helps maintain accurate content.
Offers opportunities for professional development.

KB articles can be imported or created and staged for review – over time you can build out the content and institute routine review cycles. By using a KCS approach to your knowledge base and portal, you can better serve your customers and free up your IT resources to work on more complex projects and problems.

Reduce call volume & resource drain

Of course, transitioning to a self-service portal does not happen overnight. Such a move requires proper planning, time, and in some cases, new technology. But the ROI potential is there when factoring in the benefits:

Reduced service ticket volumes.
Enhanced overall user experience.
Higher satisfaction throughout the organization.

Self-service may not be the norm, but it is becoming the expectation. With the increasing desire to “do it yourself,” a self-service portal is essential. Have you taken steps to help users self-serve to resolve their IT needs?

When you consider the cost of a support call ($22 according to HDI), compared to the $2 per self-service incident, it becomes apparent that this approach will reduce costs and IT resource strain.

University of Minnesota

University of Michigan

Cornell University

City of Sunnyvale

SUNY Buffalo State

Denver Public Schools

Buffalo Public Schools

Covenant Healthcare

Accessibility / WCAG 2.0 AA Compliance

At TeamDynamix we work with many organizations that view accessibility as a critical component of self-service design. As such, we understand that websites must be compliant with WCAG 2.0 AA/ Section 508 standards in order to appropriately serve your organization. That is why our portal is built to be compliant out-of-the-box. Each time you make any changes, it will automatically adhere to the required standards. To make your portal the most accessible it can be, it’s important to keep in mind that key adaptations such as descriptive links, alternatives to multimedia, and other elements are helpful to any visitor and are required for compliance.

Organizations that put forward a comprehensive and truly compliant website will stand apart from the others as it provides equal access – sending the message that each end-user is important.

Create content for internal & external users

The Client Portal allows TeamDynamix users to have public-facing content for better interactions with end-users who may not be part of your organization – this is great for schools and universities, parents, citizens, and prospective employees. For users inside the organization, you can publish content that is limited to authenticated users. Users are authenticated using SSO/LDAP. You have the ability to configure each article to be accessible to a segment of your users as well. This helps to maintain the security of content and to help facilitate faster, easier, and more relevant access to user groups.

By doing so, users who visit the self-service portal with an organization’s custom URL will have the experience that is intended by administrators.

Flexible access to content and Q&A forums

The self-service portal allows for richer client interaction and enables users to provide troubleshooting resources for problems they frequently encounter. This may reduce the amount of work items that service desk technicians process, as people are able to answer more of their own questions. In addition, it allows people who have not yet used TeamDynamix to register for their profile within the portal.

In the Questions application, customers are able to start open forum discussions about troubleshooting issues and best practices when using the TeamDynamix application suite. The Knowledge Base application houses the articles that can be used to document commonly encountered issues, and how to perform certain actions when using TeamDynamix IT Service Management.

Considerations When Shopping for ITSM Software

The Key Drivers for Searching for a New IT Service Management (ITSM) Software Platform So you’re shopping for ITSM software. Typically, if you’re in the market for a new IT Service Management (ITSM) platform, one of two scenarios is usually in place – either you are currently using a very rudimentary ticketing platform that doesn’t truly encompass the full scope of IT Service Management or the opposite – the platform is very cumbersome, overly complex and requires 3-8 full-time resources to administer. When looking for the right vendor, you should strive to meet somewhere in the middle – in other words, you

TeamDynamix Ranked #1 in ITSM

ITSM platforms are quickly evolving, download this report to understand key drivers for top of quadrant vendors. Use this guide to help you during your selection process. Download the Info-Tech ITSM Quadrant and Customer Viewpoint report to gain a better understanding of key vendor strengths and emerging market requirements.

Learn more about the ITSM platform

Incident & Problem Management

Asset Management & Discovery

Service Portal & Knowledge Base

Workflow & Automation

ITIL Change Management

ITIL Release Management

Project Management

Dashboard & Reporting

Integrations

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TeamDynamix was recognized as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for IT Service Management (ITSM)

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TeamDynamix was recognized as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for IT Service Management (ITSM)

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TeamDynamix Ranked 1st by Info Tech