The delay in introducing the ITSM portal has meant that the pilot phase for the first regional team will hopefully launch in fall 2023, pending the approval of staff representatives. Once the pilot phase has been completed, we will need to submit documentation and request approval so that we are able to put it into regular operation. This will then be carried out incrementally for the other regional teams. Depending on your regional team, the ticketing system (resulting from a collaborative decision) that you have been using up to this point will be phased out starting in 2024.

We are planning on the ITSM portal being in regular operation in 2024, pending the approval of staff representatives.

There will be a period during which the “central” ITSM portal and individual decentralized ticketing systems will be operated in parallel. Pending tickets will be processed in the legacy system and new tickets will exclusively be opened and processed via the ITSM portal. For organizational, technical, and time reasons we are not planning on migrating open tickets from the legacy system to the new ITSM portal.

The regional teams were established as part of the FUtureIT project and announced during the informational event (in German) on October 24, 2023.

You can find an overview in the presentation of the FUtureIT results (in German) from October 24, 2023.

We are planning for the regional teams that are responsible for first-level support for their respective region to cooperate on overarching issues such as these.

Yes, the current ZEDAT or FUB-IT hotline will remain in operation.

You can receive support over the telephone by calling either the hotline or your regional team.

IT support availability will be based on the current ZEDAT/FUB-IT hotline service hours. However, due to staffing issues in IT support, especially the hotline, this may vary significantly.

The new ITSM portal is designed for mapping IT and non-IT processes alike. The current focus is on the process design of IT support processes in the context of FUtureIT.

The ITSM portal is also suited to handle practical issues covered by the Engineering and Utilities Division, especially when it comes to error reports sent from IT, for example, “network socket broken.” The relevant processes must first be defined, signed off on, and described so that they can be mapped and implemented on the ITSM portal.

Software will continue to be assigned to IT workstations in the previously established manner for the time being. You will find an overview of software and further details here.

Yes, it will be.

Students will also be able to use the ITSM portal to report IT issues. We are currently planning on migrating individual topics from the ZEDAT to the ITSM portal as well as establishing close connections between both portals so that students can easily navigate between them to find the information they need.

Our vision is to represent IT services more or less in full on the ITSM portal and to integrate the associated processes as seamlessly as possible. We are currently facing the issue of different ticket systems not being able to communicate transparently with each other. This can only be solved by implementing one overarching ITSM portal.

The search function on the ITSM portal “Servity” is very comprehensive. Full-text, tagging, labeling, categorization, etc. are all possible.

Since last year we have had an appointed knowledge base manager at FUB-IT who is assigned to developing, maintaining, and integrating practical step-by-step IT guides as well as categorizing and tagging such materials.

Yes, there is. If you are unable to solve the problem with the help of the step-by-step instructions and practical guides then you will be able to submit an error message in the form of a ticket.

First-level support is responsible for prioritizing requests or error messages by carrying out an initial assessment. In line with our plan to provide a single point of contact, first-level support will be offered via the regional teams in order to free up second-level support whose primary task will be to maintain and keep systems running.

Features such as reminder functions will be included in incident management so that error messages that have been received are not overlooked.

According to our single point of contact concept the first-level support of the regional team is responsible for direct requests. These colleagues are responsible for responding to your queries. 

The screenshots in the presentation are from the Servity test system. The “Klaus Kunde” account was set up for “Freie Universität customers” (end users) and the “Frieda Firstlevel” account was set up for the first-level support team in order to explain the roles. 

The system designations for groups can be flexibly adapted in the ITSM portal.

The ITSM portal “Servity” offers a chatbot function. We hope to roll this out at Freie Universität Berlin in the future. This chatbot acts as an additional input channel to guide you to other support material and services, making it highly practical for users.

Each user will be able to set up their own email reminders in the ITSM portal. For example, they will be additionally notified via email once their IT problem has been solved.