How Management Can Lower Ticket Volume

A ticket submitted to the help desk is a charge against your company’s overhead and reflects a loss in productivity. The secret to reducing the amount of help desk tickets is through empowering your users. Believe it or not, there are a number of methods to do this without making them an administrator in your network.

rDirectory is Namescape’s Identity Management Platform and is used by customers to securely delegate rights to human resources, managers, as well as the end user, including:

•  Provisioning AD accounts with Exchange and home folders
• Create and manage AD groups and group memberships
• Password reset and account unlock
• Information changes in AD and more

Namescape customers have experienced a reduction in new tickets from 20% up to 60%. Lower ticket volume yields increased response time, more efficient customer care, and reduced user downtime.

Once permissions are assigned your help desk will stay up to date with audit log and email notifications reflecting changes by your company.

Please email me or visit our website to request an evaluation copy to see how rDirectory achieves these objectives and delivers an immediate impact to your organization.

Regards,
John Boyer
Namescape

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com

Assessing Value in IT

99% of Namescape’s customers renew their maintenance year after year. Would you like to know more about why our customers are this loyal to our software and services?

When you get a call from a software sales rep, you’ll hear about the value their product will bring to your organization. The reality is, value can be expensive and your company must part with REAL dollars to get it.

August is the beginning of budget season for many companies and decisions need to be made about value and the cost of maintaining that value.

How do you weigh the cost vs. value of your current software programs and annual maintenance renewals?

· Rank or score each program on:

a. Efficiency of operation

b. Utilization of all features

c. Age of technology

· Determine the real cost of keeping the bottom-rated programs:

a. How many employees does it take to maintain the software and could that time be spent on other, more important activities?

b. How much does the program cost in maintenance or tech support?

c. Are you reluctant to replace the software due to analysis paralysis?

If you are in the market to replace underperforming, out-of-date software programs, learn more about how Namescape can consolidate the expense of software maintenance and improve your company’s IT operations.

Best of luck this 2011 planning season and may your company have its most valuable year!

John Boyer
Namescape

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com

The Cost of User Downtime

Watch this short video

When employees can’t access the resources needed to perform their job; such as internet access, email or software, the resulting downtime is costly. Of all the possible reasons for user downtime, the most unnecessary is an account lock-out due to an incorrect password entry.

The real cost of employee downtime is the drain on resources, time and productivity.

· According to the Gartner Group, between 20% to 50% of all help desk calls are for password resets.

· Forrester Research states that the average help desk labor cost for a single password reset is about $70.

What safety measures would circumvent this scenario entirely?

1. Enrolling all employees (new and current) with a question and answer profile

2. Attach a link to a password reset website at critical access points, including:

· Windows Logon

· OWA

· Intranet

· Company Website

The end result:

· Uninterrupted employee productivity

· Time/Cost savings within the help desk (potentially 20-50%)

Over one million users are successfully using Namescape’s myPassword to eliminate this wasteful downtime. Learn more about how it’s done.

Regards,

John Boyer

Regional Sales Manager

Namescape Corporation

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com

New Active Directory User Provisioning Shortcuts

Watch the AD in a SNAP web video

Problem: Provisioning new users in Active Directory.

1. Requires both an exchange folder and a home folder.

2. Requires entry of all attribute information.

Question: If new uses provide profile information to HR or the hiring manager, who then completes the profile and forwards to an IT Admin to enter and create the new account, why not eliminate the middle steps and allow the user to securely create the account themselves?

Solution: Use Namescape’s rDirectory’s to automate and streamline new user provisioning:

1. Do the work once

· Create a template based on position and location before you provision your 1^st user

· Attach the groups, memberships, naming schemes for new folders to the template

2. Use the template

· Populate all user information correctly, every time, in seconds.

3. Delegate the tool

· Allow employees to securely create their own accounts

· rDirectory allows you to do this without granting administrative rights in AD

· Eliminates duplicate entry across your enterprise

Watch the AD in a SNAP web-video.

Please email me if you would like more information or to request a free evaluation copy.

Regards,

John Boyer

Namescape Corporation

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com

Password Reset Notifications

Watch our brief web-demonstration and see how to quickly perform the setup

Are any of your users guilty of letting their passwords expire? Is it possible that you don’t require scheduled password changes?

Requiring users to periodically change their passwords is a critical measure for maintaining secure access to key company systems and, it’s just good business practice. Scheduled password reset reminders can:

ü prevent password reset issues from escalating to the help desk

ü improve communication and maintain productivity by keeping users logged in

ü support an up-to-date and secure company password policy

A few tips for sending password reset notifications:

1. Send the first reminder one to two weeks out, then every other day, and again when the password has expired.

2. Include password complexity requirements in each reminder.

3. Include a link to the site or location where users can reset their passwords immediately.

Namescape customers use joBot’s Password Check module to automatically notify users of upcoming or expired passwords and connect them to a website, such as Namescape’s myPassword, where they can reset passwords and update their password profile. joBot can also notify administrators of any non-expiring passwords, recently modified passwords, and more.

Watch our brief web-demonstration and see how to quickly perform the setup

Please email me for more information or an evaluation copy of our software. Thanks!

Regards,

John Boyer

Namescape Corporation

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com

Auditing Disabled Active Directory Accounts

A customer of mine, a network administrator with over 3,000 users in his environment, was recently tasked to perform a review to ensure that expired accounts had been disabled in Active Directory.

The results of the review were surprising; over 10% of accounts that should have been disabled, were still currently enabled. Now he had to figure out why this was happening – and how to stop it.

It is not uncommon for Human Resources to use a separate database for tracking employees. HR did a great job of tracking new hires and terminations in their database, however the information wasn’t always communicated to IT administrators, resulting in an accumulation of inactive accounts in AD.

My customer needed a quick and efficient way to identify which users had not logged in with their AD credentials in over 100 days, determine their status, and immediately disable inactive users.

Namescape’s mPowerTools provided the solution needed - in just a few steps - to find and disable those inactive accounts:

• Run a report in less than a minute on users whose last log-on date is greater than 100 days
• Export the list for HR to audit for employment status
• Import the changes – in a minute - to disable inactive users

Click here to see a quick web-clip of the software in action…

For more information, email me or request an evaluation copy of mPowertools today.

Regards,

John Boyer

Regional Sales Manager

Namescape Corporation

602-667-8910 – Direct

john.boyer@namescape.com