From on-premise manual ticketing to automated SharePoint HelpDesk at Lucidica

This business case was shared by Lucidica, an IT services provider, and Jamal Smith-Graham, their Lead SharePoint Developer and Tech Manager. Having worked with the company for over 16 years, Jamal tells how they moved from an in-house support tool to an automated HelpDesk built on SharePoint.

This article walks through how Lucidica moved from a manual, on-premise ticketing system to an automated HelpDesk built on SharePoint. You’ll see what challenges they faced, how they customized the solution, and the impact it made on their daily work.

In this article:

• About Lucidica
• Challenge: manual on-premise support leading to lost updates and delays
• Solution: SharePoint-integrated HelpDesk with flexible customization
• Impact: quick processes and automated tasks
• Get started with Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint

About Lucidica

Lucidica is an established company, propelling London SMEs with robust IT support and savvy tech strategies. Founded in 2005, Lucidica has built long-term connections with small and mid-sized enterprises, providing continuity and fuelling their growth through tailored solutions.

Lucidica is defined by its core values to always innovate, build trust daily, drive excellence, and grow together. Its offering to SMEs includes cybersecurity & user training, SharePoint ERP & Intranet, cloud solutions, web services, backup & disaster recovery, and hardware supply & support.

Challenge: manual on-premise support leading to lost updates and delays

We built a HelpDesk from scratch within SharePoint using Plumsail Forms Designer (the old one that worked with SharePoint 2013/2016 on prem).

However, this had a lot of issues:

• Lost communication between Outlook and the HelpDesk. We couldn't send emails from the HelpDesk and engineers had to copy and paste emails from Outlook to the HelpDesk. Some of them would forget to send to update the tickets with the emails, which would result in some comments being lost.
• No email templates or canned responses. Additionally, we didn't have the ability to create templated responses, so engineers would waste a lot of time generating the same responses repeatedly.
• No automation. We didn't have any automation when it came to notifying clients of closed and open tickets, replies to tickets that had already been closed, these were all manual procedure that were often missed.
• High maintenance. As our previous HelpDesk was on a physical server, a lot of maintenance was needed to keep it running and secure.

Solution: SharePoint-integrated HelpDesk with flexible customization

After working with our manual on-premise setup for a while, we realized we needed something faster and more reliable. This change began quite some time ago. At first, we looked at building something ourselves and also considered other web hosted ticketing systems that were around at the time. In the end, we decided to try Plumsail HelpDesk. We were one of the first to use it when it still had the classic SharePoint 2013 interface.

How we use Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint Online

HelpDesk is essential for what we do. All of our tickets go through it, whether clients send their requests by email or call us. If we didn’t have this, we wouldn’t be able to operate at all.

How we customised it

We’ve made several changes to make HelpDesk work the way we do:

• Categories and subcategories for better organisation
• Time logging and timer functionality
• Automatic invoicing for billable tickets

It’s great that we can adapt it so easily. If we ever need a new way of categorising or filtering tickets, it’s simple to set up.

💡 Check the advanced customization options.

Ticket flow and assignments

1. A client can log a ticket by email, or an engineer can create one on the client’s behalf.
2. If the ticket is unassigned, one of our Service Desk Coordinators assigns it to the right engineer.
3. The assigned engineer is automatically notified.
4. Engineers can also assign tickets to themselves and start working on them right away.
5. Once the work is completed, the engineer closes the ticket and the client is automatically informed.

How it connects with SharePoint

Because HelpDesk is integrated with our SharePoint environment, it saves us a lot of time. For example, if the ticket requester is an existing client, their organisation details are automatically filled in using their email address.

Despite being a complex system with many layers, it is easy to understand and user-friendly. As a first-time user, you can orient yourself in a short amount of time. You will be able to come up with your own ideas to improve things, and you can get really creative with how you want to run things and make your vision come to life.

How we organize Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint Online

What we enjoy about HelpDesk is that we can organize it to match how our team works. Here's how we've set things up.

Ticket queues

Engineers have an overview of all tickets in the system, divided into individual and overall queues.

Projects view

We also use a dedicated Projects section to track larger or ongoing work.

Logging tickets for others

If a client or someone from our internal team has an issue, we can log tickets on their behalf.

Client feedback

We regularly review feedback from clients and management to keep improving our service.

Analytics and reports

Service Desk Coordinators can access analytics and data to monitor performance and workload.

💡 If you want to build a similar HelpDesk inside your SharePoint environment check out the documentation on setting up Plumsail HelpDesk in Microsoft 365.

Impact: quick processes and automated tasks

Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint Online has made a major impact.

• Saved time and automated workflows. Before it, everything was manual and hard to follow up on. Now most processes are automated, which saves a lot of time and keeps things organised.

• Fewer duplicate tickets. Previously, several people from the same company could open tickets about the same issue. Now it’s easy to spot and merge duplicates, keeping the queue clean.

• Better visibility for clients. We’ve also adapted the client portal, so clients can easily check their tickets or any they’re CC’d into, without having to call the HelpDesk.

Plumsail HelpDesk has been a game-changer for us. I’ve delivered numerous training sessions for new users, and everyone is always impressed by how intuitive and user-friendly the system is. Its flexibility is incredible, allowing us to customise workflows and features to fit our business needs perfectly, while keeping everything quick, simple, and complete at the same time.

Get started with Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint

If you want to improve how support workflows operate in your organization, start your free one-month trial of Plumsail HelpDesk for SharePoint Online. Simply download the installation wizard and follow the setup instructions.

Feel free to book a call with our team if you have any questions or need assistance to get started.