Progent Managed IT Services

Progent's Co-managed Service Desk
Progent's Shared Help Desk service is designed for organizations with 50 to 500 users and enables your IT group to divide responsibilities for Help Desk services transparently between your in-house support team and Progent's nationwide pool of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Service Desk is a joint IT support solution built around ConnectWise Manage, the leading Professional Services Automation platform for administering IT service calls, generating trouble tickets, assigning responsibility, monitoring progress, and producing management reports. The cost for Level 1 IT support for Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is typically under $18/user/month.

Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service provides a smooth extension of your corporate network support group. User interaction with the Help Desk, delivery of support services, issue escalation, ticket creation and tracking, performance metrics, and management of the support database are cohesive whether incidents are resolved by your core IT support organization, by Progent's team, or by a combination. All client service requests are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent focuses on the support level or levels you assign (typically Level 1 and Level 3). Initial service calls are routed to your in-house support group or to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), depending on your instructions. Level 2 or 3 tickets can be promoted to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The escalation procedure is transparent to your users. You have complete flexibility to extend or shrink your share of IT support activity as circumstances demand. Progent provides initial installation and provisioning of the professional services PSA software as well as workflow documentation, testing and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC)
Progent's Technical Response Center has been delivering online technical assistance for more than two decades and serves active clients in every state in the country (refer to Progent's client testimonials.) The Technical Response Center provides the team of certified computer experts who can resolve Level 1 trouble tickets, which represent the bulk of Help Desk support calls. The TRC, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation platform to streamline ticketing, tracking, responsibility assignment, escalation and management reporting. This system keeps problems from being ignored and gives clients continual understanding about all support services delivered. The Technical Response Center targets 90% in-person answer rate and enables Progent's Co-managed Service Desk Services to include a 60-minute service-level agreement (SLA). Support times are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on standard work days. Extended hours and on-premises service are offered at additional cost. To learn more about the TRC, refer to Progent's TRC Customer Commitment.

Definition of Service Levels
Progent provides three levels of remote IT support, which correspond to industry-recognized Tier 1 through Tier 3 service. You can define which support levels will be provided exclusively or in part by Progent and your in-house resources. The depth and technical breadth of Progent's roster of subject matter experts allows fast and effective escalation and makes it possible to count on Progent as a one-stop source for most support problems at any service level. Also, Progent's provision of knowledge transfer permits key service issues to move from higher to lower levels as solution techniques become documented and normalized so they can be handled by less skilled and lower-cost service personnel.

Support levels are described as:

• Level 1 Support: Categorizes Service Desk calls and provides baseline technical support and debugging, such as password resets, printer set up, break/fix procedures, ticket routing and escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 support. A Level 1 tech gathers and analyzes information about the user's issue and determines the best way to resolve the problem. Level 1 support can also include assistance for identified Level 2 and 3 issues where solutions have already been recorded.
• Level 2 Support: Primarily handles break/fix, configuration problems, debugging, application or OS installations, and hardware fixes such as in-house fixes or coordinating depot services. This Level involves escalated issues that Level 1 personnel are not qualified to handle. Level support will sometimes escalate to Level 3, based on the problem and the way the Help Desk is structured.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, configuration, database administration, and migrations for server, hybrid networks, email, file shares, and various integration problems. In addition to possessing the capability to deploy fixes to new problems, a Level 3 engineer usually has the most expertise.

This sample implementation of Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service has a four-stage trouble ticket lifecycle:

1. Your users generate requests for support through the browser-based support, a dedicated phone number, or by sending an email to a specific mailbox. This automatically becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center receives the open request and determines whether it will be handles or promoted to your in-house Service Desk.
3. Your Help Desk gets the escalated open request and decides the appropriate means to service the problem. If needed, your Help Desk can in turn escalate the trouble ticket request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent gets the updated trouble ticket request, identifies the best suited SME from the Experts Team, and assigns the chosen SME to collaborate with your IT staff until the problem is fixed or closed.

Key Features of Progent's Service Desk
Top aspects of Progent's Co-managed Call Desk offerings are:

• Pooled Level 1 support from Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) staff
• Desktop remote help provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm PST, 60 Minute SLA
• Discounted per-hour rate with per-minute granularity for Tier 1 support for users
• Typical price of Level 1 support is approximately $18 per user monthly
• Level 2 and Level 3 help from Progent SME available as an option at Progent's standard consulting rates
• De-escalation allows issues that at first call for Level 2 or 3 expertise to move to a lower, less expensive Level after solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT provides a full version of ConnectWise Manage PSA software with multi-tenant security

• Offered only in the United States and US territories
• Initial setup charge dependent on complexity of the deployment
• Starting the first day, you are assigned by Progent a Technical Resource Center (TRC) Coordinator and a TRC Service Lead to resource, appoint and communicate with your service group and your clients. The TRC Service Lead will work with you to create a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate tickets to your team or de-escalate back to Progent's support engineers.
• Live Answer of incoming service requests to Progent Technical Response Center with a goal of 90% Live Answer of all requests
• After determining whether server or network infrastructure assistance is needed, some service requests will be escalated to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All support that needs Level 2 or Level 3 expertise will be handled by a Progent SME after receiving customer authorization
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Support is for users and covers Windows-based computers and Apple systems
• Progent Level 2 or Level 3 services will be charged at regular hourly consulting rates
• Progent will provide resources - Technical Response Center (TRC) desktop specialists during standard hours, Level 2 and 3 as needed
• Progent will dedicate a phone number and email mailbox for inbound support calls
• Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for streamlined IT troubleshooting
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management system for cloud-based network documentation management
• All Level 1 remote service is charged at a special hourly rate with one-minute granularity
• All Level 1 service will be done remotely, no on-premises support included
• All on-premises support will be billed at regular hourly consulting rates
• All onsite work will have an added fixed fee as well as any specific travel expenses
• All travel cost estimates will be provided and require customer agreement before work or travel will be undertaken
• Contracted projects and distinct Statements of Work (SoWs) will include their own estimates and fees stipulated and will be undertaken only following authorization by customer

First Steps

• Create your personalized Help Desk experience, including your in-house support group, service locations, and client data
• Progent will work closely with your support team to review current inbound service requests
• Configure your incoming help request service to incorporate email, software agents, and a dedicated phone number

• Progent provides trouble ticket management education for your company's support group
• Work together to establish core workflow and ticket escalation processes
• Integrate all your staff and resources that will provide IT support
• Create the roll-out message and selling of the new Help Desk environment
• Designate a specific location or small groups to onboard initially
• Integrate more groups of users into the solution at determined intervals

• Study reports and system setup for efficient data and processes
• Create additional reports or fields needed to enhance the identification or tracking of common IT problems
• Surface key data that might allow a higher success rate for Level 1 support calls

• All clients have been exposed to the support system and can access it
• All relevant client and equipment information is entered into the support system
• You can exchange and administer tickets smoothly between your in-house support group and Progent
• You can track service performance

• Keep total control over your IT service requests: you choose what trouble tickets are escalated to Progent's support group or taken care of by your internal service team.
• Rapid access to supplemental IT service experts when you require them: Progent's professional services automation software programmatically distributes in-house trouble tickets or allows you manually escalate to Progent's Technical Response Center.
• Efficiency: Progent's team will review your incoming support requests and identify additional data that would allow an improved resolution rate for common desktop issues. Progent's consultants can also help you to improve tag management to speed up solutions.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Co-managed Service Desk acts as a seamless extension of your in-house Help Desk with unified ticketing and documentation so no ticket falls between the seams.
• Happy workers: End users have the ability to track the status of their IT service requests rapidly and conveniently.
• Management analytics: You have the measurements, accountability, and performance monitoring of an advanced PSA platform to help your organization to create a custom Service Desk experience that delivers maximum business value.
• Concentrate on your strategic business initiatives, not IT support requests and unhappy workers: Your IT management personnel escape being saddled with handling common service requests.

Download Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Though having your own self-sufficient local IT services staff can be a burden from the cost standpoint, plenty of businesses opt for that approach because it offers greater flexibility with their IT management. Yet did you realize that you can continue to reap the benefits of a managed services provider using the shared network support model. Adopting the shared model enables you to stay in control over your IT infrastructure while reinforcing your local IT team easily and affordably.

To learn more, download our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).

Download Progent's Shared Help Desk Datasheet
To download a single-page datasheet in PDF format describing Progent's Co-managed Service Desk, click:
Progent's Co-managed Service Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)

Complementary Services
Progent has packaged the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to streamline vital activities associated with network administration, security and maintenance. These RMM services can be integrated with Progent's Shared Help Desk service by installing agent software on machines to be tracked and managed. Notifications generated by these agents can be forwarded automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), managed via the trouble ticket and monitoring platform, and categorized for Level 1, 2 or 3 support.

Samples of ProSight Remote Monitoring and Management services include:

• ProSight Email Guard: Email Content Filtering, Spam Blocking and Data Leakage Defense:
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering service that incorporates the technology of top data security vendors to deliver web-based management and comprehensive security for your email traffic. The hybrid architecture of Email Guard integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway device to offer complete defense against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. The cloud filter serves as a preliminary barricade and keeps the vast majority of threats from making it to your security perimeter. This decreases your exposure to inbound attacks and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises security gateway appliance adds a further layer of inspection for inbound email. For outbound email, the local gateway offers AV and anti-spam filtering, DLP, and email encryption. The local gateway can also assist Exchange Server to track and protect internal email traffic that originates and ends inside your security perimeter. For more details, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM): AI-based Threat Analysis and Ransomware Defense:
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection solution that utilizes next generation behavior-based analysis tools from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoints against new malware assaults such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily get by traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring protects local and cloud-based resources and offers a unified platform to automate the entire malware attack progression including blocking, detection, containment, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key features include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic system-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Read more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) endpoint protection and ransomware recovery with SentinelOne technology.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery:
  Progent has worked with leading backup technology vendors to produce ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a selection of management offerings that provide backup-as-a-service (BaaS). All ProSight DPS products automate and track your data backup processes and enable transparent backup and rapid recovery of critical files/folders, apps, images, and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS lets you protect against data loss caused by equipment failures, natural disasters, fire, malware such as ransomware, user mistakes, ill-intentioned employees, or application glitches. Managed backup services available in the ProSight DPS portfolio include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent consultant can help you to identify which of these fully managed backup services are best suited for your IT environment.

• Progent's Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services:
  Progent's managed services for software and firmware patch management provide organizations of any size a versatile and affordable solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, implementing, and documenting updates to your dynamic information network. Besides optimizing the protection and reliability of your computer network, Progent's software/firmware update management services permit your IT staff to focus on line-of-business projects and activities that derive the highest business value from your network. Learn more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on (SSO):
  Progent's Duo authentication service plans utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports single-tap identity verification on Apple iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected online account and give your password you are requested to confirm who you are via a unit that only you have and that is accessed using a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used as this second form of ID validation including a smartphone or watch, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You may register several verification devices. For details about Duo identity authentication services, refer to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.