Network Support for Medium-size Companies

Progent's Shared Help Desk Service
Progent's Co-managed Service Desk is designed for businesses with 50 to 500 end users and allows your IT team to split activity for Service Desk support transparently between your internal network support team and Progent's nationwide pool of IT service engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Shared Help Desk service is a collaborative IT support system built around ConnectWise Manage, the leading Professional Services Automation tool for managing IT support requests, generating trouble tickets, designating responsibility, monitoring status, and producing management analytics. The price for Level 1 IT support for Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is typically below $18/user/month.

Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a seamless extension of your in-house support organization. Client interaction with the Help Desk, provision of technical assistance, problem escalation, ticket generation and updates, efficiency measurement, and management of the support database are cohesive whether issues are resolved by your core support group, by Progent's team, or both. All end-user service calls are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent handles the service level or levels you specify (typically Levels 1 and 3). Original service requests are assigned either to your internal network support staff or to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), based on your preferences. Level 2 or Level 3 incidents can be escalated to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The escalation procedure is seamless for your end users. You have complete flexibility to extend or reduce your part of IT support work as required. Progent takes care of startup deployment and provisioning of the professional services PSA software plus workflow documentation, testing and education.

Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC)
Progent's Technical Response Center has been providing online IT assistance for over twenty years and serves active clients in each state in the U.S. (refer to Progent's customer testimonials.) The TRC provides the pool of veteran desktop experts who can resolve Level 1 trouble tickets, which make up the majority of Service Desk support requests. The Technical Response Center, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation (PSA) platform to streamline ticketing, tracking progress, responsibility delegation, problem escalation and management reporting. This prevents tickets from falling through the cracks and offers users clear visibility of all services delivered. The Technical Response Center is committed to 90% live answer performance and enables Progent's Co-managed Help Desk program to offer a 60-minute service-level agreement. Service times are 5am to 7pm PST on standard business days. Extended support hours and onsite support are offered at additional cost. To learn more about Progent's TRC, refer to The Technical Response Center Customer Commitment.

Definition of Service Levels
Progent provides three distinct levels of online technical help, which are equivalent to industry-standard Tier 1 to Tier 3 support. You can select which support levels will be handled exclusively or in part by Progent and your in-house resources. The depth and scope of Progent's roster of subject matter experts allows rapid and efficient ticket escalation and permits you to rely on Progent as a one-stop source for most support problems at any Tier. Also, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer allows important support problems to migrate from higher to lower Tiers as solution workflows become documented and normalized so they can be handled by less skilled and less expensive service staff.

Service levels are described as:

• Level 1 Support: Categorizes Service Desk calls and provides baseline technical support and debugging, like password issues, printer set up, break/fix procedures, ticket assignment and promotion 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 may also include support for familiar Level 2 and 3 issues where solutions have previously been documented.
• Level 2 Support: Generally handles break/fix, setup problems, debugging, application or OS deployment, and hardware fixes such as in-house fixes or orchestrating depot support. This Level deals with escalated problems that Level 1 support is not qualified to handle. Level 2 service will sometimes migrate to Level 3, based on the problem and the manner the Service Desk is structured.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, configuration, DBA, and repair for server, cloud integration, email, collaboration, and various integration issues. Besides possessing the ability to find solutions to novel problems, a Level 3 engineer usually has the most real-world expertise.

This sample deployment of Progent's Shared Help Desk Service has a four-phase trouble ticket lifecycle:

1. Your employees enter requests for support through the online support, a dedicated telephone number, or simply by sending an email to a dedicated mailbox. This immediately becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) receives the ticket request and determines if it will be handles or promoted to your internal Help Desk.
3. Your Service Desk receives the forwarded trouble ticket request and decides the best method to resolve the issue. If necessary, your Service Desk can escalate the trouble ticket request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent receives the updated trouble ticket request, selects the best suited subject matter exert from the Experts Team, and tasks the designated SME to collaborate with your IT team until the issue is fixed or closed.

Key Features of Progent's Help Desk Service
Important features of Progent's Shared Call Desk program are:

• Pooled desktop support from Progent's Technical Response Center staff
• Desktop online support provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, 60 Minute SLA
• Special hourly support rate and one-minute granularity for Tier 1 support for users
• Typical cost of Level 1 service is approximately $18 per user monthly
• Level 2 and Level 3 support from Progent SME available on request at Progent's normal consulting fees
• De-escalation allows issues that at first call for Level 2 or 3 expertise to drop to a lower, less costly Tier after procedures are documented
• StreamlineIT includes a full implementation of ConnectWise Manage PSA software with multi-tenant security

• Offered only in the United States and territories
• One-time startup charge based on complexity of the solution
• Starting the first day, Progent assigns you a Technical Resource Center (TRC) Coordinator and a TRC Service Lead to resource, assign and communicate with your team and your users. The TRC Service Lead will work with you to develop a What Goes Where document to help seamlessly escalate issues to your service group or de-escalate back to Progent's support engineers.
• Live Answer of inbound service requests to Progent Technical Response Center (TRC) with a target of 90% Live Answer of all calls
• After deciding whether server or networking assistance is required, some calls will be passed to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All assistance that needs Level 2 or Level 3 expertise will be worked on by a Progent expert after receiving customer approval
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Service is for users and applies to Windows-powered computers and Apple systems
• Progent Level 2 or 3 support will be charged at regular hourly consulting prices
• Progent will provide skilled personnel - Technical Response Center desktop specialists during standard hours, Level 2 and Level 3 as needed
• Progent will dedicate a toll-free phone number and email mailbox for incoming support calls
• Free Remote Control app with screen sharing for streamlined technical support
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management services for cloud-based IT documentation management
• All Level 1 online service is charged at a special hourly rate with per-minute granularity
• All Level 1 service is performed remotely, no onsite work included
• All onsite work is invoiced at regular consulting rates
• All onsite work will have an additional fixed fee plus any documented travel costs
• All travel expense projections will be disclosed and require customer approval before work or travel will be performed
• Contracted projects and separate Statements of Work will have their individual estimates and fees defined and will be performed only following approval by client

First Phase

• Build your custom Service Desk environment, setting up your in-house support group, locations, and user information
• Progent's consultants will work with your support team to analyze current incoming service calls
• Configure your incoming support request service to incorporate email, software agents, and a dedicated phone number

• Progent provides trouble ticket management education for your support group
• Work together to establish basic workflow and ticket escalation processes
• Integrate all your staff and resources that will provide IT support
• Create the introduction message and selling of the new Call Desk environment
• Pick a specific location or manageably-sized clusters of users to onboard initially
• Integrate more users into the solution at determined intervals

• Study reports and system setup for proper data and processes
• Add additional reports or fields required to enhance the identification or monitoring of common issues
• Surface missing data that might enable a higher resolution percentage for Level 1 support calls

• All users have been exposed to the service system and can connect to it
• All required user and hardware information is populated in the service system
• You can exchange and administer trouble tickets transparently between your in-house team and Progent
• You are able to monitor service performance and trends

• Keep total control of your IT service requests: you choose what trouble tickets are escalated to Progent's service desk or taken care of by your in-house support staff.
• Quick availability of supplemental IT support professionals when you need them: Progent's professional services automation software programmatically distributes internal tickets or allows you manually escalate to Progent's TRC.
• Productivity: Progent's team will analyze your current incoming service requests and propose additional data that would allow an improved success rate for common desktop issues. Progent's consultants can also assist you with tag creation to speed up solutions.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Co-managed Service Desk acts as a seamless extension of your internal Call Center with centralized ticketing and reporting so nothing drops between the cracks.
• Happy workers: Users have the ability to track the status of their IT support calls quickly and easily.
• Management insight: You have the measurements, responsibility assignments, and activity monitoring of an advanced PSA platform to help you to build a custom Service Desk experience that provides top business value.
• Concentrate on your strategic business activities, not IT support requests and unhappy users: Your network managers escape being bogged down trying to manage ordinary support calls.

Download Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Although supporting a self-sufficient local IT services team can be expensive from the cost perspective, many companies opt for that strategy since it allows them greater control over their IT management. But did you realize that your company can continue to leverage the advantages of a managed services firm within the shared IT support strategy. This shared model permits you to keep in command over your IT infrastructure while augmenting your local network support group simply and affordably.

For more information, read our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).

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

Optional Services
Progent has developed the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to automate vital processes related to network administration, cybersecurity and upkeep. These services can be integrated with Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service by deploying agent software on computers to be monitored and managed. Notifications generated by these software agents can be routed automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), processed through the ticketing and tracking platform, and triaged for Level 1, 2 or 3 support.

Examples of ProSight RMM services include:

• ProSight Email Guard: Email Content Filtering, Spam Blocking and Data Leakage Protection:
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam filtering service that incorporates the infrastructure of top data security vendors to deliver centralized control and comprehensive protection for all your email traffic. The hybrid structure of Email Guard integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to offer advanced defense against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, DHAs, and other email-based threats. The cloud filter serves as a first line of defense and keeps the vast majority of threats from reaching your network firewall. This decreases your exposure to inbound attacks and conserves network bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's onsite security gateway appliance provides a deeper level of inspection for inbound email. For outgoing email, the local security gateway offers AV and anti-spam filtering, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The onsite security gateway can also assist Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays within your corporate firewall. For more details, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Behavior-based Threat Scanning and Ransomware Defense:
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection service that incorporates cutting edge behavior machine learning tools from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware assaults like ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily evade legacy signature-based anti-virus products. ProSight ASM safeguards local and cloud resources and provides a unified platform to manage the entire malware attack lifecycle including filtering, infiltration detection, containment, remediation, and forensics. Key features include single-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against newly discovered attacks. 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 product companies to produce ProSight Data Protection Services, a selection of offerings that provide backup-as-a-service. All ProSight DPS products automate and monitor your data backup operations and allow non-disruptive backup and rapid recovery of vital files, applications, system images, plus VMs. ProSight DPS lets your business recover from data loss resulting from equipment failures, natural disasters, fire, cyber attacks like ransomware, user error, ill-intentioned insiders, or software bugs. Managed backup services in the ProSight DPS selection include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup), ProSight DPS ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated storage, and ProSight MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to identify which of these fully managed backup services are most appropriate for your IT environment.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services:
  Progent's managed services for patch management provide organizations of all sizes a versatile and cost-effective solution for evaluating, testing, scheduling, applying, and tracking updates to your dynamic IT network. Besides optimizing the security and functionality of your computer environment, Progent's patch management services allow your IT team to concentrate on line-of-business initiatives and tasks that derive the highest business value from your information network. Find out more about Progent's patch management support services.

• ProSight Duo Multi-Factor Authentication: Identity Validation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on:
  Progent's Duo authentication services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity verification with iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using Duo 2FA, whenever you log into a protected application and give your password you are asked to verify your identity on a device that only you possess and that uses a different network channel. A broad selection of devices can be used for this added means of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can register multiple verification devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services.