Network Outsourcing for Mid-size Companies

Progent's Shared Help Desk Service
Progent's Shared Help Desk service is intended for businesses with 50 to 500 end users and allows your information technology group to split activity for Help Desk services transparently between your internal support team and Progent's nationwide roster of certified IT service technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a joint IT support system based on ConnectWise Manage, the industry-leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) tool for managing IT service requests, issuing tickets, designating ownership, tracking status, and generating management analytics. The cost for Level 1 IT support for Progent's Shared Help Desk service averages under $18 per user per month.

Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service offers a smooth supplement to your internal network support team. User access to the Service Desk, delivery of technical assistance, escalation, trouble ticket creation and tracking, performance measurement, and management of the service database are cohesive whether incidents are taken care of by your internal IT support staff, by Progent, or both. All end-user support requests are triaged as Level 1, 2 or 3 issues. Progent takes responsibility for whatever service level or levels you select (typically Level 1 and Level 3). Initial support calls are routed either to your in-house network support organization or to Progent's Technical Response Center, based on your instructions. Level 2 or Level 3 issues can be promoted to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The assignment process is seamless for your end users. You have unrestricted versatility to expand or shrink your part of technical support work as needed. Progent provides initial installation and onboarding of the professional services PSA software plus documentation, testing and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) has been delivering remote IT help for over two decades and serves active customers in every state in the U.S. (see Progent's customer testimonials.) The TRC provides the pool of certified computer experts who can handle 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 software platform to automate ticketing, tracking, responsibility delegation, problem escalation and reporting. This system keeps problems from being ignored and gives clients continual understanding about all services provided. The Technical Response Center is committed to 90% live answer rate and allows Progent's Shared Service Desk program to offer a 60-minute service-level agreement (SLA). Support hours are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on standard business days. Extended hours and on-premises service are available at additional cost. For more details about the Technical Response Center, refer to Progent's Technical Response Center Customer Commitment.

Service Levels
Progent provides three levels of online IT help, which correspond to industry-standard Tier 1 through Tier 3 support. You can define which service levels will be handled exclusively or shared by Progent's support team and your internal staff. The depth and scope of Progent's roster of subject matter experts enables rapid and effective ticket escalation and permits you to rely on Progent as a single source for the majority of IT problems at any Tier. Also, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer permits important service problems to move from higher to lower levels as resolution techniques become recorded and normalized so they can be handled by less knowledgeable and lower-cost support staff.

Support levels are defined as:

• Level 1 Support: Filters Service Desk calls and delivers basic IT support and debugging, such as password resets, printer configurations, break/fix instructions, 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 service can also provide support for identified Level 2 and Level 3 problems where mitigation solutions have previously been documented.
• Level 2 Support: Primarily handles break/fix, configuration issues, troubleshooting, application or OS deployment, and hardware repair including on-premises repair or coordinating depot support. Level 2 support deals with promoted problems that Level 1 personnel are not equipped to handle. Level 2 can sometimes evolve to Level 3, depending on the problem and the manner the Service Desk is structured.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, configuration, DBA, and fixes or updates for OS and applications servers, datacenter, email, collaboration, and common integration issues. In addition to possessing the capability to find fixes to novel issues, a Level 3 engineer usually has the most expertise.

This particular deployment of Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service has a 4-stage ticket lifecycle:

1. Your users enter service requests through the online service portal, a dedicated telephone number, or by sending a message to a designated mailbox. This automatically launches an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center gets the trouble ticket request and determines whether it will be handles or promoted to your in-house Service Desk.
3. Your Help Desk receives the promoted trouble ticket request and decides the best method to resolve the problem. If needed, your Help Desk can in turn promote the open request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent gets the revised 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 solved or closed.

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

• Pooled Level 1 help from Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) team
• Level 1 remote support available 5 days a week, 5am-7pm PST, One-hour SLA
• Discounted per-hour rate with one-minute granularity for Tier 1 support for end users
• Typical price of Level 1 support is approximately $18 per user monthly
• Level 2 and Level 3 help from Progent SME available on request at Progent's standard consulting rates
• De-escalation permits problems that at first require Level 2 or Level 3 expertise to migrate to a lower, less costly Tier once solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT includes a full version of ConnectWise Manage PSA software with secure multi-tenant support

• Offered only in the United States and US territories
• Initial setup fee dependent on complexity of the solution
• Starting day one, Progent assigns you a Technical Resource Center (TRC) Coordinator and a TRC Service Lead to resource, appoint and communicate with your service group and your users. Progent's TRC Service Lead will work with you to create a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate issues to your service group or de-escalate back to Progent's support engineers.
• Live Answer of inbound support calls to Progent Technical Response Center with a goal of 90% Live Answer of all calls
• After determining if server or networking support is required, some calls will be passed to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All support requiring Level 2 or Level 3 service will be handled by a Progent expert after receiving client approval
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Service is for your client users and applies to Windows-powered systems and Apple devices
• Progent Level 2 or 3 services will be provided at standard hourly consulting rates
• Progent will provide personnel - Technical Response Center desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and Level 3 as required
• Progent will provide a phone number and email mailbox for incoming service requests
• Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for efficient IT support
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management services for cloud-based network documentation management
• All Level 1 remote service is charged at a special hourly rate with per-minute granularity
• All Level 1 service is done remotely, no onsite support included
• All onsite work is invoiced at standard hourly consulting rates
• All on-premises work will have an added fixed charge as well as any documented travel expenses
• All travel expense projections will be disclosed and require client agreement before support services or travel will be undertaken
• Projects and distinct Statements of Work will include their individual estimates and costs stated and will be performed only after approval by client

Initial Phase

• Create your custom Help Desk experience, including your internal support group, locations, and client information
• Progent will work closely with your service group to analyze current inbound support 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 service group
• Jointly establish basic workflow and escalation procedures
• Integrate all your staff and assets that will provide support
• Develop the introduction description and promotion of the new Help Desk environment
• Designate a specific location or manageably-sized groups to onboard first
• Bring additional groups of users into the system at determined intervals

• Review reports and system configuration for efficient data and processes
• Create any reports or fields required to improve the detection or tracking of common issues
• Surface key information that might allow a better resolution rate for Level 1 support calls

• All clients have been exposed to the support desk and can connect to it
• All relevant user and equipment data is populated in the service system
• You can exchange and administer trouble tickets transparently between your internal support group and Progent
• You are able to monitor support performance and trends

• Retain total control of your IT support requests: you decide what tickets are escalated to Progent's service desk or taken care of by your in-house support staff.
• Immediate access to additional IT service professionals when and if you need them: Progent's professional services PSA software automatically routes internal tickets or allows you manually escalate to Progent's TRC.
• Productivity: Progent's IT support experts will analyze your incoming service requests and identify additional information that would allow an improved success rate for typical Level 1 issues. Progent's IT support experts can also assist you with tag management to speed up solutions.
• Transparency: Progent's Co-managed Service Desk is a seamless supplement to your in-house Service Desk with unified ticketing and reporting so no ticket drops between the seams.
• Contented employees: Users can track the progress and status of their IT service calls rapidly and easily.
• Management analytics: You benefit from the measurements, responsibility assignments, and performance reporting of an advanced PSA platform to help you to build a custom-designed Service Desk experience that provides top business value.
• Focus on your strategic business issues, not IT service calls and unhappy users: Your IT management personnel avoid being bogged down handling day-to-day support calls.

Download Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Even though having your own fully-staffed local IT group can prove expensive from the cost perspective, many businesses prefer that approach because it gives more flexibility with their network management. But did you realize that your company can still leverage the advantages of a managed services provider using the co-managed network service strategy. Adopting the co-managed model allows your company to stay in charge of your IT infrastructure while augmenting your internal IT services team easily and economically.

For more information, check out 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 Shared Help Desk, click:
Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)

Related Services
Progent has packaged the ProSight family of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to streamline critical activities associated with IT management, security and maintenance. Any of these services can be used with Progent's Shared Call Desk service by deploying agent apps on computers to be monitored and managed. Alerts generated by these software agents can be routed automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center, processed via the trouble ticket and monitoring system, and categorized for Level 1, 2 or 3 treatment.

Examples of ProSight RMM packages include:

• ProSight Email Guard: Email Content Filtering, Spam Blocking and Data Leakage Defense:
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering and email encryption service that uses the technology of leading data security vendors to provide centralized control and comprehensive security for all your email traffic. The powerful structure of Progent's Email Guard managed service integrates cloud-based filtering with an on-premises gateway device to offer advanced protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer serves as a first line of defense and keeps most threats from reaching your security perimeter. This decreases your exposure to inbound threats and conserves network bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's onsite gateway device provides a further level of analysis for incoming email. For outbound email, the local gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The local security gateway can also assist Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and protect internal email that stays within your corporate firewall. For more information, see ProSight Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM): AI-based Threat Scanning and Ransomware Protection:
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection (EPP) solution that incorporates cutting edge behavior analysis technology from SentinelOne to defend physical and virtual endpoints against new malware attacks like ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily escape legacy signature-matching anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards local and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to manage the entire threat progression including filtering, identification, mitigation, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Key capabilities include one-click rollback with Windows VSS and automatic system-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. Learn 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 advanced backup technology vendors to create ProSight Data Protection Services, a family of offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service. All ProSight DPS services automate and track your backup processes and enable transparent backup and fast restoration of important files, apps, images, plus Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps your business recover from data loss caused by hardware failures, natural calamities, fire, cyber attacks like ransomware, human error, malicious insiders, or software glitches. Managed services available in the ProSight Data Protection portfolio include ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup), ProSight ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent expert can help you to determine which of these fully managed backup services are most appropriate for your network.

• Progent's Patch Management: Patch Management Services:
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management provide organizations of all sizes a versatile and cost-effective alternative for evaluating, testing, scheduling, applying, and documenting software and firmware updates to your dynamic information network. Besides optimizing the protection and functionality of your IT environment, Progent's patch management services permit your IT team to focus on more strategic projects and tasks that deliver the highest business value from your information network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management support services.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: ID Confirmation, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on:
  Progent's Duo authentication services incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables one-tap identity verification with Apple iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected application and give your password you are requested to verify who you are on a device that only you have and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used as this added form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may designate several validation devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, go to Duo MFA two-factor authentication services.