Network Support for Mid-size Businesses

Progent's Co-managed Service Desk
Progent's Shared Help Desk service is intended for organizations with between 50 and 500 users and allows your information technology staff to divide responsibilities for support services seamlessly between your internal support group and Progent's extensive roster of IT support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a joint IT support solution based on the industry-leading shared PSA platform for managing IT support requests, generating tickets, designating responsibility, tracking status, and generating management analytics.

Progent's Shared Service Desk offers a transparent supplement to your internal support staff. User interaction with the Help Desk, delivery of support, problem escalation, trouble ticket creation and updates, performance metrics, and management of the service database are consistent whether issues are taken care of by your internal network support group, by Progent's team, or a mix of the two. All client service requests are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent focuses on the support levels you specify (typically Levels 1 and 3). Initial support calls are assigned either to your in-house network support staff or to Progent's Technical Response Center, based on your requirements. Level 2 or Level 3 incidents can be promoted to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The assignment process is transparent to your users. You have unrestricted versatility to extend or reduce your share of technical support work as required. Progent provides startup deployment and provisioning of the professional services automation software plus workflow documentation, testing and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center
Progent's Technical Response Center has been providing remote technical help for over two decades and has active clients in every state in the country (see Progent's customer testimonials.) The TRC provides the pool of seasoned computer technicians who can resolve Level 1 tickets, which represent the bulk of Help Desk support requests. The TRC, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the industry's leading professional services automation software to automate ticketing, status tracking, responsibility delegation, escalation and management reporting. This prevents issues from being overlooked and offers users clear understanding about all services provided. The TRC targets 90% in-person answer performance and allows Progent's Shared Help Desk program to include a 60-minute service-level agreement. Support hours are 5am to 7pm PST on normal work days. Extended hours and on-premises help are available at extra cost. For more details about the TRC, see The Technical Response Center Customer Commitment.

Service Levels
Progent offers three levels of remote technical help, which align with industry-recognized Tier 1 to Tier 3 service. You can pick which service levels will be handled wholly or in part by Progent's support team and your internal service group. The size and scope of Progent's team of subject matter experts (SMEs) enables rapid and efficient ticket escalation and permits you to count on Progent as a single source for most IT issues at any service level. In addition, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer permits key support issues to move from higher to lower Tiers as resolution techniques become documented and normalized so they can be handled by less knowledgeable and lower-cost service personnel.

Service levels are described as:

• Level 1 Support: Categorizes Service Desk requests and provides basic IT help and debugging, such as password resets, printer configurations, break/fix procedures, ticket routing 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 can also include assistance for familiar Level 2 or 3 issues where mitigation solutions have previously been recorded.
• Level 2 Support: Primarily addresses break/fix, setup issues, troubleshooting, application or OS installations, and hardware fixes including onsite repair or coordinating depot services. Level 2 support involves promoted issues that Level 1 support is not equipped to resolve. Level 2 will occasionally evolve to Level 3, depending on the issue and the way the Service Desk operates.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, configuration, DBA, and fixes or updates for server, hybrid networks, email, collaboration, and various infrastructure problems. In addition to possessing the ability to find fixes to novel problems, a Level 3 engineer typically has the most real-world expertise.

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

1. Your employees initiate service requests via the browser-based service portal, a toll-free phone number, or simply by sending a message to a specific mailbox. This automatically becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) gets the open request and determines whether it will be serviced or promoted to your in-house Help Desk.
3. Your Service Desk gets the promoted open request and decides the best method to service the issue. If necessary, your Service Desk can in turn promote the open request back to Progent for resolution by Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent gets the updated ticket request, selects the most appropriate SME from the Experts Team, and assigns the chosen subject matter exert to co-operate with your support group until the issue is resolved or closed.

Key Features of Progent's Help Desk Service
Top features of Progent's Co-managed Call Desk program include:

• Pooled Level 1 help from Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) team
• Level 1 remote help provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm PST, One-hour SLA
• Special hourly rate and per-minute granularity for Level 1 desktop support for users
• Level 2 and Level 3 help from Progent SME available as an option at Progent's normal consulting rates
• De-escalation permits problems that at first call for Level 2 or 3 expertise to move to a lower, less costly Tier because of detailed and shared documentation.

• Offered only in the United States and US territories
• Initial setup fee based on complexity of the deployment
• Live Answer of incoming support requests to Progent Technical Response Center with a goal of 90% Live Answer of all calls
• After deciding if server or networking assistance is required, some service calls will be passed to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All support requiring Level 2 or 3 service will be handled by a Progent SME pending your authorization
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Service is for end users and covers Windows-powered computers and Apple devices
• Progent Level 2 or 3 support will be provided at standard hourly consulting prices
• Progent will provide resources - Technical Response Center (TRC) desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and Level 3 as required
• Progent will dedicate a phone number and email mailbox for inbound service calls
• Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for streamlined technical troubleshooting
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management services for IT documentation management
• All Level 1 online service is charged at a special desktop hourly rate
• All Level 1 support is done online, no on-premises support included
• All on-premises work is billed at regular consulting rates
• All onsite work will have an added fixed fee as well as any documented travel costs
• All travel cost projections will be disclosed and need customer agreement before work or travel will be undertaken
• Contracted projects and distinct Statements of Work will have their own estimates and costs defined and will be performed only following approval by customer

Initial Phase

• Build your personalized Help Desk environment, setting up your in-house support group, locations, and client data
• Progent's consultants will work with your service group to analyze current inbound support requests
• Set up your inbound support request system to incorporate email, software agents, and an 800 phone number

• Progent delivers ticket management education for your company's service team
• Jointly create core workflow and escalation procedures
• Integrate all your staff and assets that will deliver IT support
• Develop the introduction message and selling of the new Call Desk solution
• Select a defined location or small clusters of users to onboard initially
• Integrate more groups of users into the solution at a workable pace

• Study reports and system configuration for efficient data and processes
• Add additional reports or fields needed to improve the detection or tracking of frequently seen IT problems
• Surface key information that might allow a better resolution percentage for Level 1 support calls

• All users have been introduced to the support desk and can connect to it
• All necessary client and hardware data is populated in the service system
• You are able to exchange and manage tickets transparently between your internal support group and Progent
• You can view service performance and trends

• Retain complete control over your IT service issues: you decide what tickets are forwarded to Progent's service desk or taken care of by your internal support team.
• Quick availability of additional IT support professionals when and if you need them: Progent's professional services automation (PSA) software programmatically routes in-house trouble tickets or permits you manually forward to Progent's Technical Response Center.
• Efficiency: Progent's Call Desk experts will review your current incoming support requests and identify additional information that would promote an improved resolution rate for typical desktop issues. Progent's consultants can also help you with tag creation to expedite problem resolution.
• Transparency: Progent's Shared Service Desk works as a virtual supplement to your internal Service Desk with unified ticketing and documentation so no request falls between the seams.
• Contented workers: Users can monitor the status of their IT support requests quickly and conveniently.
• Management analytics: You have the metrics, accountability, and activity monitoring of an advanced PSA platform to help you to create a custom-designed Help Desk environment that delivers maximum business value.
• Focus on your core business issues, not IT service requests and disgruntled users: Your IT management personnel avoid being saddled with handling common support requests.

Complementary Services
Progent has packaged the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to automate critical processes associated with network administration, security and maintenance. Any of these RMM services can be used with Progent's Shared Call Desk service by deploying agent software on computers to be tracked and managed. Notifications sent by these agents can be routed automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), processed through the trouble ticket and tracking platform, and triaged 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 uses the technology of leading data security vendors to provide web-based management and comprehensive security for your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid structure of Progent's Email Guard combines a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to provide complete protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. The Cloud Protection Layer acts as a first line of defense and keeps most threats from making it to your network firewall. This reduces your exposure to inbound attacks and saves system bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway device adds a further layer of inspection for inbound email. For outbound email, the on-premises security gateway offers AV and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The local gateway can also assist Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays inside your corporate firewall. For more information, visit ProSight Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Behavior-based Threat Scanning and Ransomware Defense:
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) is an endpoint protection service that utilizes next generation behavior-based analysis tools to guard physical and virtual endpoints against new malware assaults such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely escape traditional signature-based AV products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards local and cloud resources and provides a unified platform to manage the complete threat progression including filtering, detection, containment, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Top features include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and real-time system-wide immunization against newly discovered threats. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) endpoint protection and ransomware defense.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Cloud-based Backup and Disaster Recovery:
  ProSight Data Protection Services from Progent offer small and mid-sized businesses an affordable end-to-end solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery (BDR). For a fixed monthly cost, ProSight DPS automates your backup activities and allows fast restoration of vital files, apps and virtual machines that have become unavailable or corrupted as a result of hardware failures, software bugs, natural disasters, human error, or malware attacks like ransomware. ProSight DPS can help you protect, retrieve and restore files, folders, applications, system images, plus Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to a local device, or mirrored to both. Progent's BDR specialists can deliver advanced support to set up ProSight DPS to to comply with government and industry regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, FIRPA, and PCI and, whenever necessary, can help you to recover your business-critical data. Find out more about ProSight Data Protection Services Managed Cloud Backup.