June 8, 2015

Ticket First

Our initial requirement for the Business Operations database (Bizops) was to implement an electronic version of the travel form. This was a complex process that frequently required back and forth revision so it was identified by the college process improvement group as a first place to focus.

The Bizops system was built using code from the Help Desk ticket system which contained many useful entities like Tickets (a project or task) a requestor, a person responsible for completing the work, a collection of messages related to the ticket, etc.

As we talked with the fiscal team we became concerned that Bizops: Travel Form might be another disjointed collection of tasks to keep track of. If some work is listed in email, some is in one-of-three excel sheets, some is in the shared drive, some is on a post-it, and now some are in the Bizops: Travel Form, it can be messy.

“Ticket First” represents our plan to surface the Ticket concepts and user interface from the existing Help Desk code so that Bizops can be a repository for any request, any task, not just Travel Forms.

Travel Forms now become an extra artifact related to the ticket. The ticket structure provides the context for who the requester is, who the staff responsible is, and what messages went back and forth about this particular travel form.

Ultimately it will be up to the fiscal team to decide if Bizops tickets helps them track work and share information.