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EGI Core activities:2013-bidding Incident management helpdesk

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  • Service name: Incident Management Helpdesk (GGUS)
  • Service category: Operations
  • Service type: Coordination, operation and maintenance

GGUS is part of the EGI Collaboration Platform and is needed to support users and infrastructure operators.

Introduction

EGI provides support to users and operators through a distributed helpdesk with central coordination (GGUS). The central helpdesk provides a single interface for support. The central system is interfaced to a variety of other ticketing systems at the NGI level in order to allow a bi-directional exchange of tickets.

Technical description

The GGUS system is divided into three environments: development, test and production environment. Every environment includes three layers:

  • Presentation - web frontend to provide the entry point for the graphical user interface;
  • Logic - AR Server which executes the workflow rules and performs the main tasks. AR Server is providing the communication interface between external systems and is accompanied by the email-engine to provide the additional mail-based interface into the helpdesk system;
  • Backend - ticket database under Oracle DBMS and user database under MySql DBMS (will be moved to Oracle soon).


This service includes the following components:

Coordination

This activity is responsible for the coordination of the system operation and upgrade activities with those partners that are in charge of operating other systems that depend on it. Coordination with user communities, technology providers and operators is provided by the GGUS Advisory Board.

Support

Support is provided through the EGI helpdesk itself

  • to users and operators of helpdesk systems integrated with GGUS about bugs and incidents affecting the GGUS system itself
  • to the operators of integrated (or to be integrated) helpdesks about GGUS interfaces and testing activities
  • to users of GGUS about the functionality provided by GGUS

Support hours: eight hours a day (for example 9-17 CE(S)T), Monday to Friday – excluding public holidays of the hosting organization.

Operation

  • Daily running of the system
  • Support Unit maintenance
  • Provisioning of a high availability configuration
  • A test infrastructure to verify interoperability and the impact of software upgrades on depending systems

Ticket oversight and follow-up

This activity includes the administrative and reporting functions of the helpdesk infrastructure, e.g. collecting ticket statistics, and internal and external reporting of statistics for SLAs monitoring and other reporting duties. Ticket follow-up includes notifying supporters when the reaction to high-priority tickets is not fast enough, requesting information from ticket submitters when they do not react, and ensuring assigners/resolvers will react sufficiently fast when the submitter provides additional information.

Maintenance

This activity includes:

  • core refactoring, bug fixing, proactive maintenance, improvement of the system
  • coordination of software maintenance activities with other technology providers that provide software for the EGI Core Infrastructure or remote systems deployed by integrated and peer infrastructures that interoperate with the central EGI components of the system.
  • requirements gathering
  • documentation

Service level targets