How we implemented GLPI

The action takes place in one of the countries of Central Asia, I will not name the country, company and area of ​​its activity. Hope intrigued. Although, in fact, this is not significant. I would like to tell how we started from scratch and built a fairly adequate and manageable structure in which everything is laid out on shelves. So this story is not so much about the capabilities of the platform as about the experience of its use as a department management system in real conditions.

The company in which our valiant IT department works is the daughter of the Fortune 500 Corporation. In the corporation’s native country, far away from us, there is absolutely everything: IT strategy, IT policies, standards-procedures, its own full-time IT company, your Tier 3 data center, direct contacts and price agreements with major manufacturers of IT equipment and software, fast and cheap suppliers of equipment and services, clever integrators, sensible implementation consultants, etc. etc. - in general, there is paradise. They expect and demand the same level from us, but I repeat, we work in Central Asia and we still have a solid construction site here.

At first, the Company in terms of IT cost subcontractors. As a freelance IT specialist, I served the offices of 2-3 of their subcontractors. The result was that one of my clients bought all my time and seconded me to a remote site where they built an industrial facility for the Company. After working there for 3 years, I learned that the Company decided to take on a full-time IT coordinator in the country. By that time, I already had 4 coordinators from different offices and structures of the Center, so I would not have transferred one more. He went to work for the Company. Infrastructure grew very fast, the staff of the Company grew even faster, and all work on IT was now carried out by contractors. In addition to IT contractors, I had subordinates, and over time we were assigned to the department, which I now manage.

Why am I telling all this and where does itGLPI ? I just love to tell stories with details. You can safely skip a couple of paragraphs.

Our first technical support contractor was a subsidiary of a British IT company. I will call them British. They had a helpdesk rolled out on many clients around the world, written software for them, trained operators, disciplined engineers, and strict rules regarding application processing.

The second contractor was a local company, which unexpectedly won the tender by dumping prices. Let them be temporary workers - no offense, they knew that they were signing up for a short interim period in the hope of proving themselves and without much chance of winning the next long-term contract. In the technical conditions of the contract, a registration system was required, accordingly, the company bought some inexpensive software, planted a girl with knowledge of English, recruited technicians and engineers - and, despite the apocalyptic forecasts of the British, we survived the first 3 months of the contract without much shock, and then 6 months of renewal.

Everyone tried hard. There was a lot of work: while the temporary workers were struggling with the routine, we, that is, a few of our own IT staff at the company, coordinated the work on arranging a new office (4 floors, about 2 thousand square meters, about 400 jobs) and with a minimum downtime for the main business We moved and continued to work in a new place. In fact, it was not up to the helpdesk, so I don’t even remember what they stood there and how it worked. I don’t remember any special problems with technical support. And we didn’t forget about global problems ...

And then came the third - the current - contractor. By this time, we were tired of explaining to the new team what and how it worked and how it should all work, but what was to be done - we had only the final report of the previous contractor, scattered documentation on the system and we could only describe the work processes in words. It came to understand that we should have this information at hand, so as not to repeat new people from time to time ... After all, even just a helpdesk database is a storehouse of information, moreover, information about us. And know-how, and this is our know-how ... Why then do we not store this information at home?

The contract was long - for 5 years - so the new guys were determined to do everything correctly and thoroughly. And, of course, better than their predecessors. Although they were also, as they say, first-timers. But they stated a helpdesk especially at the stage of the tender and even wanted to develop it as a commercial service. Thanks to them, by the way, helpdesk at an industrial facility, we began to work in 24x7 mode.

Among other things, a discussion ensued about choosing a helpdesk platform. The British took their helpdesk. Helpdesk temporary workers were not even considered. Naturally, I requested information from the head office regarding their helpdesk. It turned out that they use CA Service Desk Manager from CA Technologies, their license for us is not broadcast in any way, no one is going to implement helpdesk in our foreseeable future. And in general, they have a massive reorganization. But at least we now know what we want! So we make a call to the exclusive software seller in the country. It starts, as usual: what exactly do you need, where is the terms of reference, why exactly this ... Well, we read the product descriptions on the CA website, made up a wish list. After some time we get a commercial offer - there were so many zeros, that sellers double-checked their quantity with their supplier. And this is only for the license, they said, and it will not be known what the implementation will cost and who will implement it. Usually, they said, the license is 1/4 of the total cost of the project - but here it’s generally difficult to promise something. Well, therefore, not fate ... But time has passed. And the operators write tickets in Excel.

I’m climbing into Google. I learn about GLPI . I put on a free car - it works, well, nifiga yourself! I show it to new contractors ... That's why I do not like engineers, because they see problems in everything and are not able to share the joy of their colleagues. Of course, my GLPI is somehow left-handed, but they found a system - that’s the system. True, paid, but were we ready to buy CA anyway? But she can then, se, fifth and tenth. And it already offends me, is that what I put in vain GLPI? In addition, it was not so much a pity for the money as it did not want to get involved with the tedious system of approvals and purchases through a tender. And GLPI is already up and running. I read it, delved into the settings - it turns out GLPI can do it all + screwed up the inventory, which I also really needed. Engineers went to read about their software and, of course, it turned out that it was easy to buy an inventory module. In general, I won. While they were looking for additional counter-arguments, I taught the operators to use GLPI and over time they stopped even (at least with me) writing applications to Excel in parallel. But anyway, at first all applications were neatly written down on paper.

In general, for about 2 years, we worked with a bunch of GLPI + OCS. All this time, only helpdesk operators used the system - they registered applications in 24x7 mode, occasionally - the chief engineer of the contractors, because I also considered this approach to be correct, and so did I. During this time, I managed to migrate the OCS server+ GLPI to the virtual machine with the transition to the new version and Ubuntu and OCS and GLPI. OCS gradually arranged agents through a GPO, and I used an administrative resource, forcing technicians to enter accounting inventory numbers in OCS and GLPI. In addition, I insisted that the contents of the warehouses be included in the GLPI database. Thus, we got a bunch of user / location-serial number-accounting inventory.

Using the Data Injection PluginI added a list of walkie-talkies, radio stations and the rest to the GLPI list of junk strict reporting. Right in the radio station added scans of permits, licenses, profiles and letters. I basically did not make changes to the data structures and just put everything in the Devices category (Devices (?)). I issued licenses and permits with expiration dates as contracts - and received ready-made planned notifications of the expiration of such documents. Conveniently, but no one except me needed it. They can always be asked and they will answer. Just remember who to ask about.

The system helped out a lot during a check arranged by the head IT. This was almost the first time that someone interestedly read our tickets, requested samples by criteria, looked at the statistics of closing orders, selectively checked how the user-tag-serial link works. There were no complaints in this respect.

After checking, I relaxed, so for a while nothing significant happened in this area.

The most interesting thing began when the Company suddenly decided to directly hire almost all of the contractor's personnel - it was urgently necessary to improve the statistics on the nationalization of the Company as part of an agreement with the government. The IT department suddenly grew at times, the usual way broke in which the Company's own IT technicians carried out general management of the contractor’s personnel, now everyone was in an equal position. Inevitably, graters appeared about the uneven distribution of the load between veterans and new personnel, the Company's personnel and senior contractor engineers - those who did not come to us. New centers of power formed, an opposition formed. Before, just a little - it was possible to go and make a complaint to the contractor and their management quickly resolved issues, up to replacing personnel. And now I am responsible for them.

Introduced staff rotation within the team. 2 tasks were solved: 1) interchangeability within the team, 2) lack of specialists at remote sites. A general calendar or duty schedule would be very helpful here, but I did not find anything in GLPI or for GLPI.

Inside the team, we wrote down duties. The list of responsibilities we have developed gradually. I already mentioned rotation, and so, we tried to ensure that each role (or duty) is performed by at least two people in different shifts, so that they change each other. Responsibilities can be reflected in the system either through groups of technicians or through entities (we use the English interface, I don’t know how this word is translated in the Russian version) - this is something like OU, an organizational unit in the active directory.

Our work consists of an inevitable routine and interesting projects. Routines should be as few as possible, and projects - the more, the better. Some of the projects I proposed based on the needs of the office, some people put forward by myself. We agreed that the projects and necessary resources (time, people, materials, money, ...) will be agreed with me in advance. Do not want to do the routine - take the projects I need. No projects - do your routine. GLPI planning was used to divide the time between taking a routine and completing projects or planned maintenance . Now on the calendar you can see who is currently busy. To control the execution of projects in GLPI, a simple but nice project management plugin was foundwith drawing Gantt charts. A lot of system objects can be hung on a project. We are just starting to enter projects in GLPI - and, again, only I need it now, because there are a lot of people, a lot of projects, and sclerosis is progressing.

In order to achieve a fair distribution of applications, they assembled a team in one place: before that, the equipment was distributed in different office blocks. At the same time, they slightly lost in response time to applications, but still achieved their goal. We agreed that all applications and tasks are distributed through helpdesk - so no one was offended. We established a simple queue when assigning applications to free technicians. We analyzed data on the number of completed applications per unit of time - there were arguments for a serious conversation with some technicians. And finally, it was possible to get technicians to register all applications. It was not yet possible to get them to close applications on their own: this continues to be done by helpdesk. In turn, helpdesk explained that now it will not be possible to write down applications on a piece of paper and enter them into the system at the end of the shift - otherwise the time for opening and closing the application will coincide. Helpdesk in general with us - well done. One had only to show them how to use templates to automate and standardize the most frequent applications - and they became the most grateful adherents of GLPI and the best assistants in the further development of the system. It seems to me that with minimal system prompts, operators began to feel much more confident. I plan to use the time freed up at the helpdesk to look after NMS, for remote support, and for anything: I need to remove them from the risk of staff reduction in a crisis, so that even the bosses do not have such a thought ... One had only to show them how to use templates to automate and standardize the most frequent applications - and they became the most grateful adherents of GLPI and the best assistants in the further development of the system. It seems to me that with minimal system prompts, operators began to feel much more confident. I plan to use the time freed up at the helpdesk to look after NMS, for remote support, and for anything: I need to remove them from the risk of staff reduction in a crisis, so that even the bosses do not have such a thought ... One had only to show them how to use templates to automate and standardize the most frequent applications - and they became the most grateful adherents of GLPI and the best assistants in the further development of the system. It seems to me that with minimal system prompts, operators began to feel much more confident. I plan to use the time freed up at the helpdesk to look after NMS, for remote support, and for anything: I need to remove them from the risk of staff reduction in a crisis, so that even the bosses do not have such a thought ...

By the way, there are more applications. And they are decorated much better. If earlier the application looked something like this: something happened for the user such and such - the application is open / the application is closed, now for a good half of applications it is enough to select the application category and the necessary fields are filled out from the template, the application is assigned to a certain technique or group of technicians in accordance with their specialization, a hint for the operator appears in the description. This can be a typical description of the problem, a link to a document in the knowledge base, a list of information that needs to be clarified by the user, the order of the operator’s actions — anything. I don’t even know if it’s worth giving out all our brilliant ideas for free. On the one hand, I really want to boast, and on the other, thoughts about monetization creep in ... However, as it turns out, the service market is already narrower,

Thanks to a visual demonstration using examples from applications, people understood why SLA is needed, how escalation is done, and all this is done automatically through categories and application templates. And now I have a live and working list of SLAs, that is, I have established the standards for certain work.

We have not mastered Business rules yet - the meaning is clear, the functionality is needed, but so far the criteria do not pass the way we want. Not scary, we'll figure it out.

Draw a network map in the Network architecture plugin. Handsomely. For some reason, the center sometimes wants to know what is connected to the port. I definitely need such a card to be in a specific place and accessible from everywhere (we naturally control access). For the Center, for presentations, for team interaction, for the complete coverage of the system, and just in case. And so our networkers have cards in Visio, in Cisco Prime - but you need to ask for this from someone, wait until they answer, but you know these engineers - they are completely negative from them.

Budget - you can paint the budget down to the cost of individual units of equipment or materials or services. Linking financial information to equipment and contracts. As for me, we have a very complicated budget cycle. About every 2 months, different authorities require reports with varying degrees of detail. I will definitely describe in detail my budget for next year at GLPI. So far there are only 2 articles: CAPEX and OPEX.

Contacts - here I entered all the phone numbers / addresses, the search of which used to take time. Up to the restaurants where we sometimes order food delivery. People always smile, but in fact we save time and make our lives easier.

Contracts - everything is clear here. Any information about the contracts. With expiration reminders. With reference to equipment - I already mentioned that I use this category for licenses for the operation of radio equipment, import permits, etc.

Problems - here I enter everything that is vaguely disturbing and does not yet have an immediate solution. Then you can attach the problem to applications to be specific to specific events. You can attach the problem to the project. You can mention it in the budget for the next period.

It seems that nothing of the functionality used by us is forgotten.

Summing up our experience, - The control system apparently still does not need a technician / engineer. They categorically do not want to share knowledge, and even more so to spread information in writing. Even if someone suddenly shared - why do we need a knowledge base, if he already knows everything, and if he doesn’t know, then this is a problem for the authorities, and if he suddenly wants to figure it out, Google will ask. Accounting applications is also not needed, in any case, it processes, and the rest are underdeveloped and let the authorities understand.

People recognize only regulations, only instructions, only control - and all this in my form is placed in GLPI in various forms. It seems to me that it is right for the leadership to keep feedback open, to adhere to common sense, to be predictable and to observe justice - but this is not necessary. The main thing to remember who promised what - and again this can be fixed in GLPI.

I did not need a management system as the head of the department, while the bulk of the work was done by outsourcing. Outsourcing can always be put in a dependent position. If you need to change the service provider, of course, problems arise, but if you have financial leverage, this is not significant. Someone even likes such problems. Some even knowingly create such problems.

The manager needs a management system when there is no one to blame. In the corporate environment, it is very important to respond to any “call” promptly and reasonably, and a “call” can be “thrown” in the most unexpected way. It may just be a request for another report from the center, or it may be an invitation to the prosecutor. That is, it is better to be prepared. And colleagues understand this. But when I tried to “sell” my decision to my peers in other countries during a suitable discussion topic, they told me, like: “Yes, it's cool ... we have something like ... But is it freeware or opensource? It can not be used in an enterprise environment? Everything should be strictly enterprise-grade. Just in case, don’t show GLPI to the auditors. ”And I was counting on him like this when I passed the audit! The main thing is that it came from the mouth of the “Burmese”,

That is, it would seem, here it is - I found the target audience of GLPI, I already said that I’ll go to GLPI in Brunei, but there’s an ambush too - unless, of course, they tell me how to answer this “challenge” ... That's why I said that the market for GLPI is narrower than we expected. Although I personally do not see any violations of GPL2 / GNU, we do not even change anything in the code - this is if the concern is caused by the type of license.

Whatever the Center decides regarding the admissibility of using GLPI in our Company, I will continue to use an automated management system. At least I now know exactly what I need from the system, all the necessary information is collected, connected and ready for export. Will I recommend GLPI to a friend? The answer is definitely positive. GLPI may well be both a final and temporary or interim solution. Free, which should be important in a crisis.

It seemed silly to me to put gratitude at the beginning of the article, but, in a good way, I had to start with this. Since I decided not to disclose information about the company, you will not recognize the names of team members. I am sincerely grateful to everyone who participated at all stages of the work. Without you, nothing would have happened.

And thank you for your attention.

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