DeskDirector Blog

Creating IT Service Desk Reports with Microsoft BI - DeskDirector

Written by DeskDirector Marketing | November 30, 2023

Improving your Microsoft help desk ticketing system is a major goal for many organizations in 2024. But considering the complexity of the average IT department, many leaders are unsure where to focus their attention and budgets.  

One popular answer is through analyzing data from your IT ticketing systems to identify recurring challenges and bottlenecks, make targeted improvements to those areas and automate workflows - which is why so many organizations build custom IT service desk reports with DeskDirector and Microsoft Power BI.  

The only problem is, many don’t know how best to leverage this integrated data system and use it to make measurable improvements. In the following article, we dive deeper into the data available in this unique integration and explore some of the most valuable benefits it can produce for your organization. 

Why You Should Integrate DeskDirector with Microsoft Power BI 

Given that some IT help desks have an average cost-per-ticket as high as $46.69, it’s hardly surprising that 48% of organizations feel their service desk needs to be improved. However, improving your ticketing desk requires a deep understanding of how the system is being used, and most software provides very limited reporting that doesn’t generate real insights. 

Integrating DeskDirector ticketing data into your Microsoft Power BI environment enables you to build custom IT service desk reports and dashboards based on a wide range of ticketing data. This includes:

  • The age of tickets 
  • Ticket resolution time 
  • Number of tickets open by request type 
  • The number of tickets open per tech 
  • And so much more 

Further, users can attach comments, context or query specific pieces of data directly within the Microsoft Power BI platform, adding an extra level of information and insight. Ultimately, the result is a far more granular view of how ticketing is used, where specific issues arise and how efficiently the overarching system runs. 

With this data, you can finally unlock… 

4 Ways Ticketing Data Can Improve Your IT Department

 

1. INCREASE END-USER SATISFACTION

From resolving tickets faster to making service more consistent, leveraging DeskDirector data through Microsoft Power BI enables you to dramatically increase end-user satisfaction. 

For example, you can measure and analyze the number of tickets open from each department, as well as the types of requests they make. This helps you allocate extra resources to departments that are having more IT issues and detect underlying problems within specific departments.  

These capacities ensure your ticketing system is constantly improving over time. As end-users see that their feedback is being taken seriously, they will become more open to provide honest feedback - ultimately creating a positive feedback loop. 

2. Improve the Employee Experience

With the global tech talent shortage and many ITSM professionals saying that their work is likely to get harder in the next year, every IT department will benefit from improving their internal culture and employee experience. Integrating DeskDirector with Power BI helps you do this by increasing ticketing consistency and avoiding excessive workflows that overwhelm your techs.  

By analyzing which issue types are taking the longest to resolve, you will be able to identify bottlenecks or communication issues that are making your ticketing system less efficient. You can also see which techs have an unusually high number of tickets open and reassign them to help make individual workloads more manageable.  

This will soon produce clear improvements to the overarching system, as well as signal to your techs that an effort is being made to improve their daily experience. 

3. Assess Tech Performance

Your Power BI ticketing system provides an objective view of individual techs’ performance over time. As a result, you can provide more detailed performance reviews, realign KPIs to incentivise improvements and make important staffing decisions based on an empirical assessment rather than gut feelings.  

The best way to track individual tech performance is through a combination of: 

  • The average time taken to resolve tickets 
  • The average number of open tickets assigned to the specific tech 
  • And the types of issues they are resolving 

You can, for example, cross-reference the speed each tech resolves a specific issue type to understand their individual strengths. Equally, you track trends to see how individuals’ performance is changing over time. 

4. Streamline and Standardize Workflows

Once you have identified key areas to improve, you can leverage your DeskDirector + Microsoft Power Automate ticketing system to implement powerful workflows. This will help you streamline and standardize the entire ticketing system - creating a better experience for end-users and techs alike.  

Data from Microsoft Power BI can then be used to continually update and optimize these automations. 

DeskDirector Makes it Easy to Improve Your Ticketing System 

From increasing ticketing adoption by 20% to accelerating ticket resolution by 400%, DeskDirector users have already seen measurable benefits. But with the ability to integrate data into Microsoft Power BI, DeskDirector has become an unparalleled vehicle for business insight that delivers lasting improvements to your entire IT department. 

Want to see how it could help your organization in 2024? 

Book a demo.