As my friends or anyone else who has checked my bio will know I am an Atos graduate. A company that prides itself on being business technologists. Anyone who does a quick Google will find that our CEO Thierry Bretton has stated that he wants Atos to be email free by the end of 2013.
So this got me thinking how could I reduce the amount of email I personally get, after a quick scan of my inbox I discovered that I receive several emails from the internal ticket management/change control system(s), informing me of ticket statuses (open, closed, updates etc) for tickets I have raised and those that have been assigned to me (internally tickets are raised for teams to do specific work). Though this isn’t spam as I do need to read to be aware of changes the current system often becomes confusing especially when multiple tickets are raised.
So during a graduate training session as part of my two week induction at a swanky Birmingham Hotel (thank you Atos!) I had a light-bulb moment. What if an App or Dashboard could be created for employees that allowed for the easy management of tickets. Such as system would need to be intuitive, to allow for prioritisation of tickets and provide feedback in real time about ticket statuses (using a notification system such as the one used at Facebook). From a corporate perspective we use Microsoft Lync (basically corporate Windows Live Messenger) so it would be great if this could be integrated into the system so that contacts related to a specific ticket would be accessible when the ticket is opened, this would further encourage a reduction in email usage as people take the ‘easy option’ in using Lync.
So what would this proposed system look like at a high level I hear you say?? Well here have an HLD…
So the HLD gives a fairly high level view for the initial scope of the system but the next big question for me would be how would the interface look and feel? Well I guess for a start I would look at one of my favourite systems management applications, Nagios. Nagios uses a highly effective traffic light system where Green=All good, Amber=There could be a problem and Red=The world is ending! (ok may have exaggerated the last one). I feel this system could be used to affectively identify ticket priority or ticket status. I also feel that a multi tab layout similar to most modern browsers could also be used in a similar effect. Ultimately however the main goal of this hypothetical system should be to have a highly effective and initiative interface that people actually want to use.
Well anyway that it’s my two cents what do you my readers think?
TheGrew
PLEASE NOTE: The above idea is the intellectual property of Atos as set out in my employment contract however the views contained in the above post are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Atos.
TheGrew 