Computer repair atlanta

Most IT solutions are aimed at making health care end-users more efficient in their work. Sometimes the IT staff that implements and manages those solutions need a helping of that same efficiency.

Renowned for excellence in patient care, research and education, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) is a nonprofit healthcare system dedicated to addressing the needs of sick and injured children and their families. With two hospitals and 17 satellite locations, its more than 6,000 employees--and its approximately 150 servers and 2,500 PCs that support these employees--are spread across metropolitan Atlanta.

As for many other IT managers in 1999, the approach of the new millennium and Y2K concerns presented an urgent challenge for Steven Brummer, CHOA's client/ server design supervisor. The need to adjust date formats from two to four digits across thousands of PCs drove Brummer to seek an efficient way to make the necessary changes to each computer. With CHOA's 20-member IT staff already spread too thin, Brummer knew that they simply couldn't visit every PC throughout the organization's multiple campuses.

IT staff also faced ongoing problems with the use of roaming profiles that enabled employees to share computers. Roaming profiles give users the ability to login to their own unique desktop settings at multiple stations, as well as allow multiple unique configurations at individual computers.

However, roaming profiles left a lot to be desired. For starters, they were prone to corruption. Users caused the majority of roaming profile failures by neglecting to perform a clean shutdown or by responding to error messages with a press of the reset button. Corrupted profiles left the typical user without access to his PC about once every three to four months. CHOA users reported at least two failures daily, but usually more. IT staff took one to four hours on average--occasionally, up to eight hours--to respond to a request to repair a corrupted profile, and another 30 to 60 minutes to actually repair or recreate the profile. Such wait times for IT service were unacceptably long in a 24/7 work environment.

In addition, IT staff were routinely upgrading or replacing old workstations, so each new workstation required a visit from a technician to create new roaming profiles--a tedious and time-consuming task for people already on the job nine to 11 hours every day.

"We desperately needed to free up time for our desktop support staff so we could respond more quickly to non-network related issues such as applications and hardware not working properly, and ease their stress," Brummer says. "One of our goals was to find a product that would help us support our network proactively, while simultaneously decreasing the need for reactive support intervention."

Brummer and his staff set out to find a solution that would help them maintain CHOA's networked PCs more efficiently, standardize and enforce desktop settings from a network administration level, and present an efficient means of preparing for the new millennium. They also wanted the solution to extend beyond CHOA's PC and server systems to manage users connecting to a number of Citrix MetaFrame and Microsoft Terminal servers.

Automated Network Administration

Researching centralized desktop management solutions on the Internet, Brummer downloaded a demo version of the ScriptLogic software by ScriptLogic Corp., Boca Raton, Fla.; CHOA purchased the full version in the fall of 1999 based on his recommendation. Installation and setup took less than two days.

"We configured registry settings as necessary to address Y2K. The next time a user logged on after that, the date format changes were pushed out to his client--problem solved," Brummer says. "We used the login scripting functionality to clean up the SMS clients so they functioned correctly, too."

ScriptLogic allowed IT staff to script user settings, which eliminated the need for roaming profiles. Now, when an employee logs on to any CHOA computer, the software automatically sets his drive mappings, printers and registry settings and creates Outlook e-mail profiles for him. It also allowed the staff to automate network administration tasks such as daily anti-virus checks and the deployment of operating system patches and new applications.

By implementing ScriptLogic, CHOA was able to decrease its desktop support staff from more than 20 people before installation to 12 people. Despite this reduction, IT staff can perform routine updates to company-standard Microsoft Office templates, anti-virus programs, service packs and other applications faster and more efficiently. They also can perform workstation administration functions, including initiating Microsoft System Management Server jobs, during the logon process. IT staff no longer have to manually configure user settings when new computers arrive or when there is a problem on an individual PC due to a configuration change. "The desktop management software reduced the IT burden and made our jobs more manageable," Brummer says.

CHOA's workstations are more stable now, thanks to timely updates and the absence of roaming profiles, so the number of support calls related to faulty roaming profiles has been reduced by 60 percent, and overall help desk calls have been cut by at least 100 daily. Problems that do occur are remedied more quickly, so user satisfaction is up and IT staff stress is down. The centralized desktop management software enabled CHOA to achieve its goal of reducing IT support intervention by more than 30 percent.

"Our IT team is so much more efficient and effective now that we're saving each technician about 60 to 90 minutes daily," Brummer says. "Instead of spending time running from one end of the hospital to the other to fix a problem, the software performs many of the tasks automatically. The solution has helped us to focus on overall network stability instead of spending time with individual PCs."

For more information about Scriptlogic, www.rsleads.com/404ht-201

SOURCE

Steven Brummer

Client/Server Design Supervisor

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

Atlanta

steven.brummer@choa.org

PRODUCT/COMPANY

ScriptLogic

ScriptLogic Corp.

Boca Raton, Fla.

www.scriptlogic.com