2–6 Mar 2009
Le Ciminiere, Catania, Sicily, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Connecting helpdesks with webservices. South-West Europe helpdesk experience.

3 Mar 2009, 16:35
5m
Foyer (Le Ciminiere, Catania, Sicily, Italy)

Foyer

Le Ciminiere, Catania, Sicily, Italy

Viale Africa 95100 Catania
Poster End-user environments and portal technologies Poster session

Speaker

Dr Gabriel Amoros (CSIC-IFIC)

Description

We want to show the use of webservices as a main tool for a helpdesk syncronized with others, based on our experience to connect the EGEE South-West Federation (SW) helpdesk to GGUS.

Conclusions and Future Work

Webservices provide adequate tools for communicating independent services and for including inherited tools. However special attention must be made when the independance and a shared workflow are involved. The SW helpdesk has succeeded in the main adaption to the workflow followed by the ticket processing synchronized with GGUS. However the system must improve using new tools in order to manage breaks in the connection so as to manage and adapt the ticket process for these situations.

URL for further information

http://swegus.ific.uv.es/helpdesk

Detailed analysis

The Global Grid User Support (GGUS) is the centralized portal for global problems, and every federation has its own helpdesk. The synchronization of helpdesks is a main task for the correct treatment of tickets in both sides. Traditionally mail has been used extensively for this task as mailing lists or a background system in a web-based helpdesk. Due to the expected increase of the users/administrators of the grid, a system that fulfills a continous and fast response for incidents, questions and problem is a crucial service.
This work explains the process of building the webservices for the SW helpdesk, the workflow followed by the functions implementing the services and the connection with the updates from and for GGUS. Special attention must be put in the possible loops and the mandatory fields. Tasks assignments and future plans for a major automatization in the syncrhonization failures will be explained.

Impact

The SW helpdesk webservices and GGUS are conected since three years. Since then new improvements in both helpdesks provide a solution which is simple and manageable. The solution could be used for other groups of helpdesks that want to be connected without losing their independance.

Keywords

Helpdesk, webservices, syncronization.

Author

Dr Gabriel Amoros (CSIC-IFIC)

Co-authors

Mr Alejandro LAMAS (IFIC-Valencia) Mr Alvaro FERNANDEZ (IFIC-Valencia) Mrs Elena OLIVER (IFIC-Valencia) Dr Farida Fassi (In2p3-Lyon) Mr Javier SANCHEZ (IFIC-Valencia) Dr Jose SALT (IFIC-Valencia) Mr Juan Palacios (IFIC-Valencia) Dr Luis MARCH (UAM-Madrid) Mr Miguel VILLAPLANA (IFIC-Valencia) Dr Mohammed KACI (IFIC-Valencia) Mr Roger Vives (IFIC-Valencia) Dr Santiago GONZALEZ DE LA HOZ (IFIC-Valencia/CERN)

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