Implementing Your Help Desk

ImplementingYour Help Desk

White Paper

A Practical Guide

Implementing A Help DeskImplementing a Help Desk may sound either remarkably easy or terribly difficult, depending onwho is pitching the solution. But, the actual process usually lies somewhere between these extremes.

This white paper offers practical advice to help you choose the right Help Desk software for yourorganization, along with step-by-step procedures and timelines for implementing an efficient,productive system.

Beginning with the definition of a Help Desk, we'll walk you through the entire process - fromselecting the software, to implementing the system and taking it live. We'll provide answers to commonquestions about Help Desk systems; key factors to consider when choosing and implementing thesoftware; milestones to meet during the implementation process; and a real-world example of asuccessful Help Desk implementation.

A Help Desk Definition"The Help Desk Glossary", published by the Help Desk Institute, offers the following definition:"The operation that provides technical information to customers and solves technical problems byproviding support and information." The handbook continues: "To increase the productivity ofpeople using information technology in a company, you need to provide an efficient and effectivemeans to answer their questions and solve their problems." It sounds simple, but what lies at theheart of a Help Desk operation is a sophisticated database that contains all the information necessaryto handle call reporting, asset management and problem resolution. In essence, the Help Desk is adatabase.

According to Rene Tenazas, Chief Technology Officer for Datawatch, "This database goes waybeyond just call management. The Help Desk actually becomes a global repository for critical dataand corporate assets - including information about customers, vendors, hardware, software,locations, licenses, networks, warranties, service level agreements, problems and solutions.Thedatabase also identifies the interrelationships among these items."

The Help Desk Timeline

Implementing Your Help Desk: A Practical Guide

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Product Selection System Goes Live

"Implementing a successful Help Desk is 50% planning and selecting the rightvendor/product and 50% implementation."

In addition to being a database, a Help Desk must reflect the workflow of the support organization.This includes details on how calls are assigned, how priorities are handled, how calls are escalatedand how problems are resolved. It must create a realistic framework for quick, effective responsesin every situation.

The business need for an effective Help Desk is compelling, but that's only part of the story. If yourHelp Desk is not providing effective, efficient solutions to problems, you're sacrificing productivityand increasing your cost of doing business.

ImplementationA successful Help Desk implementation demands careful strategic planning. You must establish aclear methodology for designing and populating the database. Both the knowledge of yourorganization's top management and the experience and knowledge that comes with your Help Deskvendor are important here.

"Implementing a successful Help Desk is 50% planning and selecting the right vendor/product, and50% implementation," according to Tenazas. "Both require very careful consideration."

The implementation process should include the following phases and steps to accurately reflect thenature of the Help Desk system you wish to create: define the requirements, assess the products andvendors, formulate the project plan, install the software and load the database, test the system, trainthe staff, run the pilot program, and deploy and refine the system.

Phase 1 - Define RequirementsAsking The Right Questions

In his book "Managing Software Support", Bill Rose suggests that the key to managing softwaresupport effectively involves thorough planning before you begin "fighting fires". The idea is to planwell in advance of actually investing in big ticket items. Key planning areas include:manpower, facilities and tools.


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Helpful Questions For Phase 1On average, how many service calls are answered each day by your current support organization?Do you have a list of all computer equipment with current configurations?How many calls are bypassing the support center altogether and are handled informally? Atwhat cost?Do you know how to get accurate real-time data when you need it?Are incoming requests routed to the appropriate personnel right away, or is time beingwasted as requests get bounced from person to person?Do you have an effective system in place for your lower level technicians to leverage theknowledge of your higher level experts?Are you encouraging your customers to help themselves with user friendly and efficientmethods?Is there a way you can leverage your existing infrastructure and expertise to implement a newhelp desk system?What payback do you expect from a Help Desk investment? Over what period of time? Howwould you want a vendor to demonstrate that such a payback had actually occurred?

Most Help Desks have many of the same objectives that are discussed in "The Help DeskHandbook". These objectives include the need to: serve the customer community, resolve problems,improve the productivity of the customer community, manage change, and measure its ownactivities and effectiveness.

Setting the objectives for your Help Desk is part of Phase 1. In addition to defining requirementsbased on your organization's needs, you'll also need to identify hardware, software and callhandling tools according to their ability to meet your specific requirements.

Jonathan Clark, Datawatch consultant, has experienced numerous examples where individualswould select a product to handle Help Desk activities and walk directly into trouble - simply becausethey did not preplan, involve senior management or the Help Desk vendor, or ask the right questionsabout their own support needs. "Once you understand that the Help Desk and the software thathelps to run it are two different things, you're already half way to a successful implementation,"Clark points out. "Installing the software does not mean that all your Help Desk problems willinstantly be solved; it just means that you now have a tool that, with proper planning andimplementation, can provide a viable solution."

Phase 2 - Assess Products and VendorsIn a recent PC Magazine article, five criteria for evaluating Help Desk software were offered:1. problem management, 2. asset tracking, 3. knowledge capture, 4. reporting, and5. technology interfaces. These criteria are the basic elements that any Help Desk software shouldoffer to be seriously considered.


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1. Problem ManagementProblem management is the most important and measurable Help Desk feature. Problemmanagement should include: problem logging; problem identification; call assignments; trackingproblems to resolution; alerting personnel if a call is taking too long; elevating a call's status to ahigher priority; and problem diagnosis.

One particularly useful feature is the ability to simultaneously track issues handled by your internalsupport team as well as issues escalated to external third party support partners. With this featureyou can provide a single point of contact and can ensure that you're meeting your customers'expectations and your support partners are also living up to their agreements with you.

A good problem manager, however, is more than the sum of its parts. What's most important ishow all the Help Desk functions work together and how they are presented to the user. Is theinterface intuitive, graphical and easy-to-use? Is the informationpresented in a logical way? Canthe user click on an item (caller name, hardware item, etc.) and see multiple levels of detail? Canthe product be configured easily to accommodate different call-resolution processes?

2. Asset ManagementAsset management is important for two reasons. First, it allows Help Desk personnel to solveproblems by providing accurate, up-to-date information on the caller's environment. Second, itserves as a library of information about your organization's asset base. According to CharLaBounty, Director of Membership Services for the Help Desk Institute, "Often, a Help Deskproduct with good asset management pays for itself simply by putting a real dollar value on acompany's current inventory of computer hardware, software and networking possessions."Asset management looks at such items as hardware and software configurations, softwarelicenses, LANs and LAN addresses, and warranties. A good asset management featureshould help organizations:

collect asset information with minimal effort (perhaps by using automated data collectionsoftware, for example NetCensusTM from Tally Systems Corporation);

minimize the number of unnecessary purchased software licenses;

minimize the number of unnecessary purchased software licenses;


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enforce equipment policies regarding approved vendors, configurations, software revisions,suppliers, etc.;

maintain equipment warranties;

schedule maintenance and upgrades

Good asset management allows companies to make vital decisions based on accurate informationabout their possessions, for example, who's using the assets and how are they being used.Answers to key questions will help provide important details about your organization's futureasset planning.

For example, how many PCs are there in the company? With what CPUs? What memory? Diskcapacity? What applications are they running and at what revision levels? What warranties arescheduled to expire and when? How many users are connected to the server? All this informationhas an immediate, dramatic influence on your organization, and can easily become an invaluableresource for future asset planning.

3. Knowledge CaptureOften overlooked, knowledge capture is the "secret weapon" that makes the difference betweena system that merely logs calls and one that really leverages the skills of the people who use it. It'salso an area that pays big dividends with little up-front investment in user training and problemassessment. "You'd be surprised," says Clark, "how many Help Desks finish a successful call justby writing the words 'problem solved' in the call comments section. That isn't much help for thenext person facing the same problem." When using Datawatch’s Visual|Help Desk software,support technicians are prompted to add their resolution to the knowledgebase, which then getssent for approval before it is actually submitted. This way, technicians are urged to describecomplete fixes in their resolution, and help desk management has the final say on which itemswill be most useful in the future. The next time a user calls up and identifies the same problem,the technician will have this resolution at their fingertips in order to resolve the issue immediately.

Help Desk software should encourage self-learning by prompting users for solution-typeinformation after the problem is resolved. This way the solution is captured for others who mightencounter a similar problem in the future. "You can't give everyone enough training in Excel andOutlook to achieve a 24-hour, 75% fix rate," Clark says. "Nor can most companies afford to hireenough specialized talent. Self-learning allows lower-skilled people to do the jobs of their higher-skilled/paid colleagues."

Knowledge capture also gives Help Desk staff the ammunition they need to fix bigger problems.For example, is there an overall pattern of failure by hardware type, software, department, serviceprovider, or customer? Does the customer who complains the loudest have a legitimate point?Is the Help Desk really overworked?


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The Symposium Proceedings from the Gartner Group, a leading computer industry consultingfirm, indicate that "Users need to be informed on an ongoing basis about exactly how the HelpDesk is helping them. Often, when a Help Desk is operating efficiently, customers don't appreciatehow much they have been shielded from complexity and lost productivity. As a result, we feel thatthe Help Desk must, on a regular basis, remind users of its accomplishments." In that regard, it isuseful for the software to include a standard call feature that makes it easy to register even thesimplest calls.

Additionally, the Help Desk should include the ability to tap into commercial knowledge bases.Knowledge bases act as a "repair manual" and add an additional layer of expertise to the HelpDesk. For example, Visual|Help Desk from Datawatch allows a Help Desk to access externalknowledge bases from within V|HD. While working in a ticket, Technicians can search both theirproprietary knowledgebase or content from RightAnswers, an on-line knowledge base thatprovides problem solving information and Help Desk resources for a variety of popular softwareapplications and operating systems. These external knowledge bases can be used to handleand resolve calls quickly at the first level.

Helpful Questions For Phase 2

What do you want to do? Manage calls? Track assets? Both?What kinds of assets do you want to track? Hardware? Software? Warranties? Licenses?User data? User applications? Other?Are assets currently audited? How?How are trouble calls currently handled?How would you change this process?Who is involved in trouble resolution? What are their roles/tasks?What subject(s) would you use to describe typical problems, e.g. PC hardware, keyboard,

hardware error, etc.?What resolution types do you currently, or would you use?What customer information do you want displayed on screen after you enter the customer's name?What kinds of information would you want available (and reportable) on look-up tables? For example, resolutions, call types, error codes...? What alerts do you want active? Do you need a crisis response group and procedure?What features do you want mail enabled? Trouble call-in, client status updates?What metrics do you want to use to measure quality of service? Number of calls handled? Mean-time resolution? Number of calls unresolved after 24 hours? Longest lifespan? Calls closed on FirstContact?What features do you want to integrate from external applications? Commercial knowledge-bases? Network management systems?


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4. ReportsTop management needs tools for monitoring Help Desk activity and results, especially when their jobrequires assessing the need for additional Help Desk resources. A Help Desk should includeeasy-to-understand, pre-formatted reports for common applications (for example, a report thatclearly lists all calls that were handled over a certain time period). It should also allow users toconfigure their own reports for unique information demands that they're likely to face in specificsituations (for example, a report that lists all calls with the same resolution, for company VIPs, or allcalls that were not resolved within time limits set by the SLAs).

These reports equip management with the information they need to move service and support froma reactive to a proactive role. Trend and cost analysis can also help streamline the Help Deskoperation. With a full range of standard and custom reports, management can achieve significantROI (Return On Investment).

5. Technology InterfacesThe last item on the PC Magazine checklist concerns how the Help Desk ties into otherapplications that can facilitate customer support, such as e-mail, paging, PDA devices and FAXservices. Users should be able to log calls from their PCs, without picking up the telephone. Also,the software should allow the user to notify callers automatically when there is a significant changein the call status. The Help Desk software should provide its own e-mail functions to pass callsregardless of what email client your technicians are using. The email should contain a link to theticket which can launch the help desk client or preferably provide web browser access to thehelp desk ticket.

Help Desk and Customer Support experts recognize that for a Help Desk to be truly robust, thesoftware must meet three additional criteria: 6. change management; 7. Service Level Agreement(SLA) management; and 8. purchasing management.

6. Change ManagementAs the first to know about changes and their effects, the Help Desk staff should be the focus forcoordinating changes in hardware and software to ensure a smooth transition for customers. HelpDesk staff can communicate information to customers regarding known problems, upcomingchanges, educational opportunities and methods of improving productivity. The Help Desk softwareshould be the repository for all system information that can affect customer performance, such asenhancements and upgrades. In this role, the Help Desk staff can act as the customer liaison,reviewing and assessing proposed changes before problems occur.

7. SLA ManagementA good Help Desk system provides customers with a clear understanding of how to use the HelpDesk and what service they can expect. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are an efficient method for


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accomplishing these goals. According to "The Help Desk Handbook" some companies reportsavings from 5% to 40%, simply by establishing and managing service agreements. According toLaBounty at the Help Desk Institute, key attributes of a successful SLA are:

define products and services provided;establish a manner in which they will be delivered;establish quality standards to be achieved;provide measurement criteria;establish reporting criteria; andnegotiate and accept cost of delivery.

The "Help Desk Handbook" points out that SLAs should include information on all assets, locations,departments and individuals, as well as:

Help Desk hours;typical response times;typical times for average and maximum resolution; andproblem escalation guidelines and procedures.

SLAs can be informal agreements or formal contracts, often depending on whether you haveinternal or external agreements. The Help Desk software must be capable of handling SLAs andupdating agreements as events occur. It should also be able to handle multi-level SLAs. For example,service calls referring to third-party vendors should be managed to meet the user's expectedresponse level.

8. Purchasing ManagementFinally, Help Desk software should provide the organization with a way to manage purchasesbased on real usage figures for hardware, software, peripherals, networks (any possible asset thatcan be added to the system). In addition, the purchasing functions should be closely integratedwith the Help Desk asset database. For example, with Visual Help Desk, both purchasingand asset management are integrated within the core system. When the only way to resolve atrouble ticket is to procure an item, your IT support team should be able to convert the help requestinto a purchase requisition. The software should also help manage purchases through an orderly andwellmanaged purchasing workflow, where all aspects of the purchase process are automaticallyrouted to the proper individuals for approval. Visual|Purchase Requisition is a workflow tool availablewith Visual|Help Desk and can be used to establish procedures for request tracking, suppliermanagement, and inventory updating and control.

According to members of the Help Desk Institute, one common mistake in selecting Help Desksoftware is to purchase a system that is too simple. You may end up paying severely in lost time andproductivity as you outgrow the system. In the long run, it is better to purchase an integrated systemthat is robust and feature rich - one that can easily keep up as your organization grows and changes.

From among the many choices of Help Desk products on the market today, you will probablyidentify a few products that can meet your organization's needs. The decision then becomes one ofselecting the right vendor. Consider these points: Is your vendor going to be there to help you assessyour needs? Will your vendor help you identify the database information that must be captured andentered into the system? Will your vendor help you through every step of system implementation?Does your vendor have knowledgeable on-staff consultants available to support you and yourcustomers? Does your vendor have a consistent industry track record so you know they will bearound long enough to provide assistance even after the product is "out of the box"?

The vendor you select must commit to being involved from the planning stages through installation,database creation, deployment, pilot testing, launches, and ongoing assessment and fine-tuning."If a vendor tells you that their product is the answer to all your problems," says LaBounty, "thenI would ask them to describe their implementation strategy for your company. Usually it's thevendors who claim that the customers can do it all by themselves whose products become shelfware40 to 50% of the time. Instead, it's the vendors who work to understand your specific situation,and assist in the implementation planning process, who will be successful."

Phase 3 - Formalize Project PlanDuring this stage, the vendor should interview key individuals in your organization and gather thenecessary information to configure the software to fit your needs. If you have selectedthe right vendor solution 95% of the desired functionality should be covered within theconfiguration controls. In addition, the vendor should review the software features and determinethe steps necessary to move from planning to implementations.

The planning stage should involve:identifying and selecting project team members with a buy-off from management;assessing the organization's requirements, including a plan for interviewing/gathering

information from key individuals;configuring the database and knowledge bases;identifying systems for handling and prioritizing calls; andidentifying SLAs/performance agreements.


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Once you've completed the planning stage, you should have a solid understanding of how theorganization will use the software. This is the time to raise any issues or questions that may havebeen missed in pre-planning. At this stage the team should also consider staffing and callhandling loads. By using customer service models as a guide (based on existing supportmechanisms), you can estimate call traffic and plan your staffing needs.

The Help Desk As A Strategic AssetHow can an efficient Help Desk benefit a company? According to the Gartner Group, a leadingcomputer industry consulting firm, the total costs of owning a PC is over $42,000 in the first fiveyears -- most of it is in support -related costs. Many of these costs are hidden -- everything fromunused software licenses and unenforced service warranties to productivity losses resulting fromcomputer or network downtime. Here are some of the ways a Help Desk can control the hiddencosts:

Unused software licenses. With an efficient Help Desk that accurately records and tracks assets, companies no longer have to buy more licenses than necessary just because they don't know how many they have.

Unenforced service warranties. Companies often don't realize when they are billed for services that they should receive under warranty. In addition, they also have no idea if the service provider is actually living up to the SLA. The Help Desk keeps track of all thisinformation.

Unaccounted assets. A good Help Desk is a repository for all the essential data about every computing asset in the company: where it is, how much it cost, how long has it been in use, how it is configured, etc. With accurate data, the Help Desk can be the source of informationon usage, trends, complaints, costs and more. The Help Desk provides the edge in making intelligent decisions about assets.

Lost business. Service is the big differentiator. The Help Desk not only enables the group to provide their customers with better service, It also limits downtime and faulty support to the customer service organization itself.

The Gartner Group estimates that a $50,000 to $500,000 investment in Help Desk automation can save a company with 2,000 PCs over $200,000 annually

Phase 4 - Install Software and Load DataHere's where the Help Desk database is populated. The captured data can be entered, eithermanually or electronically, from other systems or records. For example, Datawatch provides a jumpstart service that will populate Visual|Help Desk with:

Open Tickets from your previous SystemOn going synchronization with corporate employee data


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Knowledge documents from internal or external resources Asset data from network discovery tools or manual tracking database

As daunting as this might seem, you don't have to complete all of these steps before your HelpDesk is functional. The software product you choose should allow your Help Desk to beginassisting customers quickly. Keep in mind, however, while you get up and running quickly, you'llneed to invest some time to take full advantage of all that the software can offer.

Once the data is loaded, the project team can be trained on maintenance routines, reportgeneration, and setup of standard reports. At this time, you can further customize the software toadd knowledge tools, default allocation and assignments, and call subject information. You canalso add call variables including subjects, escalation steps and resolution types, and priorities basedon organizational policies and SLAs.

Phase 5 - Test the SystemFor this phase, you should use a small sample of customers to test your environment. Take sometime to log and manage calls from these customers, making minor changes along the way toensure that the system is working according to plan. Once the software is running successfully,you can use the test data to produce sample reports. At this point, you are one step away from alive pilot test.

Phase 6 - Train StaffTraining usually occurs at three levels: Help Desk staff learn to use the system; Help Deskcustomers learn how to get help; and the system itself learns about the organization as calls arelogged and new statistics and data are added.

Help Desk staff are trained on the following tasks:Create and Modify Help RequestsConvert End User Requests or email into RequestCreate Quick CallsFind existing help requests using views and searchUnderstand action buttonsRe-assign and escalating ticketsUpdate end-user information


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Phase 7 - Run Pilot ProgramOnce the Help Desk staff is trained, the system is ready for a pilot test. During this period, theHelp Desk should operate as close to "live" as possible, creating as many situations and callsamples as necessary to exercise both the system and the staff.This is the time to make your final changes and adjustments. After one to two days of testing, thesystem should be ready to go live.

Phase 8 - Deploy and RefineOne of the value-added features of a good Help Desk system and a long-term vendor partnershipis system refinement. As the system users become experienced they develop new insights. Theyfinetune reporting and analysis functions to ensure that management is receiving the necessaryquantity and quality of information. As long as your software has the ability to grow and evolve tomeet your changing requirements, it will continue to provide tangible benefits to yourorganization. (See sidebar: The Help Desk As A Strategic Asset.)

The timeline presented in this white paper allows for a "reasonable period" to accomplish all therequirements for implementing a successful Help Desk. For an example of how one large companywas able to compress the entire implementation process effectively, see the following: "Diary of AHelp Desk Implementation".

Datawatch is internationally recognized as experienced Help Desk software vendors. Datawatch'sVisual|QSM and Visual|Help Desk are flexible and powerful Help Desk tools used by hundreds oforganizations to support their internal and external customers. For more information callDatawatch at 800-445-3311 or in Europe at 44 (0) 1923 432 711 or go to datawatch.com.

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Help Desk Case Study: Ingersoll-Rand

Ingersoll-Rand is a diversified manufacturer with over 40,000 employees globally, $9 billion in annualsales, and a leadership position across numerous markets with trusted, well-known brand names:Bobcat loaders, Schlage locks, Thermo King refrigerated trucks and trailers, and many more. It is upto Ingersoll-Rand’s Global Business Services Business unit (GBS), based in Huntersville, NC, toprovide shared employee, finance and information technology related services for virtually all businessunits within the company.

Previously, the overhead costs to provide these crucial services were unacceptably high, leadingGBS to find a solution to improve service and cut unnecessary costs. “Until recently, we relied on anexpensive help desk application and a classic manned call center to handle service requests,” saysMarcel Berkhout, Technology Engagement Leader for Ingersoll-Rand’s GBS. “However, we recentlyswitched from our old help desk application and call center to Visual|Help Desk (Visual|HD).

“Thanks to Visual|HD’s unique capabilities, we no longer need to operate a manned call center. Thecost savings and business benefits since migrating to Visual|HD have been simply remarkable:Visual|HD has reduced our cost of routing a service request to only 1% of the cost of our old callcenter structure!

WEB-ENABLED VISUAL|HD “ACCOMPLISHES MORE FOR LESS”

Originally, Marcel envisioned that GBS would use Visual|HD for internal use within Ingersoll-Rand’sHuntersville, NC facility only. It soon became clear that Visual|HD would be highly effective to addressthe incoming calls from other business units as well. “Basically, GBS provides employees in Ingersoll-Rand’s other business units with ‘level two’ help desk support, not only for IT assistance, but also forother needs, such as payroll, benefits or pension-related issues,” Marcel explains. “Each Ingersoll-Rand business unit has its own local help desk. If a particular issue cannot be resolved at thebusiness unit level, the business unit will contact us for help. Typically, that contact was in the form of a phone call or e-mail, fielded by our manned call center, in addition to help requests within theHuntersville, NC facility itself. The manned call center spent a lot of its time simply transferringpeople to the right department. Meanwhile, our previous help desk application was used simply tokeep track of all open help desk tickets. Between our expensive help desk application and our callcenter, responding to help requests was very resource-intensive.

“The missing ingredient was a system to allow us to move to a solid self-service method to addressour non-urgent service-related service needs,” Marcel adds. “That requires a solution that is completely web-enabled, but our past help desk vendors simply did not have its web enabled capabilitiesworking reliably or simply enough for our needs.

“Visual|HD, in contrast, truly shines as a completely web-enabled solution, with a very powerful web self-service module. We also selected Visual|HD’s optional Third Party Support (TPS) module, allowing Visual|HD to transmit call ticket data in XML, to easilycommunicate with outside entities, such as vendors, for help in resolving certain issues.


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“As a result of Visual|HD’s complete web-enablement and its self-service and TPS modules, wehave been able to use Visual|HD well beyond traditional help desk software tasks. We have hadgreat success extending Visual|HD as a call center application,” says Marcel.

VISUAL|HD’S LOW COST, SUPERIOR FUNCTIONALITY EXPANDS TO OTHER BUSINESS UNITSThe costs related to replacing Ingersoll-Rand’s GBS help desk application with Visual|HD was a “no-brainer” when considering cost. “Surprisingly, Visual|HD’s software cost was a fraction of our initialinvestment in our old help desk application,” Marcel says. “In fact, the cost to acquire Visual|HDwas less than our old help desk application’s annual maintenance fees! Between Visual|HD’s superiorweb-based self service capabilities and cost savings, the decision to run with Visual|HD was an easyone.”

VISUAL|HD IS A HELP DESK AND ESUPPORT SOLUTION IN ONEVisual|HD has helped Ingersoll-Rand reap the benefits of web-enabled help desk and self-service.“We process over 70,000 requests per year with Visual|HD,” says Marcel. “Approximately 65% ofour support calls are now recorded using Visual|HD’s web-based self-service, and continues toincrease.

“Datawatch has delivered to Ingersoll-Rand a web-based solution in Visual|HD that goes beyondtraditional help desk to include strong self-service ‘eSupport’ capabilities as well,” Marcel concludes.“Visual|HD has saved us substantial time and money, while extending our ability to respond moreeffectively to employee requests.”

This document is the property of Datawatch Corporation. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this documentmay be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of DatawatchCorporation.

Datawatch may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subjectmatter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Datawatch, the furnishing of thisdocument does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

© 2005 Datawatch Corporation. All rights reserved.

Datawatch, Visual|HD and Visual|QSM are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Datawatch Corporation in the U.S.A.and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Datawatch Corporation175 Cabot Street, Suite 503, Lowell, MA 01854

Tel: 978-441-2200, Fax: 978-441-1114www.datawatch.com

1-800-445-3311

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Implementing Your Help Desk