University Information Services (UIS) is adopting a new tool to help us give you a better experience when asking for IT support, requesting IT services or reporting problems.
Our new IT Service Management (ITSM) tool, provided by Halo ITSM, will be used by all the support teams at UIS, who support the University’s central IT services, and by several other departmental helpdesks that share our current service desk tool. Halo ITSM makes it much easier for helpdesk teams to work behind the scenes.
We’ll start transitioning support teams to the new ITSM tool from Wednesday, 2 July. UIS teams will switch over on 2 July, with other departmental helpdesks following over the following few days. We’re doing this team-by-team so that we can be sure each cutover goes smoothly.
How this benefits you
There are also some major improvements for everyone seeking technical support:
Modern self-service portal
The new self-service portal will be your first place to go for IT support. It gives you a much better user experience. You can search the knowledge base to find solutions to common problems, so you may not need to raise a ticket.
If you do need to raise a ticket, the new form ensures we’ll have all the information we’ll need from you at the outset. This will help us resolve your issue faster.
The new tool is integrated with Teams, so we can use chat and video calls to assist you in real time, rather than relying on a slow chain of emails. You can still email helpdesks directly, although using the portal is recommended for the quickest resolution.
The 24/7 Live Chat service on the UIS Help website homepage will remain. This gives you access to human support agents all day, every day.
IT service status alerts on the new portal
In future, the new tool will replace our current IT service status (ITSS) alerting service. You’ll be able to see advance notice of planned maintenance and alerts of any ongoing IT incidents on the homepage of the self-service portal. You’ll be able to subscribe to email alerts for the services and systems you use if you want to get updates in your inbox.
Helpdesks moving to the new tool
June 2025 (early adopters)
- Estate Management
- Fitzwilliam College (sharing the University's central tenancy)
- MCMS
- UIS's ITSM Support and Telecoms Helpdesk teams
July 2025
- UIS (the University’s central IT services)
Also, the following non-UIS helpdesks:
- Department of Geography
- Finance Division
- Health, Safety and Regulated Services
- Human Resources
- InfoHub (BISI)
- Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
- Research Office
- Training
September 2025
- Amicus (CUDAR)
Further communications
There will be more communications about how to access and use the new portal leading up to the launch date. We will also provide helpdesk managers and departments with communications to cascade locally prior to launch.