User Support

User Support

A well-designed and well-implemented DW/BI system is much easier to use than any alternative, but its still not that easy. The DW/BI team will need to provide ongoing support to its user community. We recommend a three-tiered approach to providing user support. The first tier is the web site and self-service support, the second tier is your power users in business groups, and the third tier is the front-end people on DW/BI team (the BI part of the group ).

Note 

You cant rely on the existing IT Help Desk to provide much support for the DW/BI system users. At best, weve found that Help Desk personnel can help solve connectivity problems. To provide real help, you need to have business users talk to someone who understands the business problems, data content, and front-end tool. Having your users reinstall the software is not going to cut it.

  • Tier 1, the Web Site: Weve already discussed the support- related contents of the web site in the documentation section. Having great content and the tools to find it (navigation, search, and metadata browser) is fundamental to providing support through the web site. You may need to encourage people to take advantage of the resource. It helps to have a brief demo of the web site in every class to show people where to go for help. This could also be turned into one of the cheat sheets we described earlier. Youll still get calls from people who could have easily found the answer themselves but decided it was easier to call you. In these cases, if the answer is on the web site, walk them through the steps to find it. Once they become aware of the help thats available and comfortable with how to find it, theyll be more likely to try to help themselves first.

  • Tier 2: the Expert Users: If someone needs help creating an ad hoc query, or needs a specific report that doesnt already exist, they need to talk to someone with the skills to help. Set the expectation that this initial contact should be with someone who is based in the business, preferably in the persons department. We call this support contact the expert user. The expert user will have strong ad hoc query skills, a deep knowledge of the contents of the DW/BI system, and a sense for the business issues that can only come from working in the business. The key to creating this support structure is setting expectations with senior management and the expert users early on. This role should become part of the expert users job description and performance reviews. They should view themselves as the local pros and should encourage people to ask for help. You need to foster this sense of association with the DW/BI system by treating the expert users well. Weve talked about the various points throughout the process where the experts provide input and guidance. All of this involvement serves to emphasize the importance of their role. You must take the task of nurturing these relationships seriously.

  • Tier 3: the DW/BI Team: When the web site and local experts are unable to solve the problem, the DW/BI team must offer a support resource of last resort. This front-end team actually has responsibilities across all support tiers. They own the BI portal site and must maintain and enhance its content including the BI applications. They own the relationships with and the training of the expert users. And, they provide direct support to the users when needed. This list of responsibilities represents a significant amount of work. Plan to have more people on the DW/BI team dedicated to these front-room tasks than to the back roomin an eight-person DW/BI team, for example, at least four people will be dedicated to front-room responsibilities.

Note 

In some organizations, the BI portion of the DW/BI team gets split off to become its own entity. While there are probably good reasons to do this, we believe the DW/BI system is so closely tied to the business that splitting the two is like what happens when a cartoon character gets cut in half. The bottom half cant see where its going, and the top half has lost its mobility. Its important to dedicate people to the front-end responsibilities, but separating them into their own organization is generally not productive in the long run.

As we described in Chapter 8, the BI applications should be self-supporting, with pulldown menus , pick lists, and help screens. The DW/BI team will need to monitor its usage, maintain them as the data and data structures change, and extend and enhance them as additional data becomes available. Provide a means for users to give feedback on existing BI applications and request new ones.

Many IT organizations began building their DW/BI systems with the goal of letting users create their own reports. The real goal was a bit more self-servingthe IT folks wanted to get off the report generation treadmill. Unfortunately, while this treadmill may slow down a bit, it never goes away. Even though accessing data is easier, the majority of knowledge workers dont have the time or interest to learn how to meet their own information needs from scratch. Often, these people can be found at senior levels in the organization, so meeting their needs is particularly important. The DW/BI team will need to include creating custom reports in its responsibilities list, and to make sure there are resources available to meet the most important requests . The good news is that these custom reports can almost always be turned into (parameterized) standard reports and integrated into the existing BI application set.



Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit. With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset
The MicrosoftВ Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL ServerВ 2005 and the MicrosoftВ Business Intelligence Toolset
ISBN: B000YIVXC2
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 125

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