Progent Managed Services

Progent's Co-managed Service Desk
Progent's Co-managed Service Desk is designed for organizations with 50 to 500 users and permits your IT staff to divide activity for support services transparently between your internal support team and Progent's extensive pool of IT support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a collaborative IT service system built around ConnectWise Manage, the leading Professional Services Automation tool for administering IT service calls, generating tickets, assigning ownership, tracking status, and producing management analytics. The cost for Level 1 support for Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service averages under $18 per user per month.

Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a seamless extension of your core support organization. End user interaction with the Help Desk, delivery of support services, issue escalation, trouble ticket creation and tracking, performance measurement, and management of the service database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your in-house IT support staff, by Progent's team, or both. All client support calls are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent takes responsibility for the service level or levels you assign (usually Level 1 and Level 3). Initial service calls are assigned either to your internal IT support organization or to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), depending on your preferences. Level 2 or 3 issues can be promoted to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The escalation process is transparent to your users. Your business has unrestricted versatility to extend or shrink your share of IT support work as circumstances demand. Progent takes care of startup deployment and provisioning of the professional services PSA software plus workflow documentation, validation and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) has been providing remote technical assistance for over twenty years and has active clients in each state in the country (refer to Progent's client testimonials.) The TRC provides the team of veteran desktop technicians who can resolve Level 1 issues, which represent the bulk of Help Desk service requests. The Technical Response Center, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation (PSA) platform to automate ticketing, tracking progress, ownership assignment, escalation and reporting. This proven solution prevents issues from being ignored and offers users clear visibility of all services provided. Progent's Technical Response Center is committed to 90% live answer rate and enables Progent's Shared Service Desk program to include a 60-minute service-level agreement (SLA). Support times are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on standard business days. Extended support times and onsite service are available at additional cost. For more details about the TRC, see The TRC Customer Commitment.

Service Levels
Progent offers three distinct levels of online technical support, which correspond to industry-standard Tier 1 through Tier 3 service. You can select which service levels will be handled exclusively or in part by Progent and your in-house resources. The depth and knowledge of Progent's roster of SMEs enables rapid and efficient ticket escalation and makes it possible to rely on Progent as a single source for the majority of IT problems at any service level. In addition, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer permits important support issues to migrate from higher to lower levels as solution workflows become recorded and standardized so they can be performed by less knowledgeable and lower-cost service staff.

Support levels are described as:

• Level 1 Support: Categorizes Help Desk requests and delivers baseline IT help and troubleshooting, like password resets, printer configurations, break/fix instructions, ticket routing and escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 support. A Level 1 tech gathers and analyzes information about the user's issue and determines the best way to resolve the problem. Level 1 support can also provide assistance for identified Level 2 or 3 issues where mitigation solutions have already been recorded.
• Level 2 Support: Generally addresses break/fix, configuration problems, troubleshooting, software deployment, and hardware repair such as on-premises fixes or coordinating depot support. Level 2 support involves escalated issues that Level 1 personnel are not equipped to resolve. Level 2 can sometimes escalate to Level 3, depending on the problem and the manner the Service Desk is structured.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, configuration, database administration, and fixes or updates for OS and applications servers, cloud integration, email, file shares, and common infrastructure issues. In addition to possessing the ability to deploy fixes to novel issues, a Level 3 engineer usually has the most expertise.

This particular deployment of Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service has a 4-stage trouble ticket lifecycle:

1. Your employees generate service requests through the online service portal, a dedicated phone number, or by sending a message to a designated email address. This automatically launches an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center gets the ticket request and decides if it will be serviced or promoted to your in-house Help Desk.
3. Your Service Desk receives the forwarded ticket request and determines the appropriate way to resolve the issue. If needed, your Help Desk can forward the ticket request back to Progent for resolution by Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent receives the revised trouble ticket request, selects the most appropriate subject matter exert from the Experts Team, and tasks the designated SME to collaborate with your IT group until the problem is solved or closed.

Key Features of Progent's Help Desk Service
Important features of Progent's Co-managed Service Desk offerings are:

• Pooled Level 1 help from Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) team
• Level 1 remote help provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, 60 Minute SLA
• Discounted per-hour support rate with per-minute granularity for Tier 1 desktop support for users
• Average price of Level 1 support is approximately $18 montly per user
• Level 2 and Level 3 help from Progent SME provided as an option at Progent's normal consulting rates
• De-escalation permits issues that at first require Level 2 or Level 3 support to move to a lower, less costly Tier once solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT includes a full version of ConnectWise Manage with secure multitenancy

• Available only in the United States and territories
• One-time startup charge dependent on complexity of the solution
• Beginning day one, Progent assigns you a Technical Resource Center (TRC) Coordinator and a TRC Service Lead to resource, appoint and communicate with your service group and your clients. Progent's TRC Service Lead will work closely with you to develop a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate tickets to your service group or de-escalate back to Progent's team of engineers.
• Live Answer of incoming support calls to Progent Technical Response Center with a target of 90% Live Answer of all requests
• After determining whether server or network infrastructure assistance is required, some service requests will be escalated to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All support that needs Level 2 or Level 3 service will be handled by a Progent SME after receiving your approval
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Service is for users and applies to Windows-powered systems and Apple devices
• Progent Level 2 or 3 services will be charged at standard hourly consulting rates
• Progent will provide resources - Technical Response Center desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and 3 as required
• Progent will dedicate a toll-free phone number and email mailbox for incoming service requests
• Free Remote Control app with screen sharing for efficient technical troubleshooting
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management services for network documentation management
• All Level 1 online support is charged at a special desktop hourly rate with per-minute granularity
• All Level 1 service will be performed remotely, no onsite work included
• All on-premises work is billed at standard hourly consulting rates
• All onsite work will have an added fixed charge as well as any specific travel expenses
• All travel expense estimates will be disclosed and require customer approval before work or travel will be undertaken
• Projects and distinct Statements of Work will include their individual estimates and costs stipulated and will be undertaken only after approval by client

Initial Phase

• Build your personalized Service Desk experience, including your internal support group, service locations, and client information
• Progent's consultants will work closely with your support team to review current inbound service requests
• Configure your inbound help request service to incorporate email, software agents, and a dedicated telephone number

• Progent delivers trouble ticket management training for your support team
• Work together to establish basic workflow and ticket escalation procedures
• Integrate all your groups and resources that will provide support services
• Develop the roll-out message and promotion of the new Call Desk environment
• Designate a specific location or small groups to onboard initially
• Integrate more users into the system at determined intervals

• Study reports and system configuration for proper data and processes
• Create any reports or fields needed to improve the detection or tracking of common issues
• Surface pivotal data that could allow a higher resolution rate for Level 1 service requests

• All clients have been introduced to the support desk and can access it
• All relevant user and hardware data is entered into the support system
• You can transfer and manage trouble tickets transparently between your in-house support group and Progent
• You are able to track support performance

• Keep total control over your IT service issues: you choose what trouble tickets are escalated to Progent's support desk or taken care of by your in-house service staff.
• Fast access to supplemental IT support professionals when and if you require them: Progent's professional services PSA software programmatically distributes in-house tickets or permits you manually escalate to Progent's TRC.
• Productivity: Progent's consultants will analyze your inbound support requests and identify missing data that would promote an improved resolution rate for common desktop issues. Progent's IT support experts can also help you with tag management to expedite solutions.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Co-managed Help Desk acts as a seamless supplement to your internal support desk with unified ticketing and documentation so no ticket drops through the seams.
• Happy employees: End users are able to monitor the progress of their IT support requests rapidly and conveniently.
• Management insight: You have the metrics, responsibility assignments, and performance reporting of a modern PSA system to help your organization to build a custom Call Center experience that delivers top business value.
• Focus on your strategic business activities, not IT service requests and disgruntled workers: Your network management personnel avoid being bogged down handling ordinary service requests.

Check Out Progent's White Paper: Is Co-managed IT a Good Idea?
Even though maintaining your own self-sufficient in-house IT services group can prove expensive from the budgetary perspective, many businesses opt for that approach since it provides them greater control over their information system management. Yet did you realize that your business can continue to reap the advantages of a managed IT services firm using the shared IT support strategy. The shared services model allows your company to keep in charge of your IT infrastructure while augmenting your in-house network support staff simply and affordably.

To find out more, check out our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).

Download Progent's Shared Service Desk Datasheet
To download a one-page datasheet in PDF format describing Progent's Co-managed Service Desk, click:
Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)

Progent's ProSight Family of Managed Services
Progent has developed the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to automate vital processes associated with IT administration, cybersecurity and upkeep. These RMM services can be used with Progent's Co-managed Call Desk service by installing agent apps on machines to be monitored and managed. Notifications generated by these software agents can be routed automatically to Progent's Technical Response Center, managed through the ticketing and monitoring platform, and triaged for Level 1, 2 or 3 support.

Samples of ProSight RMM services include:

• ProSight LAN Watch: Network, Server, and Endpoint Monitoring Services
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's network, server, and endpoint monitoring service that uses advanced remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to help keep your network running at peak levels by tracking the health of vital computers that drive your information system. When ProSight LAN Watch detects an issue, an alert is sent immediately to your specified IT staff and your Progent engineering consultant so all looming issues can be resolved before they have a chance to disrupt your network. ProSight LAN Watch is National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant. Find out more about ProSight LAN Watch network, server, and endpoint remote monitoring services.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM Solution for Networks, Servers, and Desktops
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software delivers a centralized, cloud-driven platform for monitoring and managing your network, server, and desktop devices by offering tools for performing common time-consuming tasks. These can include health monitoring, patch management, automated remediation, endpoint setup, backup and restore, anti-virus protection, remote access, standard and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint profile reporting, and troubleshooting support. When ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious issue, it sends an alert to your specified IT management staff and your assigned Progent consultant so potential problems can be fixed before they interfere with your network. Find out more about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  Progent's ProSight WAN Watch is a network infrastructure management service that makes it simple and affordable for smaller businesses to diagram, monitor, optimize and troubleshoot their networking appliances like switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, endpoints and other networked devices. Using cutting-edge Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) technology, WAN Watch ensures that infrastructure topology maps are kept updated, copies and displays the configuration of almost all devices connected to your network, tracks performance, and generates notices when issues are discovered. By automating tedious network management processes, ProSight WAN Watch can knock hours off common chores like making network diagrams, reconfiguring your network, finding appliances that need critical software patches, or isolating performance problems. Learn more about ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure monitoring and management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding family of real-time reporting utilities designed to work with the industry's leading ticketing and network monitoring programs including ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and features color coding to surface and contextualize key issues such as spotty support follow-through or machines with out-of-date AVs. By exposing ticketing or network health concerns concisely and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances productivity, lowers management hassle, and saves money. For details, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring platforms.

• ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS): Managed Backup and Recovery
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup/restore product vendors to produce ProSight Data Protection Services, a selection of management outsourcing plans that deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS). ProSight DPS products automate and track your data backup operations and enable transparent backup and rapid recovery of critical files/folders, apps, images, and VMs. ProSight DPS helps your business protect against data loss caused by hardware failures, natural calamities, fire, cyber attacks such as ransomware, user error, ill-intentioned insiders, or application glitches. Managed services available in the ProSight Data Protection Services product line include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup, ProSight DPS ECHO Backup using Barracuda purpose-built storage, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent expert can assist you to determine which of these managed services are best suited for your IT environment.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering service that uses the infrastructure of leading information security companies to provide web-based control and world-class protection for all your inbound and outbound email. The hybrid structure of Email Guard combines a Cloud Protection Layer with a local gateway appliance to offer complete defense against spam, viruses, Denial of Service Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-borne malware. Email Guard's cloud filter serves as a preliminary barricade and keeps the vast majority of unwanted email from making it to your security perimeter. This reduces your vulnerability to external threats and conserves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises security gateway device provides a further layer of inspection for incoming email. For outbound email, the on-premises security gateway provides AV and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The local security gateway can also assist Exchange Server to monitor and protect internal email that stays within your security perimeter. For more details, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight MFA with Duo: ID Confirmation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Protected Single Sign-on
  Progent's Duo MFA service plans utilize Cisco's Duo technology to defend against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo enables one-tap identity confirmation with Apple iOS, Android, and other personal devices. Using 2FA, when you sign into a protected online account and give your password you are asked to confirm your identity via a device that only you possess and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide range of out-of-band devices can be utilized as this second form of ID validation such as a smartphone or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can designate multiple validation devices. To find out more about Duo two-factor identity validation services, visit Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for access security.

• ProSight Shared Call Desk: Outsourced and Co-managed Call Center Services
  Progent's Shared Service Desk provides a transparent extension of your core network support resources. Client access to the Help Desk, delivery of technical assistance, problem escalation, trouble ticket creation and updates, efficiency measurement, and maintenance of the service database are cohesive regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your internal IT support staff, by Progent's team, or by a combination. Your business has unrestricted versatility to expand or reduce your part of support work as needed. Progent takes care of initial deployment and provisioning of the professional services PSA software as well as workflow documentation, testing and education. For more information about ProSight Shared Help Desk, see ProSight Co-Managed Help Desk.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM): Behavior-based Threat Analysis and Ransomware Protection:
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection service that incorporates cutting edge behavior-based machine learning tools from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoints against new malware attacks such as ransomware and email phishing, which routinely escape traditional signature-matching anti-virus tools. ProSight Active Security Monitoring protects local and cloud-based resources and offers a single platform to manage the entire threat progression including filtering, infiltration detection, containment, remediation, and post-attack forensics. Key features include one-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and automatic system-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware recovery with SentinelOne technology.

• Patch Management: Patch Management Services:
  Progent's support services for software and firmware patch management offer organizations of all sizes a flexible and cost-effective alternative for evaluating, validating, scheduling, implementing, and tracking updates to your dynamic information network. In addition to maximizing the security and functionality of your IT network, Progent's patch management services permit your IT staff to concentrate on more strategic projects and tasks that derive the highest business value from your network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.