Computer Help for Small Businesses

Progent's Co-managed Service Desk
Progent's Co-managed Service Desk allows your IT group to divide activity for Service Desk support seamlessly between your internal network support group and Progent's nationwide pool of certified IT support technicians, engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a joint IT support solution based on ConnectWise Manage, the industry-leading Professional Services Automation platform for administering IT service calls, generating trouble tickets, assigning responsibility, tracking status, and producing management reports. The price for Level 1 support for Progent's Shared Help Desk service averages less than $18/user/month.

Progent's Co-managed Service Desk provides a transparent extension of your in-house support group. End user interaction with the Help Desk, delivery of support services, escalation, trouble ticket generation and tracking, efficiency measurement, and maintenance of the support database are consistent regardless of whether incidents are resolved by your corporate support group, by Progent's team, or by a combination. All end-user service requests are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 issues. Progent focuses on the support level or levels you select (typically Levels 1 and 3). Original service requests are routed either to your in-house support resources or to Progent's Technical Response Center, based on your instructions. Level 2 or 3 issues can be escalated to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The assignment activity is transparent to your clients. You have unrestricted versatility to extend or shrink your part of technical support activity as circumstances demand. Progent provides initial deployment and provisioning of the professional services automation software plus workflow documentation, validation and education.

Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC)
Progent's Technical Response Center has been providing online technical help for more than two decades and has active customers in each state in the country (refer to Progent's customer testimonials.) The TRC provides the team of seasoned desktop technicians who can resolve Level 1 tickets, which make up the majority of Help Desk service requests. The Technical Response Center, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation (PSA) platform to streamline ticketing, tracking, responsibility delegation, problem escalation and management reporting. This keeps issues from falling through the cracks and gives clients continual understanding about all support services delivered. Progent's Technical Response Center targets 90% live answer performance and enables Progent's Co-managed Service Desk Services to include a 60-minute service-level agreement. Support hours are 5am to 7pm PST on standard work days. Extended support times and on-premises service are available at additional cost. To learn more about the TRC, refer to Progent's TRC Customer Commitment.

Definition of Service Levels
Progent provides three levels of online technical service, which correspond to industry-standard Tier 1 to Tier 3 support. You can pick which service levels will be handled wholly or in part by Progent's support team and your internal staff. The size and technical breadth of Progent's team of subject matter experts allows rapid and efficient ticket escalation and makes it possible to rely on Progent as a one-stop source for the majority of support problems at any Tier. In addition, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer allows key service issues to move from higher to lower Tiers as solution workflows become recorded and standardized so they can be performed by less skilled and less expensive service staff.

Service levels are defined as:

• Level 1 Support: Filters Service Desk requests and delivers basic IT support and debugging, 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 service can also include support for familiar Level 2 and 3 issues where mitigation solutions have already been documented.
• Level 2 Support: Primarily addresses break/fix, setup problems, debugging, application or OS deployment, and hardware fixes including on-premises repair or orchestrating depot services. Level 2 support deals with promoted problems that Level 1 support is not equipped to handle. Level 2 service will sometimes migrate to Level 3, based on the issue and the manner the Help Desk operates.
• Level 3 Support: Troubleshooting, setup, database administration, and migrations for server, hybrid networks, messaging, file shares, and various infrastructure problems. Besides possessing the capability to deploy fixes to new issues, a Level 3 consultant usually has the most experience.

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

1. Your employees initiate service requests through the browser-based support, a dedicated telephone number, or simply by sending a message to a dedicated email address. This automatically becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center receives the open request and determines if it will be handles or escalated to your in-house Help Desk.
3. Your Help Desk receives the escalated ticket request and determines the proper way to resolve the problem. If needed, your Service Desk can in turn promote the open request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent receives the revised ticket request, selects the most appropriate subject matter exert from the Experts Team, and tasks the chosen subject matter exert to co-operate with your IT staff until the problem is fixed or closed.

Highlights of Progent's Service Desk
Important aspects of Progent's Co-managed Call Desk offerings are:

• Pooled Level 1 help from Progent's Technical Response Center team
• Desktop remote support provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, One-hour SLA
• Discounted hourly rate and one-minute granularity for Tier 1 desktop support for clients
• Average price of Level 1 service is approximately $18 per user per month
• Level 2 and Level 3 support from Progent subject matter expert available as an option at Progent's standard consulting rates
• De-escalation allows problems that initially call for Level 2 or 3 expertise to migrate to a lower, less costly Level once solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT provides a full version of ConnectWise service desk software with multi-tenant security

• Available only in the United States and US territories
• One-time startup charge based on complexity of the deployment
• Starting the first day, 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 users. The TRC Service Lead will work closely with you to develop a What Goes Where document to help transparently escalate tickets to your team or de-escalate back to Progent's support engineers.
• Live Answer of inbound support calls to Progent Technical Response Center (TRC) with a target of 90% Live Answer of all requests
• After determining whether server or network infrastructure support is needed, some requests will be passed to Level 2 or 3 support
• All support that needs Level 2 or Level 3 service will be worked on by a Progent SME pending client authorization
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Support is for your client users and covers Windows-based computers and Apple devices
• Progent Level 2 or Level 3 services will be charged at regular hourly consulting rates
• Progent will provide resources - Technical Response Center (TRC) desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and Level 3 as required
• Progent will dedicate a phone number and email mailbox for incoming support calls
• Free Remote Control software with screen sharing for efficient IT troubleshooting
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management system for cloud-based network documentation management
• All Level 1 remote service is charged at a discounted desktop hourly rate with one-minute granularity
• All Level 1 support will be performed remotely, no on-premises work included
• All onsite work will be invoiced at standard consulting rates
• All on-premises work will have an additional fixed charge plus any specific travel expenses
• All travel cost projections will be disclosed and need customer agreement before support services or travel will be performed
• Projects and separate Statements of Work (SoWs) will include their own estimates and costs stipulated and will be performed only after authorization by customer

Initial Steps

• Create your custom Help Desk experience, including your in-house team, service locations, and client information
• Progent will work with your service group to review current inbound support calls
• Set up your inbound support request service to incorporate a mailbox, software agents, and a dedicated phone number

• Progent provides trouble ticket management training for your support group
• Work together to create core workflow and escalation procedures
• Integrate all your groups and resources that will deliver support services
• Develop the introduction description and promotion of the new Help Desk solution
• Designate a specific location or manageably-sized groups to onboard first
• Bring additional groups of users into the solution at determined intervals

• Review reports and system configuration for efficient data and workflow
• Add additional reports or fields needed to enhance the identification or monitoring of common IT problems
• Surface missing data that could allow a better success percentage for Level 1 service calls

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

• Keep total control over your IT support issues: you choose what tickets are forwarded to Progent's support desk or taken care of by your in-house service staff.
• Immediate availability of additional IT support professionals when you require them: Progent's professional services automation software automatically distributes internal tickets or permits you manually forward to Progent's Technical Response Center.
• Efficiency: Progent's Call Desk experts will review your current incoming service requests and propose additional data that would promote a higher success rate for common Level 1 issues. Progent's Call Desk experts can also help you with tag management to speed up solutions.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Co-managed Service Desk works as a seamless supplement to your internal support desk with centralized ticketing and reporting so no ticket falls through the seams.
• Contented workers: End users are able to track the status of their IT service calls rapidly and easily.
• Management analytics: You have the measurements, responsibility assignments, and activity monitoring of an advanced PSA platform to help you to build a custom-designed Call Center environment that delivers top business value.
• Concentrate on your core business initiatives, not IT support requests and disgruntled end-users: Your network managers escape being bogged down handling ordinary service requests.

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

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

Progent's ProSight Line of Managed Services
Progent has packaged the ProSight family of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to automate vital processes associated with IT management, security and maintenance. Any of these services can be used with Progent's Co-managed Call Desk service by deploying agent apps on computers to be monitored and managed. Alerts sent by these agents can be routed directly to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), managed through the ticketing and tracking system, and triaged for Level 1, 2 or 3 treatment.

Samples of ProSight RMM services include:

• ProSight LAN Watch: Network, Server, and Endpoint Remote Monitoring
  ProSight LAN Watch is Progent's network, server, and endpoint remote monitoring managed service that uses advanced remote monitoring and management (RMM) techniques to keep your IT system running at peak levels by tracking the health of vital assets that drive your business network. When ProSight LAN Watch uncovers a problem, an alert is sent automatically to your designated IT personnel and your Progent consultant so all looming issues can be addressed before they have a chance to disrupt your network. ProSight LAN Watch is National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant. Find out more details about ProSight LAN Watch network, server, and endpoint remote monitoring services.

• ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM: Unified RMM for Networks, Servers, and Workstations
  ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM software offers a centralized, cloud-driven solution for monitoring and managing your network, server, and desktop devices by providing an environment for performing common tedious tasks. These include health checking, patch management, automated remediation, endpoint deployment, backup and recovery, A/V protection, secure remote access, built-in and custom scripts, asset inventory, endpoint status reports, and debugging help. If ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM spots a serious incident, it sends an alarm to your specified IT management personnel and your Progent technical consultant so that potential problems can be taken care of before they impact productivity. Learn more details about ProSight LAN Watch with NinjaOne RMM server and desktop remote monitoring consulting.

• ProSight WAN Watch: Network Infrastructure Remote Monitoring and Management
  ProSight WAN Watch is an infrastructure management service that makes it easy and affordable for small and mid-sized businesses to map, monitor, reconfigure and troubleshoot their connectivity appliances such as routers and switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers plus servers, endpoints and other devices. Incorporating state-of-the-art Remote Monitoring and Management technology, ProSight WAN Watch makes sure that network maps are kept updated, copies and manages the configuration of almost all devices connected to your network, monitors performance, and generates notices when issues are detected. By automating complex management and troubleshooting activities, WAN Watch can knock hours off common chores such as network mapping, expanding your network, finding appliances that need critical software patches, or isolating performance issues. Learn more about ProSight WAN Watch network infrastructure management services.

• ProSight Reporting: Real-time and In-depth Reporting for Ticketing and Network Monitoring Platforms
  ProSight Reporting is an expanding suite of real-time and in-depth management reporting tools created to integrate with the industry's top ticketing and network monitoring applications such as ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, Customer Thermometer, Auvik, and SentinelOne. ProSight Reporting incorporates Microsoft Graph and features color coding to highlight and contextualize key issues such as inconsistent support follow-through or machines with missing patches. By exposing ticketing or network health concerns clearly and in near-real time, ProSight Reporting enhances network value, reduces management hassle, and saves money. For details, visit ProSight Reporting for ticketing and network monitoring applications.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Managed Backup and Recovery
  Progent has worked with leading backup/restore product companies to produce ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a portfolio of subscription-based management offerings that deliver backup-as-a-service. ProSight DPS products manage and monitor your backup processes and allow non-disruptive backup and rapid restoration of vital files, applications, images, plus VMs. ProSight DPS helps you recover from data loss caused by hardware breakdown, natural calamities, fire, malware such as ransomware, human mistakes, ill-intentioned insiders, or software bugs. Managed services in the ProSight Data Protection Services selection include ProSight Altaro VM Backup, ProSight 365 Total Backup (formerly Altaro Office 365 Backup, ProSight ECHO Backup using Barracuda dedicated hardware, and ProSight DPS MSP360 Hybrid Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to determine which of these managed services are most appropriate for your network.

• ProSight Email Guard: Inbound and Outbound Spam Filtering and Data Leakage Protection
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering and email encryption service that uses the technology of leading information security vendors to deliver web-based control and world-class protection for all your inbound and outbound email. The powerful architecture of Progent's Email Guard integrates a Cloud Protection Layer with a local security gateway appliance to offer advanced defense against spam, viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based malware. The cloud filter acts as a preliminary barricade and keeps most unwanted email from making it to your security perimeter. This decreases your vulnerability to inbound attacks and saves system bandwidth and storage space. Email Guard's on-premises gateway appliance provides a deeper level of analysis for inbound email. For outbound email, the onsite gateway provides anti-virus and anti-spam protection, DLP, and email encryption. The onsite gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to track and safeguard internal email traffic that originates and ends inside your corporate firewall. For more details, see Email Guard spam filtering and data leakage protection.

• ProSight MFA with Duo: Access Security, Endpoint Remediation, and Protected Single Sign-on (SSO)
  Progent's Duo authentication services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity verification with iOS, Android, and other personal devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you log into a secured online account and enter your password you are requested to verify who you are on a unit that only you have and that uses a different network channel. A wide selection of devices can be utilized for this second form of ID validation including an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You can register several verification devices. For more information about Duo identity validation services, visit Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services.

• ProSight Co-Managed Support: Outsourced and Co-managed IT Support Center Services
  Progent's Shared Service Desk offers a transparent extension of your core IT support staff. End user interaction with the Service Desk, provision of support services, issue escalation, ticket generation and updates, efficiency metrics, and maintenance of the service database are cohesive whether issues are taken care of by your in-house support organization, by Progent's team, or both. Your business has unrestricted versatility to expand or shrink your part of technical support activity as circumstances demand. Progent takes care of initial installation and onboarding of the professional services PSA software as well as documentation, validation and training. For more information about ProSight Shared Support, go to ProSight Co-Managed Help Desk.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring: Behavior-based Threat Analysis and Ransomware Protection:
  ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection solution that utilizes next generation behavior-based machine learning technology from SentinelOne to guard physical and virtual endpoints against new malware assaults such as ransomware and file-less exploits, which easily get by traditional signature-based anti-virus products. ProSight Active Security Monitoring safeguards local and cloud-based resources and provides a unified platform to manage the entire threat lifecycle including blocking, detection, mitigation, cleanup, and forensics. Top capabilities include single-click rollback using Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic network-wide immunization against new attacks. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. Learn more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware recovery with SentinelOne technology.

• Patch Management: Software/Firmware Update Management Services:
  Progent's support services for patch management offer businesses of all sizes a flexible and cost-effective solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, applying, and tracking software and firmware updates to your ever-evolving information network. In addition to optimizing the protection and reliability of your computer network, Progent's software/firmware update management services free up time for your in-house IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives and activities that deliver the highest business value from your information network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management services.