Dear Birck User Community, As many of you know we have been running a pilot evaluation of our trouble-reporting 'ticketing' system that Rich Hosler and the engineering staff developed in June. We had good results with this pilot study, taking in approximately 40 tickets and responding to them in a timely manner. We now want to officially launch this system for Birck-wide use, and to that end we will formally begin its use throughout Birck immediately after next week's PM shutdown. Therefore, on Monday, October 26 we are directing all equipment related issues to be reported using our ticketing system. During the ramp-up phase the staff members will continue to remind users to not use email, but rather the ticketing system. For the first month any email inquiries/reports will also be input into the ticket system, and after a month's time we will no longer accept email notices (after November 23). We realize this is a culture change for our facility and we will continue to remind users about the ticketing system as we go. Why are we doing this? We are always interested in improving our operations, and we know this will address our ability to know about issues quickly and address them responsively. We have benchmarked other facilities who use ticketing processes to their great benefit. Additionally our own ECN uses a similar ticketing system to address computer and network issues all across Purdue. Below is a message from Rich regarding the use of the ticketing system, and a link to the system. We look forward to your use of the system which will improve our engineering operations. Your comments and suggestions are certainly welcome. Ron Message from Rich Hosler: Hello, The goal of this system is to reduce downtime and improve communication regarding tool and equipment availability. In general we envision this tool to be the first point of contact for any support requests regarding equipment or services inside BNC. I would ask that if you have any issues or questions regarding equipment in the Scifres Nanofabrication facility or with equipment residing in the BNC, please use the webpage below to submit a ticket. You do not have to create an account to put a ticket in, but it will help you track your tickets better if you do. https://bircknano.freshdesk.com/support/home All iLabs-tracked equipment should be represented in the list by the iLabs name. If you see a piece of equipment missing either put in a ticket for 'other' or email hosler0@purdue.edu<mailto:hosler0@purdue.edu> and I'll get the issue resolved. If you're unsure of which equipment to report under you can either select the general core that best represents the system or 'unknown/other'. Under the 'group' tab please select 'research engineering' if this is regarding equipment operation, otherwise there are categories for administration, iLabs billing, and building/installation issues. Any other questions you may have can be reported to hosler0@purdue.edu<mailto:hosler0@purdue.edu> and I'll do my best to get you an answer quickly. Thanks for your assistance, Rich Hosler