The Facilities team for Portage Public Schools in Michigan, manages an impressive 400 acres of property, which includes 1.75 million square feet of building space. Ensuring their state-of-the-art facilities are kept in peak condition for the 8,800 students that use them is their top priority. In March of 2024, the Facilities team made the decision to switch to Incident IQ from a legacy software. Their Technology Department was already using Incident IQ and both teams agreed that it would create an easier requester experience if they migrated to the same platform. They wanted to provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for requests across the district, whether they required IT assistance or Facilities services.
Post implementation, the teams agree that they have significantly improved the requester’s experience with a unified help portal. There is now a single place for anyone to submit a ticket and the system automatically routes it to the correct department. Working within the same ticketing system has also created efficiencies for both the Technology and Facilities teams. They can now easily pass work back and forth to each other. During implementation, the Incident IQ team helped set up shortcuts so that with a simple click, tickets could transfer from the Facilities queue to IT and vice versa. Previously, the two departments worked in separate software systems, so transferring requests meant deleting the request from one system and re-submitting it in the other.
Steve Phelps, Facilities Manager at Portage Public Schools, can now use the dashboard to quickly get an overview of his department’s work, with the ability to easily drill down on specifics if needed. Their previous legacy system required him to run a report each time he wanted to view and break down specific work information.
He explains: “On my dashboard, I can see the work orders per building and per agent without having to do anything. In the other software, I had to run a report every time I wanted to see that. So that’s easier as far as keeping tabs on what’s going on.”
Incident IQ encourages users to work the way they want to. For the Portage Public School Facilities team, the technicians in the field wanted to receive printed work orders. Phelps was adamant about keeping their day-to-day the same as it had been with the previous system, so he manages printing work orders and closing them out for the team.
Phelps says, “All the guys wanted stuff printed like we did before, so they’re getting a notification that a ticket was assigned to them on their phone, but the work ticket is still printed so they can write on it. It’s no different than we did before. They turn [the work ticket] back in with their time written on there, and then either I or my secretary completes it. It’s actually easier than it was before. It’s faster.”
As the team in Michigan gears up for the winter, they’re using ticket templates within the Incident IQ platform to manage cold-weather preparations and ensure nothing is overlooked.
“We’re in the process of getting all our heating systems going now that it’s getting colder. This is one of the things I’m working on with ticket templates. Assigning the assets that need to be looked at before we turn on the boilers and assigning that to a technician,” says Phelps.
The system has streamlined the process of gathering information from requestors, reducing the need for lengthy back-and-forth exchanges. It minimizes the hassle of switching between different systems to request additional details, making communication more efficient.
Phelps provides insights about how Incident IQ has improved requestor communication: “One thing that’s been a big help to me is with [our previous system], you weren’t able to converse with people on the ticket like you can with [Incident IQ]. That’s been a big help. Typing back to the requestor saying: I need this information. They get a notification that they need to provide something, and then we can go back and forth so that everybody’s up to speed on the work orders, statuses and all that. That’s been a huge improvement from what we had before. It was more like I’ve got to email them and then emails get lost, and those aren’t tracked on the actual work order unless you went in and put it in there yourself after the fact. It’s easier now.”
The next goal for Portage is to implement iiQ Events to streamline their event management. Currently, they have 800 events a week being managed by one Operations Coordinator. With the ability to schedule and manage events within the same platform that integrates Technology and Facilities workflows, Portage Public Schools expects to improve efficiency, keep everyone informed, and coordinate activities more effectively.
Centralizing K-12 Operations for Greater Efficiency
Portage Public Schools shows how integrating to one platform boosts efficiency and simplifies operations. Discover the power of integration—learn more today!
