2026 · INTERNAL TOOLS | HELPDESK
IT Helpdesk Ticketing
The school IT department's helpdesk: students and staff submit tickets, including dedicated device-break and loaner-iPad flows, and staff triage everything from a dashboard that's aware of the school's rotating bell schedule.
Built at Immaculata-La Salle High School
Tech Stack
Overview
ILS had been running its helpdesk on Freshdesk, where every single reply sent an email and nothing about the tool matched how this school actually works: a lot of device-break and loaner-iPad requests specifically, and staff who need to know where a student physically is right now, not just what they reported. I replaced it with a purpose-built Next.js helpdesk with a staff triage dashboard (bulk assign/close, internal notes, a knowledge base) and two dedicated flows for device breaks and loaner requests, each with their own lifecycle rather than being generic ticket notes. A daily sync of the school's rotation feed means a ticket shows the requester's current class block and room, not just their name.
Impact
Who it serves: 890 students and 100 staff: everyone who can submit a ticket, plus every lookup the Room Locator feature resolves
Before
ILS paid for Freshdesk, a generic helpdesk tool where every single reply generated an email and nothing about it was tailored to the school. There was no device-break or loaner-specific flow, and no way to see where a student physically was for an in-person fix. Schedule data the Room Locator now surfaces didn't exist anywhere staff could see it in the moment.
After
Staff triage every ticket from one dashboard with dedicated device-break and loaner flows, without generating an email for every reply, and ticket detail shows exactly where the requester is right now, synced nightly from the school's actual class rotation.
Est. Annual Cost Saved
$3,915/yr
Estimate, not an audited figure. Methodology and sources are disclosed above for each comparable product.
What I Built
- Staff dashboard: bulk assign/close, internal notes, grouping by building, mobile swipe/pull-to-refresh, KB article management
- Dedicated device-break flow that syncs into the school's own device-damage tracking system
- Dedicated loaner-iPad flow: request, tracking-list sync, an in-portal status panel, and return/reminder handling
- Daily sync of the school's rotation/bell-schedule feed, so ticket detail shows the requester's current block and room
- Bot-protected public ticket form, email notifications on assignment and on charge/loss cases
Screenshots
What I Learned
Syncing a daily rotation-schedule feed let ticket detail surface where a requester currently is in the school day, a small addition that mattered a lot for a helpdesk fielding in-person device issues.
An Application Insights connection-string app setting alone produces zero telemetry. The SDK has to be explicitly initialized in code before any of it is actually collected.
Modeling loaners as a full lifecycle (request → tracking record → status panel → return/reminder) instead of a one-off ticket note made the whole flow far easier to reason about at a glance.