Industry
Information Services
Public Sector
Location
USA
Challenges
  • Challenge 1: A homegrown dashboard that grew costly and time-consuming to maintain
  • Challenge 2: New code required every time a service was added, just to monitor it
  • Challenge 3: Service desk had no usable view of the engineers' monitoring tools
  • Challenge 4: Frontline staff were the last to know when something broke
Solution
  • Solution 1: A SaaS status page with no hardware or software to maintain
  • Solution 2: First-tier alerts feeding on-call techs before the morning calls arrive
  • Solution 3: One accessible dashboard the whole organization can read
  • Solution 4: Proactive maintenance and third-party vendor notifications by email

How DOTComm turned outages into customer-service wins for the City of Omaha

The IT commission for Omaha and Douglas County retired a homegrown dashboard for a status page it doesn't have to code, on Xurrent IMR.

When the IT provider for an entire city and county has a problem, two very different audiences need to know: the engineers who can fix it, and the thousands of staff and residents who just want to know whether it is safe to assume the system is down. For DOTComm, telling both groups had become the hard part. The monitoring existed. The communication did not.

DOTComm had built its own dashboard for this a decade earlier. By the time it started showing its age, maintaining it had become a job in itself. The fix was to stop maintaining a tool and start using one, so DOTComm moved to Xurrent IMR.


Results with Xurrent IMR

6,000
IT users kept informed
100+
websites monitored
~1M
annual visitors on the Omaha Metro site

Outcome: reduced help desk costs, SLA KPIs met, a quieter service desk, and overnight problems worked before the morning calls.

The problem: a homegrown dashboard built by engineers, for engineers

DOTComm's in-house dashboard served its purpose but carried growing costs: it was time-consuming to maintain and demanded new code for every service added. Worse, the service desk fielded every IT call yet had no usable view into it, so when something broke, the people answering the phones were the last to know.

Our communication tool for outages was very labor-intensive and difficult to use. As a result, we tended not to use it, which created problems for our service desk staff responding to requests for updates.

Jim Dolinski, Web App Developer, DOTComm

The solution: a status page nobody has to maintain

Because Xurrent IMR runs as SaaS, DOTComm took on no new hardware or software to maintain, which removed the burden that made the old dashboard a drain. The integration model is where it earns its keep: DOTComm's first-tier alerting systems send alerts into Xurrent IMR, which feeds on-call technicians. When something goes wrong overnight, technicians are already working it before the help desk calls start.

The platform has become a central hub for DOTComm. Its proactive nature has reduced help desk costs and improved end-user satisfaction.

Jim Dolinski, Web App Developer, DOTComm

The result: a quieter service desk and SLAs met

The status page now carries everything the help desk and end users need, including third-party vendor maintenance. The dashboard and alerting have helped DOTComm meet the KPIs in its service level agreement, a meaningful outcome for a public-sector provider accountable to two government authorities. The service desk is markedly quieter now that stakeholders can watch progress online.

It is everything a status page should be. It enables us to take charge during incidents and convert disasters into customer-service achievements.

Jim Dolinski, Web App Developer, DOTComm

At a glance

Metric Result
IT users informed 6,000 across two authorities
Websites monitored 100+
Public reach ~1M annual Omaha Metro visitors
Maintenance burden Eliminated (SaaS, no code)
SLA KPIs Met
Overnight response Techs working before morning calls

Get started with Xurrent today.

See how Xurrent IMR keeps every stakeholder informed without a tool your team has to maintain.

info@xurrent.com