Forsyth County Schools wanted to use the power of OpenAI to improve IT Services.
Forsyth, the 5th largest school district in Georgia, with over 7,000 employees and more than 55,000 students utilizes an enormous amount of technology (~60K Chromebooks, ~10K laptops, Smart Boards in every classroom). Over the past few years, Forsyth has partnered with 3Cloud for technological innovation to support the district and their students. The district’s IT department is currently challenged with keeping up with the high volume of service tickets submitted, and to do so efficiently. When something breaks, someone must interrupt the flow of their day or their teaching to fill out a work order for repair. To input all the data needed for a clear picture of the issue is time-consuming for busy teachers, which has led to an inordinate number of tickets submitted under the “Other” category, and leading to an inefficient workflow to solve problems in a timely manner. Forsyth wanted an automated process for the ticketing system to help reduce the amount of time that a director spends on reading notes, interpreting a category and flagging it appropriately.
They endeavored to leverage the power of Azure OpenAI Service to enable teachers with a quick, but more targeted selection, then AI will read the data to provide a clearer picture of the issue for IT, improving the categorization of service tickets district wide.
“This is another example of how strong partners – 3Cloud, Microsoft, and Forsyth County Schools – work together to elevate what’s possible. Three partners, one solution, countless hours of learning saved.”
The Solution
Forsyth Entrusted 3Cloud’s Expertise to Begin to Innovate the District with AI.
The school district looked to 3Cloud to build an integration to the IT Service Management platform (Incident IQ) to reduce the number of Incident IQ tickets labeled “Other” to improve the quality of ticket categorization, as well as improve the service desk experience for both their customers (55K students/7K employees) and service desk personnel by reducing friction in the ticket submission process for customers and injecting intelligence into the triage process for personnel.
By using Azure OpenAI Service, Artificial Intelligence will be an intermediary by scanning the notes on a submitted ticket and determine which category it should be placed in, saving the team tons of time spent manually reclassifying these tickets and improving the process with more efficiency. The process will also minimize the time for teachers to fill out a work order, utilizing AI to gather a few key data points for IT around what is broken and on what device.
In future phases, OpenAI has the potential to be brought into the forefront to be conversational, (i.e., What is your issue?) and triage the issues prior to a ticket being submitted. Other potential use cases include using Azure OpenAI Service to help with daily functions such as meeting scheduling, as well as tie OpenAI to Project AVA – a successful Power BI engagement between Forsyth and 3Cloud – to empower the district with more detailed answers to specific students’ challenges which could prevent them not graduating, so teachers can get them the help they need. Tim Fleming, Director of IT, would also like to incorporate cyber security automation processes, intelligent network, and hardware recommendations, and eliminate sifting through millions of log files to support better decision making from IT staff.
Curt Godwin, CETL, Network Operations Coordinator at Forsyth County Schools states, “Technology is so ever-present in everyday life that it only becomes noticeable when something doesn’t work. When that happens in a classroom, the impact is amplified – every minute that a device is down robs staff and students of valuable instructional time. Integrating OpenAI into Incident IQ, our technology ticketing system, helps ensure that issues are properly classified and routed to the right person. This holds the potential to reduce downtime and get teachers and students back on track in the shortest possible time. Ensuring that tickets are properly classified allows us to act immediately, resolve quickly, and forecast effectively.”
The time savings and efficiency gained by continuing to build upon this initial use case with more OpenAI initiatives has enormous potential to grow and impact the district. This first use case will show Forsyth employees what is possible with AI and to see it as a benefit to help make their lives easier.
Having tickets properly categorized will lead to faster and higher quality issue resolution, plus save teachers time. In addition, the data gathered will help IT to make good decisions about the hardware/software that they purchase and put in the hands of their teachers.
On the privacy side, Forsyth is a Microsoft district and has been in Microsoft cloud and using Microsoft products for 20+ years. By implementing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service into their environment, Forsyth is continuing to innovate with a company that they trust; in other words, past safety indicates future security for the district. Azure OpenAI is safe and secure — businesses, or school districts like Forsyth, can rest assured that their data is protected and not available to other customers who may also be deploying Azure OpenAI.
This first practical and low risk use case allows Forsyth to get their feet wet with OpenAI and enables them to continue their journey to be innovators in the industry and continue the evolution of Azure technologies and services.
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