Support Center

We're really excited about the new Centerspace Support Center and believe it will help save you time in resolving your issues and making certain requests.  However, a tool is only useful if you know how to use it, so we want to help you understand how to use this portal as efficiently as possible.  If you have an issue, a request, or just wonder how something works, you can always come to this portal.  We'll explain the steps you can follow every time you come to the portal for answers.  We've ordered the steps below in the most efficient way for you.

Step 1 - Make sure you're signed in to the Support Center

 In order to receive the full benefits of the Support Center, you need to be logged in with your @centerspace.com account.  You can easily check this by looking at the top of this page.  If you see the menu items labeled TICKETS and SERVICE CATALOG and also the button labeled New Ticket, that means you're already logged in (shown in the screenshot below).  If so, you can skip to Step 2!

Otherwise, if you do not see the menu items labeled TICKETS and SERVICE CATALOG and you just see the SIGN IN link (shown below), then please first use this article to sign in.  Once you're signed in, please continue from Step 2 below.

Step 2 - Search the Support Center for quick answers

The Support Center is designed to allow you to quickly search to find the answers you're looking for.  Follow these steps to quickly search for answers:

Go to the Support Center home page at https://support.centerspacehomes.com..  Once the page loads, type a word or phrase that best describes your question, issue, or request.  TIP: Try to use as few words as possible and keep them as specific as you can.  As you can see below, the search bar automatically looks for relevant answers to your question.  Now that you have searched and found results in the suggestion box, you can do one of two things here:

1. If you see a suggestion that seems great, you can just click the suggested article in the suggestion box.
2. If you're not sure which one might help, just press Enter and it will bring you to the search results page.  From there you can check out each article you want.

If we are trying to figure out how to install the Maintenance IQ app on our phone, let's click on QRG – Maintenance IQ – Mobile App Information.  By clicking the article, it brings us right to the article's page, part of which you can see below.

Now we can use this article to resolve our issue in a matter of minutes, without ever having to enter a support ticket!

Step 3 - Are you visiting the portal to make a request?

Sometimes you might not be coming to the portal because of an issue or question you have, but you just have a standard request you want to make.  In the portal, these are called Service Requests and are located in the Service Catalog.  Some examples of requests would be if you need to reassign an Centerspace-issued mobile phone to another Maintenance Technician, or you need access to a specific application.

In the following example, we'll assume a Service Technician has a broken phone and needs a replacement.  This would not require a support ticket since it's not really an error, issue, or question and is more of a request, since you'd be requesting a new phone.  Let's take a look at how to make these types of requests in the Service Catalog!

The first step is always to search.  The search box is your friend and will help you find things as easy and fast as possible.  Remember, we want to use as few words as possible and keep them as specific as we can to have the best success.  Keeping this in mind, we'll search for phone.  As you can see below, we find several matches for phone.  However, we can see that all of them except one is under SOLUTIONS.  Since this is a request, we want to look under SERVICE ITEMS where we then see Maintenance Phone and Hardware Request, which we see are under the Technology folder (shown in the small gray box beside the results).  If you see the item you're looking for, you can click on it in the search results.  If you keep reading after this screenshot, you'll see another way to access the Service Catalog.

If you already know you are needing to enter a Service Request, you can also click on the SERVICE CATALOG menu item as shown below.

Once you are in the Service Catalog, you can use the Search box there just like on the homepage.  The only difference is that it will limit your search to only Service Catalog items.  This can be nice if you already know you have a Service Request, since less results mean you'll be able to find a match more quickly.  However, if you're not sure if what you are searching for is a service request, we recommend starting from the homepage and searching, since this searches all Knowledge Base articles as well.  If we search for phone again, we can see it only brings up the two results we saw above that were listed under SERVICE ITEMS.  We can see below the same items that were shown under SERVICE ITEMS above, just displayed a bit differently.  Let's click on Cell Phone Request, since we want to request a new cell phone.

When you click on a Service Request item, you'll be taken to that item's request form.  Each item will have its own request form that contains the necessary information to process your request.  In this example, in the Reason for Request field, we'll select Replacement.  I can either request this item for myself or for another person on their behalf.  As you can see below, I need to request this for Josh, so I first selected Request for someone else and then typed in his name.  You can start typing their name or email and it will automatically show you anyone in the employee directory that matches that name or email.  You can click on the correct name to select them.  Once you fill out all necessary fields, click the Place Request button on the bottom of the form.  Now that our Service Request has been placed, the approval process for this particular request can begin.  Each item can have its own approval process, but most often an approval from your manager is required for the Service Request to be entered into the system.  Once it is approved and in the system, the proper department will receive notification and can get started fulfilling your request.

Step 4 - Still can't find the answer?  The final step is to enter a new Support Ticket

If you've searched the homepage of the Support Center and none of the suggested articles have helped you resolve your issue, it's time to enter a new Support Ticket.  Do this by first clicking on the New Ticket button in the upper right corner of the helpdesk site, as shown below.

In this example, we'll simulate that we are receiving a hard disk corruption error whenever we log in Windows.  We can still work just fine, but we're concerned about it and fear that it will lead to our computer being unusable in the future, so we want to get it resolved.  We already searched the homepage of the Support Center and could not find any articles in the SELF-HELP CENTER related to this topic, so we'll enter a support ticket.  As you can see below, first we set the priority of the ticket.  Next, we choose which department we need help from, followed by selecting what we're having trouble with.  In the Issue Summary, try to give a clear and concise summary of the issue.  After entering the Issue Summary, once you press Tab or click in the Issue Description box, the helpdesk will automatically search all Self-Help Center articles that match the keywords in your Issue Summary.  As you can see on the right side of the page it will display all articles that match your search terms under Related articles.  We'll double check that we didn't miss anything when doing the initial search for this issue, and we see that the related articles are not relevant in our case, so we move to the Issue Description.  In the Issue Description, we want to be as descriptive as we can be so the technician has as much information as possible in order to give them the best chance at resolving it quickly without several back and forth requests for information.  If we're receiving an error, such as we are in our example, it helps a lot to include the exact error message.  You can see below that we are trying to give all of the information that we can think of, including the exact error message.  You can also click  on Attach a file below the Issue Description text box and attach any files that will help, such as a saved screenshot of the error message.  One we have everything as thorough as possible, we can click Submit.

There you have it.  In short, if you have an issue, question, or request, always go to the Support Center first and follow the three guidelines of:

1. Make sure you're signed in to the Support Center by following the article here.
2. Search on the homepage of the Support Center for your issue, question, or request to see if there is a self-service option for you.  If there is, it will save you time in quickly being able to resolve it and move on to your normal activities.
3. If you have a request, check if there is already an item for that in the Service Catalog.  If there is, use the form in the Service Request item to enter the request.  If there is not an existing service item or you have an issue or question and not a request, move to step 3.
4. Enter a New Ticket and provide as accurate and as much information as possible.

Once you understand this process, each time you come to the helpdesk you will take these natural steps quickly and easily, and you'll find that more and more often you will be able to resolve your own issue and save a lot of time in the process!