Workflow Software Helps Missouri District Rebuild

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 12/19/13

Moore Public School District went public with its use of workflow software to help manage the rebuilding of the district's IT organization following the deaths of seven students and one teacher and the destruction of two elementary schools, parts of a high school, and many other structures in the wake of an intense tornado that ripped through the Oklahoma town on May 20, 2013.

Moore's technology department has turned to ServicePRO, a Web-based application from Help Desk Technology that provides automated business process workflow, asset and document management and collaborative features such as chat and remote screen sharing.  The application can be hosted on a private cloud or a public cloud and adheres to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a set of practices for IT service management.

The service was put into use following the destruction of the technology building, which was located behind the district's administration building.

"The technology building was completely destroyed, so there was no communication whatsoever," said Lisa Grace, assistant to the director of technology. "Our IT department — amazing guys! — were right there, working late into the night and through the next day. They climbed into the rubble [to salvage] whatever they could. They tried to find enough pieces of the server room equipment to get the district up and running again. They did a great job."

The Asset Management feature of ServicePRO, for example, allowed IT to inventory how many usable computers and servers each school had "in order to know exactly what it would take to get them up and running again," she noted. "It was a great tool that allowed us to see in a quick view what we had and what we needed."

Now the IT department is back at work, and Grace, who lost not only her office in the storm, but also her home and her car, would like to see the use of the service broadened in the district. "I would love to bring the other departments in our school system in to use the software and show them what it can do. Everybody has their own technologies, but I think if we were centralized into using one software, we could be more productive and more efficient and be able to work better together as a team."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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