Staffing for Apple Support question

[jhuls]

I'm curious how many of you staff support for your Apple based products and services. I work at a community college in Illinois where we have about 3000 devices we support(give or take). Of that there are 171 Macs and 94 mobile iOS devices plus 5 AppleTV's.

As far as staffing there is me working full-time at 40 hrs/wk and 1 part-time person at 19 hrs/wk.

Working in an academic environment the demands are pretty high with some instructors, staff, and administrators wanting specific configurations going into detail like what size an open/save window might be inside a particular application along with not just the usual Adobe and MS software but more unique software like GitHub, QLab, Practica Musica, Avatier Credential Provider, and many more.

By last count we support approximately 45 Mac software packages(not pkg's) which does not include the packages that include all of the specific Creative Cloud and Office applications. I don't have a count of all of the individual applications.

On the operating system side of things we have that down to four different versions of the Mac OS and very close to getting it to three. We were sitting at six versions just two months ago. For iOS the os updates are left in the hands of the users so the various versions rarely affect support. All full-time staff, faculty, and administration have admin access on their Macs. The students in the labs and classrooms had admin when I took over but I was able to get that changed this last semester. Admin removed from staff and faculty is being discussed but isn't likely to happen.

We recently implemented a tier 1 support desk but there is very little Apple support that gets resolved there. It gets bumped to our new tier 2 support which is the part-time person I mentioned. He's a hard worker but working with Macs isn't his forte. Google and coming to me are his resources.

I'm curious how people are supporting their Apple products. What size of staff do you have? What kind of workflow do you have to handle projects and trouble tickets? It's felt for some time now like I should have at least one more full-time Apple support person but am told there is no money. For the other 2800 devices on campus which are essentially all Windows we have 5 full-time support along with 2 part-time which doesn't include our tier 1 desk that I have no idea how many are there. Many of those 2800 systems are pretty basic office systems with the main demands being malware issues. The network staff here is comprised of 4 people who are all Windows oriented. One of them oversees any server aspects to the Mac services with me sometimes needing to sit next to him to guide him through how to do things since I don't have access to do it.

At any rate I'm not looking to start a rant or anything. I like my job but I'm looking for some feedback from others to see how things might be getting handled and maybe I can relate that to the powers that be. Any feedback from any of you would be greatly appreciated.

[JZaczyk]

We're a K-12 in NYC with (according to our help desk) 683 Apple devices split between iPads, Macs (desktop and notebook) and TV's. For all that, we have several techs who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty on the Mac side, but I'm the only one holding an Apple Certificication. Like you, I see a lot of the issues get escalated up to me anyway. It's nice to feel needed, but yeah, it gets very stressful sometimes. Unfortunately, the budget just isn't there to bring another mac tech in, so we soldier on...

[gburgess]

We're a K-12 that has around 2500 macs in our district with 1000 extra being added to that next year. This is mainly supported by one individual. I serve as his backup. I am in charge of about 900 iOS devices split between 200 Apple TV's and 700 iPads (An increasing number each year). On the PC side, we have about 250 machines being administered by a single support person as well. We also have one network person in the mix as well as a front end help desk support person.

A big help for us is having Casper in place. Without that, we'd be running around like mad men. We re-image all of the Macs on a yearly basis over the Summer as well, a task we try to streamline more and more each year. For the summer months, we employ some college interns. They help greatly in getting new machines inventoried and pushed through the imaging process for the year.

[jhuls]

@gburgess It sounds like you might be setup a bit like I envision could be done here with one more person. It would allow for better focus with one guy zeroed in on Macs and the other iOS. After that they can backup each other.

Casper definitely is a big help...when it works. A few updates ago we started having problems with triggers and Self Service failing at random times. We can't ever reproduce it when we need to so I've not gotten jamf involved yet. I have some pressure from administration to move to sccm for perceived cost benefits as it's already purchased but from what I've gathered it would be a big step backwards for us.

We moved away from the yearly re-imaging of labs and classrooms to cut time. I like the idea of college interns but it would only fly if unpaid and they wouldn't need a lot of handholding. We have trouble finding Mac people who can do support. There's no problem with finding people who know how to use Macs but supporting is a whole different ballgame.

[boberito]

We're a preK to 12 school and have 4 technology people on staff for 600 devices. Our students are 1-to-1 with MacBook Airs. We have like 100+ AppleTVs and maybe 75 iPads. We all handle very different tasks. 1 is just for support of mainly faculty/staff and their needs. 1 is for the laptop program and supporting students (me). 1 is the tech director. And 1 is for the different databases and accounts and things like that. We all help with support needs if need be.

Probably doesn't overly help much.

[GabeShack]

We are a K-12 District with around 2000 Macs, 1000 Windows PCs, and about 1500 iPads and 1000 Chromebooks.

We have 7 Buildings, 4 Elementary Schools, a Middle School, a High School and our Admin offices.

Each building has a Full Time Tech Assistant for Tier 1 support. I provide the tier 2 support for Macs and iOS, another co-worker handles the Windows tier 2 support and another coworker handles the network support.

One of those Tech Assistants also handles the Chrome Management.

We currently have no 1-2-1 program, but we are giving old teacher unibody white MacBooks to students who do not have internet at home (with sprint hotspots).

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools