Office just received Sharepoint 2007

[bawhorton]

Hi my office just received sharepoint 2007. I work in a govt human resource office that discharges/separates 1,000 personnel each month and has customer traffic of approx. 2000 per month.

We received about 32 hours of training but I still need advice how on to set some work flow processes up. We have a QMATIC ticket numbering system much like the DMV also.

1. When a customer comes in to my office they get a ticket from QMATIC and are called back to the appointment desk to schedule a sit down appointment in the future. This is where I want to begin using Sharepoint, with the setting up of the appointment.

-Have two clerks who only make appointments and the return appointment is usually two weeks out.
-My two clerks make appointments for 16 other clerks who actually sit down and prepare paperwork for the customers.
-The 16 clerks have three supervisors, who in turn report to me.
-Once appointments are made, my two appointment clerks then need to type a request for the personnel records of the customer, which is sent to another office about 1/4 mile away.
-That office will gather the personnel records and call me to come pick them up each day.
-Now the customers work for 57 various organizations throughout the base.

-Can I use Sharepoint to do the following and if so, how do I begin:

Customer comes in, makes an appointment with my clerks, and receives an appt slip.
I would like to have that one appointment in Sharepoint provide simultaneous notification to one of the 16 clerks, the three supervisors, and the correct personnel chief in the outlying 57 units. At the end of the day, would like Sharepoint to be able to generate a form letter based off of the days appointments that were made, and send to the office that will consolidate the personnel records instead of needing to type up a separate letter.

There are dozens of other processes in my office that I want to incorporate via Sharepoint, especially all the forms and documents my 16 clerks actually prepare for the customer during their appointments.

Thanks
Brian

[HansV]

Welcome to Eileen's Lounge!

Your question is quite broad - I hope that some of our members who have experience with SharePoint will react.

Microsoft has a helpdesk template for Sharepoint Services: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Application Template: Help Desk.

Another one that might be useful is Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Application Template: Case Management for Government Agencies.

[JoeP]

Without any real detail I'd guess that what you are describing can be done in SharePoint. However, you probably should not use the number of workflows that you envision especially the very basic workflows in SharePoint. Workflows can have timing issues when you try to use them for any significant real time or near real time volumes. There are several different ways you could handle forms & documents. You should contract with a SharePoint specialist to help figure out the best approach.

Joe