The initial setup was really straightforward. I think we were up and running in a couple of hours or so. We then had to move from an American instance to a European one for our cyber rules, so we rebuilt it for that. We had our own team working with the Freshdesk team to design an asset database, keeping in mind that not all of our equipment, such as cameras, has an IP address. They helped us rework some of the categories and fields of the database to suit our equipment.

We have around 50 to 60 agents using the solution. If you add our interactions with people, it's helping us serve a client base of around 10,000 in the UK. We recently discussed getting additional support engineers to deliver some of the extra load and that will probably increase by about 10 each year. 

The solution doesn't require any maintenance from our end. There are sometimes notifications from Freshworks but it doesn't affect us.

It was complex, but now, it is better. Previously, it was really hard, and I had to change a lot of workflows. With recent updates, especially in 2021, there has been an improvement in the performance, workflow, and number of data updates I need to make.

In terms of administration, I am mainly responsible for updating or changing anything, but the admin who was leading before me is also there for support if I am not available.

In terms of maintenance, some checks are required to see if there is any issue. Sometimes, a user is able to submit a request, but some of the required fields are missing. I receive a list of tickets with no required fields, and then automation or workflow doesn't run. The request doesn't get assigned to any group. I have requested them to update it, and they worked on it for about three months. They fixed it, but after one month, the same issue came back.

The initial setup is straightforward. Our main implementation strategy was to kind of move our existing agents and existing users as well as migrate almost four hundred thousand tickets to the platform. First, we created all the different fields. We imported all the users and mapped them to the correct queue. I provided access to the agents in different groups. After that, we migrated our tickets. It took almost two weeks to migrate everything and set up.

I wasn't there when they did the initial implementation. They actually implemented it about four months prior to when I started with the company.

That said, for the most part, myself and one other person have been predominantly managing the entire administration of the deployment since. I've mostly been managing it on my own for about a year and a half now.

From what I understand and what I've seen as far as the backend is concerned, it was simply just a matter of tying it in via API with our active directory. We have pretty much an auto-visioning feature that was happening with Active Directory until we implemented Okta as an IDP. We now push the group from AD into Okta, which then provisions into Freshservice.

On the day-to-day management side of things, it's doable under one user. It depends on the need from the business as far as what you're trying to provide, as far as the catalog is concerned. If extensive asset management needs to be done or monitoring needs to be done, that will definitely add to the overhead of management. We don't do the majority of that. Even the asset management we don't even maintain anymore as we're planning on moving out of the solution.

The initial setup wasn't easy or difficult. It was kind of in the middle. There's a lot of configuration you can do on your own. There is some stuff where you've got to involve your IT department. Overall,  that's what I like about Fresh compared to something like ServiceNow. It's pretty lightweight. It's pretty scalable and has a much simpler ease of implementation.

It requires very little maintenance. Maybe we had one person attached to it. However, it wasn't a full-time job for them. We don't have to have an in-house Fresh technical expert. It's pretty easy to figure out.

Generally, before setting up the tool, we discuss it with the client to understand their present state. Setting up is not a big deal, but understanding the customers and their pain points and providing the best solution to improve their business takes time. Once we gather the business requirements document, the implementation along with UAT takes two to three months. We must configure the solution so the business can scale up anytime.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It was not overly complex. We didn't run into too many issues.

We constructed everything and handled the setup was in one day. Three days later we had to start with all the functionality and the implementation for the entire company including the change management process, the training, etc. Everything was done in less than one month.

I was involved in the changes area. The base of Freshservice was already in place, and that was being managed by our support manager. So, the initial setup for me was around the changes area. It came out of the box and then it involved deciding whether or not we add additional fields. We added the additional fields that we required, and then gradually, we would check out the workflow and then say, "Okay, we want to have an approval step here." We'd then add an approval step. So, we incrementally worked on it as we saw it and then tested it all the way through, and when we were ready, we made it available for a sample group. We could then test it out.

We didn't do it as a big bang approach. It tended to be segregated to a particular system area, and then we rolled it out to other areas after that. That seemed to be a good strategy for us.

In terms of duration, for the changes piece, we had a working prototype within about six weeks, and that included documenting how we wanted it to run. If I had to look at just the configuration time, it probably took about four weeks to work through configurations. That was pretty quick for the changes side. 

For the APIs, it was probably a similar duration. There was a bit of requirements gathering and working out. We had trigger conditions where we wanted to trigger a workflow so that it automatically creates a change based on a trigger condition within Jira. The longer part was just setting up the base integration. The actual configuration with the actual tool was probably of the order of two to four weeks.

The initial setup is very straightforward, especially the out-of-the-box configuration. Freshworks provided what they call a transition support specialist to assist us, so the setup was simple.

The deployment was relatively seamless; we configured the solution in an offline state which took about a week and deployed it from there. We shared the URL within the company, and end users accessed it using that. In total, it took one to two weeks for the setup and basic configuration. We did a lot of customisation, workflows, and automation, which took much longer than two weeks.

As the solution is SaaS, it's very light in terms of maintenance; we have two staff with global access to monitor it. One staff member could do that, but we use two for resiliency.

The initial setup and implementation are easy. 

It took us a month to create various catalogs of service for our client and fully deploy. 

The initial setup starts off easy enough. It does get more difficult when you start dealing with complexities in your environment.

It took us about 30 to 60 days to get everything up and running. 

I run two instances of it, and I deployed both. It just depends on the needs of the business. If you need a lot of custom development, then you do, but if you don't, then you don't. It depends on the level of complexity that you have for your buildout such as:

• How many workflows do you need?
• How many admins do you have?
• How many people do you have? 

Because of the size and scope of our group, it took longer. We spent six months on it. Migration from Cherwell for IT and then for operations is an ongoing thing.

The initial setup was a very easy task. You just need to click around a few times and everything will fall into place. The UI is very friendly and it is not at all complicated with the preconfigured settings, making the setup more forward and requiring minimal input. It is a very easy and smooth process. The exact time frame of the deployment is not very sure but according to my technical manager, it does not take very long to set it up. After discussion, he proceeded with the setup in a day which was further configured and customised.

The initial setup of Freshservice is very easy.

The solution can be deployed in a couple of hours.

Three people in my company were involved with the deployment phase of Freshservice.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The initial setup is very easy. It's a SaaS product. You just sign up and get going within ten to 15 minutes. 

The initial setup was simple. I had a good understanding of how it works and didn't have any issues with deploying it. It was easy to configure the workflows and so on. 

We started by adding the users and syncing their devices to it. We then added the workflows for each company or department. We added any extra services required to augment the full solution.  

The maintenance process is pretty simple. However, some people might have difficulty with the back end. 

It is fairly user-friendly. It is just when you're already kind of dealing with tickets coming in and you're the person in charge of dealing with the tickets and modifying the site and configuring it to where it becomes more useful for you, it gets difficult. That's because there are lots of ways to customize it. To make it as boisterous as what we've done is just time-consuming. You need to find the time to be able to go and utilize all their features. You just can't go and have it right off the bat configured because every organization is going to want to manage these things in a different manner. It's just time-consuming to go and configure all different features.

I wasn't part of the initial setup. It was set up before my arrival at the company. I'm not sure how long it takes to deploy in a typical setup.

We might have one person, and maybe one extra that can handle the maintenance necessary on the solution. 

The initial setup of Freshservice is a very easy process. It can be done in minimal time.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It was extremely easy to set up. We had it up and running in less than an hour.

The deployment of the solution was very quick and easy. Once we set our ticket form and support channels, we were ready to start using Freshservice. So the initial setup was very straightforward and simple.