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We moved to a new Help Desk location on August 2, 2019. The location is opposite the biologist desk, immediately inside the second-floor office entrance. This is a panorama of the Help Desk. The County Biologists use the majority of the left side (their microscope and computer are in that corner).
Occasionally there's a need to send reference material to people via US Postal mail (when a client doesn't have email or the material isn't in electronic form). To do this: Get the full mailing address from the client (and make sure it is entered into Zoho Desk.
Working from home requires process for how to work with your partner (or other people if working during non-shift hours), and for handling web/email and telephone questions.
As of August 12, 2021 The Help Desk Ninjas are a dedicated group of Master Gardeners that will help out in answering Help Desk questions when the queue becomes quite large. We use groups.io to send emails to the Ninjas. If youre on the list you can remove yourself, but you need to ask to get on it.
Recommendations for answering Help Desk questions. We educate and offer choices, but we do not make the choices for the client. Master Gardeners suggest and educate with research-based information. Be careful about saying We (UCANR) recommend...
Interested in working on the Help Desk? It's a great way to practice your Master Gardener skills and learn new things. The basics of getting started: Review and understand our Guidelines for Answering Questions Become familiar with using Zoho Desk. Start by visiting the Zoho Desk webpage.
Figure out what the question is Is more than one question being asked? Decide if more info is needed If so, ask before continuing. Stay relevant and be specific use science-based sources and explain why you believe this answer is the best answer.
Fellow Master Gardeners are county residents and are therefore eligible to submit questions to the Help Desk. However, we have different expectations for submissions. Specifically, when submitting a question to the Help Desk, Master Gardeners should: Identify themselves as members of the program.
