Exam 2 Practice Quiz

PC Help Desk Exam 2 Study Quiz, made by Nick, Vonn, and Cody

When a support staff selects general office productivity software such as word processors or spreadsheets, they often use which decision strategy?

Industry standard products

A purchasing procedure that invites vendors to submit product and price proposals for a system that meets a user’s needs is called a ____.

request for proposal (RFP)

During the 1980s, incompatible computer products resulted in ____.

all of these

Another name for the weighted point evaluation method is the ____ method.

Kepner-Tregoe

In the early 1980s, significant differences between competing computer products were thought by vendors to have ____.

competitive strengths

Benchmark tests on competing products can be used to select ____.

both hardware and software products

A computer product vendor’s response to an RFP usually includes all but which of these?

A description of problems with the competitor’s products

An electronic magazine organized like a print publication, but distributed via a Web site, that may contain product reviews and comparisons is called ____.

An ezine

Which of these product evaluation methods uses several criteria of predefined importance to arrive at a numerical score for each competing product?

Weighted point method

Which of these would you expect to find as members of a product standards committee?

All of these.

In the weighted point evaluation method, the product that is usually selected is the one with ____.

the highest overall score

Which of these statements is true of Honolulu Community College’s computer support policies described in the chapter?

The college offers a choice of PC and Macintosh computer platforms.

In the weighted point evaluation method, when two product evaluators disagree about the score for a product, which of these is the least likely strategy?

 

Drop the product from consideration.

Which of the following are more likely to use subjective selection criteria to choose among competing computer products?

Small organizations

Which of these would you least expect to find in an organization’s acceptable use guidelines?

A list of approved vendors

In the weighted point evaluation method, if more than one support person evaluates competing products, the score a product receives is usually ____.

The average score of all evaluators

In the weighted point evaluation method, if a product receives a vendor support score of 80 and the weight of the vendor support criterion is 10%, the product gets a weighted score of ____ points for vendor support.

8

Which sequence of letters represents the order of the steps below in the weighted point evaluation method?

A) Compute the total ratings for each product.
B) Assign a weight to the importance of each criterion.
C) Decide on the evaluation criteria.
D) Weight the product ratings for each criterion by the importance of the criterion.

C, B, D, A

Which letter sequence represents the order of the following steps in the request for proposal process?

A) Send the RFP to vendors.
B) Develop product specifications.
C) Evaluate RFP responses against the criteria.
D) Define the selection criteria.

B, D, A, C

RFP stands for ____.

request for proposal

The purpose of benchmarks and weighted point evaluation methods is to make the product selection process as ____ as possible.

objective

In the weighted point evaluation method, ease of learning and ease of use are examples of which kind of criteria?

End-user needs

An objective test or measurement that computer product evaluators use to compare two or more products is ____.

a benchmark

Software designed specifically for a highly specialized industry is called ___.

vertical market software

During the early 1980s, ____ word processors competed for market share.

several

During the 1980s, the number of competing operating systems and software packages had which effects on employee cross-training and productivity?

Hard to cross-train employees; productivity was decreased

A help desk manager would probably emphasize which of these skills in a job search for an advanced technical support staff member?

 

Technical knowledge and skills

The Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) A+ exam is an example of a ____.

vendor-neutral exam

Which of these is an important topic in a help desk staff training program?

All of these

A vendor-specific certification is ____.

none of these

Which of these categories of workers is expected to increase at about the same rate as employment in the U.S. economy over the next decade?

Computer Support Specialist

Which of these levels of user support is likely to be the most responsive to a user’s needs?

Premium support

Which of the following is not a primary benefit of computer industry certification?

 

Ability to identify a worker whose performance has fallen below industry standards

Which of these testing methods is often used in industry certification exams?

Computer adaptive test

Which of these support management concerns directly affects the support staff’s job?

All of these

A measure of the number of support incidents that can be processed in a given time period, often used in staffing the help desk group, is ____.

an Erlang unit

Which of these knowledge, skills, and abilities would a help desk manager probably not seek in an applicant for a help desk position?

Programming skills

“Act with integrity and honesty in dealing with the public, end users, coworkers, management, and competitors”, would likely be covered in which of the following?

A professional code of ethnical behavior

CBT and WBT for those preparing for certification exams are ____ courses.

online tutorial

Which of these ways of organizing a support center has both an expense budget and an income budget?

Profit center

Which of the following kinds of questions gives an applicant for a help desk position a specific problem to solve that is representative of situations that help desk agents actually encounter?

Scenario question

A computer adaptive test may be able to determine a test taker’s proficiency level by asking as few as ____ questions.

15

Which of these aspects of help desk operation would not normally be covered in a user support mission statement?

Help desk fees for services

Objective measures of the user support or help desk operation are called ____.

performance statistics

One of the first vendor-specific certification programs was offered by ____.

Novell

User support managers often use which of these strategies to determine how many staff members to hire to handle the volume of support incidents received?

Use an Erlang calculation to estimate staffing needs

Which of the following levels of support services likely costs the most to provide to users?

Premium level services

Which of these can be examined for industry certification?

Any of these

Which of the following kinds of questions is designed to determine whether a help desk job applicant has specific educational and work experience required for a position?

Directed question

The primary purpose of help desk performance statistics is to ____.

justify the value and expense of support services

Which of these support management concerns directly affects the support staff’s job?

All of these

Which of the following is not a common type of certification used in the information technology field?

Verification of prior employment during a job interview

Which of these is not a common method used to conduct a user satisfaction survey?

Face-to-face interview

Which of these is an important topic in a help desk staff training program?

All of these

Which of the following is not a primary benefit of computer industry certification?

Ability to identify a worker whose performance has fallen below industry standards

Which of these proficiencies (KSAs) would a user support manager usually not specify in a position description for a user support position?

Marketing ability

The average time it takes a help desk to respond to incidents is ____.

wait time

The incident management step in which a closed incident is stored for later use in a knowledge base of solved problems is called ______.

Archive the incident

The incident management step in which a user”s problem is satisfactory dealt with is called incident ____.

Resolution

Which of these help desk positions is often staffed by an employee with programming or product development experience?

Technical support

Time management tools in a help desk software package probably have the greatest impact on the productivity of ____.

A help desk agent

A help desk structured into level or tiers of support uses a ____.

Multilevel support model

The incident management step in which an incident is transferred to a support staff member who has greater experience or resources to handle difficult questions is incident ___.

Escalation

The principal concept in the multilevel support help desk model is ____.

Lower level help desk staff can refer difficult problems to higher levels

LBE is an example of a(n) ____.

Commercial help desk package

____ is not a common source of job stress among user support workers.

All of these are common sources

One way to organize user support services in a way that provides a single point of contact for an organization’s workers or customers is to use ____.

A help desk

The usual sequence of incident escalation during help desk incident management is ____.

From incident screener to product specialist

The ___ help desk position is normally staffed by an entry-level employee.

Incident screener

The ____ position is unlikely to exist in a help desk that is organized in a multilevel support model.

Needs analyst

A help desk software package that includes asset management can help a support staff control ____.

An organization’s equipment inventory

____ is not a category of management issues covered by the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).

Personnel management

The goal of multilevel support model is to handle most support incidents at ____.

The lowest support level

In help desk jargon, ACD stands for ____.

Automated call distributor

Which of these technology trends may permit a support agent to answer questions about multiple operating systems from a single PC?

Virtualization

The purpose of prescreening an incident is to ____.

Determine the type of incident and how the help desk staff will handle it

Which of the following does not normally occur during the first step in the incident management process?

Verify that the caller is authorized to call

Which of the following forms of communication between a user and an agent is asynchronous?

Email

This ____ technology trend may change the way computer users access software and data.

Cloud computing

The process of updating the information about an incident as it is processed and as information is added to the incident record is called incident ____.

Tracking

During the ___ step in the incident management process, an incident is categorized as a request for information, a question, a problem, a complaint, or a work order.

Incident screening

A telephone system that can answer calls, greet callers, provide menus, and route calls is a(n) _____.

Automated call distributor

Which letter sequence is the order of the steps below the incident management process?

A) Authenticate the user.

B) Archive the incident.

C) Log the incident.

D) Prioritize the problem

A,C,D,B

The ____ is a library of procedures, tools, and methods that are considered support industry best practices used by successful help desk operations.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

commercial help desk software packages are available for large desk operations, but are too expensive for small-scale help desks.

False

A dashboard is a visual display to alert each help desk agent that incidents assigned to him or her are willing to be handled.

False

In a HelpSTAR dashboard, throughput measures ____.

The volume of incidents in various categories

An incident’s priority code is based on the number of incidents in a queue ahead of it.

False

A help desk that organizes the support function into levels or tiers uses a(n) _____ model.

multilevel support

A(n) _____ is a contract between organization and an external support provider that defines the expected performance of user support services.

Service level agreement

____ is a method that allocates the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments, each of which can run its own software.

Virtualization

Network problems are often traceable to ____.

some combination of all of these

A procedure or feature that accomplishes the same result as another feature that does not work correctly due to a software bug is called a ____.

workaround

A common source of user misunderstanding and subsequent calls to help desks is poorly designed ____.

user documentation

A computer system that operates but does not work as efficiently as it should has a ____.

performance problem

Software that is developed collaboratively by a loose-knit team of programmers who agree to distribute the source code without cost is called ____.

open source

Most software problems that impact end users occur ____.

during the installation and configuration of the software

A 48- to 72-hour period during which a system or component is operated nonstop before installation at a user site is ____.

a system burn-in test

A hardware component that has its jumper pins set incorrectly is an example of a hardware ____.

configuration problem

Which of these version numbers is likely the most recent version of a software package?

3.61