Glossary / Service Desk
Service Desk
The IT team's single point of contact for support requests, incidents, and service requests — broader in scope than a traditional helpdesk, which is usually reactive, ticket-only support.
"Helpdesk" and "service desk" get used interchangeably, but the distinction ITIL draws is useful: a helpdesk is reactive and narrow — log the issue, route it, resolve it, close it. A service desk is broader and more proactive — it's also the intake point for service requests (provision a new laptop, add a user, grant an access change), and it's expected to own communication during a wider incident, not just individual ticket resolution.
In practice, most small and mid-sized IT teams and MSPs run one unified queue that does both jobs under whichever name they prefer — the functional distinction matters more in how an organization scales its process (does an incident automatically trigger status communication and a post-incident review, or does it just get closed when it's fixed) than in the label on the tool.
A service desk's effectiveness is usually measured by the same core metrics regardless of what it's called: SLA adherence, MTTR, ticket volume trend, and first-contact resolution rate — how often an issue gets solved without being escalated or bounced between technicians.
How Nexus handles this
Nexus runs one ticketing queue for both incidents and service requests against the same client and device record — SLA timers, escalation, and history in one place instead of a helpdesk tool and a separate request-management tool that don't share data.
More terms
MSP (Managed Service Provider)
A company that remotely manages a client's IT infrastructure and end-user systems on an ongoing, proactive basis — usually a flat-fee contract, not break-fix billing.
RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management)
Software that lets an MSP monitor device health and perform remote management tasks — patching, scripting, remote control — across every client site from one console.
PSA (Professional Services Automation)
Software that runs the business side of MSP operations — ticketing, SLAs, billing, contracts, and client records — the system of record most MSP work flows through.
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