Help Desk Hero

HelpDeskHero is built to revolutionize how IT professionals learn, practice, and grow. We believe hands-on experience is the best way to master real-world support challenges.

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Inspiration

Currently, in the Information Technology (IT) industry, many students struggle to get their foot in the door and land their first job. On top of that, when students finally enter their first roles—typically Help Desk (Tech Support) positions—they are often completely unprepared and overwhelmed because there is no adequate way to train for Help Desk work.

As someone who has been in the field and has managed hundreds of users, I know firsthand how difficult it is to break into Help Desk and how stressful those first weeks can be. Over time, we’ve also grown frustrated with how ineffective platforms like CompTIA CertMaster are at preparing students for the realities of the job. Other training methods, such as home labs, are extremely expensive—costing hundreds to thousands of dollars—and therefore inaccessible to most IT students.

Although platforms like TryHackMe and HackTheBox exist, they are designed for cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is not an entry-level field, and no similar hands-on learning platform exists for general IT.

With our platform, students can solve hundreds of realistic support tickets before entering their first Help Desk job, removing the stress of not knowing where to start. Additionally, since operating systems and software are constantly changing, IT Help Desk technicians are often the first to encounter new issues. Our platform can also be used to train entire IT teams on emerging problems before they face them in the field. With this, we plan to disrupt the current IT training market and provide an accessible, modern solution for all aspiring IT professionals.

Furthermore, the interview process for IT Help Desk roles is often unpredictable, as IT managers have no standardized method for evaluating candidates. With Help Desk Hero, we aim to create a consistent, standardized way for interviewers to assess technical ability.

Help Desk Hero is redefining how future IT professionals learn, train, and get hired, making the first step into tech no longer the hardest one.

What it does

When users log in to our platform, they can choose from a variety of challenges. After selecting a challenge, a virtual machine with a intentionally broken system image is launched. Users must diagnose and fix the issues within the machine, and once they successfully restore it, they receive a flag. Submitting the flag awards them points and tracks their progress.

How we built it

We used React, TailwindCSS, Firebase, Next.js, Vercel, Figma, and TypeScript to build the website itself, from the Problem UI to the Account page. We used Figma to design our website, used Vercel to host our website, and used Firebase to connect to a database. We hosted and deployed the Virtual Machines in each individual problem using Azure.

  • Created two Azure VMs within the same Region and Subnet: a Windows Server (domain controller) and a Windows 10/11 workstation
  • Installed AD DS on the server and promoted it to a domain controller
  • Domain-joined the workstation
  • Created a dedicated folder on the server to act as a shared drive
  • Created an AD security group specifically for shared-drive access
  • Applied appropriate share and NTFS permissions mapped to that group
  • Deployed a batch script to automatically validate whether permissions were set correctly

Challenges we ran into

  • Azure API was a pain to set up which we eventually gave up on
  • Getting the websites home page scroll animation to work dynamically was difficult and we ended up fixing it by making the "broken" space look useful
  • The VMs were originally deployed in different Azure regions, which meant they were placed in different virtual networks/subnets and couldn’t communicate causing DNS conflict
  • Azure’s portal made custom images, snapshots, and disk setup tedious
  • “Advanced Sharing” on the server didn’t open initially due to UI/permission errors despite having Admin right
  • Getting NTFS and share permissions aligned correctly with the AD security group
  • Troubleshooting why the workstation couldn’t see the shared folder until permissions and group membership were fully synced
  • Designing the batch script so it reliably verified completion of the lab

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating the whole website.

What we learned

Learned about everything.

What's next for Help Desk Hero

Create more challenges and making it more accessible so anyone looking to break into IT can use our learning platform.

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