Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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quadraginta said:
Struggling to find where the correct data input areas have been moved to is a bit more serious than changing an icon color.

And I wasn't suggesting it was your IT problem. But if it isn't somebody's IT problem then whose is it?

One of those things that just falls through the cracks?
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Training. If a system is implemented and the users can't use it correctly, the training is deficient. At my own employer the training was the weakest link--we burned through trainers three times as fast as all the other staff. It's a lot of work, and very thankless as the trainers get heat from both the implementation and the users. And at least at my place a major problem was they decided to hire trainers from outside, who knew the system we were getting but not our business, so they were at sea trying to reconcile the huge difference between the system as it is in the box, and the system as we ended up customizing it to suit ourselves. The bad ones taught the users the system as they'd never see it, and the good ones drove themselves frantic trying to learn what we were going to do as we did it (which wasn't really feasible because everything changed too frequently).

In our case, it ended up working because we never stop training-- there are whole departments that go around constantly training and teaching. It's perpetual, it has to be, because we always add more users and always make more changes. A complex system can't just be shoved out with a binder of manual and then that's it.
 
There was an episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe - maybe it was one of the live streams - where Geo asked the rogues "When are you at your best?" leaving the interpretation of the question up to them.

That got me thinking about that question. And I realised that I felt that I was at my best when I was delivering training - imparting the value of my experience to others. Whether it be in sword fighting or onboarding new starters at work, I found joy in instruction. So I decided to add that to my possible future career path.
 
arthwollipot said:
There was an episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe - maybe it was one of the live streams - where Geo asked the rogues "When are you at your best?" leaving the interpretation of the question up to them.

That got me thinking about that question. And I realised that I felt that I was at my best when I was delivering training - imparting the value of my experience to others. Whether it be in sword fighting or onboarding new starters at work, I found joy in instruction. So I decided to add that to my possible future career path.
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I am curious why you need to train your users in sword fighting. But it IS Canberra, so the need is feasible, I guess...
 
Being confident to ask the right people the right questions seems to be a skill in limited supply. I should have it front and centre on my CV
 
quadraginta said:
I believe them when they tell me changes are made without them being given sufficient advance warning or training.
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When we send our software out we see quite a lot of poor decisions about training from the higher ups.
The actual day-to-day users are given the bare minimum, or worse yet one or two people are sent from each location who can then train the rest of the staff. The excuse used is normally either time restraints or scheduling while ignoring how many hours are lost or errors being made fumbling with a new system.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Training. If a system is implemented and the users can't use it correctly, the training is deficient. At my own employer the training was the weakest link--we burned through trainers three times as fast as all the other staff. It's a lot of work, and very thankless as the trainers get heat from both the implementation and the users. And at least at my place a major problem was they decided to hire trainers from outside, who knew the system we were getting but not our business, so they were at sea trying to reconcile the huge difference between the system as it is in the box, and the system as we ended up customizing it to suit ourselves. The bad ones taught the users the system as they'd never see it, and the good ones drove themselves frantic trying to learn what we were going to do as we did it (which wasn't really feasible because everything changed too frequently).

In our case, it ended up working because we never stop training-- there are whole departments that go around constantly training and teaching. It's perpetual, it has to be, because we always add more users and always make more changes. A complex system can't just be shoved out with a binder of manual and then that's it.
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I agree.
 
Mongrel said:
When we send our software out we see quite a lot of poor decisions about training from the higher ups. The actual day-to-day users are given the bare minimum, or worse yet one or two people are sent from each location who can then train the rest of the staff. The excuse used is normally either time restraints or scheduling while ignoring how many hours are lost or errors being made fumbling with a new system.
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This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.
 
A good friend has so far failed to convince a number of companies that moving data from creaky old system A to shiny new system B with nice schema X is not going to magically compensate for all the years of minimun wage, untrained, sometimes borderline illiterate, staff entering bad data or leaving it out.
 
Wudang said:
A good friend has so far failed to convince a number of companies that moving data from creaky old system A to shiny new system B with nice schema X is not going to magically compensate for all the years of minimun wage, untrained, sometimes borderline illiterate, staff entering bad data or leaving it out.
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Heh. Like buying a fancy new house, moving all the old beat-up furniture into it, then wondering why it's not spectacularly wonderful.
 
Mongrel said:
When we send our software out we see quite a lot of poor decisions about training from the higher ups.
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Our higher ups are pushing my department to switch to a new custom software for one of our core functions and I will not budge on it until we hire the point person who will be responsible for the implementation and training. The vendor keeps saying we don't need that hire just yet, but that just means trying to play catchup. I want someone on my team who is familiar with the software before the vendor starts to mess with it and will understand how to continue to train the rest of us after the vendor gets paid.

I hate most vendors. I like my boss though and he agrees.
 
Yay! I've been a Tier 1 helpdesk operator for a very brief stint.

Long story short, a firewall replacement went pear-shaped and the help desk were overwhelmed by a tsunami of calls because no one could connect to anything.

So a few of us volunteered to take calls and explain what was going on...

... very strangely, afterwards, I've received an astonishing array of "thank you" messages relayed to me via the chain-of-command.

I think I only spoke to about 10 people (during the outage and called them back after the outage) and some of them were very liberal with their praise.

This is very different to my usual work.

:)
 
Oh! Forgot the best bit.

One of my team members called in, because he was working at home and had lost his connection due to the outage.

He recognised my voice on the phone, and was so surprised to be speaking to me on that number, it almost caused a brain freeze.
 
novaphile said:
Yay! I've been a Tier 1 helpdesk operator for a very brief stint.

Long story short, a firewall replacement went pear-shaped and the help desk were overwhelmed by a tsunami of calls because no one could connect to anything.

So a few of us volunteered to take calls and explain what was going on...
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That was very brave of you. Well done.
 
novaphile said:
It was nothing really.

:)

Especially as I wasn't able to do any other work while the whole network was down.

Just one of those interesting coincidences, we had a massive outage and the help desk had three people off that day.
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Regardless, good work. I've been doing this for decades. For people who haven't, direct phone support can be intimidating.
 
So the Department has just rolled out Cisco Jabber to all staff. Jabber is a soft phone that allows people to make and take calls via their PC rather than their desk phone. This is part of the mobile workspace initiative that will allow staff to work remotely much more easily.

Something was just pointed out to me that I hadn't thought of, though in hindsight it is obvious. We are always telling people to reboot their computer. Guess what happens when you do that while you're on a Jabber call?

*click*
 
arthwollipot said:
So the Department has just rolled out Cisco Jabber to all staff. Jabber is a soft phone that allows people to make and take calls via their PC rather than their desk phone. This is part of the mobile workspace initiative that will allow staff to work remotely much more easily.

Something was just pointed out to me that I hadn't thought of, though in hindsight it is obvious. We are always telling people to reboot their computer. Guess what happens when you do that while you're on a Jabber call?

*click*
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The company I work for relies heavily on something like Jabber. They straight up encourage helpdesk calls to be phoned in from a different line, and ask for a different phone number when starting a ticket.
 
Again this is less IT specific and more just general "Office Workflow" but what is it about some people that makes it so their brains are wired thusly:

Step 1 :Get told a new rule you have to follow.
Step 2: Amend the phrase "I'm sorry I know you asked to not do X anymore but this is important" to the front of your actions and continue acting exactly the same.

The ongoing saga of my customers not contact the Help Desk to generate a ticket and just contacting us completely through drive bys, direct e-mails, and coming right to our door finally reached a head and the CEO of their company, not ours so they should understand they have to listen, sent out an e-mail instructing the users how to contact IT.

Literally nothing has changed except now they say "I know I'm not supposed to do this" before doing it.
 
We're on Google chat which, thankfully, is not like Jabber. No one can "call" me, they have to drop a meet into chat and I have to click on it, Much more civilised than for the GLW in the next room, who can, and is, called on Jabber constantly
 
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