Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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So my laptop camera hasn't worked ever since this machine was deployed to me. I had a zoom meeting today and I mentioned this, and someone asked if I had flicked the slider above the camera. "I don't have one of those," I thought as I felt around the camera for it. Suddenly something moved under my thumb and my camera started working. I hadn't even seen it, and I've been looking directly at it for months!
 
A knowledge library project at one of my tech support workplaces was highly unpopular at first. The doctrine was, to reduce time troubleshooting, for any ticket with a known issue you would search up the solution, apply it to the ticket, perform the steps as noted, and then manually document further only if the results deviated from expectations, otherwise affirming the resolution. If the documented solution was not best practice, before taking the next call the tech was to submit an update, which would be cleaned up by the technical writing team, and then be submitted to a tech lead for approval.

If the solution was not already in the knowledge base, and it wasn't a one-off situation, the tech was to submit the steps they took, in order to make it a new solution. The same cleanup and approval applied.

It wasn't well liked, making a lot of the reps feel like script monkeys, when in fact we were able to troubleshoot up to what's considered level 2 solutions. (Level 3 was at the sysadmin/developer tier). However, after a while it proved quite valuable. The solutions started to be a good match to what steps we usually used, saving documentation time. In particular one frequent process that I recall used to spell a 20-minute call or longer was improved to be a reliable first call resolve in about 12 minutes. Quite a bit of expertise was shared and solution processes improved.

Then we all got outsourced. Doh!

These things start out with good intentions, but then fall foul of management by metrics, in my experience. In one project, we had this system, where if a case had a new solution, we'd flag it, and one of a team of technical authors would write up a readable version for future use, referring to the support engineers for details if necessary. Then budget cuts removed the technical authors, so the solutions were not so well written, as the support engineers had to write them up themselves, at a point when they were just interested in closing the case. Then targets were introduced to encourage support engineers to submit solutions to the knowledge database. This led to poorly written solutions to non-problems being submitted. The least able engineers submitted lots of these, so the knowledge base became less and less useful as the quality of information in it declined.

That's leaving aside the issue that most of the search tools for these knowledge bases were inadequate.
 
So my laptop camera hasn't worked ever since this machine was deployed to me. I had a zoom meeting today and I mentioned this, and someone asked if I had flicked the slider above the camera. "I don't have one of those," I thought as I felt around the camera for it. Suddenly something moved under my thumb and my camera started working. I hadn't even seen it, and I've been looking directly at it for months!

Had you filed a trouble ticket with the support department? :p
 
So my laptop camera hasn't worked ever since this machine was deployed to me. I had a zoom meeting today and I mentioned this, and someone asked if I had flicked the slider above the camera. "I don't have one of those," I thought as I felt around the camera for it. Suddenly something moved under my thumb and my camera started working. I hadn't even seen it, and I've been looking directly at it for months!

My coworker had the same issue with his new laptop, but worryingly the problem was intermittant. Apparently the slider can be jostled open and closed if you move the laptop much, so you should still check to be sure the camera's not on when you don't want it to be.
 
So my laptop camera hasn't worked ever since this machine was deployed to me. I had a zoom meeting today and I mentioned this, and someone asked if I had flicked the slider above the camera. "I don't have one of those," I thought as I felt around the camera for it. Suddenly something moved under my thumb and my camera started working. I hadn't even seen it, and I've been looking directly at it for months!


I think we've had a couple of people on here who would have preferred the explanation that you had been in one reality where your laptop didn't have a slider then you slipped into a different reality where it did.
Parsimony.
 
My first thought, too. I wonder what level it would have gotten to.
It probably would have gone to Desktop, who would have sent someone around who would look at it, then calmly reach over and flick the switch, then walk off without saying anything.

I know these folks. That's absolutely what they'd do.
 
Exactly what I was thinking. I can even see your tie fling out dramatically as you spin on your heel to walk away without comment. The slight smile not visible.
...because I'm wearing my mask like an essential worker has to.

There have been close contacts in my building.
 
We're getting to play around in the new ServiceNow environment in earnest. I'm doing some test scenarios in anticipation of getting real training next week. It does things quite differently from SCSM, but it's looking pretty smooth. I think I actually kind of like it. I expect that there'll be a steep learning curve, but once I'm at the top I'll completely forget what SCSM was like.

SCSM is awful. I won't miss it.
 
I do like that I've been working in this position long enough that when someone calls and asks questions, I can just answer them without having to check with someone else. I routinely get people saying that I've been very helpful. It's nice.
 
I do like that I've been working in this position long enough that when someone calls and asks questions, I can just answer them without having to check with someone else. I routinely get people saying that I've been very helpful. It's nice.

This sounds like one of those things in magical childrens' books, "you had the power all along, you just didn't realize it". Why, I've been confidently answering people's questions for years and years, even when I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Just like with dogs, the words you say don't matter, only the tone of your voice. They want to hear a reassuring, confident tone! And if they come back to say it didn't fix their issue, simply use the same reassuring, confident tone to explain that they must have misunderstood. With skill and practice you can keep this up until they give up entirely and learn to live with their problems. That's adaptation, which is nature's miracle of life and what enables species to survive and evolve. Start helping the universe by furthering this noble goal!

Some of you possibly disagree, but that's only because you're reading this. I assure you, were you hearing me say this in my reassuring, confident tones you would believe it so hard!
 
This sounds like one of those things in magical childrens' books, "you had the power all along, you just didn't realize it". Why, I've been confidently answering people's questions for years and years, even when I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Just like with dogs, the words you say don't matter, only the tone of your voice. They want to hear a reassuring, confident tone! And if they come back to say it didn't fix their issue, simply use the same reassuring, confident tone to explain that they must have misunderstood. With skill and practice you can keep this up until they give up entirely and learn to live with their problems. That's adaptation, which is nature's miracle of life and what enables species to survive and evolve. Start helping the universe by furthering this noble goal!

Some of you possibly disagree, but that's only because you're reading this. I assure you, were you hearing me say this in my reassuring, confident tones you would believe it so hard!
The art of consultancy. Well the real art is being paid for telling people what they want to hear or already know.
 
So my laptop camera hasn't worked ever since this machine was deployed to me. I had a zoom meeting today and I mentioned this, and someone asked if I had flicked the slider above the camera. "I don't have one of those," I thought as I felt around the camera for it. Suddenly something moved under my thumb and my camera started working. I hadn't even seen it, and I've been looking directly at it for months!

I got issued a new laptop at work a few weeks ago, and wondered why someone had drawn an ugly little dot on the camera slider with a silver paint marker. Now I’m guessing our (criminally overworked, two people for 400+ users) on-site IT department has heard this one before.
 
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