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

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The Man said:
Basically double-time for 8hrs while fewer people are around to screw things up. Though, unfortunately, with the recent work from home initiatives people are becoming more skilled at screwing things up from home.
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Actually our holiday work arrangements are such that I get double time for five hours of work. Still, that's ten hours worth, which is considerably more than the 7:25 that my award requires.
 
arthwollipot said:
Actually our holiday work arrangements are such that I get double time for five hours of work. Still, that's ten hours worth, which is considerably more than the 7:25 that my award requires.
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Not sure but I think our holiday pay changed recently. Working a holiday may now net you time and a half for the hours worked plus the usual 8 hr of regular pay people not working the holiday get. I'll have to check the next pay stub for the rates.
 
gnome said:
Wouldn't you worry that you'd lose vital people that actually are needed even if they have difficulty explaining it in short form?
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Not even in the slightest.

Not being able to explain it well is one thing, literally not being able to even start to verbalize what you actually do is another.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Not even in the slightest.

Not being able to explain it well is one thing, literally not being able to even start to verbalize what you actually do is another.
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Still feels dangerously oversimplified. I completely agree with your goal--but it doesn't seem like every part of a large organization that doesn't meet that goal can be immediately ripped out and discarded without some serious unwanted consequences.
 
I think I've mentioned this before. We sometimes get a situation where someone tries to phone us, they get put in a queue, and after a few minutes waiting impatiently they hang up (contributing to our abandonment stat) and send us an email instead. Usually the email says something passive aggressive like "I tried phoning but the wait was too long".

The wait time on the phone at its worst can be up to about ten minutes. The wait time for an email can be up to three days.

Then there's the people who call us up, are placed in the queue, then put the phone on speaker and go off and do something else so they don't hear us when we answer the call.
 
Grrrfff...

Firefox just did another update and made some layout changes. The main thing I don't like is that now my menu items are twice as spaced out as they used to be. I used to be able to hit my links from the list practically without looking, and I liked being able to see most of the list at a glance. Now there's so much space between the lines I practically have to read each one to find what I want.
 
alfaniner said:
Grrrfff...

Firefox just did another update and made some layout changes. The main thing I don't like is that now my menu items are twice as spaced out as they used to be. I used to be able to hit my links from the list practically without looking, and I liked being able to see most of the list at a glance. Now there's so much space between the lines I practically have to read each one to find what I want.
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(eta) Apparently I'm not the only one who found that to be an irritation. Fortunately a Google search immediately found me a fix. It may be beyond some people, but it was pretty easy for me. I just hope it doesn't change with every update.
 
After the update Firefox has taken to grabbing the search box and moving the typing to the address bar, a behavior I always hated even when it works, but Firefox is doing that and then giving me an error that my search terms aren't a valid URL.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
After the update Firefox has taken to grabbing the search box and moving the typing to the address bar, a behavior I always hated even when it works, but Firefox is doing that and then giving me an error that my search terms aren't a valid URL.
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I've had several crashes this morning when working on an important Tinkercad project (online). Fortunately it saves my changes as I go along. I imagine a patch should be coming out forthwith.
 
I want to say something. I've told stories in this thread, and got the response "that really should be automated". And yes, it really should. Sometimes it can't but sometimes it can. This week I'm stuck doing New Starter Requests (NSRs), and this is one of those times where most of it is actually automated - and there's a stark contrast between the bits that are automated and the bits that aren't.

Creating the AD and Exchange accounts is almost completely automated, and takes about thirty seconds. There are one or two additional bits to be adjusted then that's done. Creating the phone account is a little bit more involved, but it too is largely automated. Voice mail, ditto. All this, five minutes tops.

However, the department has recently been adopting Cisco Jabber, which is a VoIP soft phone that allows people to use their internal phone extensions while working from home. Setting this up is not automated, and it shows. I still can't do it without following the SOP document carefully, and it takes me about fifteen to twenty minutes.

I expect that this too will be largely automated in time, and just hasn't been yet because we haven't been doing it for all new starters for very long.

So yeah, I do get the benefits of some automation some of the time.
 
This doesn't really fit here, but I thought I'd put it in anyway.

The person living with me is "more-than-a-rommate, less-than-a-partner," and being Thai with a poor command of English often asks me to assist with things. Today he received a replacement credit card that requires activation before it can be used. The recommended way to do that was to call a telephone number.

Earlier incarnations of this approach used the telephone keypad for input, but speech recognition has been getting better over the past few years and a lot of sites are now using it. He called the number on his cell phone and put it on speaker so we could both hear the other end. The conversation went something like this (IVR=credit card provider's interactive voice response system, S=person living with me, me=me):

IVR: Please say the 16 digits of your account number.

S: Do I do that?

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the 16 digits of your account number.

Me: I'll do it.

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the 16 digits of your account number.

Me: digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit, digit

IVR: Thank you. Please say the four digits of the expiry date (gives example):

S: That's this date here?

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the four digits of the expiry date.

Me: No, that's the date the card becomes active--

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the four digits of the expiry date.

Me: Zero Seven Two Three

IVR: Please say the card holder's month of birth and last two digit of birth year.

Me: That's May 19--, right?

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the card holder's month of birth and last two digit of birth year.

S: No, it was (19-- +1 year)

IVR: Response not understood. Please say the card holder's month of birth and last two digit of birth year.

Me: Oh, right. Zero Five--

IVR: Response not understood. We're sorry you're having problems. Please try again later. click
 
I like the ones that let you use the phone keypad if you prefer that to speaking. A bit frustrating when it asks for a number, and you punch it in, and it says it didn't understand. Come on! This used to be easy, now I have to argue with the phone.
 
These are starting to fall under anti-discriminatory legislation in the UK. My mother for example has had a laryngectomy, during which they also damaged the nerves to her tongue and that makes her extremely hard to understand, especially on a telephone. She can't use such technology.
 
arthwollipot said:
Yeah, that's not speech recognition getting better, is it?
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No speech recognition is getting better. Cheap speech recognition is not.

OT but I remember back in '98 heading over to one of Microsoft's buildings twice a weak to give handwriting samples. That still doesn't work reliably either.
 
arthwollipot said:
I want to say something. I've told stories in this thread, and got the response "that really should be automated". And yes, it really should. Sometimes it can't but sometimes it can. This week I'm stuck doing New Starter Requests (NSRs), and this is one of those times where most of it is actually automated - and there's a stark contrast between the bits that are automated and the bits that aren't.

Creating the AD and Exchange accounts is almost completely automated, and takes about thirty seconds. There are one or two additional bits to be adjusted then that's done. Creating the phone account is a little bit more involved, but it too is largely automated. Voice mail, ditto. All this, five minutes tops.

However, the department has recently been adopting Cisco Jabber, which is a VoIP soft phone that allows people to use their internal phone extensions while working from home. Setting this up is not automated, and it shows. I still can't do it without following the SOP document carefully, and it takes me about fifteen to twenty minutes.

I expect that this too will be largely automated in time, and just hasn't been yet because we haven't been doing it for all new starters for very long.

So yeah, I do get the benefits of some automation some of the time.
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Heh. A few years ago in a different job I supported several applications, and there was a drive to automate the installation of one of them. So I had to go teach the guy writing the automation how to install the application. Which was a horrendous process which took four pages of instructions, and even then frequently went wrong. The application in question was one that connected the readings from several different types of vitals monitors to the electronic medical record. So there were lots of finnicky customizations for various hardware. (My favorite was that in one place during setup you had to type the manufacturer of the device, and if someone misspelled "Philips" as "Phillips" the software would never be able to catch the monitor's data, but anyone not looking for that exact error would probably not notice the spelling difference.)

They finally gave up trying to automate the installs of this one, it was just too complicated with too many variables.
 
Me: Types the same URL into the web browser a billion times over the course of literally years.
My Browser's autofill/suggestion bar: "Yeah I ain't remembering that."
Me: Accidently types the URL in wrong just ONCE.
My Browser's autofill/suggestion bar: (Every time I type the first letter of the URL until the end of time) "Oh you wanna go to Faceboot? Do you? You stupid idiot. Lookit Faceboot. Is that the website you want to go to you pathetic piece of crap?"
 
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