Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10 - Page 5

Armitage72 · 13th August 2021, 10:06 AM

In the past our email system has sometimes had temporary problems that would block external emails. Employees could email each other, but customer emails would vanish into the ether.
I emailed the IT help desk with a quick FYI because a customer in Canada emailed me twice this morning, once at 10:25 and again at 11:24. The 11:24 email arrived at 11:42, and the 10:25 email arrived at 12:00. I wanted to make sure they were aware if there was a problem.

I was told that traffic is backed up at the border today.

TragicMonkey · 13th August 2021, 10:36 AM

Reminds me of a lady at my company who used to send out tons of emails to tons of people, all on subjects they didn't care about. It was work-related to her work, but not really needed by the people she was continually blasting emails to. Eventually she switched to a different position in the company and ran into a curious problem when it came to communicating actually relevant work-related information: it turns out that dozens of people had set up an Outlook rule to immediately route any email from her into the trash.

JoeMorgue · 13th August 2021, 10:38 AM

That's another common trait of the "Don't actually have a job" types I mentioned earlier. They absolutely love to forward other people's e-mails to the same people who already got it with an (at most) one line addition of "Let me reiterate what so and so said about blah blah blah" or something to that effect.

malbui · 13th August 2021, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue

That's another common trait of the "Don't actually have a job" types I mentioned earlier. They absolutely love to forward other people's e-mails to the same people who already got it with an (at most) one line addition of "Let me reiterate what so and so blah blah blah" or something to that effect.

I once had a kind of senior manager without portfolio in my hierarchy who'd be copied in on mails sent to managers and forward them to the same manager five minutes later with a comment saying 'I think we need to act on this.'

One of the few good things about SOX was that he got canned when it became clear that he didn't add any value to any business processes.

TragicMonkey · 16th August 2021, 07:10 AM

This morning's fun: explaining, and then demonstrating with examples, why dividing a given set of data up into subcategories to get averages then averaging the averages of those subcategories together yields different results from getting the averages across the larger categories to begin with. It's a math thing, I don't have control over how math works. And the person I'm explaining this to is a director in the finance department...

JimOfAllTrades · 16th August 2021, 11:44 AM

I used to go through this with accountants all the time. For some reason they just didn't seem to understand that if you round off the amounts in your financial reports (to the dollar, to the nearest $1000, whatever) then the total of all your sub-reports may differ from the total of the main report by as much as 1 (dollar, $1000, whatever). As you say, it's out of my control how rounding works.

gnome · 16th August 2021, 05:43 PM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

averaging the averages

HISSSSSSSSSS

Norman Alexander · 16th August 2021, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

This morning's fun: explaining, and then demonstrating with examples, why dividing a given set of data up into subcategories to get averages then averaging the averages of those subcategories together yields different results from getting the averages across the larger categories to begin with. It's a math thing, I don't have control over how math works. And the person I'm explaining this to is a director in the finance department...

Just give him the data in a giant spreadsheet and leave it to him to get the standard deviations of the mean average modes or whatever. Just make sure you call the spreadsheet Jims_own_private_database_of_stuff.xlsx

Filippo Lippi · 16th August 2021, 11:01 PM

We have a weekly IT newsletter. One of the features is the "new starters," and we're growing rapidly so there's a lot of them. The format is a photo of the colleague, their name and where they'll be working. Except there's rarely any photos, just the silhouettes from the template. The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative

Norman Alexander · 17th August 2021, 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

We have a weekly IT newsletter. One of the features is the "new starters," and we're growing rapidly so there's a lot of them. The format is a photo of the colleague, their name and where they'll be working. Except there's rarely any photos, just the silhouettes from the template. The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative

Were any of the new hirees web jockeys?

Filippo Lippi · 17th August 2021, 02:57 AM

There will be a fair few.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

Norman Alexander · 17th August 2021, 07:00 AM

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

Originally Posted by Me

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative

Were any of the new hirees web jockeys?

There will be a fair few.

Then at least one of them is not doing their job, it would seem.

Filippo Lippi · 17th August 2021, 07:32 AM

I think it's just that internal comms is very low priority

Darat · 17th August 2021, 10:31 AM

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

I think it's just that internal comms is very low priority

I've noted in many companies that people have an idea like an internal website page as you describe, it will initially get some resources and made live but no provision is made for ongoing resources to keep them up to date or even relevant.

Wudang · 17th August 2021, 12:31 PM

<triggered> Some 15 years back BigBankUK decided it needed an internal website. Naturally they hired consultants who decided the ideal metaphor for an internal website was "The High Street". So you'd have Library (for knowledge), Bank (for anything financial) etc. This was obviously brilliant stuff and acclaimed widely until some smartarse asked a stupid question like "How the **** is that supposed to work?" producing unnecessary embarassment for many talented and eager people.
There's always one.

arthwollipot · 17th August 2021, 06:21 PM

You know, I think "library" would be a much more user-focused term than "knowledge base". I bet something like 80% of my callers have no idea that our publicly-searchable knowledge base exists.

gnome · 17th August 2021, 07:22 PM

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!

arthwollipot · 17th August 2021, 08:26 PM

I've said previously that every single job tracking system I have used has had an integrated knowledge management functionality that was unused in favour of an external knowledge base.

Dr. Keith · 17th August 2021, 08:47 PM

Originally Posted by gnome

Then we all got outsourced. Doh!

That's just a fringe benefit of really good documentation, right?

Norman Alexander · 17th August 2021, 09:25 PM

Originally Posted by gnome

Then we all got outsourced. Doh!

They paid you well to write the manual so it was good. Now they only want to pay monkeys with bananas to use the manual.

NB. It's almost always about the money.

arthwollipot · 17th August 2021, 10:34 PM

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!

zooterkin · 18th August 2021, 12:55 AM

Originally Posted by gnome

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.

Blue Mountain · 18th August 2021, 01:28 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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?

Dr. Keith · 18th August 2021, 05:54 AM

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

Had you filed a trouble ticket with the support department?

My first thought, too. I wonder what level it would have gotten to.

TragicMonkey · 18th August 2021, 06:11 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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.

Wudang · 18th August 2021, 07:28 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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.

arthwollipot · 18th August 2021, 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by Dr. Keith

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.

Norman Alexander · 18th August 2021, 08:51 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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.

Indeed I would.

arthwollipot · 18th August 2021, 08:59 PM

Originally Posted by Norman Alexander

Indeed I would.

I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do too.

Dr. Keith · 18th August 2021, 10:03 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do too.

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.

arthwollipot · 18th August 2021, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by Dr. Keith

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.

arthwollipot · 19th August 2021, 12:39 AM

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.

novaphile · 19th August 2021, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

...

SCSM is awful. I won't miss it.

Hey. It could be worse. You could be using Heat.

(Heat needs to die in a fire).

arthwollipot · 19th August 2021, 07:29 PM

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.

TragicMonkey · 19th August 2021, 08:24 PM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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!

catsmate · 20th August 2021, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

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.

malbui · 20th August 2021, 03:59 AM

Originally Posted by catsmate

The art of consultancy. Well the real art is being paid for telling people what they want to hear or already know.

Borrowing their expensive watches to tell them the time.

TragicMonkey · 20th August 2021, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by malbui

Borrowing their expensive watches to tell them the time.

Borrowing their expensive watches to tell them they need to learn how to tell the time on their own.

Senor_Pointy · 20th August 2021, 05:56 AM

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

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.

catsmate · 20th August 2021, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Borrowing their expensive watches to tell them they need to learn how to tell the time on their own.

If they're from MCKC, not returning the watch.

13th August 2021, 10:36 AM	#162
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 66,035	Reminds me of a lady at my company who used to send out tons of emails to tons of people, all on subjects they didn't care about. It was work-related to her work, but not really needed by the people she was continually blasting emails to. Eventually she switched to a different position in the company and ran into a curious problem when it came to communicating actually relevant work-related information: it turns out that dozens of people had set up an Outlook rule to immediately route any email from her into the trash.
	__________________ You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara.

13th August 2021, 10:38 AM	#163
JoeMorgue Self Employed Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Florida Posts: 44,114	That's another common trait of the "Don't actually have a job" types I mentioned earlier. They absolutely love to forward other people's e-mails to the same people who already got it with an (at most) one line addition of "Let me reiterate what so and so said about blah blah blah" or something to that effect.
	__________________ "If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. Last edited by JoeMorgue; 13th August 2021 at 11:07 AM.

13th August 2021, 10:52 AM	#164
malbui Beauf Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,492	Originally Posted by JoeMorgue That's another common trait of the "Don't actually have a job" types I mentioned earlier. They absolutely love to forward other people's e-mails to the same people who already got it with an (at most) one line addition of "Let me reiterate what so and so blah blah blah" or something to that effect. I once had a kind of senior manager without portfolio in my hierarchy who'd be copied in on mails sent to managers and forward them to the same manager five minutes later with a comment saying 'I think we need to act on this.' One of the few good things about SOX was that he got canned when it became clear that he didn't add any value to any business processes.
malbui Beauf Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,492	__________________ "But Master! Does not the fire need water too? Does not the mountain need the storm? Does not your scrotum need kicking?"

16th August 2021, 07:10 AM	#165
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 66,035	This morning's fun: explaining, and then demonstrating with examples, why dividing a given set of data up into subcategories to get averages then averaging the averages of those subcategories together yields different results from getting the averages across the larger categories to begin with. It's a math thing, I don't have control over how math works. And the person I'm explaining this to is a director in the finance department...
	__________________ You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara.

16th August 2021, 11:44 AM	#166
JimOfAllTrades Graduate Poster Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 1,105	I used to go through this with accountants all the time. For some reason they just didn't seem to understand that if you round off the amounts in your financial reports (to the dollar, to the nearest $1000, whatever) then the total of all your sub-reports may differ from the total of the main report by as much as 1 (dollar, $1000, whatever). As you say, it's out of my control how rounding works.
	Last edited by JimOfAllTrades; 16th August 2021 at 11:53 AM.

13th August 2021, 10:06 AM	#161
Armitage72 Philosopher Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Rochester, NY Posts: 7,825	In the past our email system has sometimes had temporary problems that would block external emails. Employees could email each other, but customer emails would vanish into the ether. I emailed the IT help desk with a quick FYI because a customer in Canada emailed me twice this morning, once at 10:25 and again at 11:24. The 11:24 email arrived at 11:42, and the 10:25 email arrived at 12:00. I wanted to make sure they were aware if there was a problem. I was told that traffic is backed up at the border today.

16th August 2021, 05:43 PM	#167
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 13,764	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey averaging the averages HISSSSSSSSSS
	__________________

16th August 2021, 06:30 PM	#168
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Dharug & Gundungurra Posts: 14,982	Originally Posted by TragicMonkey This morning's fun: explaining, and then demonstrating with examples, why dividing a given set of data up into subcategories to get averages then averaging the averages of those subcategories together yields different results from getting the averages across the larger categories to begin with. It's a math thing, I don't have control over how math works. And the person I'm explaining this to is a director in the finance department... Just give him the data in a giant spreadsheet and leave it to him to get the standard deviations of the mean average modes or whatever. Just make sure you call the spreadsheet Jims_own_private_database_of_stuff.xlsx
	__________________ _{...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015}

16th August 2021, 11:01 PM	#169
Filippo Lippi Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 4,377	We have a weekly IT newsletter. One of the features is the "new starters," and we're growing rapidly so there's a lot of them. The format is a photo of the colleague, their name and where they'll be working. Except there's rarely any photos, just the silhouettes from the template. The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative
	__________________ You can't defeat fascism through debate because it's not simply an idea, proposal or theory. It's a fundamentally flawed way of looking at the world. It's a distorting prism, emotionally charged and completely logic-proof. You may as well challenge rabies to a game of Boggle. @ViolettaCrisis Last edited by Filippo Lippi; 16th August 2021 at 11:03 PM.

17th August 2021, 01:44 AM	#170
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Dharug & Gundungurra Posts: 14,982	Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi We have a weekly IT newsletter. One of the features is the "new starters," and we're growing rapidly so there's a lot of them. The format is a photo of the colleague, their name and where they'll be working. Except there's rarely any photos, just the silhouettes from the template. The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative Were any of the new hirees web jockeys?
	__________________ _{...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015}

17th August 2021, 02:57 AM	#171
Filippo Lippi Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 4,377	There will be a fair few. Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk
	__________________ You can't defeat fascism through debate because it's not simply an idea, proposal or theory. It's a fundamentally flawed way of looking at the world. It's a distorting prism, emotionally charged and completely logic-proof. You may as well challenge rabies to a game of Boggle. @ViolettaCrisis

17th August 2021, 07:00 AM	#172
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Dharug & Gundungurra Posts: 14,982	Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi Originally Posted by Me Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi The result is a webpage that's not very informative and looks terrible. Week after week. No one has time to fix it, I guess. Indicative Were any of the new hirees web jockeys? There will be a fair few. Then at least one of them is not doing their job, it would seem.
	__________________ _{...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015}

17th August 2021, 07:32 AM	#173
Filippo Lippi Illuminator Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 4,377	I think it's just that internal comms is very low priority
	__________________ You can't defeat fascism through debate because it's not simply an idea, proposal or theory. It's a fundamentally flawed way of looking at the world. It's a distorting prism, emotionally charged and completely logic-proof. You may as well challenge rabies to a game of Boggle. @ViolettaCrisis

17th August 2021, 10:31 AM	#174
Darat Lackey Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: South East, UK Posts: 109,607	Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi I think it's just that internal comms is very low priority I've noted in many companies that people have an idea like an internal website page as you describe, it will initially get some resources and made live but no provision is made for ongoing resources to keep them up to date or even relevant.
	__________________ I wish I knew how to quit you

17th August 2021, 12:31 PM	#175
Wudang BOFH Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: People's Republic of South Yorkshire Posts: 15,452	<triggered> Some 15 years back BigBankUK decided it needed an internal website. Naturally they hired consultants who decided the ideal metaphor for an internal website was "The High Street". So you'd have Library (for knowledge), Bank (for anything financial) etc. This was obviously brilliant stuff and acclaimed widely until some smartarse asked a stupid question like "How the **** is that supposed to work?" producing unnecessary embarassment for many talented and eager people. There's always one.
	__________________ "Your deepest pools, like your deepest politicians and philosophers, often turn out more shallow than expected." Walter Scott.

17th August 2021, 06:21 PM	#176
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	You know, I think "library" would be a much more user-focused term than "knowledge base". I bet something like 80% of my callers have no idea that our publicly-searchable knowledge base exists.
	__________________ Слава Україні! Героям Слава! 20220224 - 20230224

17th August 2021, 07:22 PM	#177
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 13,764	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!
	__________________ Last edited by gnome; 17th August 2021 at 07:37 PM.

17th August 2021, 08:26 PM	#178
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	I've said previously that every single job tracking system I have used has had an integrated knowledge management functionality that was unused in favour of an external knowledge base.
	__________________ Слава Україні! Героям Слава! 20220224 - 20230224

17th August 2021, 08:47 PM	#179
Dr. Keith Not a doctor. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 25,592	Originally Posted by gnome Then we all got outsourced. Doh! That's just a fringe benefit of really good documentation, right?
	__________________ Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake.

17th August 2021, 09:25 PM	#180
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Dharug & Gundungurra Posts: 14,982	Originally Posted by gnome Then we all got outsourced. Doh! They paid you well to write the manual so it was good. Now they only want to pay monkeys with bananas to use the manual. NB. It's almost always about the money.
	__________________ _{...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015}

17th August 2021, 10:34 PM	#181
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	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!
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18th August 2021, 12:55 AM	#182
zooterkin Nitpicking dilettante Administrator Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Berkshire, mostly Posts: 55,834	Originally Posted by gnome 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.
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18th August 2021, 01:28 AM	#183
Blue Mountain Resident Skeptical Hobbit Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Waging war on woo-woo in Winnipeg Posts: 7,339	Originally Posted by arthwollipot 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?
	__________________ The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French)

18th August 2021, 05:54 AM	#184
Dr. Keith Not a doctor. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 25,592	Originally Posted by Blue Mountain Had you filed a trouble ticket with the support department? My first thought, too. I wonder what level it would have gotten to.
	__________________ Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake.

18th August 2021, 06:11 AM	#185
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 66,035	Originally Posted by arthwollipot 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.
	__________________ You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara.

18th August 2021, 07:28 AM	#186
Wudang BOFH Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: People's Republic of South Yorkshire Posts: 15,452	Originally Posted by arthwollipot 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.
	__________________ "Your deepest pools, like your deepest politicians and philosophers, often turn out more shallow than expected." Walter Scott.

18th August 2021, 08:30 PM	#187
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	Originally Posted by Dr. Keith 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.
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18th August 2021, 08:51 PM	#188
Norman Alexander Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Dharug & Gundungurra Posts: 14,982	Originally Posted by arthwollipot 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. Indeed I would.
	__________________ _{...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015}

18th August 2021, 08:59 PM	#189
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	Originally Posted by Norman Alexander Indeed I would. I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do too.
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18th August 2021, 10:03 PM	#190
Dr. Keith Not a doctor. Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Texas Posts: 25,592	Originally Posted by arthwollipot I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do too. 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.
	__________________ Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake.

18th August 2021, 10:41 PM	#191
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	Originally Posted by Dr. Keith 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.
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19th August 2021, 12:39 AM	#192
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	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.
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19th August 2021, 03:56 PM	#193
novaphile Quester of Doglets Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Sunny South Australia Posts: 4,941	Originally Posted by arthwollipot ... SCSM is awful. I won't miss it. Hey. It could be worse. You could be using Heat. (Heat needs to die in a fire).
	__________________ We would be better, and braver, to engage in enquiry, rather than indulge in the idle fancy, that we already know -- Plato.

19th August 2021, 07:29 PM	#194
arthwollipot Observer of Phenomena Pronouns: he/him Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Ngunnawal Country Posts: 82,095	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.
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19th August 2021, 08:24 PM	#195
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 66,035	Originally Posted by arthwollipot 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!
	__________________ You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara.