IT Help(less) Desk (1 Viewer)

NauticalGent

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Gotta love US Gov IT. You place a trouble call, get a ticket, wait a week and the first communique you receive is an email asking you "has the issue been resolved?"

It took all I had not to respond "Gee, I dont know...did you FIX it?!?"

I understand that a there is a reason for asking but it sure is frustrating...

Rant over...
 

moke123

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Have you watched the IT Crowd on Netflix?

 

Uncle Gizmo

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Here's a sketch by Three Dead Troll's in a Baggie:-

 

The_Doc_Man

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Having been a tier III responder on the U.S. Navy's Personnel Help Desk operating out of Navy Enterprise Data Center New Orleans, I can tell you that if a Help Desk agent exhibited that behavior while the phone was ringing or people were on hold, they would immediately be taking a walk to the front door without a job and without their Navy credentials. I know the jokes. A lot of the scammers and spammers pretending to be on a help desk deserve to be the butt of raunchy humor as well as the target of vituperation and contumely. And to be honest, the "coffee cup on the CD-ROM tray" joke (in the "Three Dead Trolls" video) has been around since MS-DOS days. We had our own problem classifications, and one of the most common was PICNIC... Problem In Chair, Not In Computer. So yes, there were times when a user calling the help desk ended the call feeling someone dumber than a box of rocks, and deservedly so.

However, it wasn't all fun and games. At NEDC-NO, we were told that when that phone rang or when we got an e-mail that documented a ticket requiring our attention, there was only one circumstance of higher importance and that was our assigned system being down. Which if it actually happened, was probably the most likely reason for the trouble call anyway. If a user's problem made it all the way up to tier III, we were forbidden to put the caller on hold. We were set up for hands-free operation so we could talk and type at the same time (for those of us who actually COULD talk and do anything else at the same time... how do you think you GET to be a tier III responder?)

Fortunately for me, most of the time the Help Desk tickets were resolved by fixing the aftermath of someone trying to do things they should not have done such that the system's security software caught them and locked down the account. The Help Desk could change passwords for users in a certain group, but if a security lock-out occurred for a file or an account, that required system admin intervention. Sort of like the moderators here on AWF. We can short-term ban any members who are excessively disrespectful and permanently ban spammers. We can move threads to different headings and such, but it takes Jon or his system admin to do things that are out of the mod's abilities.

@NauticalGent - The long lead time for a technical help desk is kind of odd to me, but there ARE things that get reset automatically after 24 hours (or some other time, because often, the timeout duration is set by local group policy). So if someone asks if you still have the problem, they MIGHT be hoping that you had an issue that expired on its own. Let's face it. Even when we have good intentions, we can still hope to have caught a lucky break on a problem.
 

Isaac

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The worst is in a big environment when they try to pawn it off to many different groups. I call the help desk to make my Internet Explorer browser settings work with ActiveX controls on an InfoPath form... that guy decides it has to do with SharePoint and gleefully pawns it off on the SharePoint administration team. They decide it has to do with end-user computing and circle it around. Finally a month and a half later the original guy is persuaded mostly by me and my manager to help me fix my internet security settings. This was my previous job.

In my new job, happily, we are on a VDI virtual desktop and everything JUST WORKS ... all the time.

The problem is the structure of their incentives which is number of tickets closed or resolved. It needs to be based like 90% on the user experience satisfaction and 10% on number of tickets resolved.
 

AngelSpeaks

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I've run into situations where as soon as someone responds, he marks it resolved and closed and I have to open another ticket if the response didn't resolve my problem.
 

NauticalGent

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I've run into situations where as soon as someone responds, he marks it resolved and closed and I have to open another ticket if the response didn't resolve my problem.
Bureaucratic inefficiency at its finest. Luckily for us, they need our permission to close out ANY ticket so I refuse permission until my issue is resolved. Works for now until they decide they dont need our permission. Nukin Futs...
 

NauticalGent

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In my new job, happily, we are on a VDI virtual desktop and everything JUST WORKS ... all the time.
This is what we have, only now with an Azure environment. Everything is a little slower but not to the point of annoyance...yet....
 

NauticalGent

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Friday afternoon, approx 1645 I receive a phone call from the help-desk while I am driving my granddaughter home. Friendly young man starts to ask me questions that were asked by the Tier I folks. Since I was driving I could not read them off to him so I had to ask him to consult the comments and screen shots the T1 guy has taken. He did and I could hear him mutter - "oh..." AYKM?!??!!

Anyway, this morning I have an email saying that the comments to have ticket have been updated so I eagerly log into the app to see what progress has been made...there was a single comment: Knowledge article KB0011681: SharePoint - Enterprise Media Public Sites. What in the HELL am I supposed to do with that??!?

Going to mow my lawn and drink a couple of beers...these folks aint seen the football since the kickoff.
 

The_Doc_Man

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If these folks are following the standards published by one of the Help Desk "standards" groups (there are many), you could reply to the message (if it is not a "NoReply" address) and comment that the Friday call at an inopportune time was not helpful. Then ask to talk to a supervisor and have that person record "optimum contact hours." Rather obviously, they don't have your working hours on record or they would know that 1645 on Friday is not a time when you can respond.

I cannot tell you which group the Navy used but we WERE advised of customer etiquette including adherence to customer contact hours. And if they AREN'T following the standards of any of the major Help Desk groups, then they deserve any and all of the scorn that gets heaped on them.
 

NauticalGent

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Worst part about it was "Radar Love" was on the radio and the breakdown was just about to start. Hell, I almost declined the call...
 

Isaac

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I've run into situations where as soon as someone responds, he marks it resolved and closed and I have to open another ticket if the response didn't resolve my problem.
That's another good trick. Mark it resolved as soon as they send an email with a possible solution.
Another trick is to wait 3 weeks and then send the user a message on the day they are on Vacation. Wait 3 hours and after no response mark closed.
Sure, open another ticket - that just makes them happier. That just increases the ticket percentage/volume. It's all a game and the offshore India folks play it quite well, in a sincere compliment.
 

moke123

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I spotted an issue with the new Database that our agency spent over a Million $ on over the last 4 years. I ran it up the chain of command a few weeks ago. It's a really important flaw in the system and the powers to be have been holding meetings with IT and the developers.

I was just informed that the issue cannot be resolved without a major re-write of the whole system.

Should I be feeling this good about it?
 

The_Doc_Man

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I spotted an issue with the new Database that our agency spent over a Million $ on over the last 4 years. I ran it up the chain of command a few weeks ago. It's a really important flaw in the system and the powers to be have been holding meetings with IT and the developers.

I was just informed that the issue cannot be resolved without a major re-write of the whole system.

Should I be feeling this good about it?

Schadenfreude is a common feeling - particularly if you subconsciously felt that the folks from your agency who worked on the project were already a bunch of screw-ups and now you have proof.

Sort of like watching a drunk driver crash into a police car. You hope nobody was hurt but you know the drunkard deserved what he is going to get.

EDIT: I was present during the initial PeopleSoft presentation that led to the beginnings of a D.o.D. project called DIMHRS, the attempt to unify all armed forces personnel management under a single umbrella. As soon as I heard the PeopleSoft sales pitch I knew it would be doomed to suffer the "death of a thousand cuts" due to the thousands of change-orders and special code requirements that were going to balloon the project into the stratosphere. You can look up that acronym online to see just how bad it was.

I told them at the meeting that they were going in the wrong direction. I essentially accused the sales guy of lying by not telling the whole story with regard to the degree of customization that would be required. I got thrown out of the meeting. Several of the civil service types were totally horrified that I would have been so rude.

Seven years later, the guy in charge of the PeopleSoft part of the project was fired (a rarety in civil service). As he was walking out of the building for the last time, he saw me coming in to work for a late shift and said "You warned us. Nobody believed you. But you were right." It was one of those times when I was glad to know I had been right and sad as well because of the taxpayer boondoggle it had become. In this case, it was a LOT of schaden and a little freude.
 
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moke123

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It was the 3rd issue I found but the other 2 could be fixed.
It's comparable to a permissions issue and I'm a little skeptical about it being unfixable.

The solution is they are going to inform staff that accessing the info will be a fireable offense.
 

Isaac

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The solution is they are going to inform staff that accessing the info will be a fireable offense

That's about the short and long of one of the most common solutions that I see people give to access security discussions too..
 

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