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Then you’re just encouraging them.
Encouraging people to ask for help when they need it is a good thing.
“Happy to sort that for you, but I’ll need a ticket logging.”
Or “Happy to sort that for you, I'll just log a ticket first.”
IT people should be locked away in an office, they all sound like moaning ****s 😅
Then you’re just encouraging them. Why would they ever log a ticket if they know you’ll do it for them?
Sorry for being truly tedious, but our guys just say "yeah we can give you a headset to replace the one you've left at home in time for your meeting in 10 minutes, you utter utter numpty [they generally only think the last bit]. Can you just log it?" and then point at a laptop on a desk where you put in your email and click a box. Er, and that's the extent of the drama.
I know. I know. I have no humorous anecdotes to enliven this scene of day to day corporate life. Maybe someone went "hmph" once, it's possible?
Or “Happy to sort that for you, I’ll just log a ticket first.”
No.
Times that by 20 in one day, and it throws your entire workoad off for a whole week, then you get account managers and product owners bitching at you because service report x wasn't delivered on time.
The only time service delivery should be logging a ticket for you, is if you physicaly can't do it yourself, locked account/no connectivity etc.
IT people
Are not your personal assistants/hand holders/botty wipers.
Times that by 20 in one day, and it throws your entire workoad off for a whole week, then you get account managers and product owners bitching at you because service report x wasn’t delivered on time.
Who's time costs more?
Open plan offices isn't the end, they're not that bad, been in them for a few years now, had all the hissy fits at the start with bosses complaining about being in with the minions, security issues would be a nightmare (work in MoD), no privacy, etc, etc, reality is you're all going to be in the same environment, in your own little clusters, doing the day job, you're all covered by the same company policy as well, so misconduct and so on will make people aware of what they can and can't do.
As for doing non work stuff, it gets done, at the beginning folk put so much effort into hiding it, now i walk through an floorplate and you just see folk openly watching their phones, chatting, etc, but it's recognised as normality in the work day, of course if it's taking up most of peoples days it gets noticed and stamped down on pretty quick.
Anyway, just accept you'll have an acclimatisation period, same as everyone else, you'll find your happy medium, same as everyone else, you'll survive, maybe even thrive!
Who’s time costs more?
Or even who's job is it to offer IT support?
No chance mate. All modern workplaces are open plan. I don't love them, or hate them tbh. I do miss my old office but those days are gone. There's far far far more sensitive information than IT being processed in open plan offices.
Who’s time costs more?
Funny you should ask that...
The answer is, it's impossible to quantify without a correctly logged incident, in order to assign it the correct priority in line with business needs.
For example if the CEO can't acess thier email, that would be assigned a higher priority than Colin from accounts who's struggling to send a document to the office printer.
The answer is, it’s impossible to quantify without a correctly logged incident,
you win. You get your office... 🙂
Sounds like you just need to catch up with the 21st century and adapt to a perfectly normal work environment
There’s far far far more sensitive information than IT being processed in open plan offices.
Then the company would struggle to maintain thier ISO certifications, and other industry compliance/security related certifications - which many clients insist on as a base level of competence at enterprise level, before they will even look at a company for a project/service contract.
That's another huge time sink for IT departments...annual external audits related to information secuity.
Who’s time costs more?
We're often so wound up in our own little worlds that we forget that this is really about service delivery. And that is subject to the same design thinking forces as everything else
Desirability, Viability, Feasibility
The sweet spot varies between services, but the folk doing the delivery don't tend to decide where that sweet spot is.
I have a love hate relationship with ticketing systems, except SNow which I just hate, but from a BI/BA perspective they can be useful.
Agreed, it's never black and white, and it depends on the individual business priorities.
If the boss’s office is free 90% of the time = your office
So after 4 pages the one thing we all agree on is that no-one wants to share an office, open plan or otherwise, with the weirdoes from IT?
Yep, conclusion.. IT and normals do not want to share the same space
However, this is a normal scenario... and getting used to it it will be fine
re walk ups and phone ups.....
I rarely answer the phone, If i do it better be critical, or my response is to log a ticket and we will get round to it
and yes, i will be using the office as and when, and i think the rest of the time i will probably sit with a headset on all day.
Who’s time costs more?
Irrelevant both will be waiting while the ticket is being logged.
Who’s time costs more?
Jesus.
He can log a ticket as well.
He can log a ticket as well.
🤣
Irrelevant both will be waiting while the ticket is being logged.
Not usually.
'Oi my mouse isn't working'
vs tapping away for at least 30 seconds whilst that stuff is entered into the ticketing software.
FWIW, for some reason a few years ago I ended up managing a large ICT team. Everything that's been said about a ticketing system/service desk is spot on. We had several customer facing roles including a handful of BRMs, but we eventually realised that the real techies/infrastructure/network guys were best left to do their thing.
I have no background or training in ICT but was asked to look after the service area - this meant I had to listen to the people actually doing the job.
Who's time costs more
I commented again on this thread as this kind of comment reminds me that I'm glad I don't work in such a toxic environment
Encouraging people to ask for help when they need it is a good thing.
Educating people how to ask for help in a manner beneficial to both parties is a good thing.
Or “Happy to sort that for you, I’ll just log a ticket first.”
You must be stuck for something to do.
Who’s time costs more?
If they're so important that they can't simply write down what they need, they'll have a PA.
I missed one off my list earlier, accountability. "Why did you do this?" - "you asked me to." - "No I didn't!" If they didn't log the ticket then you have zero evidence that you broke something because you were directly instructed to do so.
Sounds like you just need to catch up with the 21st century and adapt to a perfectly normal work environment
I have, I work from home. Your notion of modern working is off by some margin, I worked in an open-plan office in 1992.
Who’s time.costs more
I think you missed the context. It was a genuine question about priorities and cost to the business.
The A-grade 1st line support techie may really want to spend the next hour hoovering dust out of a pc that is going to go back into stock, but if you have a G-grade somebodyorother sat on their hands for the same hour waiting on a job that the A-grade could do in 5 mins that's a cost that could be avoided.
Cost/opportunity/risk avoidance etc.
Not usually.
‘Oi my mouse isn’t working’
vs tapping away for at least 30 seconds whilst that stuff is entered into the ticketing software.
In my experience here, this wouldn't even reach IT. They'd just pinch a neighbour's in their open-plan office and then a game of rodent-based musical chairs would break out.
I said this earlier. People are inherently lazy bastards, they aren't going to log a call if it's easier to rock up and go "can I have a new mouse?" and by the same chalk they're not going to bother to walk all the way over to IT's desks when there's an unsupervised one just lying there on someone else's desk.
(In truth, I can't remember when I last came across a report of a faulty mouse, probably back when they still had a ball.)
It was a genuine question about priorities and cost to the business.
The A-grade 1st line support techie may really want to spend the next hour hoovering dust out of a pc that is going to go back into stock, but if you have a G-grade somebodyorother sat on their hands for the same hour waiting on a job that the A-grade could do in 5 mins that’s a cost that could be avoided.
Sure, but. It's a good point but not that simple.
In the case of the OP, he's half of a 2-person team servicing 350+ employees. He's 1st line, 2nd line and 3rd line.
Hoovering dust out of a PC is something you might possibly undertake when there's absolutely bog all else to do (and is frankly a demeaning example if you think that's what even front line techs do all day, I'd have them doing self-paced training if they were that quiet) but your G-grade whateverthatevenmeans can just wait or go mither someone else if the network for the entire building is out. Any C-Suite execs worth their salt would immediately recognise that.
If only there was some way of categorising, prioritising and managing this sort of thing. I'm amazed no-one's thought of it before. Maybe Outlook Calendar...
Hoovering dust out of a PC is something you might possibly undertake when there’s absolutely bog all else to do (and is frankly a demeaning example if you think that’s what even front line techs do all day, I’d have them doing self-paced training if they were that quiet) but your G-grade whateverthatevenmeans can just wait or go mither someone else if the network for the entire building is out. Any C-Suite execs worth their salt would immediately recognise that.
It wasn't meant to be demeaning it was simply to represent a low priority task.
if the network for the entire building is out
Well obviously that would be higher priority.
Did anyone mention a ticketing system and prioritisation? 😆
^^ we are testing Outlook for that under good advice
Jesus.
He can log a ticket as well.
"Before the cock crows three times, have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
You saw how angry he got when he had to go and visit the finance department, would you seriously tell him you're not replacing his mouse until he's submitted a ticket?
Ticketing systems are only good if the people at the other end know what to prioritise or have any idea how the business actually works. In my experience they usually don’t. We used to have database access ourselves. Then updated IT systems and something that would’ve taken a couple of clicks is now a ticket, followed by chasing the ticket, then escalating the ticket and finally (sometimes) the issue being resolved. Then they have the cheek to ask for a rating.
What happens if the ticketing system goes down?
What happens if the ticketing system goes down?
It doesn't if implemented correctly, same way websites never go down if implimented correctly, ideally it's load balanced over several physical servers in normal operation, so if one has a problem, it can be taken off line for analysis.
This puts additional load on the remaining live systems, which is why you always over-spec capacity so you can fail-over to a working one in a crunch situation, albiet a slower but still functional service for critical operations.
Of course this requires extra cost and extra admin, and requires documented disaster recovery plans etc.
Guess who has to write said documents and procedures, and ensure they actually work, via test runs in an emergency with zero extra budget? yeah that's right..the IT team.
So forgive us if we snort at you for rocking up to our desks to wax lyrical about a printer jam or an iPhone with a flat battery.
Sometimes stuff falls through the cracks
Tell me about it! Theoretically, we have the tools in place to handle tickets correctly but no one else in the company is the slightest be interested in triaging anything raised. There's a couple of key people on our customer support team who have the ears of the CEO so whenever certain clients raise a "request/bug/new feature" then it almost certainly gets moved into the next available sprint without any sort of impact analysis
So planned stuff keeps on getting deferred or forgotten about. I used to get really pissed off about this lack of strategic thinking but now I'm just coasting my way to retirement 😄
Anyway, the company is (or was, pre-COVID) open plan so this obviously why we've failed to grow as a company...
I did that with a 2U ThunderX2 box. HR rushed out to site facilities to get a dB meter, the result was 100+dB when the fans span up!
I used to run an industrial folding machine that would take about a 1/4 ton stack of SRA3 paper at one end and turn it into neatly folded but untrimmed leaflets at the other, about eight or nine feet away. It was in a long, narrow room with a high ceiling and plastic strip doors at each end. A decibel meter I installed on my phone said it was running continuously at 95-98dB.
I was told off for wearing custom-fit earphones plugged into my phone, because I wouldn’t be able to hear a fire alarm. I pointed out, quite reasonably, that the noise levels I was working in required PPE hearing protection that, along with the noise, meant I couldn’t hear the fire alarm anyway.
Not long after a fire alarm with a flashing light was installed in the room… 😁
accountability. “Why did you do this?” – “you asked me to.” – “No I didn’t!” If they didn’t log the ticket then you have zero evidence that you broke something because you were directly instructed to do so.
Yeah, happened to me a lot at one place I worked at, no ticketing, I had five or six different jobs within the company, so it was very easy to forget something that I’d been asked about earlier, but had slipped my mind because of a succession of other things had been added to my workload.
These were then brought up at the regular personal assessment meetings, where I’d be asked why I’d forgotten such-and-such; “because of all the extra stuff you keep adding to my daily routine”
“So, how can we help you?”
“By taking back some of the extra work and giving it to someone else”
“Oh, we can’t do that, but how else can we help you?”
Actual conversation, before they kicked me out after eleven years working there.
Best thing that could have happened, it got me the job driving for BCA, followed by my last job at Smart Fleet Solutions/Cazoo, which was a brilliant place to work for, they actually cared about mental health.
What's all this talk about logging tickets and a prioritisation system?! I work for a huge company and whether it's an intermittent problem with my mouse getting a bit laggy, or myself and all my colleagues find a major application is down and can't do any work...we all sit in the same call queuing system for 45 minutes, and then support log the call, which gives them one of about 6 scripts to read out to us, which ranges from turn it off and on again (we've already indicated that we've done this my pressing option 2) to very quickly progressing to telling you that a laptop swap by courier has just been arranged for tomorrow morning and no, we absolutely can't raise a second line request even though you know there is a script they can run. My general approach is to send the new device back to them (which would also arrive with the same problem) until I can get to second line (which must hurt their stats considerably!)
PS Storm in a teacup, your boss has already basically given you permission to take over his office, you just need to ensure its easier and more pleasant for him to work on your open plan desk by occupying all the sockets and LANs and most of his desk
Nobody there has read any BOFH have they? No one lets IT mix with the normal people. There's going to be a run on carpet, quicklime and shovels. Directors being found in the lift after a weekend locked in and drinking their own urine.
OMG
I feel like most people posting on this thread either work in IT support or get their knowledge from watching old episodes of the IT crowd.
Well if nothing else it makes me grateful to work where I do.