I have recently become more frustrated with my company's helpdesk. Despite the promise of a new day with them being brought in house and staffed by actual employees, the expected improvement has not been entirely successful. One of the big frustrations is in their ticket writing skills. You see, when receiving the trouble tickets from the helpdesk in the past, my group has had to deal with poor spelling, absent punctuation, a poor grasp of the English language and one phrase that popped up repeatedly: "Google did not find the answer." We also apparently fell down on "doing the needful", tho we're still looking for that in our procedures.
Our new helpdesk promised to erase these issues, and in some cases I see that they have. However, I can't say that the solution is better. Now I get tickets with no troubleshooting information at all. Some have contact info, but that is even a stretch and often incorrect. What is better is when I reach the end user and find that they were on the phone with the technician for 1 to 2 hours and a variety of changes were made but not documented. In an effort to improve the situation, I exchanged emails with people above me and above the helpdesk, communicating the issue and requesting a better job in providing the troubleshooting already done. When asked for an example of a properly documented ticket, I provided one that I created specifically for a user that bypassed the helpdesk and came straight to me.
_________________________________
Number: 42172
Status: Completed
Entered By: Irishdoh
Customer: Tom Smith
Description: Computer not authenticating to the domain.
Initial Troubleshooting:
The machine has long ago fallen off the domain. I will endeavor to work feverously through the afternoon to correct this unfortunate mishap. I will further toil to educate the user on the proper methods and procedures to ensure that this unfortunate situation does not occur upon the morrow or thereafter.
Update:
I have found the following issues to be detrimental to the proper operation of this computer:
1. The computer is not running our image.
2. The computer does not have our standard Administrator password.
3. The computer does not have our standard backup IT login.
4. The computer name is too long and will not properly authenticate to our network.
5. Lunch is not sitting well with me and this is making me a bit cranky.
I am working to correct these issues. However, number 5 will likely not fixed until after I go home.
Closing notes:
The following steps have been taken to rectify the unfortunate situation that was created with the improper use of the laptop:
1. I disabled all forms of communication to the laptop including semaphore and smoke signal.
2. I logged in using Tom's cached credentials and corrected the administrator password to our company standard.
3. I have added the it login and set the account to use Administrator privileges.
4. I removed the computer from the "domain" and put in into the "schmuck" work group.
5. I logged into the computer as the local Administrator and corrected the name to allow proper joining of our impressively secure domain.
6. I restarted and logged back in as the administrator to enable the Network Interface Card and test the semaphore communication. Smoke signal is still disabled.
7. I added the computer to the impressively secure domain.
8. I restarted yet again, as this is Windows (Land of a Thousand Reboots!), and logged in as Tom.
9. I checked that everything but smoke signals were working properly and then impressed upon the user the grave and stern language that I would use if he again decided to impair his computer in this way.
10. Success! Drinks are on the house! Huzzah!
________________________________
I later in the day received a note from my director thanking me for my input and politely requesting that I keep my suggestions to myself in the future. I recall a hole and my ability to jump into it were mentioned in the conversation. The next ticket assigned to me had no notes...
No comments:
Post a Comment