Potluck this Friday

Come join us for an end-of-term potluck party this Friday, 11-1. Come for the food; stay for the camaraderie. If you plan to bring a dish, please update the google sheet (see email I sent out earlier today).

High Sierra “Root” Exploit

Due to a vulnerability in High Sierra, it is possible to login as root without providing a password. To fix, apply the latest updates.

For details, see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208315

If the root account is needed, it will need to be re-enabled and have password reset after applying the update. If there are issues with authentication or connecting to file shares, you may need to repair file sharing (see link above).

Splitting and Merging Tickets

If you are handling multiple tickets all related to a single request, please create a parent ticket and set it to the classification “Release”. You can then link the child tickets to it by going to Update, Set Parent. A typical time you would do this: multiple builds all being placed with the same customer. The build tickets will be the child tickets, and can be closed when the builds are done. The parent release ticket is where we should communicate with the customer and schedule placement.

Please don’t merge tickets, pretty much ever. Merging tickets merges the feed, and makes it really hard to track what is happening. It also breaks the link to the first ticket, which could be confusing to the customer. If there are two tickets about the same issue, close one of them with a note saying the request is being handled in the other ticket (and include the ticket number in your note).

Exception: if we receive a voice message about an existing ticket, it is okay (and a good idea) to merge that with the previous ticket.

Reminder: We Support People, Not Technology

While our job does require a certain technical savvy, our role is not so much to be subject matter experts but rather listening and troubleshooting experts. Customers don’t expect us to know everything about everything. They do expect us to help them figure it out. If you find yourself trying to figure out how to get out of helping someone because “we don’t support that” I encourage you to re-frame the question to “how can I help this person do what they are trying to do?”

And as a reminder, the typical words our customers use to describe excellent service from us are: friendly, helpful, patient, quick, professional, prompt, polite, nice, courteous, welcoming, kind, personable, follow-up, effective, clear, responsive, persistent, intelligent, and caring. Those are the attributes our customers value.

Keep up the excellent work. 🙂

Team:

Our first responsibility is to get our users back up and running as quickly as possible. Often this involves a work-around that doesn’t address the underlying issue. But if the customer is good to go, it’s okay to close the ticket.

However, our second responsibility is to fix the problem. If a service or device is not behaving as it should, please let someone know. Even just dropping a note into Slack would be a good place to start.

As a specific example: if a computer or printer in one of the main computing labs (e.g. Milne, Tykeson, ILLC, Slug lab) is not working properly, or if there seems to be a BeaverPrint issue going on,  please put a note in the #is-campus-labs channel on Slack.

If you are not sure who to notify, tell a supervisor. If a problem is widespread, we may need to create an outage ticket and escalate to tier 2 teams.

But even short of an outage – if a service is just behaving in a less-than-great way, please pass on that feedback. You can always send a heads up to me (Kirsten Petersen) on Slack. I frequently take such feedback to service owners to make them aware of what customers are reporting.

Thank you for your assistance with this!

Team,

Please keep your work areas clean and tidy. If you spill food, clean it up. Don’t leave it for the next person to find.

Also, a reminder: stinky food trash needs to go OUTSIDE. Don’t leave it in the trash cans in 213 or 201 for everyone to smell for days. Be kind to your co-workers. Trash pick-up is once a week on Tuesday nights.