Tag Archives: Field

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Milne Office Moves Timeline

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Here are the details for our upcoming office moves. If you have questions or concerns about where you will be working during the transition or how processes may be impacted by these changes, please see the chart outside Richard’s office. If that doesn’t answer your questions, talk to Max C., Angela or Kirsten.

Timeline of Moves

  • Friday 3/23
    • We will start clearing out 213C (the old 201)
  • Saturday 3/24
    • We will reconfigure the furniture in 213A
  • Monday 3/26
    • Spring Break starts
    • We will tear down and move out of 213C; walkup customers will be temporarily redirected via signage to 213
    • Contractor begins furniture install in new 201
    • Telecom installs new phones in 213A; David and Keenan’s phones will be moved to 213A at this time
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A
  • Tuesday 3/27
    • Telecom installs phones in 201
    • Lisa moves to 201A (pending contractor break down of her existing furniture)
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A
    • Setup of 201 completed
  • Wednesday 3/28
    • 201 ready for walk-up; can also be used for call center and builds if needed
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A; 201 can also be used for builds if needed
  • Thursday 3/29
    • We will tear down 213
    • 213A used for CN builds and call center; 201 can also be used for builds if needed
  • Friday 3/30
    • Telecom reconfigures phone jacks in 213 for new layout (in preparation for staff moving to new locations in 213)
  • Monday 4/2
    • Contractor begins install of new furniture in 213
  • Tuesday 4/3
    • Contractor completes furniture install in 213
  • Wednesday 4/4
    • We begin setting up staff and student work stations in 213
  • Thursday 4/5
    • We will have a large truck available to surplus old cubicle walls, etc. Until then Milne 228 will be used for temporary storage of furniture bound for Surplus.
  • Friday 4/6
    • Setup of all work spaces completed by end of the day; afterwards builds and call center can be done in 213 and 213A (as well as 201 if needed). Walkups can be handled in all areas. Dbans will be done in 213A.

Process changes to note:

  • CN builds
    • May be delayed 3/26 through 3/30 and possibly as late as 4/6. CN customers will be notified no later than 3/20.
    • A role will be defined for a full-time staff member to monitor builds throughout the day and ensure they are being assigned and completed.
    • After the change, builds can happen in all our work spaces. Clear notes in tickets regarding location of equipment and good adherence to process will be even more critical than before. Please be careful not to misplace customer equipment and peripherals.
    • After the change, Extension customer equipment will likely be stored in Lisa’s new office in 201A. Other CN customer equipment will either be in the Mail room or the new storage racks in 213. The CN outgoing rack will be moved to the new storage racks in 213.
  • Walk-up
    • Walk-up services will be interrupted 3/26-3/27. However, as this is Spring Break, traffic should be light. Signs will redirect customers. Let customers know we are sorry for the disruption, and that the move of the walk-up is intended to make it easier to find.
  • Call Center
    • By the time the tear down of 213 begins on 3/29, we plan to have enough work spaces in 213A to handle our usual load of calls. However, some spaces may need to double-up and do CN builds as well (we will try to limit these), or even handle a walk-in customer.  The worst days will likely be 4/2 and 4/3, as that is the start of the term and we will be space-limited on those days. By 4/4, we should be starting to get back to normal as we begin to set up work spaces in 213.
    • I am expecting some longer call wait times and higher call abandons on 4/2 and 4/3. Do the best you can but don’t worry overmuch about it.
    • More full timers will be assigned to do call mentoring after the change. It won’t be just Robin and Keenan anymore! 🙂
  • Field/On-site appointments
    • Additional staff will be added to the rotation for on-site appointments. More information to follow soon.
    • No one will take appointments 100% of the time; staff will be assigned to varying roles throughout the day. Please read calendars carefully before scheduling appointments.
    • In the future we plan to allow more ad-hoc on-site visits – that is, you take the call, you decide an on-site is needed, you aux out and go see the customer. More information about this will follow soon. (Max and I still need to work out details.)
  • Slack
    • There will be some changes to our Slack channels. More information on this soon.

 

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Service Desk Digest 1/20/2017

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Salmon Bowl

Jeff will be helping out again at the Salmon Bowl in February and April this year. Todd and Jeff were able to secure from CPHHS a laptop cart with Dell laptops for the event. With help from Thomas, Jeff and Jim Galloway, we will be able to upgrade the drives to SSD by re-purposing old lab hardware. Nicely done, guys!

Exchange Issues

The issue with “Microsoft Exchange administrator has made a change that requires you quit and restart Outlook” should be fixed by emergency maintenance tomorrow, 1/21/2017. The root cause was a configuration problem at the load balancers. This should also resolve the issue for customers who see this error when roaming between wired and wireless. More info: 2433305

The intermittent Exchange outages we have been seeing for the past couple weeks are a separate issue. It appears to be a problem with some Mac clients. In some cases, it appeared to be an issue with malware, and in one case with an out-of-date Mac Mail app. The clients open too many connections to the server, causing a performance hit and resulting in disconnects for other users talking to that mailbox server. Server Support are monitoring for clients making too many connections, and are disabling them and notifying desktop support teams as they see this happening. More info: 2531723

Field Techs

Vu Le is now a trained field tech. The current list of field techs available for on-site appointments has been updated. See the Appointment Scheduling Workflow section under Call Center Processes in the ISCS Service Desk Process Guide for details.

Walk-up Access to Back Office

The walk-up area now has a key for after-hours access to the back office, where CN computers are stored before and after the build process.

The West door to the back office area should be unlocked during business hours (Monday through Friday, 8AM to 5PM). At all other times, it should be locked as no one will be staffing those areas.

Thank you to Angela and Max for taking care of that. And thanks to Thomas for bringing up this issue.

Professional Conduct

As a general reminder, please note that food is not allowed in the walk-up at any time, even if you are not on shift. Everyone is welcome to eat in the call center. Please do not eat while you are taking calls – no one wants to hear that, and I don’t care how careful you are with the mute button.

This is also a good time to remind everyone that trash pick-up is on Tuesday evening only. Please do not leave any food trash in the call center or walk-up.  It smells bad and is not kind to your co-workers. There are trash cans just outside the building that you can use.

As space is sometimes tight in the walk-up, please do not hang out in there for long periods of time when you are not on shift. It doesn’t look good to our customers if they walk in and see us playing games, looking at our phones, or goofing off.

Likewise, when working in the call center, please be aware of how loud your conversations are. Technicians working nearby may not be able to hear the customer well over the background noise.

Campus Labs

Reminder: if a computer breaks in the lab, please put one of the “out of order” signs on it, AND assign a ticket in TeamDynamix to the Campus Labs group. Include information in the ticket about what is wrong with the machine.

If you are trying to fix a computer in the lab, you can always ask for help in the #is-campus-labs channel in Slack. However, this is not a substitute for making a ticket.

After hours “special” access to the labs: starting this week, students and employees can fill out a form to request after-hours access to the computer lab in the basement of Milne. The forms should be submitted at the walk-up, and then will be given to the Accounts team to process and reprogram the doors.