PlusNet Community Website

I’m one of the developers working on an update to the PlusNet, FreeOnline and Force9 signup process so thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself and where we are with the project.

I have been at PlusNet overall for around 5 years and before moving to the Web Application Development team was a Lead Developer in the main development department. My main role in the new team is as a link between where we are and where we want to be - I’ll try and help Tam and Colin with how their funky new stuff integrates with our current system back end if necessary and also coordinating with the rest of the development team for general work and platform improvements.

The signup revamp phase currently being delivered is the first part of that journey for me - the look and feel is being tidied up and streamlined whilst being re-written using a MVC framework, but from a system point of view it will be the same underlying structure which in the next phases will be updated to be even more resilient, user friendly and incorporate some of the technologies we would like to start using such as AJAX. As i follow up this thread, i will try and include some examples of how the new MVC framework works with some code examples etc.

We are currently towards the end of beta testing - our main aim until launch is practising the roll-out process and thorough QA. It’s been a hard slog to get to this point as there were a lot of firsts that had to be learned but, as always, the delivery team has pulled together (the dedication from people involved has been incredible) and pushed on so that we are confident of publishing a great piece of software that, other than making it easier for wise internet buyers to become PlusNet customers, can be used as a focus point of how to use the framework to create or improve our software platform going forward.

1 Comment »

For interested eyes only Shh… nobody tell Kelly, I nicked this info / prototype from his internal tasks !

We’ve mentioned in the past about how we’ve been planning to re-work the Service Status tool - and it’s fast becoming a reality.

The new tool will see the Service Status pages on our website overhauled and massively improved. Here are just a few of the features we’re planning :

[*] Categories with Sub-Categories
[*] E-Mail Subscription (with ability to subscribe to low-level categories, top level categories - or everything)
[*] RSS Output (subscription ability similar to E-Mail
[*] Ability to link items to each other (and post follow-ups to items)
[*] Restructured back end making it easier for us to use, update and manage
[*] Ability to use code in Service Status posts (for links, formatting etc..)
[*] One tool to feed all vISPs and services (such as the Parbin brands, JTN, PAYH, Port995 etc…)

Additionally, we have plans to work with the PlusNet UserGroup to provide an off-site replicated version using the RSS feeds as output - but managed seperately and updateable seperately.

I thought I’d throw a high-level prototype at you to see what you guys think of the new tool, the layout, the features etc… This project is still in the very early stages and, as ever, things are subject to change. However, the benefit of this is that we can be open to ideas etc… and actually think about working them into our plans if they’re any good! We don’t have a date to go live with this yet - we’re probably looking at Q2 2007. So hopefully before mid-year!

Please bear in mind that the prototype is non-functional using only example data. So - what do you think?!?

Click here

Cheers,
Liam

No Comments »

We are the PlusNet Web Portal team and this is our new playground. More specifically, I am Tamlyn - a web developer - and this is my first blog post.

Prepare yousrselves for some exciting news… but first a word or two of backgound.

Here at PlusNet Towers we have a bunch of plasma screens on each floor which are used to keep us updated on what’s going on in other departments. It’s a nice touch. But then it struck us: why not keep everyone updated on what’s going on? Not just employees but subscribers and potential subscribers. And their aunties. We looked into the possibility of having plasma screens installed in every home but that turned out to be too expensive.

So this is the next best: a blog to share our joys, successes, failures & frustrations with our fellow colleagues, PlusNet subscribers and the world at large.

You are witnessing to the dawn of a new age.

In time we hope to bring you more than just information. As we develop new tools and features we will put up alpha versions here for you to play with and give us feedback on. These alphas will be followed by live public betas on the portal (in a GMail stylee) . This has the dual advantages of getting new features out to you sooner, and allowing you to influence the development process with suggestions & bug reports.

The world will never be the same again.

PS I promise to cut down on the unnecessary sensationalism after this initial post

No Comments »

The CSC is normally measured on Call Answer Rate (CAR) and ticket levels.  Over Monday we’ve seen a massive effort from the CSC which has seen a fantastic CAR of 88% which they are looking to maintain moving further into the week.
This remains testamount to the extra work and resource that we’ve been adding into the CSC and is a great sign of what is to come.

A great well done to the CSC from everyone in the Comms Team and we look forward to seeing more of the same, and we are certain that our customer will have seen and will continue to reap the rewards of this great work that’s beiong done!

3 Comments »

Introduction
Our biggest challenge over the last two years has been balancing the need to have a profitable and scalable product proposition whilst delivering good value to our customers. While we’ve been doing this, the use of broadband applications has exploded, yet the wholesale infrastructure that all ISPs work with has not scaled accordingly. In 2006 we saw increasing average usage, driven by faster speeds and more video and music downloads. We envisage that this growth in usage will continue throughout 2007, due to new technologies like Web 2.0 and TV on demand.

When we design any broadband product we plan to provide an amount of network capacity per customer. That drives how much capacity we buy, which in turn drives our costs. To allow for the envisaged growth in usage, we intend to increase the amount of network capacity per customer. We believe that this extra scale will provide an excellent customer experience.

New BT Central pipe on order
We have now ordered an additional 622Mb/s BT Central pipe, which we expect to be available in March. We intend to activate two segments of this immediately; this means our total capacity will grow by 12.5%. Our estimated timescales are based on the lead times being met by both BT and our network equipment suppliers.

A key issue we face at the moment which is affecting customers using USB modems on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings is a shortage of sessions. This has been caused by an increase in session concurrency due to an increase in background traffic (caused by viruses) and an increase in the proportion of customers using routers. Adding additional capacity now will provide us with extra sessions at peak times and gives us further room for growth.

We’re taking some short term steps to deal with this including introducing a network-based personal firewall for customers. The PlusNet Usergroup has been giving us some feedback on this.

We are also looking at some alternative network options to give us some short-term increases in sessions ahead of our new BT Central pipe arriving. We will be inviting a group of customers to trial this alternate access network provided by BT in the next week or so. We will trial this with staff accounts first, then PUG members and then open the trial up to the wider customer base. It is likely that this will be open only to Pay As You Go customers and will not support static IP addressing.

2007 & 2008
May 2007 should see new BT Wholesale pricing which will give us the opportunity to review our product designs. We are planning our network strategy with BT which means we will be able to assure the quality and customer experience of our products.

We will be providing more information to all customers by email and on our website when the proposed acquisition by BT completes during the coming weeks.

Kind regards,

Neil Armstrong
Products Director
PlusNet

No Comments »

I don’t really think that anyone is going to dispute that 2006, especially the second half was a really tough year. >From my perspective however, the first half was possibly even more of a challenge. Working from home until May following having taken on the Comms role, and including the Comms Team Leader role, working for a new company and knowing only a few people within the business whilst working 200 miles away was a massive challenge, which led to my eventual moving to Sheffield.

The second half of the year saw ticket backlogs and issues with Max and Tiscali faults, and resulted in myself and my team making a continued effort into addressing tickets raised to us by our customers, which saw a practical dissapearance from our forums towards the end of the year.

Now, in January, I firmly believe that we are in a better place with the Comms Team as a whole playing an active part in our Portal Forums and the PUG Forums, which I’m sure a large number of our customers will have seen and appreciated. We will continue to do so and more where possible.

I might even remember to stop working when I get home in the evenings

No Comments »

We love graphs
As of yesterday, we now have mxlast queue reporting and Homepages server load graphing available on the Portal alongside the mxcore queues and service performance graphs added last month.

The mxlast and homepages graphs were made available following customer feedback and we will continue to add to the available reporting here going forwards.

See : Mail queues (updated)

Also : Webspace Servers

We plan to add CCGI and Frontpage performance graphs shortly, and also daily / hourly / weekly mail volumes if possible.

Any suggestions for what we can add - drop us a line.

No Comments »

Morning all,

Just thought I would share this information with you that’s recently come out of our Customer Support Centre as I think it makes good reading and is a nice reflection of some of the progress the guys have been making over the festive period.

With Tiscali being managed as part of every day operations i just wanted to highlight the improvements we have had over the last few months.

AFAIK we have around 16,000 LLU customers.

As of yesterday we had only 45 LLU faults open with Tiscali, Wholesale: our supplier.

Of these…

- 17 were considered resolved and are awaiting closure
- 18 were awaiting feedback from us
- 10 were with Tiscali, 3 of which being with 3rd party suppliers.

In the last month we reported 155 faults, where as for the same time period in Aug we raised 1138 faults.

Also Tiscali now only have an 8.3% Service Level Agreement failure - which is better than BT

Good stuff!

No Comments »