So we draw to the end of another week. As ever, it’s been a pretty busy one as you’ll have seen from our daily updates. Today, following my spending sprees of yesterday, I’ll be your editor and with that, we’ll cut to the chase and let you know what our various departments have been upto!

QA first, from Catherine:

This week the QA team’s been a bit on the quiet side. The dreaded Fresher’s Flu has taken it’s toll, leaving us all coughing and sneezing. That with my holiday for half of the week has meant a serious reduction in team numbers. We’ve not let that stop us, however and have been ploughing on with problems and our individual project work.

Since a lot of work on my current project has to be done by a developer, I’ve been spending a lot of time on problems. This is ad-hoc work; most of our work is project based but there’s always someone free to pick up all the problems which arise as part of the day to day maintenance of our systems. Since the work isn’t project based problems can come from every area of the company, from a tiny content change to a huge monster of a P1, and this makes being the problem tester for the day very interesting. Today’s problem tests have included verifying an update to the video help on setting up the Outlook email client, checking the text of an email for our Home Phone service and monitoring the progress of a database privileges fix. Quite a mixed bag!

It’s also Paul’s birthday tomorrow, so we’ve had sweets and butter cookies to munch on through the day

Networks now, with the new boy, Lee.

Hello! My name is Lee O’D and it has been my first week here at Plusnet. I am working within the Networks and Platforms projects area helping to manage the delivery of new systems and services.

I have previously worked for a number of other major ISPs and Telcos, and I must say I am very impressed at how dedicated everyone at Plusnet is in order to improve every aspect of our systems and services. That said, I do have a number of recommendations that I hope to get implemented to help us progress even further.

I have met an incredible amount of people this week, and now have a good appreciation for the whole business. Melise, who has been helping to initiate me this week, is now moving on to work within our Partner programme - Thanks Melise for all your help!

I’ve got a lot of information to digest over the weekend - but I’m already looking forward to Monday so the journey can continue.

The CSC update comes from Kelly, yet again!

Today in the CSC we have been continuing with our new starter training, and preparing for tomorrow’s recruitment day.

Top reasons for contacting the CSC today:
(1) Fault Updates:
This is mainly prompted by our SMS messaging with the occasional customer who is chasing for an update 20%

(2) Email Problems: Mainly customers unable to receive emails, common causes are mailboxes needing refreshing from our side and customers being blocked by local firewall/internet security software. 20%

(3) Router Settings:
We’re still seeing a number of customers who are trying to connect without the realm (ie: @plusdsl.net). This is mainly new customers but some longstanding customers who are setting up new routers etc. 15%

(4) New Faults:
Customers calling to report they have lost their connection. Main causes this morning seem to be authentication and the odd no sync problem. 5%

(5) Provisioning updates:
Customers calling to see if their line was active (hardware has already arrived) or there has been a delay on a house move. 5%

Other misc issues 35%

Finance now, from Kate.

End of another week! After the finance night out last night there were a few sore heads this morning. Even so, we still managed to close 147 tickets today. The Commercial team have been continuing to focus on the Strat Plan, Jen has been focusing on various billing issues and the rest of the team have been concentrating on clearing a ticket backlog. Early Nights all round tonight. Have a good weekend.

Products with Darren again:

Yikes! It’s the end of the week already :S and what a week it has been too. Today has been like every other day here in the products pod… Jam Packed. So what have we been up to I hear you ask? Well:

Ian: Well what haven’t I been doing would be the easier question. I have been working on our parental control strategy, IP phone and various community activities.

Rich:

- Comms signed off on the VoIP platform announcements and PUG testing plan for me.
- Progressed testing for the new MyAccount section in the VoIP control panel
- Completed a list of VoIP polls we can use over the next couple of weeks to slowly introduce our VoIP platform plans
- Begun to write a survey for VoIP customers who have previously shown an interest in VoIP services (info collated from a previous portal poll)
- Made contact with Telewest and progressed talks with our Fax-to-email account manager

Shaun: Aligning targets with Finance reporting for the dashboard, various project related work and reporting requirements, fixing parts of the dashboard that have broken.

Me: Continuing work to upgrade customers from dial-up accounts to broadband. Ordering more insert sheets into our warehouse so customers can set up their routers with ease. Completed several documents needed by my University regarding my current placement here at PlusNet. I have also been looking for Halloween banners to decorate PlusNet towers for the 31st.

Marketing, with Chris “Great North Runner” Cotterill:

We’ve had the prototypes for some upcoming product improvements signed off - keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks. I’ve been busy with the newsletter and some external promotions for our BBYW Pro product.

We’ve also been looking at some direct marketing possibilities and finalising plans for the upcoming LAN party here at PlusNet HQ.

Have a look here for more details of the LAN party - it’s gonna be freakin’ sweet.

Finally, Comms comes from myself:

For me, it’s been business as usual, handling forums and a number of tickets that I “own” as well as writing a blog post about SNR Margins. Mand’s been off today, but Chris has been beavering away on the Networks floor and Bob’s been cracking away with problem management, emailing customers about the Royal Mail delays and going along to one of the CSC team meetings.

As ever, I hope that everyone has a pleasant weekend and we’ll be back with the End of Day’s next week. See you then!

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This entry was posted by James on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 5:37 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD, Tech News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a reply below. Pinging is currently not allowed.