As I type even I don’t know whether we’ve got an update from the CSC today.. I know I had to go and prod the late shift manager which is unfair because it’s generally the early shift that preps their top 5 issues.  Let’s find out shall we?  

Let’s start with Catherine in QA:

There’s a reasonably mellow mood in QA today. We’ve had a good day clearing out our problem pool and also had a good session covering what we as a team need to communicate to the rest of the business. We’ve discussed what we need to do and divided the work between us, but since it’s my mini-project I’ll be the one presenting it to the rest of the department and, I hope, the rest of the business. Still, they’re a friendly bunch so they won’t bite. I hope.

We also had a new departure yesterday when we each set our own targets for the week and presented them to the team. We’ll then have to give a progress report on how we did next week. If this works well, it should allow us to have a smoother workflow and maybe even get more done. In other news, I’ve been breaking my healthy eating plans with some tasty Scarborough rock. And yes, it does say ‘Scarborough’ all the way through it (just). See you all tomorrow!
 

What’s happening with switches and routers today?

Hello Rizwan from Networks reporting today’s activities; it has been another busy day up here at the Station. Today’s focus was to fix any outstanding problems; here is what everyone has been up to.

Dan: Resolving customer questions and doing mail policing
Ade: Testing of Radius systems and working on problems
Ben: Improving and testing mail policing system.
Dunc: Worked on problems and planning for testing platform upgrades
Matt: Resolved customer questions regarding mail and traffic management
Mark: Installation and configuration of new hardware.
Mike P: Housekeeping and monitoring.
Mike G: Planning and upgrading of storage and backup systems.
Rich: Resolving power issues with hardware, and auditing of legacy platforms.
Russ: Upgrading and migration of monitoring system.
Sarah: Enhancing and upgrading of Traffic management system
Si: Upgrading and planning of backend storage.
Alan: Documentation of new and planned projects, migration of databases

I have been working on mail problems related to our new Postini system, and I have had to put up with toxic air released by my colleague the whole day (delightful - Ed). Overall we got some problems resolved and rest with a resolution in progress which means that in total we down on number of problems that were present at start of the day.
 

Darren in Products:

Today we’ve been as busy as always.  I spent most of the day working through some daily tasks that started to mount up and working on a recent hardware issue. Shaun’s been working on catching up after having a long weekend break. Rich’s day has been mostly meetings and working on the VoIP platform. Dave’s been working on usage analysis; specifically looking at changing usage patterns since the end of last year, he’s also been looking at regrading customers on fixed rate to Max. Ian’s been reciting the potted history of PlusNet for a new starter and working on a new proposal for our BBYW product set. Finally, Maria’s completed the Product slides for the new induction presentation and revisited the T&C’s for a product that is in development.
 

Alex, tell us what Finance have been counting today:

Just a quick update from the land of Finance. It’s been a typically busy day upstairs today. Kate and James have been working on payroll. Mark has been working on customer tickets and I (Alex) have been processing cheque and BACS payments onto customers’ accounts and also processing direct debits.
 

James at the helm in Comms:

Today I’ve spent all of my day on the second floor with Products, Marketing and the Web Team looking after our latest new starter, George. During that time I’ve also been working on our forums, doing some MAAF Comms and my usual other bits and pieces.

Chris has been working in the forums, handling some change controls and looking at a blog that one of our Network Managers has been writing about the health of our platform.

Mand has been spending most of her day writing up documentation for our provisioning processes to help out any of our new starters working on the Provisioning team.

Bob’s been dealing almost entirely with Postini, but also finding some time to make some other posts in our various forums.
 

Chris in Marketing, busy day?:

Today I’ve been busy making the finishing touches to the newsletter ready to send tomorrow morning, I’ve posted out another batch of free games and had a meeting with SWFC about some upcoming promotions. The team have also finished off one of the print ads we’ve been working on and whizzed it over to the printers and we’ve had some coverage on the Webuser site.

We’re off for a few drinks tonight to officially welcome Tim to the team - but he can’t make it. Oh well! (I notice you all trooped off to the pub anyway - Ed)
 

Farhan in Development; I suppose it’s been a busy day for you too has it?

It’s been a busy day in development as usual. We have been focusing at fixing customer facing issues and also working on new development and projects. Here’s what some of the teams have been working on today.

Rick has been working on the house move tool enhancements. This tool is used by our customers when they move their home or business. The enhancement Rick is making for this tool would enable us to know in advance if the re-provide order has failed for a customer, so we can rectify the error before hand, hence improving customer experience. This is due to go to beta testing next week, so watch this space.

Cam is been working on the signup process improvements. We have noted in the last couple of weeks that our signup process hiccups for various reasons. Though these issues have been quickly fixed by our developers, we have decided to address the issue with a long term solution of improving the backend of the account creation process. Nigel (our technical architect) came up with the technical implementation and Cam, along with Rowan is cracking on it now.

Robert has been busy today reviewing and rolling the latest code we have received from our remote team.  Ben has been working on the SMS project. This will enable the customers to reply to the text messages that we send them with updates on open tickets.
 

No CSC then..  Oh wait.. Hold the bus.. here comes Brad:

1. Hardware Chasing - There are still customers calling to find out where their routers are, agents are making them aware of the backlog and updating them on the timescales.
2. Router Setup - Figuring high again, customers unable to complete the setup of their equipment. We are seeing customers having problems with their local firewall/Internet Security software blocking the IP address of the router so they are unable to access the router’s setup pages.
3. Fault Updates - These are mainly logged faults awaiting update from BT, more often than not we can give them an update over the telephone or perform any additional checks that are required and then pass this back to the logged faults team.
4. New faults - No real pattern identified, customers have not usually performed the required checks to raise a fault so are asked to perform these and then call back.
5. Email Setup - Mainly new customers wanting to setup their mail client to download their PlusNet email; most are not aware of the setup guide on the member centre or are not “technical enough” to follow it.

So there we have it; another day over for the 9-6′ers and another insight into the busy world of PlusNet.

P-j

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This entry was posted by Peter Jackson on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 7:18 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.