Today I’ve been working on some intranet improvements which will give each staff member personalised homepage just like iGoogle. I’ve also been catching up on some blog reading. I was excited to see the first alpha release of Mozilla mobile but then disappointed to learn it currently only runs on a single device. Elsewhere in the Web Team James has been improving the search algorithm on the community support library and revising the new accessibility page. Marc’s been working on the line speed checker. Wojtek & Colin have been working on problems along with Nick & Andy who have also been updating support pages including the high speed broadband section. Grzegorz has been working on the design for the house move tool. Pete’s been planning and Kelly’s been in and out of meeting and working on KPIs.

Mand from Comms:

Today has been a typical Monday in Comms.

Bob’s been whining, and the rest of the team have been hurling abuse in his general direction. He’s also been working on some internal tasks, and has made some forum and Service Status posts. I’ve been laughing at our colleagues from the red side of the city after yesterday’s defeat. I’ve also been working on some documentation and training for upcoming special offers (we’ll tell you more on that soon ), as well as clearing up my internal task list after a busy couple of days. Chris has been working on problems, and some of our internal processes. As well as the usual round of meetings. Matt’s been monitoring our forums, and has also dealt with change controls. We’ve also had the usual round of Monday meetings, and more than the odd cup of tea.

I’m instructed that the random link for today HAS to be a game called ‘World of Goo’. So enjoy.

Ben T from CSC:

This morning we all thought that we were in for a nice relaxed day, but by 9.30AM that notion was well and truly shattered! We’ve had a node down in Ilford, a couple of local exchanges out and a few problems with our internal systems – some expected due to planned maintenance, some not. As I type this post at 4.15PM we’ve answered over 1,100 calls and I’m sorry for those who weren’t able to speak to us due to the long wait times on the phones.

Here are our top five issues for calls today:

1. Router setups – We’ve recently changed our hardware supplier over to Thomson and although the routers are excellent, the setup process could be a bit simpler. A lot of customers are changing the password for access to the configuration pages and not writing it down so only a factory reset will restore access.
2. Major service outages – As I described above, we’ve had a few regional problems that have caused outages of different types for our customers, mostly no synchronisation, but we have also noticed intermittent synchronisation problems.
3. Fault updates – We’ve had a major push on the initial stages of fault diagnosis where customers are contacted to ensure that the relevant checks have been completed, but this has meant that the tickets queues are longer for the faults logged with BT. As such, this increases the number of calls from customers waiting for an update from us, when we are in turn waiting for an update from BT.
4. Email setups – As ever, customers are taking advantage of the free email addresses we offer with all of our broadband packages, but sometimes they need a helping hand. Whether this is with creating email accounts through the Member Centre or setting up their email clients on their computers, we’re happy to help.
5. New faults – Unrelated to regional issues, we’ve had a fair number of customers calling in with the three faults – these are mostly resolved by simple checks or rebooting routers, with only a minority being passed to the faults team for further investigation.

Ryszard from Dev:

We’ve been busy down here in dev today, with various members of the department working on or assisting with some of the P1 problems we’ve had. Stress levels are a little higher than normal, and the air conditioning being out of action on the dev floor hasn’t helped! Despite it being a chilly day in October outside, it’s pretty subtropical in here.

I’ve been working with Seb on revision control, and today’s been his first full-time (almost) on the project. I’m getting him up to speed to take on the day-to-day work and ops, as I transition to a lead developer role and guide his hand. We’ve made great progress today, and he’s picking it up really quickly.

Simon’s been looking at time wastage on projects, Henry’s been ploughing on with his project solo now that Seb’s with me, and our management team have been doing a good job keeping the department ticking over, noticeably so today as things heat up a bit.

Hopefully it’ll be a bit less like a glass house in a botanical garden here tomorrow.

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This entry was posted by Tamlyn Rhodes on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 5:35 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.