Hello all!

It’s Carl here, in the Technical Support Team. It’s been a busy day today, but only a short EOD. Lets hear from James in Technical Support first:

“Very busy day for calls today, but we’ve been pushing hard and tried to keep call wait times to a minimum, and not left anyone waiting too long. As always, a mixed bag of calls today, but most of them general run of the mill stuff.

So from most to least common:-

1. Router config – Not sure if this is due to a jump in customers due to our new products introduced a few months ago, but seems were getting a lot of calls recently for help with the routers. Hopefully if the new easy setup testing goes well, this should be a thing of the past.

2. Email problems – Always a mixed area, whether problems sending, receiving or setting up. Mostly setup problems though. Don’t forget that we have some truly excellent step-by-step guides on our web site, just put the name of your email client in the search bar at the top of our website and you are good to go.

3. Fault updates – Obviously a frustrating time when you have a fault, so always quite a high contender in our top 5 calls. No particularly high fault volumes at the moment, so seems were keeping on top of this nicely.

4. New faults – Mostly authentication faults at the moment, though still getting a good few sync faults. Bit of a turnaround in recent weeks as sync always used to be top of the pile here.

5. Billing – Still getting a good few calls for billing issues, though many of these still stemming from the change in home phone, and the separate billing of call charges in the first month.

So, as I speak, the calls are trailing off earlier than normal for a Tuesday, and looks like we should be in for a steady night.”

Thanks James. You were wrong though, we still have a steady amount of calls! Next up is the ever lovely Mand from Comms:

“Howdy

After a day working from home yesterday I’m back into the swing of things in the office.

I’ve been trawling through some Home Phone accounts, changing things where necessary, and continued work on our sekrit projekt (not long to go ’til we can tell you ’bout that ). I also shouted at some CSC agents under the guise of managing the floor.

James and Chris have been working on our Easy Setup Trial. Which is going very well since you ask. James called the customers to check.

Bob did Change Controls, Service Status, Twitter, and some DNS investigation. He’s also putting the rest of us to shame by continuing the ‘Healthy Bob’ campaign. Doesn’t make him any less angry though.

Matt’s being a faults ninja, helping out our CSC colleagues. It’s rather quiet round here without him.

Anyway, that’s all from me. Have a good one.”

Thank you Mand. Like I said, a short one today, so I am back off to answer your technical queries!

See you all soon,

Carl.

No Comments »

Hello Readers!

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, or been at work for that matter.  It’s good to be back (no really!) but I need another week off to recover as I’ve spent the last 12 days moving house and attending to the assorted extras that entails.

I have just the one update for you today, which is from the Web Team in the shape of Mark…

Hello out there in community land. Mark here, reporting on today’s activities in the Web Development team. Most of the team’s been working on a major project that we can’t talk about.

*whispers*
Look, we trust you lot, but you never know who might be reading.
*glances around, looking for suspicious trench coat wearing types*

Anyhow, while I can’t tell you about the details, I can say that things have so far gone very smoothly. We’re now at the stage we call ‘Integration’, which is where we throw all the words, pictures and code together and make sure it’s going to work when you lovely people try to interact with it. The previous flurry of creativity now has to give way to careful checking, fixing and gap filling. As a result, there’s been a 45% reduction in chatter, and a 62% increase in furious keyboard bashing.

Gary appears to have reduced his tea intake by 200% percent. Frankly, I’m worried. Could it be the strain?

I asked the rest of the team if they’d got anything to add. Nick says “I’ve been working on plenty of support page updates, testing and peer reviewing. A usual Monday I’d say. In other news, my diary tells me that today’s historical event was that in 1919 the R34 was the first airship to make a return journey across the Atlantic. Hasn’t technology come a long way since then?”

Yes Nick, Airships are cool. Bring back airship!

I learned from this news article that every second spent web browsing generates 20 milligrams of CO2.

Naturally, I stopped browsing immediately and got back to work …

laters taters..

Thank you Mark – I like that ending so I think I’ll steal it..

Laters taters!

3 Comments »

It’s end of another week, seems to have been a long week but I think three sets of early morning rollouts and leaving late does that. Still, at home now and the last task of the week is to post the End of Day.

So, what’s happened this week? First thing I’ll mention is Fibre to the Cabinet. BT this week announced an expansion of their rollout of FTTC aiming to reach 40% of the country by 2012. We today placed our first customer order today, so tune in in a week and a bit to find out how it goes. Sadly my exchange isn’t on the list but we’ll be feeding back which exchanges we want next

What else has been going on this week? The Ashes has been causing lots of traffic, plenty of iPlayer traffic as people listen to the BBC’s radio commentary but also, thank to a signature we added this morning, there’s been a fair bit of SkyPlayer traffic, hitting a high of just under 150Mbps at lunchtime today. We also added a signature for ITVPlayer this morning, not a lot we can tell you yet except during Jeremy Kyle this morning it was doing about 6Mbps. Of course we can’t see what shows people are watching just how much traffic each application is doing which in turn helps us with our capacity management. iPlayer gets the headlines of course but the other catch-up and live TV services will just increase in usage too as people get used to iPlayer. And of course being being able to plot usage trends and predict spikes can be invaluable. Next on my list to look at is 4oD.

Enough though of my waffle, what’s everyone else been up to? Let’s start off with Mand from the Comms Team:

It’s Friiiiiiiiiiiiday. This makes your Comms Team happy.

It’s also James’ birthday, so happy birthday Bailey boy.

Today Bob has been mostly working on preparations for our upcoming data centre move.

James has been in the forums and working on our Easy Setup trial, along with Matt.

Chris is at home ill, get well soon cparr.

I’ve been doing problems, change controls, and a couple of complex cleanup tasks.

We also had biscuits, laughed at our esteemed leader getting all irate over trivial rules, and marvelled that social networking is a more reliable source of news than news sites following the massive amount of tweets regarding a fire in Soho before the news got hold of it.

Have a good weekend, see you on the other side (of the weekend, not anything more sinister ).

And just chipping in is birthday boy Jimbo:

“We also had biscuits”

I think you mean pseudo cake.

Next is Rys from Dev:

This week’s gone so quickly that it was easy to forget what day it was from one to the next. It’s a knock-on effect from Dev running flat out this week. We’ve got some friends from QBurst in the department for a while which, added to a couple of good developers leaving the company recently and projects running at greater than full speed, means that nobody’s had time to stop.

In amongst helping the QBurstians settle in this week has been some notable work. Biggest of all is our successful testing against BT’s provisioning system for 21CN. Our Java business tier and the PHP side are both doing the right thing there now, so with certification from BT in the bag we can move on to the next step in offering ADSL2+ products in the future, from a dev point of view.

On top of that there’s ongoing work on our reseller portal from me, quite a bit of work on our internal Workplace system which I’ve been helping to code review, some work from another team on performance improvements for the reseller portal (it can struggle when faced with large datasets, so scaling is an issue).

Oh, and lots of work on our business product stack from Ben, who’s leading technical direction on a Zend Framework trial on that project, with QBurst. It’s going great so far.

Oh, and I’m learning to drive! So wish me luck, and if you live in Sheffield, be careful crossing the road near Crosspool!

Lastly for today is Katie from the Customer Services team:

Had a busy day in customer services today, lots of calls coming through so apologies for any delays you’ve experienced.

Mark’s been on holiday making the most of the sun and black clouds that keep passing by.

Kim has been working down in retentions and Vicky has been helping in Business.

Rae, Daniele and I have been taking calls and anwering tickets, we are all going to reward ourselves with wine this evening.

Vicky and Kim are working the later shift tonight.

We all have our fingers crossed for a sunny weekend (not that its going to happen) for family visits, BBQ’s, weddings and hen party planning that are all happening.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Katie

And that’s it for another week, time to put the laptop away, feed the tomato plants and think about what to do this weekend. Take care everyone…

1 Comment »

Just a very quick update today – Everyone’s been running around with a bunch of projexcts that are drawing close to a conclusion.  We’ll try harder on Friday!
More…

No Comments »

Good evening! I hope you all had a good day today. Everyone seems pretty chipper here:

Mark from Provisioning

Hi, and welcome to the provisioning EoD

It has been a lovely sunny day in Sheffield, no sign of the predicted rain as yet. We are halfway through the week too, which is always good.

Today:

• Rob has been working in the delayed orders pool. He is going to the cinema tonight (No idea to see what though)
• Alice has been working in the migrations pool. She’s just got back from a friends wedding in Brighton and she had a lovely time.
• Andy has been working in the house moves pool. He is still in the middle of decorating his new flat.
• Malik has been working in the order progress pool. He has just bought a new house, so will likely be decorating it.
• I have been working in the ceases pool. I am also in the middle of decorating my new house…. it’s really boring! (I’m sure Andy and Malik will agree with me!)

Songs of choice this week are Bulletproof by La Roux and Heavy Cross by The Gossip.

Thanks for reading!

Ben from The CSC

The call centre’s been busy as we were a little short handed covering staff holidays and some sickness so I’m sorry if you wanted longer than we would like to speak to us. Our top five issues for calls are as follows:

1. Fault updates
   Our faults team work between 8am and 9pm and often can’t contact a customer, leading to those customers calling us for an update.

2. New faults
   There have been one or two outages reported today and a normal mix of the major fault types provoking calls.

3. Router setup
   ‘Easy setup’ routers are around the corner, we can’t wait! For now, we’re still helping a reasonable proportion of our new and existing customers setting up their routers.

4. Provisioning updates
   Lots of new customers are eager to get online with their new broadband and so call us for an update on their order.

5. General account queries
   Our new broadband products are very competitive in the market and a number of our existing customers have been calling us for more information about them, or to change their current product.

Chris from Comms

Commmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmms – we really do put the mmmmmmmmmmmmmm in comms.

So today has been filled with the joys of Spring, the woes of Autumn, the majestic trotting of the Winter otters and the cheery stickiness of Summer.

Tomorrow is Thursday, which means we’re nearer Friday and that can’t be a bad thing.

Matt has been beavering away working on the easy setup trial and doing some other bits n bobs along with it.

James has been rabbiting on the forums and helping out with some more complex customer issues. He even went to a meeting.

Mand isn’t at her desk, which means she’s in a meeting. Im pretty sure she’s been badgering our dev guys about some problem cleanups she’s working on.

Bob’s been working on some internal planning and looking after our Twitter followers.

I’ve been playing about in excel and also helped out watching the CSC floor for a while.

Catherine from our LCST and QA

Hello and welcome from LCST! That’s the Live Code Support Team, a multinational team of crack superheroes, wearing spandex, fighting crime and rolling out problem fixes as we go. Well, okay, not so much wearing spandex, more drinking tea, but certainly protecting the platform against any crimes. Unfortunately, half the team aren’t here as they work in India and have very sensibly gone home since it’s 9.35 in the evening for them. So, in their stead, I shall tell you that we’ve had another busy day, with testing and developing problem fixes for them, and some of that and many and varied jabbers from all corners of the globe about all manner of things for me. Keeps things interesting Have a good evening!

No Comments »

I am very, very excited. I am also posting this on time, at work, and not from home. What’s going on you might ask? Well, I need to leave work on the dot* today, for I am off to the Manchester International Festival… and the exciting event that I plan to attend is the BINGO!!!!!????! I am only 32, don’t have a blue rinse (sorry, that’s not an exciting hyperlink!!) and I am not quite sure how bingo can be part of a modern arts festival, but I am deliberately not reading up on it. I am just going to go along and see if it surprises me!

(*Dilapidated Old Train, ha ha!!)

Anyway, on with the posts! Here’s Heather, first of all, from the BSC:

On this day in 1928 sliced bread is sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. It is described as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped”.

Similarly, on this day in Plusnet 2009 Lellis has put up an unbelievable amount of tennis balls on our Wimbledon incentive! “The greatest forward step from a COT agent since Mr. P Booth finally made a cup of tea”.

After the mad busy Monday, things calmed down a fraction today, but we have still had over 300 COT calls as of 16:15 and Sales has seen another uplift from DM. CAR has been a challenge at the start of this week, but the teams are working ferociously to keep it as high as possible.

HP Attachment to sales remains strong at around 40%, with certain individuals excelling! COT had a tough Monday (as ever) but I’m sure will bounce back today and push the 50% barrier.

Thanks Heather!!! Next up, Mand from Comms…

The only redeeming feature about Tuesday is that it’s not Monday.

The rather dreary weather, and general busy-ness has led to a not very exciting but rather productive day.

James has been looking at forums. And dealing with a couple of faults.

Matt has been sorting out some Easy Setup stuff, some SPAM issues, and CSC support.

Bob has been to lots of meetings, sorted CCs for networks, chased up some problems and spent some time showing some love to our customers via Twitter/Usenet/the forums.

Chris is no longer here, but I know he did some Easy Setup stuff, some reporting, and some stunt PJ.

I have been finishing off the clean up for a couple of Home Phone problems, gone to lots of meetings, finalised some project work and got my task list down to single figures again, yay.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me, have a nice evening.

Thanks for that, Mand. This is also my last-ever posting as a project manager at Plusnet, because from Monday I move into our business improvement team, where I’ll be helping my new boss make the Plusnet world an even better place. Sounds rather corny but it’s true, and the work within that department will also benefit you, our customers. Hopefully I’ll be allowed to talk all about that next time I post.

Thanks for reading and have a nice evening!! Appropriately it’s now peeing down in Sheffield, nice weather for ducks, two little ducks, 22, quack quack, bingo here I come!!

All the best,

Ali McGowan

2 Comments »

So, Monday comes around again and brings us a day where the weather is best described as “variable”, one minute beaming with sunshine, the next absolutely pelting it down!
More…

No Comments »

Friday’s tennis at Wimbledon set a new record for iPlayer streaming, smashing the 2Gbps barrier.. that’s a lot of people watching the tennis on the BBC’s Sports page!

Here’s ‘Jeremy’ with this week’s TopStream.

This edition now available in HD

see also : Murray Mania Marches On!

4 Comments »

Welcome readers!  I hope you’re not all too busy watching the tennis (as it appears most of our userbase are, contributing to more than 2Gbps of traffic) and have a moment to catch up on what we’ve been upto today.
More…

2 Comments »

It’s been a long day today, been in since 7am for a couple of rollouts, had intended to leave on time… if not early, oh well best laid plans as they say. Good job I hadn’t really planned on doing anything, and the later I leave it the quieter the traffic will be.

I hadn’t actually intended to be editor today, but James seems to have roped me in to doing it. He has though said he’ll be editor tomorrow.

So it’s a good job James has written a contribution, here’s what Comms have been doing today:

ANOTHER sunny day in Sheffield (which also means I may die of heat exhaustion in the bus again). I’ve been working on forums aswell as some project stuff that you’ll hear about before tooooo long.

Matt and Chris have been working on Easy setup again and Matt went into town at lunchtime to buy some Solero’s, which were awesome.

Mand’s off celebrating her birthday today and tomorrow but new and improved Healthy Bob claims to have been busy. We don’t believe him though if for nothing but to make him more angry!

And that’s all for today. Semi-final day at Wimbledon tomorrow and we’re expecting another busy afternoon on the network (which means I can get away with watching the match).

Have fun everyone and look out for James tomorrow…

No Comments »