Welcome to yet another installment of your daily** End of Day posting.  Another miserable July day here in Sheffield as we progress through the “summer” (which was supposed to be a belter but was quite blatantly a bunch of lies).

** Saturdays and Sundays not included.

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Hello Readers!

40 years ago, man landed on the moon.  Today we’re over the moon as England have taken a 1-0 lead in the Ashes with three tests to go.

That was a tenuous link wasn’t it! – while I try to think of something better, here’s todays sole EOD entry from Mark of the Web Team.

Hi everyone! It’s Mark here, reporting from the little corner of the development team that’s responsible for web development.

What’s today been about? Well, over the weekend we moved to a new code change management platform, called Git. No honest! It really is called Git, and it isn’t a slur against the author, ‘Kernel Linux’ himself, Linus Torvalds. It’s an exciting time (in the same way that moving house is exciting.) The way we all handle any changes we make to web pages, scripts, and code is now done differently. I’ve not had much hands-on experience with Git, but Windows the client I use features a turtle somersaulting through the air when you make a change. That works for me!

Otherwise it’s been business as usual, only a tad busier. Integration of our big project continues successfully. Right now, our QA testing comrades are testing our changes, raising bug tickets when problems are found. So everyones aim, over the next few days, will be to reduce the list of bugs to zero.

Right, back to bug fixing….
Toodle pip

Thank you Mark, and thank you readers!

See you next time!

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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.

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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!

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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!
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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!

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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!
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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.
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Hello Readers!

I’m posting from home (and a bit later than usual) today, which means I can do something that’s almost unheard of  in Plusnet EOD history – yes PRAISE THE AIR CON!

I’ve been at my desk for most of the day (tying up loose ends as I’m off work until a week on monday ) and even though I’ve been wearing a hoodie all day (hood down or course ) I’ve not felt anything like warm, just comfortable.

But then I stepped through the office doors, it was like walking into a wall of fire – yikes!  I’m now sat slowly cooking at home… never mind on with the EOD!

First we have Adheel from the Faults team, who is keeping quiet about his beloved Blades for some reason!

Good evening all, here is the faults end of day!

Its been a busy day and although the sun has been hiding , its been swelteringly humid in the office. I also missed the ice cream van as I was in a meeting so I’m not impressed

On a plus note, lots of work has been done today, which should stand us in good stead for what is set to be a busy week. Our 3 secondee’s are on their last shift on the team and are pretty adamant they have learnt plenty in the month they have been on the team.

I’ll be testing them next week so we will see if that’s true or not. My learning stick (a 2×4 under my desk) will be close at hand should they fail to get 100% on al the modules. Just joking lads! :-p

The next batch of secondee’s start tomorrow so I’m sure we will get a end of day from one (if not all) of them to advise on how they are finding it on the faults team some time over the next few weeks.

The team has dealt swiftly with a variety of fault tickets today.

Myself, Alex and Jake have been dealing with new faults. These are the ones that go through manual testing before raising to BT.

Rich (who beat me 3-0 at pool today and I no longer consider a friend) has been dealing with PSTN (voice) faults. This involves running a test on the copper line part of the telephone line to find any specific faults. This can then be raised for further investigation or the customer contacted for further internal checks to be tried just to rule out all equipment.

The other chaps who came in dribs and drabs throughout the day include Rich U and Jon (who along with Jake bid farewell to our team today), Brad (who has been entertaining us with his anecdotes from over the weekend) and Tony and Keith (who made a killer brew for the team as soon as he came in this morning.) Simon our team leader has been recovering from last nights game of football in which he was on the winning team and I wasn’t.

Ah well, revenge shall be mine next week!

Have a good evening!

Adheel was sat no more than 10m away from me today, strange how he had such a different experience.

Next (and finally) we have Matt B from QA…

And a very good evening from QA. Here we go with a quick run round the team.

Catherine has been working on getting problem fixes rolled out live, interspersed with drinking tea (Lady Grey) and joining in with the usual conversation around the kettle.

Gary has been working on our Partner product and has been relatively quiet all day. I’m assuming this is indicative of some hard work being done…

Gavin has been creating a test plan for the upcoming move to our new datacentre. Yes, it is as fascinating as it sounds!

Paul has been reviewing all open problems to see which can be fixed within future projects. Integrating problem fixes into project work can save a lot of man hours that are then free for more dev work so it’s really useful.

Peter has been testing some work on our usage recording systems and also testing some priority problems.

Nigel has been testing some new marketing promotions as well as planning the testing of some future promotions.

Finally I have been the general dogsbody today. Picking up random testing tasks and making some team scheduling changes, as well as writing this EOD for you lovely people

Thanks Matt!

That’s it from me today – I’ll see you in a week and a bit!

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Hello readers!

A short and sweet EOD today, with just the one entry from James who’s a TSM (Technical Shift Manager) in the CSC.

Well within the CSC our TSMs have been pretty much back to normal today.

In recent weeks we have had Simon, our faults manager, along with James K, our business support manager, working with our colleagues in SA so we have had other TSMs such as myself covering for them. So whilst I have been covering the business team in recent weeks Im back to my traditional desk today looking after our CS and Prov teams in Sheffield.
Our Operations manager, Nick, has also returned to the UK too having been in SA for months and months and months. Its good to have him back with us, especially as its another person I can beat at golf as my victory yesterday afternoon proved.
So things here seem a little more normal and Im sure our teams are loving having their normal leaders back too, well grudingly they might admit that.

Cheers James!

Thanks for reading all!

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