topic Re: Anotherone in Community Site Feedback

Anotherone

rongtw — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 21:32:22 GMT

after this new forum started , i have noticed that a NON PN staff member here has put more input on this forum than the staff here

About time PN recognised his assisance !!

Give him some free BB

Re: Anotherone

NorthEasterner — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 21:40:24 GMT

Totally agree. Plusnet management should learn from this!

well done @Anotherone it is appreciated!

Re: Anotherone

198kHz — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 22:03:16 GMT

I agree, and expressed similar thoughts last year -

https://community.plus.net/t5/Community-Site-Feedback/Bright-Sparks-Above-and-Beyond/m-p/1197095#M7166

Re: Anotherone

Anotherone — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 01:04:13 GMT

Thanks for the kind comments guys. Well this place is not the most intuitive, and there are still a number of shortcomings/enhancements that we want to see resolved to replace some of the missing functionality of SMF, so it's important to try and give people workarounds etc to make the best of it. The appearance of all the additional bugs on Friday morning is a real mystery. The Testing site is not reproducing the same bugs making it much more difficult for the experts to track down what is happening with things, but it seems to be all Javascript related. Let's hope it gets fixed soon. To say that the group of us that were involved in testing are really disappointed, would be a gross understatement. Oh, and just so that you know, I shall be having a little bit of a holiday for some of tomorrow

Re: Anotherone

Townman — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:12:32 GMT

"Really disappointed" is something of an understatement, we are though where we are and have no alternatives but to make the best of what's here. Sadly this approach seems the norm now - "Sod the debate about it being right, just do it and deal with the issues later". I can only conclude that the guys on the ground had their arms twisted quite high up their backs by non technical management just telling them to make it so.

AO has indeed fielded the issues in something of a vacuum - besides being busy with other issues, the near invisibility of PlusNET presence on this board has somewhat dissuaded me from being here as much I used to. Having to find sticking plasters to make a brand new system function is very disheartening, as is zero comment on this topic by any PlusNET staff member.

At least an acknowledgement of other's appreciation of AO's contribution would not go a miss! @PlusnetLiam

Re: Anotherone

rongtw — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 09:05:21 GMT

I agree it looks like , banging your head against a brick wall , spring to mind

And yes i am not surprised that PN have not visited here

Re: Anotherone

ScottStorey — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 20:28:44 GMT

People in Plusnet definitely appreciate the contributions that anotherone (and others!) make to the community. I know for certain I do.

I'd like to post more (as would other non-CRT staff) but unfortunately we don't get a lot of spare time to. We definitely keep an eye out and listen to what is going on especially around things like the new network and the general sentiment from customers.

To add, without people like anotherone it's not really a community and is just a help forum. The people that visit and contribute make all the difference.

Re: Anotherone

rongtw — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 21:50:43 GMT

Thanks for finding time Scottstorey

thank you goes a long way

Re: Anotherone

colintivy — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 10:07:44 GMT

I am a fan of AO's contribution to the fora. He has a wide and detailed range of expertise but does not belittle the troubles of more ignorant mortals like me. He actually called on me (in trouble with a dodgy connection and installation in very rural Wales) very successfully. Long may we benefit from his interest!! Give him a raft of thanks from us!!

Re: Anotherone

Townman — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 09:55:44 GMT

Hi @ScottStorey,

Great to see you in here. I think it's is understood that there are staff whose prime role is not to be in here, but do visit and contribute when they can. The concern here is that there are staff whose role it is to be here and have not been as visible as might have been expected at the time that this new service was launched. I specifically discussed with the project team staffing levels over the initial go-live and believe it was said that extra staff would be made available to field the initial the teething problems.

in reality, the switch over was scheduled for when the lead (only) in house developer was on leave, to happen immediately prior to a weekend, leaving only customers supporting those having teething problems.

i do not think you'll disagree that this could have been done differently? Personally I feel that many of the outcomes were predictable, worse still a number of the issues were discussed at length during testing and remained unaltered. It seems quite strange to me to have chosen a representative sample of users to examine the new service, then to have decided to hold off on some of the feedback to see what a wider audience thought ... only to get the exact same feedback and need to make urgent changes within 24 hours of go-live.

There are lessons to be learnt here. Someone needs to accept that judgement calls could have been better and the consequence has been more negativity than there ought to have been, left for the other customers to field.

Re: Anotherone

ScottStorey — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 12:53:16 GMT

Hi @Townman,

I have to agree the timing was less than ideal. Unfortunately the original date got pushed back which then clashed with holiday.

I can't really comment much on the staffing levels as I've not been around, at a glance it seems to be similar to pre-switchover. I see the social media guys when I'm wandering around the office and they are always busy and the webdev guys have been around to help with various fixes. It definitely wouldn't hurt having more staff on the forums though and I know this is something Louisa and Liam will be looking into.

There are definitely lessons to be learned and that will be picked up by the project team. The project is still very much ongoing as we need to fix these initial problems, decommission old kit, migrate other services that run on the same hardware etc.