End of Day: 30th January

‎31-01-2008

It's Wednesday and my time to edit the End Of day again. I'm going to hijack the top of this to make sure you have all seen the new Community Site skin we are testing on our Beta site at the minute. If you haven't, go and have a look and let us know if any bugs in our bugs thread in the forums. Enough of that, and on with the EOD! In the lead is Cameron from the Dev Team It's pretty much standard day of dev here - everyone is busy on either projects or problem fixes and upcoming work is being planned and tasks being assigned. We've also identified some work to improve our sign up process which will give a much better stability to the application and provide us with better ways to process the new accounts, which will also be able to be put to use on other applicable applications. Next week we are going to have some new developers in so its going to be fun getting to know them and helping them get into the Plusnetter mind set and introduce them to our systems and way of working. We're coming up with ideas to help them get to know us and also the fun and frolics (weather permitting) that Sheffield has to offer. Today personally i have enjoyed a presentation by Paul, one of our team managers, about talking and presenting - its an area i find very hard so was good to see ideas that will help. We've also had our weekly team leader meeting to get a round up of what each team is doing, and there is a lot being done! Next in line: Martyn from Marketing It's Wednesday, and in Marketing that means graphs. We've been looking through loads of graphs on conversion rates, sign up numbers, search engine marketing performance and more. It's not graphs all day though (I for one don't think I could handle a full day of graphs and statistics, although our web analyst would love it). We've been putting together a survey on VoIP if you've got a couple of minutes to spare, why not fill it in for us? We've also been turning our attention towards our business pages. The look and feel of these hasn't changed very much recently, so we're in early discussions about how we sort that out. We've also been working on some print stuff (there's a lot of it about at the moment), My Referrals and emails. I've got Italian lessons tonight, so, it's arrivederci from me. Dan's update on the Networks Department now. Dan from network operations, lots of of problem fixes today and new networks implementation and various testing. Tickets have also been work on again and cleared down very nicely. Here is what the guys have been up to:

Ben B: Tweaking the mail policing scripts.
Ade: Radius changes for Brighview.
Carl: 155 segment for BV, Cogent move, Ellaocya work for new 155 segment.
Denis: work on firewall migration.
Dunc: Problem fixing.
Ian G: Server migrations and some general Solaris silliness with Sarah.
Jason A: New induction seminar, security steering group, data centre planning, HR training strategy and a bit of PCI compliance planning.
Mark L: Webmail resilience.
Matt R: Ellacoya operational work, tickets.
Michael P: Housekeeping.
Mike G: Netapp backup stuff, planning for this quarters projects.
Richard P: Problems, Tickets.
Rizwan S: mail problems, fix Postini issues.
Russel M: Dell support liaising 🙂 and Altintiy future meeting.
Sarah R: Working on a new Ellacoya configuration management server.
Si B: Meetings, Meetings.

Darren from Products Today most of the team have been speaking with BT about how they can help in our choice of our next customer hardware supplier; this has lead to some great team discussions. Ian has been looking at how to improve our data retention process and trying to redefine our approach to product design. Rich has been working on VoIP tickets and fax to e-mail. Shaun’s been handing more work over to other team members, as well as working on churn and usage analysis. Dave’s been number crunching with the intention of reworking the broadband product design model, plus working through some tickets. Maria was working on the Products Prioritisation list and updated the HR team on some of the Product slides for the induction process. I spent most of the day chasing some outstanding hardware issues, working on my normal daily activities and preparing for work being handed over by Shaun . Alexandra up in Finance next It's midweek up here in finance and also the sun's been shining so it's been a pretty good day! James has been working on preparation for the month end today, Kate has been working on timesheets and has also been performing various pre-month end tasks as well. Mark has been invoicing and sorting out expenses. I have been updating payments and also working on customer tickets along with Andrew. Hope everyone has a good evening! and lastly, Mand from Comms Hello and welcome to your lovely Comms Team EOD. I'll keep it brief as the pub is calling. Today I've been finishing off some new starter training, working on internally raised problems, approving (or not :P) Development team change controls and chasing a couple of particularly nasty BT Wholesale issues. Matt has been writing enhanced care training, manning the forums, carrying out relay policing, and trying to sort out a temperamental new laptop (yes we are jealous 'cos his is newer ). Chris has been in the forums, helping out with some tickets, writing a blog post and supporting our CSC colleagues. James has been training, placing some provisioning orders and looking at forums (we're semi-confident that he replied to some posts too :P). We're not sure what Bob did 'cos he didn't submit an EOD today, but it's probably related to Postini. We do have to state that he has made us all tea for three days in a row now, which whilst being good is also strangely concerning. Anyhow, we'll be back tomorrow working hard as usual. G'night, --- and that's your lot. Please have a look at the new skin and let us know if you see anything awry.