End of Day: 5th August

[#1]

Has something changed on the website? It looks a bit different somehow. Maybe somebody changed a banner, or something. Is there more pink and a bit less orange? Maybe Colin from the Web Team can tell me what's changed...

By the time you read this the Web Development team will be down to 5 people from the 12 people that started this morning. The reason for this should be obvious - most of us started at various times between 6am and 9am to help with the refresh of the Plusnet brand, and the quick coat of paint the main Plusnet website (and this very community site) had this morning. Just in case you hadn't noticed, you should check it out! After we all got started, we spent most of the day complaining of being tired - most of us couldn't sleep due to the early start! In between times, we've been fixing some of the issues we've spotted on live. It's almost guaranteed on a project this size that you'd miss things! Rupert, Andy and James have managed to continue on their other tasks - the Smart Search bar for the Community Site, some work on the My Account project and some work on organising a future rollout and continuing with support page updates. Bye for now, Colin zzzzzzzz

Hmm... I'm just not sure. Something about a bit of a facelift to the front-page? Any clues, Russ from Networks?

The network bees have been busy as usual! Seems there is never a quiet day in the life of a networks engineer. We seem to have problems under control and continually working towards further platform stabilisation. Binary Bob has been sat up in networks pretending to work but on the plus side his facebook profile is coming along nicely! :-) The heroes include: - Alan Langridge: catching up after holidays, problems and Change Control reviews - Aaron Bennett: trials, tasks, front-line support and hostmaster - Russ: Sorting the BV spam issue on the relays - Ben 'Judas' Brown: getting build sorted for new internal services box - Rizwan: Skiving at the data-centre and looking at the pretty lights - Dan 'Danger' Payne: Tickets, training and abuse - Duncan Scotland: Problem work - Matt Roebuck: Tickets and kwiff maintenance - Michael Presson: Problems - Mike Grice: Scheduling, HR stuff and Datacentre planning - Neil Minor: Ticket KPI's and mail deletions - Richard Pearce: Monitoring - Sarah Routledge: Loadbalancer migration work Thats it from networks team today - till next time. Dont call us, we'll call you

Nope, nothing. Well, I'm truly puzzled now. Talking of Binary Bob, he's got an update for us from Comms:

Evening all! Well, as you can probably guess today's been all about this morning's Brand Refresh, and our shiny new image. We've got a new sign above the door, new mouse mats and we've even done away with all our 'legacy mugs' and replaced them with new ones! So other than the Brand Refresh, what have team Comms been up to today? Well, contrary to Russ's accusation, I've not actually spent the day on Facebook! 😉 (although I have been up on the Networks floor). What I have done is send an email to a couple of hundred Waitrose & Greenbee customers, contacted users who've been (inadvertently) spamming our relay servers, reviewed networks change controls and made the odd forum/usenet/service status post. Matt tells me he's been concentrating on personal tickets, problems, meetings, home phone and development change control review. Chris has been processing another batch of Aladdin additions doing some problem cleanup, working on some personal objectives and manning the forums. That leaves James who I was shocked to see at 7:30am when I arrived in the office this morning (this is a first, trust me). Impressed by his commitment I tried asking what he'd been up to today only to find that he's already gone home!! So that's your lot. All with the exception of today's random link - Well, it's not actually that random today to be honest. I thought it might be an idea to take a trip down memory lane at look at a couple of incarnations of our website as it was back in 2001 and 2003 (be patient, it may take a while to load). Nostalgia eh? It's not what it used to be! 😉

Wait!... what was that? A brand refresh? Is there a new brand? Tell me Adheel from CSC... is there a new brand?

The Top 5 reasons for calls coming into the CSC today are as follows: 1) Router Set-ups - Always a popular one, most customers using equipment supplied by us, as well as the usual Netgear, Belkin and LinkSys models. 2) Fault Updates - Customers calling in to query their outstanding faults or to provide us with a update after being left a message earlier in the week or over the weekend. As normal mainly the no sync or intermittent connection fault types being queried. 3) Email Set-ups - Customers calling in for advice on either how to configure popular email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird, or asking for general help on creating mailboxes, aliases etc. 4) Provisioning Updates - Customers who have signed up recently chasing activation dates or other information on thier broadband activation, as well as supplying MAC keys, correct phone numbers in order to progress the order. and finally... 5) Billing - General billing queries such as customers making outstanding payments, supplying new payment details or querying their accounts types in search of a better deal.

Hmm... No help there then. Maybe Rhys from Development can enlighten me...

Dev have been busy today supporting the new branding bits where needed, and it seems that went nice and smoothly! Good work everyone involved, everything looks good. My team has just gone to beta with our project, and it's the biggest one we've ever undertaken. Beta means bug squashing for the next few weeks before gamma, so we're working closely with QA to make sure the final product is what the customer asked for. Fingers crossed! Lastly, we're working to change our internal revision control system and some of the dev processes that hang around the RCS, like our branching, maintenance and release best practices. It'll mean quite a few painful changes in process, but the upshot will be less maintenance headaches, sane release management and a more structured hierarchy of development so everyone knows clearly what's required during app and content dev. We have a huge codebase and a large dev team, and we've outgrown CVS and current best practices, and it's my job to drive that change forward. Wish me luck.

Ah! Yes! A new brand! That must be what this mouse-mat and mug are that I found on my desk when I came in this morning... it all makes sense now! Well, I'm going to go have a gander at the new-look. Till next time, folks! Roo.