End of Day: 7th August
Good evening, Ali here as your Editor. Today I've had the delights of being on multiple conference calls - from home - using Skype. Isn't the Internet a grand thing? OK, so the quality of Skype isn't always spot on, but it's so much better to hold a conference call or meeting where you can see the participants. One glitch - my place overlooks a somewhat noisy road... and there is also a museum close by, so one call in particular today was interrupted by the ‘Choo choo' of a clapped-out steam train puffing past. It did raise a few eyebrows and cause some chuckles (and I know this because we were using Skype!). OK - this is what you're here for... here's the End of Day: First, Richard in Networks:
Today feels like it's been a relatively busy one: Sarah, Ade, Josh, Mike and the rest of the NetDev team have been migrating some of our systems to a new load-balancing setup, configuring a new firewall, designing up-coming projects and improving our internal reporting systems. Our database team have been attending meetings, performing normal house-keeping tasks, improving our documentation and fixing small issues as and when they cropped up. Duncan, Russ and Rick have been monitoring our systems, cracking down on spammers and dealing with other ad-hoc problems when they arose. Finally (and by no means least) Dan, Aaron and the rest of the Ticket Team have been working through the ticket pools handling abuse complaints, complex account changes and other such non-trivial customer problems.
Cheers Richard. Over now to James in Comms...
Today's been a very exciting day. It really has. So much so, Matt and I paid a visit to our local KFC with the Comms order of choice to celebrate! I've mainly been working on the forums for most of the day, with a couple of meetings and problems thrown in for good measure. Oh, I also made tea. Chris tells me that he's been doing forums, problem cleanup on referrals issues, prep work for exchange migration comms, using Paint to annoy James (he put a smiley face on my nice new gold star avatar, which was quite a shock!). Matt's not here right now. But he's mainly been grumbling about something or other. Bob "the terrorist" Pullen is talking to Geoff at the moment. I didn't really hear what they were talking about, but Geoff seems quite amused and I think I heard the word "roadmap" a couple of times. Geoff's just gone now, so I'll ask Bob again. He says he's been looking at problems and discussing the future of our email platform, probably with Geoff just now! He's also been doing some relay policing. Well, with that, I shall leave you to spend your evenings in peace and we'll be back again tomorrow! Bye bye, James PS: linky for today: I scored 4
Thanks James (hic!). Over to Web Development with an update from a different James.
Hello everyone, here's what the team have been up to today. First up, Nick has been planning the next stage of the brand refresh which was launched on Tuesday. There are some sections that will be re-styled and structured to fall in line with the new design. Colin has been sat in the Projects Team helping out with various brand refresh problems, tweaking the new look Community Site, and gave a PUGIT presentation. Jonny has been busy all day with admin work now that his laptop (which died last week) has been returned to him. Wojtek has been winding The GMan up, fixing brand refresh bugs, and working on the Partner Programme. Talking of the GMan, he has been squashing brand refresh bugs and talking to me about Customer Generated Support Pages development and scheduling. Pete has been scheduling meetings (that should read 'having meetings about scheduling' - PJ) and has been reviewing problems, NADS, and PUGIT items. Tam, who has just returned back from his holiday has been reviewing a new internal tool and catching up on general forum banter. Meanwhile, Andy has been centred in planning the new faults support section and Sam has been exterminating brand refresh bugs. Dan has been supporting ACES and fixing general problems, Rupert has been focused on My Account dev work, and finally I've been writing some more documentation and preparing a task list. That's all folks. James.
Thank you, James. Here with the CSC top 5 for the AM shift for today is Thomas:
1. New faults - Due to the pipe drop in the wee hours of the morning we have had a string of customers call in who were experiencing a basic fault which was cured by a router reboot. 2. Email client set up - various different email client configuration calls came in, from setting up new mail boxes to editing existing settings. 3. Billing - Quite a few calls to query billing mostly due to home phone and customers finding this sometimes to be confusing. 4. Fault updates - Users calling in to get updates on faults already raised with BT. 5. New faults - I know i posted this one twice - This one if for customer who are contacting us for the first time for actual ADSL faults that were not part of the pipe drop. All in all a busy day for the CSC which has now started to calm down now the last of the customers effected by the pipe drop are now reconnected.
Cheers for your update Thomas. Finally - Martyn with a Marketing update:
So what have the marketing team been up to today? Well, we've all been getting stuck into our next projects now that the new-look website is live. I've been planning a new email campaign while Spencer has been working on our order journey, as well as sorting out new company PowerPoint templates using the new logo. Gavin's been designing some posters for the office and fixing a couple of bugs. Amy's been doing "invoices, invoices and more invoices" and "deal-making". Sounds interesting. Sameer's been analysing our web traffic to see what impact the new site design is having and Chris has been handing over a big cheque to the Sheffield Children's Hospital - more about this tomorrow. Right, we're going to the pub, enjoy your evenings.
Have one for me, Martyn! That's the end of today's update... off to the gym for me - and I'll try not to get run over by any steam trains on the way. Have a great evening, Ali McGowan