Support: A day in the life of.

Recently Random and I were going over our daily activities, which can include internal support, Client support, and project work, and we were discussing how scattered and at times hectic our days can end up. We put together a list of events that could happen on any given day. This shows how techs covering several duties must be able to multitask and not pull your hair out in the process.

7:50 AM -Arrive at work, boot up laptop, and prepare for another work day.

7:55 AM – Check emails that came in over the night. It looks like we received a ticket regarding a client’s Oracle IPM that had crashed and they are not sure why. They attached the log information, but it will take some further investigation to fully vet the issue. Go to get coffee and found none ready so I needed to start a pot, I’ll come back later when the coffee is done.

8:00 AM – Begin work on an internal project that I was unable to work on much yesterday. Nothing scheduled for today so I should have time to work on it and I expect to finish it by the end of the day.

8:30 AM – Support Hours start.

8:35 AM – Reviewed Oracle IPM logs from the ticket that came in last night. I called the client and was only able to leave a voice mail.

8:55 AM – Returned to work on internal project.

9:02 AM – Internal Support: Employee calls asking for help with their second monitor. They cannot get it to come up even after several reboots.

9:18 AM – Replaced the cable and it fixed the issue.

9:21 AM – Back to work on my project.

9:40 AM – New Ticket. Here is the customer’s description: Urgent: System down!!! Please contact ASAP!!!. The call is listed as urgent, severity 1, so I will call immediately.

9:42 AM – After a couple of attempts to call I could only reach a voicemail. Sent off an email and still awaiting a response.

9:44 AM – Go to get Coffee and had to start another pot as someone left the pot that I had started earlier empty!

9:52 AM – Resume work on my internal project.

10:07am – Instant message from another employee who needs some help trouble shooting an issue for an upcoming demo. Started a WebEx to review the problem and help trouble shoot system.

11:01 AM – NEW TICKET – Client has questions about Nexus 10, forwarded ticket to their Sales Rep and Marketing to answer their questions. Back to work on trouble shooting.

11:55am – Found the issue in the linked server configuration on the system that is being configured for the demo.

11:57am – Stretch break right before lunch time.

12:50pm – Return from lunch only to find out that the entire network is down including all email.

12:59pm – Received phone call from employee letting us know that the email is down. I ensured them that we are working on the issue and we will have it up as soon as possible.

1:04pm – Received phone call from another employee letting us know that the email is down.

1:11pm – While trying to fix the networking issue, we received IM letting us know that the email is down. We are unable to send out a companywide email to inform people that the network is down because the email is down.

1:48pm – Found the issue with the network. An employee had connected a LAN line back into an internal jack causing a dead loop. This in turn shut everything down. After many insults we were finally able to forgive the coworker. Sent companywide email letting everyone know what had shut the system down and how to avoid this in the future.

1:50 – Back to work on internal project.

2:03 PM – NEW TICKET. Description: 1-3 users are unable to look at images on their workstations. They are able to see the images on other workstations. We have tried rebooting several times as prompted, but we are then asked to reboot again. Please Help!

2:09 PM – Finally able to figure out what the client’s was trying to say and sent email with the steps on how to correct issue. Returned to internal project

2:13 – Received response from “urgent” ticket. Contacted the client and jumped on a WebEx to solve the issue.

3:40 – After several attempts to unsuccessfully ping the storage server, the client rebooted the server. After the reboot we are still unable to ping or remote into the server, we successfully attempt to directly log into the server, and found that the NIC drivers became corrupt. Reinstalling drivers and rebooting the server brought it back up online.

3:41 – Back to project.

3:50 – Customer called wanting help configuring a batch class in ILINXCapture. I then walked the client through submitting a support ticket .

4:09 – Finished assisting client with building the desired batch classes in ILINX Capture.

4:28 PM – NEW TICKET – Client needs assistance in backing up their system. The client is busy through the rest of the day and we set up and appointment first thing in the morning.

4:33 PM – Restart internal project

5:00 – Entered in time for the day and realized that I was never able to finish my project. Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

Brandon Konen
S.E. at ImageSource Inc.

Random McParks
S.E. at ImageSource Inc.