The Pinged Hobbit

Software support is one the major aspects of my work. Out side of installing new systems I spend a lot of time dealing with customer queries over the phone and via email. I am sure it is the same for most people who deal with software support. One thing that is noticable after a short while spent dealing with support is how important a role the help documentation for the software can drastically reduce the amount of support calls. If you are supporting a software with very little documentation for end users you will find that the majority of the calls you deal with are related to the basic operation of your software and a lot of them may even be repeat calls from the same customer asking the same question over and over again. No matter how good the software trainers are (if you have them) there will always be things that people do not take in.

Good documentation will not only make it easier for your clients to use the software, it will also free up the time of your support team. Allowing them more time to concentrate on the more important support problems that come in that really require the attention of a trained support person. There are a few things that is useful to keep in mind when creating help documentation:
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Any regular reader of this blog might have noticed a lapse in postings over the last few days. It’s not that my appetite for posting my rambling has diminished, far from it. I still have the urge to clear my mind on a regular basis. I am however at the moment rather distracted as I prepare for my forth coming trip to Peru.

This time next week I will be getting ready to fly away for 16 days to South America and hopefully an interesting journey. During my time away I doubt there will be many posts, I wont be taking a laptop with me or a phone so no I wont have Internet access when I want. As a self confessed technology junkie I am not sure how I will react to this sudden flash back to my pre-computer youth. This will be the first time in over 10 years I have not had regular access to the Internet, I have a feeling I may suffer culture shock a lot harder than I suffer altitude sickness!

Rest assured on my return I will have hopefully documented my travels, both visually and in the written word and will only be too happy to share it with anyone interested!

More and more people are becoming mobile workers. They don’t have a fixed office/desk to work from. Some, like me are road based, moving between various offices and using multiple PC’s over the course of the week. Others are not so extreme, they might use one or two machines. One of the nice things to be able to do is have the same functionality available to you no matter which computer you are using. Having the same programs and utilities at you fingertips can be very useful as you can always have access to what you need in order to be able to complete your task. Continue reading »

Previously I give some hints about how to apply for that IT job you saw advertiesd. I mentioned some of the do’s and don’t about applying for the job, because at the time I was in the process of reviewing CV’s. Since that point we have moved on to the next stage. We’ve gone through the CV’s and picked out the ones that stand out, the ones we want to interview. So as a follow up here are some hints for when you have been offered that interview for your dream job:

• Be early – An obvious one to begin with. They give you a time for a reason. You probably wont be th only person they are interviewing that day and they have things scheduled. Try and stick to it. Turn up early but not too early. Aim for around 10 to 15 minutes before. Turning up too early can look just as bad as turning up late though!
• Look the part – When going for an interview you should always dress smart. You CV has done the hard work of creating an impression for you. But you still have that first visual impression to make with your prospective employer. Don’t be afraid to wear a suit if you feel the need. You can never look too smart for an intereview. If you do go for a suit, make sure it fits you. Rather than buying the standard size from the local supermarket spend that little bit more. Nothing looks worse than looking like a child in their father’s suit!
• Prepare for the interview – Do some research on the company you are looking to be employeed by. A candidate that has some idea of what the companies main business area is creates a much better impression that one who needs a lesson on the basics before the interview gets going. It doesn’t need to be indepth, just a look over the company website is usually enough.
• At least try to appear interested – You may well be applying for more than one job at a time and this job might not be the one you want most, but still if you are in and interview and feel you might want the job at least try to give the impression that you are interested
• Have some questions to ask – Asking questions of the interviewers is advisable, it shows the interviewer that you are not just going through the motions. Asking the right question can make you stand out from the crowd and possibly get you the job.

Project management is a task encountered daily by the majority of people in their life. Be that in work or in their home life. There are always times when you require someone else to complete a task for you, it can be a bit hard to keep track of the various tasks you have people doing for you. You have to remember who is doing what, who has finished what and what else is left to do. You have all the hassle of remembering to check with them each day about how much they have done on the task as well. It can be a real annoyance. Thats where Please Notify Me comes into play Continue reading »

Anyone reading this probably uses the web to shop for items and do research just like me. One of the most annoying things of using the web in this way is that when it comes to clicking the print button, what you think is one page of A4 from looking at the screen actually turns out to be 4 or 5 when printed out and usually it is covered with ads which obscure or detract from what you are really interested in. In this age of environmental awareness where everyone is being encouraged to look for ways to save the planet, the amount of wasted paper this generates needs to be reduced. This is not only an environmental saving it is also a monetary saving as well (definitely a good thing with the rising cost of living!)

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I’ve previously talked about the brains ability to make snap decisions, how with out conscious thought we can spot pattens and solutions in only a faction of a second when if we spend a great deal of time considering all the possibilities we might come up with nothing. (The previous posts on this subject can be read here and here) I’m not going to cover old ground here, but I thought it was important that I show you an example of what I mean. Continue reading »

It’s late at night, you’ve been out for a few beers with your friends. You get home and it’s not that late that you need to be in bed so you fire up the computer to go online for a little while. You check your emails, maybe send of some to some of your contacts. Check to see if any one is online to talk to on MSN. Then you go to bed. The horror begins the next morning when you wake up, you either realise that you sent an email to your ex, or you find an reply from your ex waiting for you in your inbox. It’s something I am sure quite a lot of us have done at one time or another. It’s doesn’t have to be to an ex, but its the most common one. But you can put a stop to it, at least you can if you use Gmail. Continue reading »

In Part 1 I talked about how sometimes snap decisions can work out just as good or even better than choices that we spend a lot of time thinking about. How our subconscious mind can process a great deal of information with out input from the conscious part of our mind. This part that of our brain that is almost like a locked door, behind which a great many thoughts occur that but we have no idea about what is going on there. The part of the brain that deals with all processes needed to do something like walking. This part of our mind has basically become trained to perform certain actions, it learns and develops as we do different tasks. For instance walking, when a child learns to walk the conscious side of the brain is highly involved, it’s not a skill that we are used to needing, but given a short amount of time our brain adjusts and it becomes natural for us to walk. We can move around and do other tasks, we don’t have to concentrate on our balance and movement because the thought processes are taking place behind the closed door. Continue reading »

I agree with a lot of what you have to say here. For me the quality of professional IT has been on the decrease for sometime now. There is too much focus on specailisation. I don’t claim to have the level of knowledge needed to be a sysadmin and for my job I don’t need to be.

I’ve found that with regards to IT companies/managers seem to become fixated with certain buzz words for a while and while those buzz words are popular they hire IT staff only capable of operating systems related to this. I deal with a lot of different IT departments, for some very large UK companies and there are lots of times I can run rings around them even with my knowledge level. I’ve seen guys who are basically database administrators who are responsible for some big networks.

By the same token, people seem to neglect IT as well. I know companies where the guy who makes all the choices about IT is the Finance Manager, he feels he knows enough to make software choices about company wide critical systems.

The problem is people have become used to substandard service from IT, they don’t expect to get what they want quickly so they tolerate impotence. This attitude needs to change if things are to get any better

Originally posted as a comment by ThePingedHobbit on Hey Internet! using Disqus.