The Pinged Hobbit

Remote support utilities are one of the things I find very useful in my normal working life. I’ve spoken before about Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue. It’s so much easier to support a client when you can see what they are seeing on their screen. The biggest problem with both Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue is their cost. There not particularly expensive, but if your a small IT company with a few distributed clients it might be too much of a stretch to your budget to afford them. Ammy Admin is a free utility that provides much of the functionality of the paid for apps, but at no cost. Continue reading »

As the Net Generation begins to flex it’s wings and make it’s presence felt in the work place, multitasking is becoming more and more common. People are finding that they prefer to switch between tasks rather than concentrate on one for long periods of time. The technology in use today is only going to encourage this trend more. I am a multitasker, it is very rare that I will be working on only one project at once. As I write this post I am switching between IM windows, moving to a remote desktop to my PC at work and surfing a could of news websites. The use of PC’s is making it easier for people to multitask, with virtual desktops enabled I can have different windows open on different screens and switch between them.

Multitasking is also something I have found useful in my support work. By cultivating this skill I can hold a conversation on the phone supporting a clients problem while simultaneously working on a setup for another client on my pc. In order to be able to multitask effectively there are some habits you need to develop. Be warned thought, multitasking is not guaranteed to work for everyone. In fact in most cases it is likely that it will be more of a detriment than an advantage. Continue reading »

In my day job I deal with the installation and support of IT software for businesses. I share the role of managing the department with a colleague. As part of my responsibilites I have to recruit new engineers from time to time. Personally now that I have experience of both sides of the coin I have no more liking for the recruitment process than when I was looking for a job. As a candidate its an awkward process, from the start when you first apply you are never sure to get a response from an application and even if you get to interview you are going to probably be nervous as hell. From a recruiter’s point of view, looking at a CV does not always give an accurate picture of the candidate and when you get them to an interview you might get the wrong impression due to nerves.

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Yesterday I posted about how to deal with the IT support department. Well as you may have noticed, I try to be fair and look at both sides of things. So I’ve decided to follow that up with some helpful hints for the person at the other end of the phone to make their life a little smoother hopefully, and perhaps help the person calling them not to get too stressed! Hopefully these hints will be useful for anyone considering a career in a helpdesk role as well. Continue reading »

There are very few jobs around now where you don’t have some contac with a computer. Some aspect of your job will probably require you to deal with a piece to accomplish it and at some point in time you have in all likely hood had to call the tech guys. Be you a shop assistant having problems with a sales till, or an accountant having trouble with a piece of accounts software you will still at some point end up calling the guys with the advanced knowledge to solve your problems for you. A lot of people dislike dealing with technical support, seeing them as hard to talk, sometime brash or rude. Seeming like they have no patience for a user with out as much technical grasp as they have.

In truth most support staff are no more brash/rude than anyone else, the thing that a lot of people forget about support staff is that they spend a lot of time dealing with people who have no patience with them and after a while it tends to rub off on you now matter how nice a person you are. We tend to get people who just expect us to drop everything the instant they call and in straight away know the cause and the cure of their unique problem. It doesn’t work like that though, would you expect a mechanic to be able to diagnose a fault and fix it with in a moment of seeing your car? So as someone who deals with giving support and receiving support on almost a daily basis I thought I would offer my advice on how to make things go easier when dealing with technical support Continue reading »

The hardest part of on side work is forming good relationships with the customer you are dealing with. It’s your responsibility to keep the customer happy and to make sure they carry a good impression of your company after your visit. Now a days a company’s reputation means more than anything, word of mouth can be one of the biggest influences on your trade, upset a customer, leave a bad impression and only will that customer probably never deal with you again but they won’t recommend you to anyone else. Word of mouth and peer reviews are becoming more important now with the growth of sites where old clients can leave their thoughts on your company for future prospective clients to look up. That’s why it’s important you make a good impression. For an on site software engineer the two main contacts on site are the end user and the IT department. Keeping the end user happy is the most important one, but that task can be made much easier by keeping the IT department on site. After all if you keep IT happy they will be more helpful, both during and after the installation. With that in mind I thought I’d cover some of the things I have found useful when dealing with IT

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I’ve already mentioned one aspect of my job when I talked about being a Good IT Trainer. But training users in how to operate the software isn’t the only aspect of my job. Another part of my work is the installation of the software, hardware and setting the software up to client specifications. The setup and installation of a software can be more trouble some than training people it’s use (although that of course depends on the caliber of the user you are training).

I’ve gained a fair bit of experience in this field over the past few years, some of it good and some of it bad (sometimes the bad stuff has been really helpful to learn from), so in a similar vein to my IT Trainer post here is some of my tips for making a good installer. Continue reading »

One of the main aspects of my job is training clients in the use of one of our software packages. Training a person or a group of people on a piece of software can be one of the easiest things in the world or one of the hardest. It all depends on the people you are training and your own confidence in your knowledge of the software. I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last 3 and a half years training people on various software packages, working with anything from 1 person to groups of 10-12 individuals. There are a few things I have picked up over this time that I’ve found useful, stuff I though might be helpful to other people taking on a similar role Continue reading »

In the fast paced and ever changing world of IT one thing is surer than anything else. Staff turn over is damn high. This is one thing i can testify to from exprerience, with all the oppertunities out there for people wanting to work in IT (a list thats always growing) its very easy for some one to jump ship.

This can be annoying for two reasons; One side is that recruiting new staff is costly, it costs to advertise, it costs to use a recruitment agency (and boy does that cost!)

The other side is that every company has its own setup, its own way of working. Staff you already employee already have this knowledge, they know how you work, they know the procedures, they know how your IT infrastructure fits together. This knowledge (sometimes called Domian Knowledge) can take a lot of time and training to aquire, its not something you want to have to teach to a new person every 12-18 months. Having to do so is inefficient. Continue reading »

At the moment there isn’t a lot on the site. I’m one of those people who seems to work on about three or four things at once. At the moment I’ve started to thing about what I am going to put on here, I’m partly learning how to operate the new iMac I’ve bought myself and to add to my troubles it looks like I am going to be learning a new computer programming language either delphi or C# depending on various influences at work.

Along with working on content for this site I’m also probably going to use it as a practicing ground while I learn more about CSS as I’m considering improving my web skills some what. Keeping myself way to busy really.

The choice as to whether or not we use C# or Delphi is really governed by which of the two we can use to integrate a MS SQL database into our new software product. I’ve always been drawn more towards to development work and now work are wanting to draw me more in to that side of the business I am feeling slightly happier about the place in general. Still have my doubts about whether its the right place for me though.