IT Employment
Hi
I would like to understand from the various IT professionals out there what are the problems faced when it comes to troublehooting problems related to slow response time when the end users complain????
- headache-
by oldefar
The biggest issue with slow response is the lack of a baseline for performance. This places the problem in the realm of perception versus science and makes problem identification a real headache.
The biggest issues with perception occur when the user has been trained in a LAN environment and moves to a WAN environment - user has unrealistic expectations; and when the user has improved his skills to where he is now waiting on the system rather than the system waiting on him.
When properly baselined prior to roll out, it is fairly easy to identify changes in network (path specific congestion, route changes due to circuit outages, or router congestion due to added unrelated functions), application (CPU or memory bound), or database (data corruption, table changes). Most problems relate to workstations that have not been regularly defragged, that have memory leaks, or have had new applications that hog resources.
by hal 9000
Home or Business or both users here?
Col
hi
I mean Business Users
Cheers
by tek2com
My personal opinion, users have one track minds. But again, that is a personal opion. : ) Professionally, my advise is to provide them a brief and an even vague explanation. Quite often, all they (users) need is for someone to respond, acknowledge and provide some logic to what they (users) feel is the end of the world. There is alway a technical answer to why slow response time is an issue. Potentials issues could vary. It could possibly be due to peak hours. If you are authorized to provide such information, advise the user the best time to be online. They may be on a dial up connections. A definite technology limitation. It's time to upgrade. I could go on forever and provide possible points of problem to the users issue. Do not let the user take control of you. Remember, you are the key master. Take control of the user and understand what it takes to make them feel at ease. I would say, start by giving them an answer that a none IT individual would understand. Provide an honest realistic explanation. Remember, it's just a job. Just know when to flip your internal switch. Switch on the positive side you when the user is hostile and switch off when life is simply grand. Most of all, if you can, just simply say yes sir or yes ma'am. Anyhow, I hope this helps.
@%^D
Good Luck.
by hal 9000
Any down time no matter how short is considered as "Too Long" by the user particarly if it involved e-mail. Anything short of an instant correction of the problem is considered by the user as too long. They seem to think they can ring you up with a problem and you will have an instant answer no matter what is involved.
I can remember a recent case where a company that I consult for installed an updated version of MYOB only to trash the system. Seems that they followed the Help Desk Advice at MYOB and installed the program on every computer that had access to the program instead of installing it on the server and then creating new shortcuts to the program. The end result was that the person entering all the expences was saving that data to their HDD and the person who was entering the wages and so forth was saving that data to their HDD and nothing was ending up on the server so there was no updated data being accessable.
What was the best thing however was that they where adiment that it was my fault that this had happened and negelceted to mention that they had upgraded the program. It took 20 minutes to mess things up and 3 hours to fix them all up but it wouldn't have taken anywhere as long if they had of told me exactly what they had done in the first place. It does make it hard when you are working in the dark in these things and even worse when the manfacture of a program gives the wrong installation procedures.
Col
by mmbarreca
Users have a bad habit of not telling you what they have done because they don't want to look stupid. Even if you ask them if there have been any changes to the system lately, a lot of times, you will get "nothing has changed!", only to find out later that they installed a new program or something similar.
I've found it helpful when troubleshooting to reiterate some common points such as :
- has anything changed?
- is this affecting every log on, even the admin?
- when did this start happening and did anything coincide with it?
I've had manufacturers of ECG products tell our clients that the product they bought won't work with ours and that we have to remedy it. That company continued to blame our software. Upon closer inspection (and luckily in front of the owner), I showed how it wasn't our software but how their software was designed. After I fixed how their software installs, I was able to get it to work when the other company could not.
You won't always be that lucky but be sure to document everything that you do in the troubleshooting process so that if you're asked "what's taking so long?", you can list out all of your steps.
by hal 9000
On Friday morning I got a call from a company who I keep their network that stoped them getting any internet connections. Not bad considering I had not been there for a few months.
So I headed off over there and when I got there ai found their ISP people there mucking about and the very first question I was asked when I walked in the door is "What have you touched that caused this?"
I just replied that I had just arrived and had no idea of what was going on so I went to the router and hub as it is only a small installation of 5 computers and started to pul the plug on the hub at which point I was stopped by thehead of their ISP company who insisted th=at the hubs where very reliable and never caused any problems. Naturally there was no networkrunning and no internet. I just suggested that with the storm last night and the power outages the hub may have not reinitilised properly when the power was restored. Anyway instead of listening to me he pulled the plug on the modem and then set about connecting a LT to the now reconnected modem which brought up a connection straight away but when he connected to the hub nothing.
After 3 hours of mucking around I just pulled the plug on the hub left it out for 3 minutes and reconnected it and everything worked. Hey I'm only the guy who's susposed to keep their network running but I'm not considered to know more than the ISP people who only supply an internet connection.
Then to add insult to injury they sent the ISP people on their way and asked me just why one of the computers which is on a different modem sent up to 50 e-mails of the same thing when it attempted to send an e-mail to a different part of the office. The one shown actually sent 31 e-mails to a different computer and I suggested that they should have their ISP people answer this question as they had setup the computer/net connection whatever bt on closer inspection I found 31 attachments to the e-mail and when it had completed sending the thing through it compiled them all down to one and dumped the rest in the deleted items bin without any attachments. Seems that each attachment was being sent by itself and then being recompiled when it was completely recieved. That was definatly something that I had done as that ADSL connection wasn't even there last time I was there so I just suggested that they have a nice long talk to their ISP people as they obviously knew far more than me.
But what the hell I got paid for the time I wasted over there even though I had far more work than I could poke a stick at and then to add insult to injury I got a phone call at 4.45 pm telling me that their AV program was preventing MYOB from installing its link to its templates as MYOB had told them so. I just jumped on a computer here and over the phone solved the problem as the MS Office Security was set to its default setting which prevented any Macros being installed. Where they happy hell no.
Instead of just dropping in the install CD and rerunning the install program after altering Word's settings I now have to go back over there Monday morning and run the setup procedure just so nothing goes wrong. While it is the perfect setup for the IT pro it is hardly a real job either as it was only an upgrade to the existing program but i suspose it will save me hours of frustration if I do it myself even though it is a major inconvenience particuarly sincve I asked where there any other computer problems when I was there and when I took the job I specifically stated I was happy to do any work except Accounting Packages as I didn't ever want it thought that I may have given their competition some information that I came across when I was trooling through their accounting program. So I'm constantly being asked over there to show them how to set the bloody thing up. it already bad enough that I have to go back there Monday but last Friday there was a complaint that the Super was not possible to setup for a new staff member and whenI did have a look see they didn't have an account number to pay the money to and naturally MYOB would not accept this so I had to explain just what was required and why Super payments couldn't be paid weekly.
Mind you this is my favourite mightmare as the very first time I went there I was told I was only required to fit a DVD drive and instead of spending a few minutes there I ended up spending 4.5 weeks setting everything up correctly and installing all the network points which where then just wires hanging out of the walls and the person responsible had left one day and said he would be back but that was by then already 10 weeks previously.
But what was even funnier was once I had finished the whole thing off the person who was susposed to wire the place walked back in expecting to pickup where he had left off 14.5 weeks previously. I rearlly do not know just how some companies stay in business.
Col
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