Two Weeks Into My Secondment

Discussion in 'Employment & Jobs' started by craigie, Sep 5, 2008.

  1. craigie

    craigie Terabyte Poster

    3,020
    174
    155
    For any of you who have been reading my job updates, I have now been with my employer for a total of three months and have just completed two weeks into my 2nd Line Secondment.

    Week 1

    The department I'm in now has Customer Care (8 people) , Service Delivery Managers (4 people) of different contracts and Managed Services (my department, 12 people).

    My first day in the new department got off to a really bad start, as I was virtually ignored for the first two hours. The bit that really annoyed the hell out of me, was the fact I was introduced to my trainer by my new Team Leader (who then left for a meeting). I repeatedly asked this person when the training would start every 15 - 20 mins, or if I could help out. Who said she was to busy!

    So I went and introduced myself to everyone in the room. Chatted with the Unix chaps (they are a different breed), all the SDM's and Customer Care.

    So my training started and pretty much, I was given lots of calls to err call back and state your call is closed (if I could get hold of the customer).

    I figured fair enough, they are busy, I can do this and show willing to help out.

    By the end of the day, I felt like a Customer Care person, but always looking on the bright side, things can only get better.

    Day number two, again tons more phone calls to people to state the call is closed or just to get basic information that people had not gotten originally e.g. MAC addresses, 2nd contacts, etc. In the afternoon, I did recieve some training on our Cisco contracts.

    Excellent, I thought, and was welcomed to the world of Cisco Call Manager v3x and v4x pretty OK to understand and worked away resetting VM Pin's configuring Profiles, VM accounts etc.

    Day number three came again and guess what more call backs. By this time, I had not dealt with any IT issues, not even a AD Password Reset or Account Unlock.

    By the end of the week I had spent 95% of my time doing call backs. I was seriously demotivated as I had been 'sold' on the premise that I would be doing 2nd Line work and it felt like a demotion.

    I asked for a meeting with the Service Delivery Manager of my seconded department and felt it was necessary for me to give feedback on how his department operated. We chatted and I explained that if I was a new starter and was ignored for 2 hours, I would have most likely walked out of his department and not come back again. I also stated that the work I was doing felt like a complete demotion and what could we do together to improve things.

    Week 2

    The clouds are lifting and I start to get involved with some contracts (we have 21 in total). Five with complete 3rd Line Support and all the rest with different levels.

    I learnt two contracts a day from Monday to Wednesday and picked some work for the Service Delivery Manager, with a contract that has not been going well (they pay us in excess of £500,000 per annum).

    On the Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent some major time on the contract that was going badly and shifted threw all the crap calls which had been logged with missing information via email or over the phone and put in place a fix for most of these. The calls where just basic things like printer queues needing configuring, but no IP addresses available, printer needs vetting to see if an engineer should go on site etc. I then arranged for the SDM, an Engineer and the (Client) Operations Manager to meet on Thursday on site to resolve any issues which could not be fixed remotely.

    The good news is the client (Operations Manager) is now alot happier as a clear line of communication was put in place with people who where responsible and all of the calls have now been resolved or nearing finalisation. I even got a thankyou from the SDM and Operations Manager!

    Thursday, I was trained on one of the 3rd Line Support contracts, these are enquiries that come across to us after 1st Line vetting and we HAVE to fix them.

    Thursday and Friday have been a huge learning curve IT wise (the rest of the time it was more Customer Care/Service skills which I have over 15 years experience in).

    I have had chance to play with Citrix Presentation Server and do some work with Thin Clients and actually resolve a few 3rd Line issues (thank you to the MS 70-290 book and google!) and example of this was

    A HP printer needed a Print Pool adding and configuring. An onsite engineer had plugged the Jet Direct Card in and given me an IP address. I went to the IP address in IE to confirm that the printer was up and running (no users to speak to) and view the Printer Config page. The Config page was stating that there was a duplicate IP address even though this was assigned by DHCP which a MAC address from something else.

    So I pinged the IP address which responded and also the Name and both replied. However, I could not tell from the IP address what was replying. This contract only has Thin Client and Printers, so I checked the MAC address of the Thin Clients database and bam, the IP address was being used by a Thin Client (no idea how this happened as I'm yet to read the MS 70-291 book).

    I reset the Thin Client and this obtained a new IP address from DHCP and configred the Print Pool for the HP printer. Job done! (well it took me about two hours in total :oops: )

    But from this one exercise, I learnt ALOT, and I think I know what I'm going to do after my MSCA: Messaging, its going to be a Citrix CCA.

    Anyway, thanks for reading, I think the outcome of this really should be:

    1. If you have an issue, talk to your Manager and explain the situation in a constructive way and always ask what we can do together to resolve this.

    2. When you are feeling demotiavted and despondant, things can turn out for the better!
     
    Certifications: CCA | CCENT | CCNA | CCNA:S | HP APC | HP ASE | ITILv3 | MCP | MCDST | MCITP: EA | MCTS:Vista | MCTS:Exch '07 | MCSA 2003 | MCSA:M 2003 | MCSA 2008 | MCSE | VCP5-DT | VCP4-DCV | VCP5-DCV | VCAP5-DCA | VCAP5-DCD | VMTSP | VTSP 4 | VTSP 5
  2. wizard

    wizard Petabyte Poster

    5,767
    42
    174
    Nice one :D

    Very rude of the trainer to ignore you like that though and it seems you had a very frosty reception in there, I just wonder if they did that to every "new" person that stepped through the door?
     
    Certifications: SIA DS Licence
    WIP: A+ 2009
  3. craigie

    craigie Terabyte Poster

    3,020
    174
    155
    After speaking to the SDM, apparently, the previous employee in there had caused a few issues amongst the staff. However, my response was, I understand that, however, people can still be polite!
     
    Certifications: CCA | CCENT | CCNA | CCNA:S | HP APC | HP ASE | ITILv3 | MCP | MCDST | MCITP: EA | MCTS:Vista | MCTS:Exch '07 | MCSA 2003 | MCSA:M 2003 | MCSA 2008 | MCSE | VCP5-DT | VCP4-DCV | VCP5-DCV | VCAP5-DCA | VCAP5-DCD | VMTSP | VTSP 4 | VTSP 5
  4. derkit

    derkit Gigabyte Poster

    1,480
    58
    112
    Nice update Craigie - glad to see things moving in the right direction.
     
    Certifications: MBCS, BSc(Hons), Cert(Maths), A+, Net+, MCDST, ITIL-F v3, MCSA
    WIP: 70-293
  5. Naive

    Naive Byte Poster

    176
    6
    39
    Great read, thanks for that Craigie!

    Good luck in your 2nd line role and keep us updated :thumbleft
     
    WIP: MCDST
  6. Qs

    Qs Semi-Honorary Member Gold Member

    3,081
    70
    171
    Yeah... interesting read :)

    Glad you're enjoying it.
     
    Certifications: MCT, MCSE: Private Cloud, MCSA (2008), MCITP: EA, MCITP: SA, MCSE: 2003, MCSA: 2003, MCITP: EDA7, MCITP: EDST7, MCITP: EST Vista, MCTS: Exh 2010, MCTS:ServerVirt, MCTS: SCCM07 & SCCM2012, MCTS: SCOM07, MCTS: Win7Conf, MCTS: VistaConf, MCDST, MCP, MBCS, HND: Applied IT, ITIL v3: Foundation, CCA

Share This Page

Loading...
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.