Today is a day like any other. A Tuesday in August. Which means for me that my allergies are in full swing. [I'd like to shake the hand of whoever invented Claritin.] Blurry eyes, sneezing and all! And typically off to a late start in the morning. So I thought I'd chronicle my day for the Blog... not a special day, but just another day.
8:25 am - arrive at work, fire up the laptop and get to a cup of coffee quick
8:35 am - got my coffee in hand... boy this a good cup... reading my email from last night
8:45 am - need to pack up my cell phone that died and was replaced by Verizon last week, tape it up and call Fed Ex
9:00 am - So what do I tackle first today - let's look at the Dovetail newsletter I'm working on getting out and pick some topics
9:15 am - got my topics and start generating requests for help by posting it to our internal Dovetail Blog
9:16 am - Ben's already replying to the Blog post with ideas and content, discuss and pull some more together
9:45 am - Time for another cup of coffee so I can fuel some meeting prep work I need to start
9:50 am - Working on finalizing new Dovetail Service Ticket System
9:54 am - Mark chimes in on the newsletter content and will get me some photos we can use for one piece.
9:56 am - Back to my prep
10:09 am - Mark stops by to bounce some compilation issues he's dealing with off of me... unfortunately I'm not much help
10:15 am - Back to my prep
10:40 am - Ben stops by to tell me about how one of our APC UPS services may cause some problems but that the developer is sending a hot-fix over now
10:49 am - The fax rings, go check it out, I'm expecting a fax from a new customer... WOW! That's great I can get a low low mortgage rate if I just respond to this junk fax... crumple, crumple, toss...
10:50 am - I ask Ben on some thoughts about the service ticket emails ... back to prep
11:24 am - Ben stops by needing to do some brainteasing... But I have to make him wait...
11:26 am - Just finished the service flowing...
11:27 am - "OK, what's up, Ben?"
11:30 am - Seems like we got a call from a customer dealing with an interesting network question wanting to separate their LAN traffic to two separate ISP connections.... Ben and I spend a bit of time white boarding the options, confirming theory and best practices.
11:53 am - Ben goes back to his desk to think through the detailed response and touch base with the customer
11:58 am - time to get some lunch...
12:34 pm - Mmmmm. Good lunch! I'm on a low fat / low cholesterol diet so I've become an expert at ordering healthy from anywhere. Today's stop... McDonald's - Yes you can eat healthy from there - a side salad with lo cal dressing and a grilled chicken sandwich, naked... tasty and only about 10 grams of fat... well back to the grind... still have more flow prep to do for service.
2:05 pm - Finished service tickets... just in the nick of time too. I'm about to go into a project planning conference call to discuss a number of development tasks and my service training is right after that... So stay tuned and I'll give you some exclusive behind the scenes on what we'll be rolling out to help track and monitor incoming support.
3:05 pm - Had a great project planning conference call. Looked at some feature requests and agreed on an approach that works for everyone. This is what it's all about - coordinating with the development and planning expertise Mark brings to the table, getting the attention of the sponsors and project managers and agreeing on a course of action. Now it's time to setup the projector for the Team and I'll be training on the new service ticket system which will be launched shortly thereafter...
5:02 pm - Wow, what an afternoon. A good meeting with the team on service and support tickets. We are going to launch our new system with customers tomorrow which entail the launch of our internal help desk solution. We will be able to quickly capture incoming support incidents, assign them unique tracking numbers, automatically email customers with information, track the activities associated with them and improve the overall flow of support for Dovetail.
5:34 pm - End of the day. Need to complete a few clean up items for the day and then I'm heading out. Gotta run to a volleyball game - my wife and I coach the teen league team for our church - a lot of fun. Wish us luck!