So said a very experienced helpdesk leader I worked with.

It lets the annoyed customer to get all their annoyances out, and they calm down.  Of course, swearing at a helpdesk person is not permitted.

To get the helpdesk staff to remember "Acknowledge the user, to avoid the flack", he purchased some AFLAC ducks.

What’s an AFLAC duck?  Well have a look here:

If you are invited to a meeting by me:

TO vs. CC vs. BCC

• TO indicates you are REQUIRED.
• CC indicates that are invited, but not required.
• BCC means I’m telling you about the invite for your information.

Acceptance

• it means I’ve checked your calendar, and you are listed as free.
  If you are not free, I would have called before scheduling.
  Or left a reason why, in the invite notice.
• Do not use “Tentative accept” without telling me why you might not make it.
• A “Decline” is rude.  Either propose a reschedule or call me to discuss.

Conducting meetings

• Lateness to anything shows disrespect, so don’t be late.
• Meetings will have a purpose, some may be informational, and some will require actions to be taken.
• At the end of the meeting, sum up what was learnt, and any actions required.

Some points on work email etiquette which I “borrowed” from someone else.

~~~

As your team lead, you can expect:

• I will “see” your email within 12 hours.
  If what you want to know is urgent, pick the phone up.  You have been issued a cell/mobile phone, start using it.
• I generally will not send responses like: Sure, righto, can do, no problems etc.
• As your manager I expect that you will view your emails as soon as practical, but remember you have a cell phone, so start using it for “action this day” items.
• Do not cc: me in on emails for no good reason.
• Mail cc’d to me lands into a separate mail folder.  It’s checked less often than mail sent TO me.
• I use Return Receipt with those class of people I need to know they have seen the email.
  This is generally “Project Managers” & “Customer Relationship Managers”.

I expect that when you write emails:

• you will use Punctuation/Capitalisation.
• will not use use SMS slang/abbreviations or “l33t” speak.
• you will make a meaningful subject line.
• People who are in the TO: field, are expected to action the email
• People who are in the CC: field, are being informed only, and no action should be required.
• The goal is for all of us
  -  to Manage By Exception (no news is good news)
  - spend less time answering emails, and more time, doing other productive stuff.

It’s a big THING I’m told by people who know, that the Bronco’s Men’s Basketball team has made it into the Elite Eight.

From what I gather, it’s been running 52 years, so you know it’s got to be big.

Anyhow, my thoughts will be with you guys (Mark, Erika, Nate) 3am Thursday Melbourne time.
(and if I’m real keen, I’ll listen to the game here ).

 EDIT: It was a darn close game, but UCO Bronchos narrowly lost in Overtime.  Further details here.

Know your audience, and speak to them in their language.

If you believe MessageLabs, 73% of the 0 billion messages it scanned, in February, were unsolicited bulk emails.  SPAM in other words!

In Australia:

Under the Spam Act 2003 it is illegal to send, or cause to be sent, unsolicited commercial electronic messages. The Act covers email, instant messaging, SMS and MMS (text and image-based mobile phone messaging) of a commercial nature. It does not cover faxes, internet pop-ups or voice telemarketing.

Never fear, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to the rescue with SpamMATTERS

The SpamMATTERS software:

• is free for internet users to download and install into the Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email programs. Once installed, you can delete spam and report it to ACMA at the same time – with just one click of the mouse
• captures spam emails that may have bypassed spam filters and anti-spam programs, including messages that are often the most problematic, such as phishing spam
• enables ACMA to identify and gather the forensic information it needs to identify spammers and take action against them.  

Download it here

This post brought you to the letters S M E E.

It’s been my experience in IT, that good first impressions count, and often those first impressions are formed by your reception staff.  If your reception staff seem to directly descended from the SS-Helferin guards from Ravensbrück, then you have problems.

Your reception staff should be:

• neatly attired
• well spoken
• helpful
• smiling, and optionally:
  attractive.*

I can think of only three receptionists in 20 years who meet these criteria.  All the rest, you’re not memorable, that’s for sure.

* Why optionally you ask?  Well in some countries, attractiveness is a form of discrimination.

*ring* *ring* goes the phone.

“What do you know about the ‘letsrebootthepcandreallyannoythecustomer.exe utility?”

First written in 2005, by Mahatma Coat.  We tried getting some modifications to it.  We were partly successful.

“Who looks after it?”

Try Mahatma, his boss and the generic “Desktop Engineering Team” mail box.  You might have some luck with those.

Letsrebootthepcandreallyannoythecustomer.exe was created to manage the “can we reboot your PC Mr. Customer?” issue we were having.  Our customers wanted to see:

• our company logo on the prompt
• the option to delay the reboot
• the option to not even install the update.

So one of our programming remote desktop engineering folks created it.  It suffers from a couple of issues IMHO, and they are:

1. developed by a novice desktop engineer, which brings in all the mistakes novices make in programming code.
2. Used Visual Basic 6, a product long out of support, and which no other desktop engineer uses on a regular basis SO we can’t easily modify it.
3. If we have the source code.  We don’t.  The Remote Desktop Engineering Team keep their source code to themselves.

If I ruled the world, I would either a) buy a Commercial Off The Shelf product and ask the vendor to customise for our requirements, OR b) re-write it in something “better” than Visual Basic 6.

Knowledge transfer, or getting to the point of this post.

Back when I was a spotty computer operator, working shift work, the importance of “shift handovers” was drilled into me.  “Shift handovers” was a semi-formal process where we told the next shift team and the issues we had on shift, and the ones they needed to manage on their shift.  Other professions do it.  Nurses for example.

On a grander scale, what is your organisation doing to manage the loss of knowledge which occurs when one of your employees leaves the company?

There are three things which will get you into trouble in life, thus explains why I returned a USB memory stick to my employer.

It was a surprise to the colleague I gave it to.

“Why not keep it?”

It’s not mine, that’s why.

“Not that they’re going to miss it”

No, but the principle is important.  I’m going to walk out this door with what’s mine, and leave what’s theirs.  And that’s just the way it is.

Sometimes in life you need to light the way for others.

It was a sweet product though.

Previous post -> Some shared IT items

Today’s Front (Newspaper) Pages – 609 front pages from 58 countries (and growing)
Every morning, more than 500 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet to be part of Today’s Front Pages.

WorldTimeZone.Com – Australian timezones

Weimaraner Club Of Victoria

VOPT Hard Disk Defragger
This is the other disk defragging tool I plan to evaluate.  You might remember my PerfectDisk evaluation.  This’ll be similar.

 TrueCrypt – Free open-source disk encryption software
I use this, not because I’m paranoid, but because my employer blocks the use of EFS and I can’t use Bitlocker.
I used to use PGPdisk, which was equally as good, but not free.  TrueCrypt is free.

Password Manager XP
The commercial version is being evaluated by a work colleague of mine.  He’s impressed.  Password Manager is a password storage system.

Learn Chinese – Learn to Speak the Mandarin Chinese Language Online Free