Helpdesk is as much use as a choccy fireguard.

Can someone please tell me how to open a ticket ?
Cos when I go to 'Helpdesk', I get a stupid box telling me to enter my question, it doesn't matter
whether I ask it my name, or how to cook a bloody curry, all it does is give me some stupid pre-defined bloody answer that bears
no relation to any question I want to ask.

YES, I'm mad & frustrated, I have payware from Sim Central that does not work & my only contact is a bloody mindless web page. :n:

It's not actually a chocolate fireguard, however it's not clear how to use it.

If it's Simulator Central related, use the Support Link on that site.

Shane

If they don't let you ask the question you want to ask, then give you an answer, then it's bloody useless Shane, there's no point having it if it just sits there & behaves like a Wiki page.

Done as you said, to actually get to the same useless bloody "Type your question here" (and get the same useless generic answers), I had to log in another 3 times, including logging into a page I had just logged into. :n:

Interestingly, I've been involved in making sure their Helpdesk system works. On this site, it's under General > My issue is not listed. On Simulator Central, it's the Customer Support link, then login accordingly.

Shane

Managed to get to where I could actually submit a ticket, but ...............

On Simulator Central, it's the Customer Support link, then login accordingly.

Click to expand...

Why did I need to "Log-in" again in "Customer Support", when I'd already had to "Log-in" to Sim Central to start with ?

It's like having fire doors on your firewall to get to the fire extinguisher, bloody pointless, frustrating & not helpful to
someone who is already disgruntled by the palaver of actually getting to that stage in the first place.

I've noticed that, and will ask N3V why that's the case. In the meantime, logging in will allow you to submit a ticket.

Shane

Maybe it is just me but the process seems obvious enough and I just tried it for the very first time. The box where you have been typing your question is to search the knowledge-base, not to post a ticket.

The first step is to log in with your DLS name and password, then click the troubleshooter link, select the category of your problem. etc. Like I said it worked first time for me and I have never used it before.

By the way, what is a "choccy fireguard"?

pware said:

By the way, what is a "choccy fireguard"?

Click to expand...

Choccy is short for chocolate. A fireguard (fireman) made out of chocolate would be pretty useless. :hehe:

Kieran.

captainkman said:

Choccy is short for chocolate. A fireguard (fireman) made out of chocolate would be pretty useless. :hehe:

Click to expand...

But very delicious and more appealing to me than those revealing firemen calendars that proliferate at this time of the year

This looks useful but I agree with the OP the layout could have been allot better, it is too mixed up.

chocolate fireguard : Fireguards were made out of wire mesh and would stop the lumps of wet coal from spitting out of the fire and setting alight to the carpet. One made out of chocolate would melt of course, hence the fraise "as useless as a chocolate fireguard"

BLACKWATCH said:

Can someone please tell me how to open a ticket ?
Cos when I go to 'Helpdesk', I get a stupid box telling me to enter my question, it doesn't matter
whether I ask it my name, or how to cook a bloody curry, all it does is give me some stupid pre-defined bloody answer that bears
no relation to any question I want to ask.

YES, I'm mad & frustrated, I have payware from Sim Central that does not work & my only contact is a bloody mindless web page. :n:

Click to expand...

These designs are to cut down the number of messages that helpdesk have to reply to. On the one hand they can sometimes get you to the answer without any helpdesk impact from a very cynical point of view the civil service sometimes used similar techniques to reduce demand for services, if you can't find the correct form sorry we can't process your application. On the other hand they can be very frustrating to find your way through.

It's all balancing cost against customer service is helpdesk simply another cost or a way to keep in touch with your customer base? and sometimes some companies put profit first.

Cheerio John

I used to administer tickets while I was at Oracle. They had their own customized version of their CRM On Demand system which we used internally. The problem with helpdesk software is no matter how much a developer tries to cover all the problem solutions and bases, there are many, many more that aren't covered and get caught in the unknown category.

Part of my job was to take the incoming tickets into my group and sort them so we could handle the problems as quickly as possible. This was far from as easy as you'd think. There were many cases were the information was miscategorized. This wasn't always the user's fault either. The software had categories for things that were so deep in the tree that they'd get lost looking for them. To ensure their tickets were handled properly, I'd have the users in my org group email me their ticket numbers so I could track them and assign them. I'd then have to call the user to verify what the problem was so it could be solved by one of the techs. To make matters worse, once we were assigned a ticket and took ownership of it, we then had one business day to close it. If the problem couldn't be resolved immediately, we had to note this in the ticket and keep adding information tags so the powers above wouldn't think we were slacking off. The other thing too is once a ticket was taken, the problem had to be seen all the way through. You were responsible for resolving the problem to the end, whether the problem was escalated up the chain, or not. You owned it, you fix it was the motto. During my last year there, I handled over 320 tickets a month myself. My boss didn't care that I had closed over 320 tickets that month because there were 50 more that were still sitting in the queue that I didn't close.

This ticket admin process was only a small part of the many tasks I did as I worked with close to 700 users at the Burlington location.

The fun times of helpdesks and crappy software.

John

JCitron said:

The fun times of helpdesks and crappy software.

Click to expand...

I note that N3V have been advertising for a new helpdesk person but it is not a job I would ever consider despite working more than 30 years dealing with computer "illiterate" workers in my workplace. Just look at some of the angry "Trainz is cr@p" posts that appear in these forums where, after a few suggestions from the cooler heads amongst the forum members, the problems turn out to be the fault of the users or their computers (yes, I know, some genuine problems are Trainz related).

A big part of the problem is that angry, frustrated users will post before thinking or trying to "work the problem" themselves - something that I have been guilty of myself.

Peter Ware
2.5 cents worth (adjusted for inflation)

JCitron said:

...I used to administer tickets while I was at Oracle....

Click to expand...

Ahhh, ticket number 13.472.5.78.3.45.9.1.0.34....

itareus said:

Ahhh, ticket number 13.472.5.78.3.45.9.1.0.34....

Click to expand...

Hmm, shouldn't that be Roman numerals as answer from an Oracle? :hehe:

Greetings from cloudy Amsterdam,

Jan

pware said:

I note that N3V have been advertising for a new helpdesk person but it is not a job I would ever consider despite working more than 30 years dealing with computer "illiterate" workers in my workplace. Just look at some of the angry "Trainz is cr@p" posts that appear in these forums where, after a few suggestions from the cooler heads amongst the forum members, the problems turn out to be the fault of the users or their computers (yes, I know, some genuine problems are Trainz related).

A big part of the problem is that angry, frustrated users will post before thinking or trying to "work the problem" themselves - something that I have been guilty of myself.

Peter Ware
2.5 cents worth (adjusted for inflation)

Click to expand...

I don't miss those days at all myself and for the very same reason. The forums here can be frustrating too, but I found as usual if you read between the lines and keep cool, the user's problems seem to go away most of the time. I was in the industry for about 30 years myself with the last 15 in the IT end of things and the remainder dealing with mainframes and hardware. Hardware was the best because it didn't complain! So no, I'm definitely not interested in applying for the job with N3V. Yuck!

itareus said:

Ahhh, ticket number 13.472.5.78.3.45.9.1.0.34....

Click to expand...

Oh, yes... On the Own-IT system, these huge ticket numbers were awful to search. The other thing too is the system would display different data based on the filter even though the same parameters were plugged in. Scary! I wondered always how much was missing. The other thing which I forgot to mention, is we had to monitor our own queues. Their old system would notify us if someone assigned a ticket to us, but their new one did not. We'd be busy running around all day and not have time to look at the queue only to find the users had sent us 15 or 20 tickets in the day. I'd then get a call from the manager about missing tickets and a reminder to close them out as though I didn't know that already. We brought that up in our weekly meeting team, which I established as one of my org contributions. Like the forums here once something is brought up that irks the community all hell broke loose. The manager conceded that it wasn't working the way it was intended so he delegated one of us to watch the queues but it still wasn't enough. I still couldn't move fast enough because of the shear number of people at my location. I was handling the largest hub in the sales division. This system as far as I'm concerned was a system setup to fail. It was poorly implemented, and poorly designed. There was no feedback from the community, I mean system application admins, and was designed by corporate IT for their needs. We were forced to bend our needs to fit their software rather than let us use our own thing which we had before. In the end when I was threatened with dismissal over the 50 tickets, I was on my way out anyway and left due to medical reasons.

Jananton said:

Hmm, shouldn't that be Roman numerals as answer from an Oracle? :hehe:

Greetings from cloudy Amsterdam,

Jan

Click to expand...

Good one, Jan. I once kidded someone about that. We had a failed system and I took the power supply and threw it on the floor so the wires were spread out. My buddy looked at my puzzled as I told him I was consulting the computer gods at Oracle.

John

OK, I've read all the answers & opinions on this thread & being the opening poster, I now feel I should give a response.

Firstly, when I posted this thread, I had had a day of nothing but aggravation, I have a new
OP system (current system Win.XP, new system Win.7). Because of programs I use, I am having to use dual boot &
run 2 OP systems on the same machine (never done it before) & swap between systems to do what I normally do while trying
to move stuff across & understand how it functions under the new regime.

I didn't get into computing until I was in my late 30's, until then, I was a 'paper based' creature, so with the above
stated situation, plus upgrading to TS12 on Win7, while still getting to grips with TS2010 on Win. XP, while not wanting
to let go of the the "old one" until I knew the "new one" was stable .....................

............... it's kind of "doing my head in", I'm 60 years old & feeling it, not as bright as some, but feel I should be able
to handle this stuff, but to quote a phrase used by Noel Gallagher of Oasis ..........................

.. sometimes I feel "Like a man with a fork, in a world of soup"

I'm sorry about my attitude, but sometimes I just type what I feel.