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So this past weekend, The Client rolled out a major upgrade to Trouble Ticket System. The upgrade (which we'll call v2) was significant enough that we had to have training for how to use it, since some of the usual features had been moved to different places, or worked slightly different, etc.
To their credit, they rolled it out after business hours on Friday, when there would be very little traffic on the network to affect it. However, there were a number of issues that very quickly arose when the upgrade was pushed out.
For starters, it started sending out automated emails about closed tickets. As in tickets that had been closed for over a year. They found the cause of the issue and fixed it in as little as an hour, but that still hit everyone with a few dozen emails in their inbox.
Also, many users of TTSv2 found themselves unable to assign tickets to themselves. Something with their permissions got borked with the upgrade.
Several other changes were problematic enough that on Saturday evening, ITSD Manager L called everyone around 11pm, asking them to come in at 8am the following morning so we could play around with TTSv2 and figure out what we had issues with, so we could give that information directly to a TTS Team guy who would be there.
So my Sunday started much earlier than usual, and with very little sleep (not for lack of trying), as I went in at 8am to blearily poke around at TTSv2, then sit in on a training session as TTS Team Guy gave us a refresher on how to use TTSv2, and took notes on some of the issues.
Issues like the fact that TTSv2 doesn't have a field for the user ID anymore. In the previous version, tickets for a user could be found by using the user ID, although the 'advanced' search options allowed for other ways to search as well. This change is problematic for ITSD, since we need the user ID to look up things like their account profile location, what their workstation ID is, and so on. When he was told about this, TTS Team Guy looked surprised. Apparently, they'd been getting feedback from people saying they wanted the user ID field removed. ITSD very quickly told him that we never said that.
Another change is the location field. They made a change to how to input locations in TTSv2, but it's currently broken and doesn't work all that well, and makes it all but impossible to input the location.
Various other changes increase the number of clicks we have to make as well, which slows things down.
On Sunday, as well, it was running very slowly, to the point where it could take up to 2 minutes or more just to assign the ticket to ourselves to resolve it. Given that we're given 2 minutes of "wrap time" after concluding a call, this meant we had little chance to catch our breath in between the calls we were getting.
Now, there is one thing that TTSv2 has that I'm grateful for. We have the ability to send communications (emails, basically) from within TTSv2. So if we want to send an email to the affected user, requesting information from them or a status update, we can use a template email (or craft one ourselves) directly in the system. We can also send an email to the tech or the group assigned to the ticket, requesting a status update from them. No more trawling through the address book trying to find the right email address to send to.
Still, growing pains are going on, though I seem to be one of the few people at the ITSD who isn't kvetching like crazy about TTSv2. I had this conversation with my CW "Jefe" today.
Jefe: "I haven't heard you complaining. I was like 'Jay must like TTS 2.'"
J2K: "I don't hate it. But I don't exactly like it either."
Jefe: "Heh."
J2K: "See, I'm a practical person. I know that my opinion means absolutely nothing to the people who made this. Most of the bad things were already complained about, so there's no point in saying anything else. I figure, I'm gonna have to live with it anyway, so get used to it."
To their credit, they rolled it out after business hours on Friday, when there would be very little traffic on the network to affect it. However, there were a number of issues that very quickly arose when the upgrade was pushed out.
For starters, it started sending out automated emails about closed tickets. As in tickets that had been closed for over a year. They found the cause of the issue and fixed it in as little as an hour, but that still hit everyone with a few dozen emails in their inbox.
Also, many users of TTSv2 found themselves unable to assign tickets to themselves. Something with their permissions got borked with the upgrade.
Several other changes were problematic enough that on Saturday evening, ITSD Manager L called everyone around 11pm, asking them to come in at 8am the following morning so we could play around with TTSv2 and figure out what we had issues with, so we could give that information directly to a TTS Team guy who would be there.
So my Sunday started much earlier than usual, and with very little sleep (not for lack of trying), as I went in at 8am to blearily poke around at TTSv2, then sit in on a training session as TTS Team Guy gave us a refresher on how to use TTSv2, and took notes on some of the issues.
Issues like the fact that TTSv2 doesn't have a field for the user ID anymore. In the previous version, tickets for a user could be found by using the user ID, although the 'advanced' search options allowed for other ways to search as well. This change is problematic for ITSD, since we need the user ID to look up things like their account profile location, what their workstation ID is, and so on. When he was told about this, TTS Team Guy looked surprised. Apparently, they'd been getting feedback from people saying they wanted the user ID field removed. ITSD very quickly told him that we never said that.
Another change is the location field. They made a change to how to input locations in TTSv2, but it's currently broken and doesn't work all that well, and makes it all but impossible to input the location.
Various other changes increase the number of clicks we have to make as well, which slows things down.
On Sunday, as well, it was running very slowly, to the point where it could take up to 2 minutes or more just to assign the ticket to ourselves to resolve it. Given that we're given 2 minutes of "wrap time" after concluding a call, this meant we had little chance to catch our breath in between the calls we were getting.
Now, there is one thing that TTSv2 has that I'm grateful for. We have the ability to send communications (emails, basically) from within TTSv2. So if we want to send an email to the affected user, requesting information from them or a status update, we can use a template email (or craft one ourselves) directly in the system. We can also send an email to the tech or the group assigned to the ticket, requesting a status update from them. No more trawling through the address book trying to find the right email address to send to.
Still, growing pains are going on, though I seem to be one of the few people at the ITSD who isn't kvetching like crazy about TTSv2. I had this conversation with my CW "Jefe" today.
Jefe: "I haven't heard you complaining. I was like 'Jay must like TTS 2.'"
J2K: "I don't hate it. But I don't exactly like it either."
Jefe: "Heh."
J2K: "See, I'm a practical person. I know that my opinion means absolutely nothing to the people who made this. Most of the bad things were already complained about, so there's no point in saying anything else. I figure, I'm gonna have to live with it anyway, so get used to it."
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