What are they realy doing?

There are a squad of administrators who are happy to help you with your every move. But, belive it or not, administrators have many responsibilitys and user support is only one of them. Administrators might need to take care of systemwide issues before they can spend time on one single user. If the system, or a part of the system is down, an administrator can't quit working on that problem just to help a user read e-mail or print a file. If there are lot of people asking for help, I'm affraid you have to wait untill it's your turn.

An administrators responsible includes;

• Maintaining hardware such as computers, servers, printers, modem etc...

• Maintaining software such as many diffrent operating system, many diffrent programs etc...

• Purchasing new hardware and software etc. That also means a lot of testing and practising on the new stuff...

• Installing new or updated hardware and software.

• Doing backups.

• Problem Solving

• Reading manuals etc etc

How do administrators solve users problems?

Stright answers for stright questions.

When a user complain, I never get a stright description of the problem. It is like working like a detective spending 90 percent of the time figuring out what the problem is, making theories, asking questions and try unitil the user is happy again.

Example: A user complain the printer doesn't print. The administrator must figure out what printer he was using, what kind of computer he is using, what software he use and what file he tries to print. Does other user have the same problem? Is the problem located to the printer, the computer, the software or the file itself? (or maybe the user?)

And so on. It is the same process as we all do with a puzzle, eyeballing the possible problem untill we can isolate where things went wrong.

Put your self in my shoes!

Please bear in mind, there are more than two hundred people working here and I have no idea what you are doing or how you are doing your work. I'm also trying to solve multiple problems about many different topics every day, so I can hardly remember the most obviously things we talked about yesterday just like a snap.

I try to maintain many operating systems, such as the SUN systems, WindowsNT4, Windows95, Windows3x, not to mention all software, the network, all surounding equipments, modems etc etc, so please forgive me if it looks like I don't know what you are talking about. It takes a few secconds for my brain to connect correctly.

Tell me what you are trying to do from the beginning when you encounter a problem, please. Tell me what you expect, and decribe the problem as detailed as you can. Treat me like I'm an idiot, otherwise I'll belive you are....

 

 

A user suddenly put a printout in my hand and yells angry;
-Look at this! It can't look like this. Fix it, and do it fast!
-What's wrong? I said.
The papers was perfectly printed with ink on all letters. The toner doesn't need any replacement for long time yet.
-Don't you see? Are you blind, or what? There are only 18 rows on each paper. It used to be twentyfour rows...

A user had spent at least two hours to get a picture on an external monitor connected to his laptop, trying diffrent setups. After a while he gave up and called me. I just walked in and plugged the power supply cord in the wall outlet and, voila, there is the picture. I'll never forget that face...

Obvious answers

If your equipment is dead, check the power-on button or the power supply cord. If you password doesn't fit, check the CAPSLOCK key and so on. Sometimes is the problem very obviously, just staring at you. All you need is to check the simpliest things and you are probably in the air again. Nothing is so embarrasing as calling an administrator and he just push a button and everything is okay. You will also save your own time instead of waiting for an busy administrator.

Look at the error messages

I know computer messages looks like jidderish for an human eye, but if you read the messages carefully it might make sense. Like any document, an error messages is written in either Swedish or English. If you can't understand the message yourself, type it down and pass it to your administrator.

Error messages are tricky to understand. This one from Windows95 visualize hard dissisions.

Recreate the problem

The most common answer I got when I ask; "what did you do, to get this...?" is; "I didn't do anything".

I'm sure you do. How else do you work? Well, I don't ask for having fun with unexperienced user, but recreate the error. It isn't becoase I hope anything has miraculously changed, but just to make sure there is a way to test the error, read error messages, and test again when I belive I have fixed it.
If you recreate the error, You can easly describe the problem you have encountered, step by step, and I can easily confirm the problem and start to work with it.

Has anything changed?

If you try to do something that you have done before, and it suddenly don't work anymore, something must have changed. If the change is on system level, it's your administrators problem. But the most common is that the user has changed something in his own enviroment. Try to remember when it last worked and see if you can pinpoint what has changed. If you can't locate the problem, please, try to inform the administrator every clue you can think of.

One day, I sent an e-mail to all employers at IDA with a message that says I'll clean up the network by removing unused cables next day. I also wrote that if anyone discover any problems, it could depend on that. Unfortunatly, I got a terrible cold so I stayed at home for the rest of the week instead of removing any cables. Next monday when I return to my office, I was flooded with e-mails complaining over all trouble I caused with the cabel removal...

 A user complained that the e-mail was dead. I checked if I could read my e-mail.
-No problem. I aslo checked if there where any other systemwide problems with the e-mail.
After a long while, I figured out that user uses a portable MacIntoch to write documents and usually connect remotly to the Unix-systems only for reading e-mail. This particulary day, the user forgott to hook on the network but typing documents worked just fine, but connecting to Unix-system didn't work. In the users eyes, there must be somthing wrong with the e-mail.

Gather facts

It is a lot help if you prepare the following information before you call an adminstrator:

• What you are doing.
• Detailed description of the problem and how I can recreate it. Preferably step by step.
• What equipment and the name of the equipment.
• Location of the equipment.
• Your operating system, what software that coase the problem.
• Are there any error messages? Type down the error messages.
• What have you allready tried, to solve the problem?

Detailed descriptions get better help

Your chances to get a quick response from an administrator is much better if you can get all the facts toghether before you call the administrator. No adminstrator can compleate his work if you don't give him all relevant information. I'll give an example:

One day, I recived the following e-mail:

From: Sten Sture <stest@ida.liu.se>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 12:21:29 +0100 (MET)
To: gse@ida.liu.se
Subject: file doesn't print

Göran,
I'm having trouble printing my file /home/stest/lic.doc. I use the emacs
program to edit and the lp-command to print. I recived the following
message when I try to print on E1n. No other printers seems to work
either. My collegue next door doesn't have any problem to print.

/Sten

obel33% lp -d e1n lic.doc
UX:lpstat: FEL: Skrivarhanteringen LP är inte igång
eller går inte att nå.
ÅTGÄRD: Den här utskriften går inte att genomföra
utan skrivarhanteringen LP.
Be systemadministratören om hjälp
om problemet fortsätter.
obel33%

Okay, What do we have here?

• I know who the user is from the mail header.
• He tells me what software he is using.
• He's tells me what file he tries to print.
• He tells me what printer he use and he had tried other printers as well.
• He also typed the command he used and the error message.
• He noticed that other users can use the printer.

He has actually told me some other information, unaware of that of cource, but important for me:

• By typing the command, I know he is using a UNIX operating system,
  not Windows3x, Windows95, WindowsNT, MacOS, or anything else.
• Probably by misstake, (he used cut'n'paste from screen) he also typed the
  command promt which tells me the name of the computer.
• He didn't tell me the location of the computer, but I didn't need it this time.

From the error message, I understood the printer software wasn't running and his neighbour could print so the problem must be on the users computer. I used the telnet-program to connect remotely to his computer, and started the printer software. As a supervisor, I also printed his file just to check it's working. In the reply I sent him, I asked him to check the output bin on the printer. The problem was solved without lifting my butt, in the same time as it takes to read this paragraph, .

Just compare with the following e-mail, imagine he's using an unknown computer, maybe a PC with windows-something or a MacIntoch, maybe in the next building, remotly connected to anything else... How would you solve his problem?

From: Sten Dum <stedu@ida.liu.se>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 12:21:29 +0100 (MET)
To: gse@ida.liu.se
Subject: file doesn't print

I can't print my files! What the heck are you guys doing!?

/Sten