Technically Speaking

Working primarily in a support role for the past few years has taught me a thing or two.  One of the things I learned was about helping others and this is the focus for this post.

When providing support it is essential that you deal with other people, it is also essential that you try to avoid the blame game as much as possible, however it is unreasonable to think that one will never fall into the “he said she said” blaming of others.

Another think I have noticed, perhaps recently (and maybe far too late), is that matching the level of politeness and patience can go along way, but being polite regardless of the other end of the conversation is a home run.  Working on this takes time, frustration, and possibly some conversations with yourself during the ride home from work.

Being helpful and able beats being right

There are times when it is fun to be right.  For example, when the colts beat the saints on Sunday it will be fun to have been right (although this isn’t guaranteed) and maybe even bring in a few bucks for me.

When doing technical support, being helpful is more important than being right, no matter the situation or the reason.  Imagine if you will a relative who asks you to look at their computer because the Internet doesn’t work.  Sometimes it is an inconvenience, sometimes it is happening again, but think about how much better it feels to help than to complain or refuse. 

I will admit that I have to eat my own dog food here and can surely improve this, but I am confident that I can.

Helping with purchasing decisions

There are many organizations where a purchasing department places the orders for the needs of the company and handles all of that, but from time to time they will ask another department for help.  Sure they could get help from the vendor, and maybe they’ll need to anyway, but when asked providing the information you can might save extra work for these individuals.

For other systems, like when Aunt Mary asks what computer to buy, probe a bit and discover the ultimate use of the system and provide your opinion.  Be honest when asked “what would you do?” but make sure you let them know that you are providing an opinion about a system.  This way if they shop around or ask others as well, they wont feel like they are stepping on your feet.

Remember it is OK to ask for help

Along these lines, when you are asked to help someone solve a problem, you may need to ask for help from a colleague or co-worker or even an outside party.  If this is the case, make sure you let the person who asked you for help know you need to get assistance so they do not feel you are blowing them off.

Thinking about these few items in relation to the support calls and requests you receive might make your day a bit less stressful because helping someone just for the sake of helping them, can be rewarding sometimes.

Community is something that for a while, at least to me, seemed a bit lost.  Sure there are facebook pages and twibes and twitter lists full of people ready to discuss something or get involved in some cause, but where is the real community?

I participate in both facebook and twitter, although not as much as I could I suppose, and those communities are great for reaching out to others or planning events… for those of you who are on twitter, I am a regular at the #bbhill tweetups held on alternating Fridays.

Wherever you find them, communities are essential.  Knowing where to go to find help with any number of issues, in this case more technical than not, but any issues really at all can be quite a relief.  Being busy with projects and family and keeping up with the Kardashians (so to speak) has left me little time to consider community.  For quite a while I spent a good deal of my time at Experts-Exchange, a site built to provide points for answers to questions.  The site has evolved a great deal since I first signed on (January of 2003 with a paid account).  In the years I have been a member, I paid for my account, earned my account, and now have been awarded my account access.  Just looking at the transgression from paying 10$/month to where I am today shows something about community involvement.

I like to help people with technical issues.  Sure I may not know do not know all the answers to all the questions, but there are a good amount of people in that community who know where to look for certain things.  It has been quite a fulfilling experience and I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.  I had stepped away for a while as some of the procedures on the site for new features were a bit confusing, but when I get into it for its core, the community, and jump into help others… it is a great place to be.

There are other communities I am involved in (and hope to increase involvement in) over at TechNet and TechRepublic, both built on getting help for those members who ask questions, but the community that really sort of sucked me in was Experts-Exchange.  I will hopefully grow in all three of these communities as well as those on twitter and facebook as effort to help those around you grow (either physically or at the other end of the data connection) will allow you to grow.

My participation in these types of activities has also helped, to some degree at least, to keep my skills sharp.  Sure helping others is a good boost for me and might cause me to remember that I once fixed problem x for someone, but it isn’t going to get me through the certification learning I need to do.  There is still room for other types of growth and learning, but community participation can boost your happiness in what you are working on or act as a type of skills test.  Not to mention, the feeling that I get from helping someone, even if it is just to explain a bit about hoe licensing works (I understand it, but am not sure I am an expert there… I think there could be a masters degree offered in licensing) is very rewarding.

Who knows, you might just help someone so much that they seek you out for other projects or even a new career. 

Microsoft Outlook carries a great deal of convenience for its users.  Some of these conveniences, like calendar, mail, tasks, and contacts in the same application are available from a majority of similar applications, but Outlook handles them really well.

The focus for this post is on the NK2 file and what it brings to the user, convenience, and also on making sure it is managed well by IT.

what the heck is the Nk2 file?

This file is where Outlook stores e-mail addresses as they are used.  For example, if I send an email to mike@myemail.com to catch up with a friend and then send an email to matt@widgetsplus.com to order parts for a project, the email addresses are plunked into the Nk2 file.

From then on, if I start typing an email address with m as the first letter, a dropdown list appears in the To: line of my message containing all of the entries in the NK2 file that begin with the letter M.  This feature is very very handy, but is not the best implementation of the address list.

Note: It has been said that Microsoft is working to incorporate this list of used addresses into the Outlook application for the Office 2010 release, making the Nk2 file go away.  I am curious to see what happens there.

Why do users care about this file?

Users in general do not care about the Nk2 file specifically, they only care about the list of addresses kept in the file.  Think of this as a makeshift contacts list.  Why would the vast majority of people put a contact into Outlook, when the list just appears as they begin entering addresses?  That is a huge waste of productivity and time.

When something happens to the Nk2 file for one or more of the users you support, it is likely that you will hear about it.  When I first experienced Nk2 atrophy I didn’t even know where to find anything about “the wiped out drop down list of addresses I need to send email”.  I spent a good amount of time learning that the dropdown list was contained in the NK2 file, stored within the cavern that is Outlook application settings within the user profile.

Will this file save the day?

It can be quite the safety net for a good majority of Outlook Users, but the contacts folder is the best place to put addresses.  Relying on a single file with no default backup is not a good idea, although most users (and sometimes myself) do it every day.

You can create a backup of this file for your users by copying the file to the network on regular intervals, which is highly recommended.  This way, if the list of addresses goes empty, the nk2 file can be copied over the old one and should be back to normal when Outlook restarts.

Note: In my organization we use Desktop Authority to manage the user experience, it copies the nk2 file to the users home directory when they logoff every day. When they logon, the local and remote files are compared and the newest one wins.  If that is the remote, due to locally corrupt or deleted file, the file is copied during logon and the list works as needed.

Using a scheduled copy script on regular intervals will accomplish the important part of the task, the backup.  Then when the user notices the issue, you can copy the backup to their machine and restart outlook.  Presto! Working address lists.

Creating a backup copy of the file

To get a backup of a users Nk2 file you simply need to copy it to another location.  Using a utility like xcopy works very well here, but remember to run the operation when the file is not in use to catch any entries that may get added (and make the process much smoother).

The local Nk2 file lives at c:\documents and settings\<username>\application data\Microsoft\Outlook

and is typically named according to the Outlook Profile (usually a userid).

so the source portion of your xcopy operation might look something like this:

Xcopy “c:\documents and settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\username.nk2”

Note: <username> represents the user id of the user whose Nk2 file you need to copy.

Add the destination to the xcopy script, typically the users home directory, I usually use a mapped share for this:

Xcopy “c:\documents and settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\username.nk2” “U:\<username>\<username>.nk2”

Then specify the needed xcopy options for the job, typically just /Y to prevent prompting to copy.

Save the file and schedule it to run for your users.  This way newer copies of the local nk2 file will overwrite older ones on the network, keeping the most recent copy backed up and on tape with the rest of the data.

Using the backup

Now that the nk2 files are backed up, if the user loses their address drop down list, you can quickly rescue them by copying the file back to the local application data folder.  Then when they restart Outlook all should be well.  Since the copy only takes a few minutes (depending on file size and bandwidth) you might have the user close Outlook then copy the file.  This way when started again the list should reappear and the user will be back to normal again.

Being the type of administrator who assigns accountability to files created by users, i.e. they have to get their files saved to the network for backup to happen, I have found this a very good idea because the user is not likely to know about this file if they can get to its location.  Automating this backup has proven very helpful for both my IT department and my users.

This morning when I arrived at the office I had a few things that were top of list and needed to be checked out right away.  We were having difficulty with a web application used to handle checks received.

On Friday, the user of the system spoke with a bank support representative about the issue and was treated quite rudely.  I know that I have been a bit less than nice in the past when providing support, but have learned from my experiences and adjusted accordingly.

Why do I mention this?  Because there are two things that are important here:

1. You can attract more flies with honey than vinegar

2. A poor attitude impedes the solution to the problem

Both of these are seemingly common sense thoughts that most, including myself at one time, would brush off as understood and no brainers.  This is where I have found that I was wrong.

Sure there are easy fixes in the technical realm, and rebooting is often a solution that is a no brainer, but assuming a solution will just work and going away, or giving the impression that you (or your staff) know more than those using the computer (or about following instructions) is just a bad plan.

Usually when i ask a user to reboot, I have a secret hope that the issue will go away, but actually the reboot gives me a chance to do a quick search for information or get a soda on my way to work with the client (for those instances when I am in the office working with co-workers).

Assuming that all systems are configured equally is not a good plan either.  An example, while on the phone with the bank support rep, my co-worker was told to access user accounts in the Windows XP control panel.  It was the fourth icon from the left.

At full screen with the control panel in classic view and sorted by alpha, the fourth item from the left is actually Automatic updates.  Perhaps a better approach might be to ask the person you are helping what is on their screen or if they see xyz icon and suggest where they might look for it.

Until I did technical support on the phone for a while, I was in two camps, I was sure I knew how to fix the issue in many cases, but also unsure of how to confidently and politely convey this to the people I was helping. 

Doing onsite support and being able to get my hands on the machine killed my ability to do off the cuff phone support, but it helps keep my mind fresh because I have to look for things to get the problem solved.

I have learned that it is more about helping those who ask and doing the right thing in many cases than being right or best or any of that.

Please work to instill this in yourself and your staff.  You and your IT department will be better for it.

Being an IT manager is much different than being on an IT staff, unless of course, like me you are the IT staff.  Sure the role of manager gets some benefits, like pay or sometimes delegation to employees, but overall many of the ‘perks’ are more work than perk.

I was reading a blog post recently about not caring about some things.  The post outlined a philosophy of not caring and pointed out that this is ok in some cases.  We all have things we do not care about and others around us will not care about some things that are seemingly near and dear to us or cause us worry.

This hit home for me in terms of IT management because some fires, no matter who they are for are just not that important.

A document has a bad font in the header and gets printed.  The individual printing the document runs over to the help desk and announces their worry about the font issue complaining that it needs to be corrected.

Does the document go to a customer?  Or is the document getting filed for later (or never again) viewing by someone here?

If the document goes to the customer it should be fixed (unless it is known perhaps that the customer doesn’t care) and if it is going to a box in the recesses of an underground bunker never to be seen again, who cares what the header looks like.

While this philosophy cannot be forced on others, like the employee running over with the problem, simply showing that you do not care may get the problem resolved.  You’ll likely have to explain why you don’t care and show that the fix is unnecessary and may well end up fixing it anyway, but the not caring stance may make the whole process less stressful.  If you do not care about the issue, it doesn’t matter either way the outcome, so you needn’t worry about doing it or not doing it.

This isn’t intended as a way to get out of work, but to look at the things you get asked objectively rather than subjectively.  These things shouldn’t cause you worry and loss of sleep because you do not care about them, certainly not the opposite tons of worry and sleeplessness because you didn’t get to the task.

This afternoon I was asked to help prepare some video for a sales meeting.  I am not sure if the video was intended to be motivating or not, but I think the target audience of sales staff could easily have been replaced with IT staff.

Some IT Manager and staff have likely taken the approach that the problem will come to you when it needs to be fixed, I sure have.  Waiting until the fire has started and could burn out of control at any moment rather than trying to work with the users as soon as there is something they find that isn’t quite right.

Sure in some cases IT is reactive, you cannot fix a problem if you don’t know its there, but there are some problems that can be fixed simply by being active in your organization and doing some managing by walking around.  Hearing how the users interact with each other and the IT staff and seeing how they use their computers might be a clue to an upcoming problem.  Being able to solve the problem either before they mention it to the help desk or as soon as they do might take the opinion of the IT staff through the roof as being extra helpful.

The video clip simply got me thinking about doing the work rather than planning to do the work.  Yes some planning needs to be done, but if all of the time is spent planning little to no work is getting done.

Spend time building procedure and getting the right process in place as soon as possible to reduce the overall work required to fix problems.

I thought the clip really drove home the idea that we as IT people should get out there and do the work and help those around us.

Have you guessed the clip I watched? – Here is a link (NSFW) Video Clip

Do you think the approach to sales in the clip was too harsh or that it might have been right on target?

Business Intelligence or BI has been a buzz word in the IT industry for quite some time.  But what does it really mean, and how can it help your organization better acheive its goals?

Business Intellegence to me is a method of reviewing organizational data to make informed decisions to benefit the mission of an organization.  Using the data that an organization is collecting and generating during its usual process, the business decision makers (and others) can be empowered to make better decisions.

During Tech Ed last week I heard a comment about business decision making and thought about how I have seen it done.  While it is true, that organizations should empower employees and value their input, the true test comes when an organization is faced with decisions that affect their comptetitive edge, and many times, those who work with the data directly are not included in the overall process of deicision making.  It is beginning to be seen that the more involved the employees are in decisions that affect them, the better for the organization the decision can be.  Making decisions in the executive suite, a.k.a. a vacuum, is usually not going to acheive the best results, but there are many organizations that continue to do things this way.

Tools to improve analysis

Many executives get reports from the employees who work with data and technologies.  To me, the executive summary is just that, a short discussion of how a dataset affects an organization at the 15,000 foot level.  But drilling into the details isnt something that happens at that level.

Using technology like Sharepoint is great, but if the reports shown to decision makers in their current form arent really being considered when decision time rolls around, what good will the tech do?

SharePoint is a technology that improves visibility of existing data to make analysis easier to handle for the employees who dig in enough and are familiar enough with the data to make sound decisions about it.  For executives, it serves more to improve visibility, not analysis necesarily.

Take the tech to the analysts

In deciding how to improve BI within an organization, work with those who are in the trenches to prove the concept of an application like SharePoint.  Once the capabilities of the application are proven and can be shown at the user level, then the discussions about licensing and cost can begin.  If the approach is reversed, there will be no effective way to prove the usefulness of the application and a salespitch is not the best way to gain more BI and technology.  The overall ROI may be low, and the benefits may be huge, but attacking the issue from the top down may well be a death sentence for the project.

If you take the time to pilot the idea with the users and analysts who work the data, your results may be tangible up front and convince the right BDMs that this technology will improve business, not just give IT a new toy to play with.