[lopsa-discuss] Interruptions coverage...

[John Stoffel]

Benjamin> Time Management for System Administrators describes a pretty
Benjamin> common practice: having a rotation of people fielding
Benjamin> interruptions for the team.

Benjamin> How does your site handle this?  What hard lessons or subtle
Benjamin> points have been addressed as your process matures?

Back when I was working more at a single site, we had it setup so that
each member of the team worked two shifts a week on the hotline
answering the phone and taking first stab at emailed tickets, etc.
Walkups were re-directed to that person verbally, or asked to send an
email to the ticketing system.

Worked nicely when we have 5+ people in the group, which turned into
two shifts a week, which wasn't bad at all.  Let you get project work
done the rest of the week.  

The big issues are:
 
  - making it easy for end users to open tickets: email, phone or web
    so they got immediate feedback that their problem had been
    recoreded. 
  - discouraging walkups/direct dial calls.  Redirecting people to the
    hotline extension/person/email.  Politely but firmly. 
  - sign all outgoing emails with the group email/web/phone numbers,
    even for individual admins.  Get across the mentality of the group
    is the contact, not specifc admins.

In my current setup, we've got seven sites, but only two are staffed
with admins.  Makes it tougher, along with multiple poorly done ticket
systems.  Yes, we need WebRT (version 1.0.7!) setup and running for
us.  *grin*

John