End of Day: 3rd March

‎04-03-2008

As I stepped off the train in Sheffield this morning the sun was shining and it was almost warm. 5 minutes later it got suddenly cold. Then it started to snow. It was snowing and sunny at the same time but I couldn't see a snow-bow. Then the sun went in and the blizzard continued for 5 minutes. By the time I got to the office it was sunny again. Development: I am Ali from Java Dev to bring you the updates. Most of the dev team is working on new project and have been doing well and making good progress despite tough time lines. I am working to upgrade the Java systems to new platform which will help us to better manage and maintain applications. Matt is back from holiday this morning and has brought some snow with him, but it was good during the day though. Owain is enjoying his holiday and will be back in action tomorrow. Web Team: Colin got in a bit late today as he was rushing back from Scotland after going home to surprise his mother for Mother's Day. James has been tidying up the Flickr sidebar widget in preparation for releasing it as a WordPress plugin. Dan's been using jQuery to smarten up the interface for the internal workstream tool. Sam has created templates for improving the spam settings in Manage My Mail. Chris has been working on the Community Site design with an improved way of navigating blog categories. Tam's been troubleshooting other people's JavaScript problems and putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's "Introduction to Usability" presentation. Marketing: We've got a couple of new offers that will hopefully be launched this week. I can't tell you exactly what they are just yet, but all will become clear later in the week. Today we've been creating web pages and emails to promote the offers. There is some stuff I can tell you about though, including an email to businesses to promote Enhanced Care. We've also had our regular start of week meeting where we all get together to discuss our workloads for the week. Networks: It is start of a new week and a new month, it was very calm and relatively quiet in networks today. We had two new colleagues moved up to join us, they have been settling in pretty well. I have been working on problems and improvements to system security. Here is what rest of the team has been up to. Mark: Enhancing access lists, addition of devices for monitoring and debugging monitoring issue Sarah: Been very bravely battling with internal phone system. Russ: Monitoring, security related work Ben: Investigation of our user broadband usage system, making better tea Simon: Testing platform improvements John: Attending meetings, Work-stack management Michael: investigation of problems and resolution Richard: Improvements to autoturn and parbin platform Matt: Has been dealing with customer questions Quality Assurance: It's been biscuitopia in QA today. I appear to have two packets on the go and Matt R has been sharing his garibaldis with the team. They've been a tasty accompaniment to the problems, testplan reviews, database checking and signup testing we've all been doing today. I wouldn't want to mention that 'b' word but I've got a feeling it's not going to be a quiet week. In other news, Our Glorious Leader isn't very well so we hope he feels better soon. Customer Support Centre: With snow one minute and gorgeous sun another its been a strange day in the CSC, and the weather outside was pretty random too 😉

Router setups - Seems to be a popular one all the time now, so many brands along with our own supplied equipment, one of the most difficult devices to set up for customers, maybe in the future we'll provide something that saves this hassle.
Pre-fault checks - Mainly no sync, usual causes being line noise and extension cables.
E-mail configurations - So many customers, so many e-mail addresses, they all need to be set up at the other end.
Sales - With the number of new broadband users going down its always great to see sales in the top 5.Prov updates - Customers moving house mainly, with the stress that comes with moving house, no broadband just makes it more stressful.

Other queries today included

Connection issues that just need to switch off and back on again
Billing, the start of the month everyone sorting out new card details or failed payments.
Fault updates for those whose broadband hasn't been working for a little while.