Proof That Murphy's Law is Just Plain Evil

1. Weeks ago I turned off the automatic agent to send out birthday notices because we had a new shared company calendar in Outlook.
2. Therefore I took out the task in my termination checklist to un-check "send birthday notice" on employees' Lotus Notes person documents. (We have to keep them in the system to make sure we don't miss any mail, but by un-checking this field, the agent would skip them.) No need - right? - since I had turned off the agent anyway.
3. This morning the birthday notice went out. (Why?? The agent was turned off! Maybe something changed when our server died this weekend??)
4. And - here's the part that's just plain evil - the one notice that mistakenly was sent was for an employee who's no longer working here. (What's up with that? If it had to mistakenly fire, why not send one for an employee who's still employed?) Really?!

Look, it's MacGyver! No, wait, it's Paul!

"Braver Than Most...Smarter Than the Rest"  

If you are of a certain age, you've heard of the t.v. show MacGyver, and perhaps even used the term "MacGyvered." I thought of that show yesterday when Paul told me how he'd made a literal band-aid repair to a laptop.

Wikipedia describes MacGyver as "a resourceful agent...able to solve complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand, along with his ever-present duct tape and Swiss Army knife." Paul's been known to use duct tape as well, but in this particular case he used a band-aid. We sometimes talk of fixes being "just a band aid," but in this case, that was a good thing!

Monique's laptop keyboard, and also Jesse's, were acting very strangely. Here's Jesse's description: "About 50% of the time I press "e" on the keyboard I get "poiurewq". I also get "\;lkjfdsa" when I press on other letters I get "\; lkjfdsa". When I press "c" it activates the microphone and takes me to the previous browser page." How weird is that? Jesse, displaying some detective finesse of his own, sent us a link to a tech forum where others wrote about a "tape kit" you could order from Lenovo (the maker of our laptops).

The issue was this: The ribbon connecting the laptop keyboard to the laptop itself had a hole worn into it from rubbing against a sharp piece of metal protruding from the laptop frame, causing the keys to short out. The "tape kit" fix was a piece of adhesive material with some padding which you place over the sharp metal, preventing it from creating the hole.

Paul ordered the tape kit, but that would take 2-3 days to get here, so on Friday he went up to San Francisco, opened up Monique's laptop, and put a band-aid over the sharp metal. Who needs an official tape kit when you're MacGyver? Paul just snipped a band aid to size and -- voila! -- problem solved. He "MacGyvered" that thing!

There you go, "smarter than the rest," indeed

What's Going on With "Dexter in the Cloud"?

First, I need a better name. It's not going to be called "Dexter in the cloud." But for now that name makes the idea fairly easy to understand.

There may be a few of you who don't know about Dexter in the cloud so I'll quickly explain. Basically, I'll be moving the functionality of Dexter -- the processes we perform there -- out of Lotus Notes into the "cloud" -- the internet, specifically into Salesforce.com.

Most of you know that my effort in this direction has been going on a long time. If you look back in this blog you'll see where I wrote about working with ServiceMax, an app inside of Salesforce.com, to bring Dexter to the cloud. Well, after getting us to the point where we were pretty much ready to start beta testing, I took a step back and decided that using ServiceMax was not the right way to go. I had thought that it was about 80% of what we needed out of the box, but it actually turned out to be more like maybe 20%. Just not a good fit, nor a good way for us to spend our resources.

So, it was back to the drawing board. I didn't lose all the work I'd done last year, but a significant amount for sure. I hate that it's caused this long delay but I really feel like this was the right decision. Better to get it right at the beginning.

I've been working with a consultant to recreate Dexter in the cloud. By the end of next week I believe I'll be ready to show some key users a demo of Phase 1 -- creating a project through to requesting work from a sub-contractor labor company. Phase 1 will not include scheduling and dispatch from Tech Services. While I'm working on designing that Tech Services piece, we can test the initial processes.

Watch for more details as time goes on. This is a huge project and a big change for us, but it brings with it all kinds of potential.

*sigh* do I HAVE to do a help desk ticket?

 “…or -- *sigh* -- do I HAVE to do a help desk ticket?” 

Seems like it used to be easier, didn’t it? Usually when you got stuck you could just call or find someone in IT to help you right then and there.

Things have changed. We now (after WR and Pivot became one) have over twice the number of employees and twice the number of locations to support, with less of us in the combined IT team. We can’t always – can’t even usually – drop everything for every request.

But if you are in a crisis, if you can’t do your job, if you have a deadline crunching down on you and you need IT, we’re here.

Here are some improvements we’ve implemented recently. If you have more ideas, let us know!

• Email to “Help Desk.” We’ve already made it easier for you to submit your request to the Help Desk system. Just shoot an email to “Help Desk” and it’ll create a ticket. You may have missed this announcement in the Everyone Chatter group. 

• Shorter wait times. Especially for the first several months after the acquisition, there were tickets that sat for weeks, even months. That was bad. But give us a chance to show you how much better it is now. Quick responses to the tickets are now a part of our performance measurements. If we can’t close your ticket right away, we’ll update you at minimum once/week so you know why.

• Satisfaction Survey. Whenever we close a ticket, the “ticket is closed” email contains a link to a satisfaction survey. We want your feedback! Fill in the survey! It just takes a minute.

We’ll keep trying to get better and we appreciate all the support and encouragement you give us.

Knowledge - Communicate & Collaborate

Knowledge in the cloud!

I am just beginning the set up of Knowledge, another module within Salesforce.com. I'm excited about this as another way of communicating and collaborating within Salesforce -- connecting with information all in one place.

Knowledge gives us a place to create "articles." I think of these articles as similar to many of the reference documents we currently have in our Home Pages in Lotus Notes.

Currently we have a home page for Technology, Design, Sales, Marketing, Green, and so on. We can get the same functionality -- and more -- with Knowledge. We'll be able to create articles categorized by various topics, including links and attachments as we do now. In addition, we'll be able to connect to other information within Salesforce and use various means to communicate.

For example, someone might post a question in Chatter -- maybe something like, "What do you do when this & that happens in Autocad?" For the answer, someone might say, "Take a look at this article," and include a link to the related article in Knowledge.

Knowledge can be a self-serve type of thing where you go in and do a search for whatever information you're trying to find. It can also be a way to have answers suggested to you. Companies can use it for their customer service employees so that as they answer calls and begin a "case" for a particular problem, Knowledge will suggest various articles that may give them the answers they need to solve the problem.

To begin with, I will be working to set things up so we have the active, up-to-date reference documents we need as we leave Lotus Notes and no longer have the home pages. Beyond that, I hope to engage you to build more knowledge. Designers, for example, have a lot of knowledge "living in various brains." :) One designer may know the best way to do something, or perhaps one designer has called support and been given a great tip. With Knowledge, we'll be able to have people submit what they've learned or know, have it reviewed by an expert, and then published for all.

Looking forward to sharing the knowledge!

Wow, bigger than I knew!

Recently I spent a day at Tech Services. I discovered that even though I created Dexter, I didn't know all the ways it is being used. It's actually pretty cool the way people come up with ways to use information beyond what it was originally intended for.

One thing that gets a lot of use is the Dispatch view. I knew that Peggy used that view, of course. She's the one who builds the view, which shows which jobs are scheduled for the day, who the lead, driver and crew are for each job, and, if they are going to more than one job, in what order they will be going from one job to the next.

Another person who uses that view is Dave Aguiar. Peggy prints the view and writes some more information on it pertinent to Dave's needs and then Dave uses that to determine which trucks will be prepared for which driver. He, in turn, prints the view for the drivers and indicates where the trucks are parked so they can find them quickly each morning.

Eduardo is another person using information from Dexter. He receives the work request and equipment list so he can make sure the trucks contain the right equipment for getting the job done. Turns out he really doesn't need the entire list of equipment we currently use. If he's got a clear scope, he knows what equipment is needed. But he does need to know exceptions, such as if there is a field cut, or special protection or equipment needed.

Terry Bash in the shop uses the Dexter information, too, for any shop work that may need to be done, including shims, since he makes those.

It was a good day at Tech. We have hardworking people out there who are trying to make sure the people in the field have everything they need. One constant refrain was their need for a clear scope. I gathered some information on what makes up a clear scope; more on that later.

What do you think makes a clear scope?

Guest blog on ServiceMax site

I was asked to be a guest blogger on ServiceMax's blog site, called SmartVan. They asked me to write about my experience with ServiceMax so far, and possibly to write another blog after we've implemented.

Here's a link to the blog I wrote: http://thesmartvan.com/servicemax/2011/06/01/why-pivot-interiors-chose-servicemax/.