Dan V. Mark, Loren, Gordon, Eric.

Klark (ill)

• ostickets for unified ticketing system report (Dan, Klark, Loren)?
• : We have only tried out the mantis system to the extent of submitting tickets. It seems simple enough, which is obviously a big plus, but none of us have been able to get a status report back regarding submitted tickets. We've tried it on mantis.cs.byu.edu and two other demo's on the internet but none of them sent an email back to us. Is there someone in your lab that has been working with this? — klark
• Who to host the ticket system?
• : The help desk interacts with the system more than others, so let the help desk manage?. Mark: he feels it should be with the web server to not proliferate the number of virtual servers. Loren is going to assess the administrative overhead for ostickets. From there, it will be more clear where to put the server. Consolidation versus separation. Mark concerned about continually creating one-off servers.
• Wiki content export report (frequency etc. to report to faculty)?
• : Student has possible solution that also helps with migration to MediaWiki new versions. Not solved, but getting close. — Loren
• MediaWiki upgrade path.
• : Upgrade path is not really clear. Migration is a real problem. May be possible to take freeze-dried wiki and import into new version of media wiki.
• CS Wireless can no longer be disabled (and has never been used really)
• CS Website redesign and merging HTML servers and content to a single server
• Computer in CS conference room (Klark)
• : Computer will be finished by the end of the week. I need to finish installing a couple of applications and patches/updates. — klark
• Mosi? (Gordon)
• : 10% non-profit/educational discount. Not terribly dramatic. Let's let it die for now.

• Virtualization in the Open Labs
• : The virtualization hasn't progressed very far due to the fact that we're working on the Windows 7 image instead. We are no longer planning on putting XP in a virtual environment but we need to get the Windows 7 image working before we can do virtualization. The goal is to have a test lab ready for Windows 7 by the end of Winter semester and to hopefully get a virtual environment ready during spring/summer for fall semester.
• : We have been throwing around the idea of using VMWare but the license that BYU has is only good for one year. We are then required to purchase the license after that. We are still considering RedHat but there are some issues that we haven't resolved with that one either.
• : The problems that we are facing in running Windows in a virtual environment are security and corruption of the image or the virtual installed OS. None of us have enough experience with Windows 7 to know what our options and/or limitations are, and how tight we lock down a virtual instance of Windows. — klark

I still have no idea how to “make this happen”, but I have a great article about this that I think should be the basis for our philosophy. Check it out:

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service ://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

The article gives 8 bullets for *remarkable“ customer service:

1. Fix everything twice (quick patch, and figure out how to make it not happen again)

:I think this is a systemic thing that we have discussed at various times before (most recently, last week, I believe). This should be something we do automatically, all the time, and, over time, all the simple, common problems will go away forever.

2. Suggest blowing out the dust (word your suggestions to customers diplomatically, even if they are doing something dumb)

:This is an attitude that we can train our support people with – be careful to word things in a way that never lets the customer feel insulted (even if they are being dumb).

3. Make customers into fans (do something so cool, they have to tell others about how awesome you are)

:This is both a systemic goal to shoot for and an individual attitude to inculcate into our support people.

4. Take the blame (take the blame)

:This is an individual attitude thing again, and, not a natural one.

5. Memorize awkward phrases (so that you can respond diplomatically automatically instead of getting bent out of shape like the customer is)

:This is an individual attitude thing again, and, not a natural one.

6. Practice puppetry (don't take things personally)

:This is an individual attitude thing again, and, not a natural one.

7. Greed will get you nowhere (generally true, but possibly less applicable here as we are not charging customers, still a good point)

:I think how this might apply in our situation is simple in the sense that we need to let the customer change their mind until they are happy.

8.(bonus) Give support people a career path (so that you get good ones – you get what you pay for)

:We kind of do this already, in the sense that our CSRs are training to be computer scientists. We could facilitate this even more, I think, if we made the CSR position one that everyone wanted to be in (financial incentives, recognition, etc.)

This doesn't say anything about communicating well with the customer, but that obviously falls into a couple of categories, in particular, I think 1, 2, 3, 6, 7.

Also, I think we are actually pretty good in some of these areas already. In particular, I think we are pretty non-confrontational and diplomatic, etc. The biggest areas we could improve in are probably points 1 (fix two ways) and 3 (make customers fans).

1. I think we should change to gmail and start a faculty discussion about it. Klark thinks we should set up a department email server that doesnt depend on anything else
2. Unify DHCP in the department and create an interface to allow faculty to register a mac address.
3. Explore BYU's complete authentication system