Helpful hint.

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

In addition to basic server administration and escalations for support, I am a "support engineer" which means when a customer buys a very expensive one-time support incident, I have to deal with it. SLA guarantees a phone call within a certain amount of time. 99.9% of these tickets are for remote support. Basically we charge our customers for being lazy and not wanting to follow the instructions sent by our lackeys. So, they pay a pretty good chunk of change for up to a certain amount of hours of my time, fix not guaranteed. I guess it makes people feel self-important to pay a ton of money for me to read their ticket to them or just follow the instructions our level 1 guys sent. Anyway, I get paged when these support tickets hit the queue.

So I get a ticket in from the level 1 guys today and it's one of these tickets. Phone goes off, and I spring into action. I look this guy's support history up. 2 tickets including this one, first ticket was closed after almost a month of inactivity and prodding the customer to provide some specific information. The customer obviously failed to provide it (or to respond at all after the initial "Ok, I'll see what I can do to get you this info" kind of reply), and now he's pissed off. Wants the problem resolved RFN.

So I'm reading the new ticket and basically the guy is begging for remote support, but says that the information we requested is confidential and is not available under any circumstances. We ask for an admin level login or vnc access to an account with an admin level account logged in + the IP address of the server they need help with. Apparently it's all confidential at this company. You know, they couldn't create an admin login like "remot3h3lpd3sk" or something like that, something they can delete when we're done. No. Too easy.

So I try to call the guy who has been listed as the POC.

He has left for the day.

So how am I supposed to fix this since it "requires immediate attention", with no login information and nobody who can sit there while I read off the instructions he was provided originally?

Oh yeah, self importance. It affects him so ZOMG WE NEDS 2 FIX NOWEEE!!!!!!!!!! I replied to the ticket and told him his options are a: give us remote support or b: get a refund for the incident and go back to tier 1 support.

Too busy for end luser games today. Far, FAR too busy.

Comments

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

So how am I supposed to fix this since it "requires immediate attention", with no login information and nobody who can sit there while I read off the instructions he was provided originally?

I'll take "mystical psychic powers" for 200, Alex.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

Do you use any sort of desktop sharing program? That way they could connect you where you need to go and put in any required passwords.

Of course, that still requires someone you can get in touch with.

[reyvin.livejournal.com]

There was a division of my old company that was like that. I used to create all the new NT/AD logins for incoming users and build their profiles on their machines and set the machine up in the office. Basically, the new user's computer from start to finish was my job. But there was certain info we needed to do that. All of which was classified.

They wanted the computer with all necessary logins on the user's desk the moment he started work but they wanted to NOT tell me anything about the user, not even his name, and give me less than 24 hours notice. Mmmmhhhmmm. Yeah...that's not working for me.

We had to devise this convoluted system of creating and immediately hiding all visible portions of the ID. /sigh.

[wibbble]

We're sometimes reduced to using GoToMeeting. It makes me cry on the inside. Sometimes on the outside, too.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

We've got a server set up to run Remote Support System (http://www.remotesupportsystem.com/) which is a pretty good program. Doesn't work with vista but works great with any previous version of windows. I believe there is licensing for that but I don't believe it's too massive. RSS leaves nothing on the computer after you're done (though every once in a while it gets goofed up and you have to kill its run.exe process to clear it out). It also has features such as an automatic reconnect on a reboot, automatic reboot to safe mode, good interface for enabling auto-login including the ability for the user to input their credentials without you seeing the password, and screen blanking if you want it.
Otherwise we use CrossLoop (http://crossloop.com/) which is free but isn't quite as reliable. Does work decently well but without any bells and whistles. It's also an installation that remains on the system but it doesn't run in the background or anything.

[jecook]

*pinches bridge*

Where I work, our vendors all have their own remote access account that stays disabled until either we call them and enable it, or the application owners have them call in and open it. Each time it's opened, we reset the password to something random.

We have to have an existing ticket in our system, AND there's a metric asstonne of paperwork that the regulatory agency wants: full name of the person connecting, what they are going to do, what they did, and of course, start and stop times. if it's missing *any* of those, we are out of compliance and in DEEP DEEP guano.

Fortunatly, one of our developers made a widget to streamline most of it. :)

[zendequervain.livejournal.com]

*pinches bridge* gave me the most amusing mental image of a cartoony-like person trying to pinch the golden gate bridge.

Hee. Thank you for the smile. I need it today.