ryan colley

We have had a lot of fun researching and creating posts over the last many months. There are only a few of us at Radical Technologists, and we have had complications managing our full time responsibilities as well as dedicate the time necessary to make this blog what we feel it should be.

So to be fair to our readers, until we can give this blog the attention it deserves, we are going on an extended hiatus.  Someday we hope to return, but until then we will take away the great relationships we have formed in such a short period of time.

We hope our readers keep pushing for change, thinking creatively, developing rad solutions and get to the point where people are calling you crazy for your ideas — that is when you know your doing it right.

Employees today are more technologically advanced than ever. Many have been utilizing computer technology for the majority of their careers and new employees entering the workforce today are almost as versed with technology as the IT departments that support them. IT needs to evolve their support philosophies, or risk being outdated by the very employees they support.

Users today are already familiar with a wide range of technology tools that provide fast and flexible communication. An easy way for IT to engage this tech-savvy work force is to accept support requests using the tools that your users already utilize. Here are 5 examples of how IT can accept support requests using popular technologies available today other than by phone, email or web forms.

1. Text Chat — text-based chat is both familiar and fast for users to communicate with IT. It allows real-time communication, unlike the delay with Email and it also allows IT staff to handle multiple tickets at once, unlike phone calls. And don’t forget to copy those chat logs back into your ticket system for tracking.
2. Mobile Video Chat —the ability of smartphones like the iPhone to do FaceTime video calls can be a great addition to support requests. For example, if a user calls you from a conference room to plug-in some equipment, you can see what they see and walk them through it over the phone instead of having to walk to their location and have them wait for you to get there.
3. Social Media — many of your users today utilize social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to get information and stay in touch with colleagues. These tools are a fast and flexible way to communicate so why not take advantage of them for support by creating a page or account for IT where your users can message support. Some ticket systems like ZenDesk even have social media services built directly into them to easily track those requests.
4. Text Message — neither email nor social media sites have slowed down text messaging. It is a fast and immediate way to communicate, so why not setup your help desk number to accept text messages that either transfer to technicians or go directly into your ticket system using a service like Twilio. This allows your users to open quick support requests when they are on the go or stuck in a meeting with only access to a mobile phone.
5. Walk Ups — Many IT departments frown upon walk up requests.  But what if you actually staffed for those requests to provide more flexible support.  For more, read our previous thoughts on walk-up support.

Our users are getting smarter, and it is easy today for almost any user to get a hold of the latest technology.  Between developer builds, beta releases or even 1.0 versions of software, our users have the access and knowledge to get their hands on the same software that IT can. There is no longer that exclusive access for IT that we had for years as companies like Apple make developer programs more accessible to the masses.

Too many times we get tickets from users who have installed beta software on a computer or mobile device that has rendered them unable to work. IT has to spend extra time to remedy the situation and this trend can be a nightmare for us to manage. But instead of just locking down installs via software or policy controls, here are 3 ideas for allowing your users to get their new technology fix, while keeping their production equipment in line with policy.

Beta Groups

Identify a core group of tech savvy users across multiple departments and make them your beta testers. Give these users immediate access to new technology and allow them to support themselves, by providing them with a second set of equipment to use for “testing”. Allow them to be advocates within their teams and departments by sharing that technology to their groups.

Developer Labs

Turn an area of your building into a developer lab that contains all new technology hardware and software.  Allow your users to come in and “test” technology on their own schedule as individuals or a team. Come up with a way to communicate new additions and even have IT schedule some demo sessions to give some in-depth looks at new technology, so users are prepared when they launch.

Rental Pool

Similar to the developer lab, create a rental pool of beta technology.  Allow your users to check out technology and use it in their daily workflows.  This will allow them to really see how new technology will benefit their workflow in a daily setting and they can also share with their team and departments.

Even though IT plans to have coverage during business hours, there are times when there is no staff in IT due to meetings, lunches, rollouts or just lots of tickets.  And sometimes it is nice to display a message when users walk up to IT letting them know if there are any current outages, training tips, general company news or just when to expect us back. Even though using an iPad as a kiosk is nothing new, I decided to use one as an overly expensive sign for our door — because I am a big fan of utilizing technology in creative, and ridiculously lavish ways!

Analog solutions wouldn’t work as I wanted something that was easy to update by multiple staff, worked from mobile devices so it could be updated on the go, kept a history of our messages, could be updated directly by solutions like our ticket system and was branded to look like a custom company tool.

The display was the easy part as I decided to mount the iPad on the door with some double-sided Velcro that would allow it to be taken on and off as needed.  A small hole was drilled behind the iPad to run a power cable through that goes up to the ceiling from behind and there quickly was a nice, and easy to read door display that was always powered and could close at night.

I considered many options to get our information to the iPad. Knowing I wanted our solution branded, I would have to create a custom web page to display the data styled to match the company brand.  So I ended up landing on Twitter to house the data as it is easy to update from mobile, I could give all of our team access to the account and with it’s great API, Icould easily pull in the last tweet posted. The 140 character limit actually helps keep messages relevent and small so they fit great on the iPad.

I created a custom webpage using PHP and a great Twitter PHP class by Jamie Hurst, so there wasn’t much custom coding and I had our solution ready in just about an hour. It works like this; any of our IT staff can send a tweet using our signage Twitter account such as “Out to Lunch:IT has gone to lunch and will be back at 1. Please contact 555.555.1212 in an emergency.”

The webpage runs on the iPad as a “web application” so it hides the menu bar and looks full screen. It refreshes every minute, displays the last tweet from our twitter account, and uses the text before the colons as the header with the remaining message as the body.  The message is display formatted with our company brand in an easy to read format, and includes the date and time of the last message.  So now any IT Staff can quickly update the sign on our door from any location, letting our users know where IT is or what is going on in IT today.

It is certainly an overkill solution, but it has a few cool advantages. The sign gets our company thinking about new and creative ways to use technology for us and our clients.  It is truly informational and our users have begun to rely on it to locate IT when they have an emergency or get IT news for the day. Using the Twitter account allows people to follow and have just one more way to stay in communication with IT.  And the best part is that it is tied in to our outage notification system so if IT has a service down, our users can see it before they come into our office to ask the status, which helps our communication during an emergency.

Of course not everyone has an iPad lying around to tape to a door, but hopefully this solution can spark some thought for other rad ways to use technology at your company. I have provided the source code below that pulls from twitter if you want to take a crack at setting up your own, overpriced door sign.

Download IT Sign Code @ github

It is difficult to introduce new technology to a company, especially when it affects productivity tools like documents or spreadsheets. IT is great at providing new tools, but we have to rely on the users to figure out how they will fit them into their workflow. We need advocate groups to help test, teach and promote new tools so that we have partners in delivering them to the masses.  But getting that group of advocates can be a challenge, as most users never make time to assist.  You could always get management involved and push change from the top down, but sometimes a grass-roots effort is much more effective.  One way to enlist the help of your users is by reverting to the age-old method of having a contest.

We will use Google Docs in this example, which is a great addition or replacement for the traditional document workflow.  With it’s collaborative features, easy file sharing and accessibility, Google Docs can bring a lot of new productivity to any workflow. So if we wanted our users to test Google Docs and see where it could fit in their workflow, here is a suggestion for holding a contest to entice your users into participating.

• Use help desk metrics to identify your participant group consisting of advanced and basic users of the current too,l and users across multiple departments.
• Pick good prizes, ones that will get your users excited to participate.
• Set a reasonable timeline to complete the contest such as 30 days so the users don’t feel too rushed.
• Schedule a kick-off meeting to give each participant their initial training on the tool and contest instructions.
• Allow each participant 1, 30 minute follow-up training with IT after they have established their workflow solution.
• Schedule the contest finale where each person has to present his or her workflow solution, along with a functioning demonstration.
• Vote for your finalists based on categories that you choose such as best idea, most innovative, simplicity and more.
• Have each participant schedule meetings with their teams/departments to display their solutions and have IT participate.
• Dedicate a location to all of the solutions and training created by the entire group and make it all available to the rest of the company.

It seems that at many companies, there are a bunch of special requests that fall to IT.  Run errands, move heavy objects, fix anything broken — it never ends.  I have been an IT Director for 10 years now and every week I still crawl under desks, carry furniture, change light bulbs and perform an unnumbered amount of tasks that are not part of my job. And not only don’t I mind it, I actually like it, and I heavily encourage my staff to do it too.

I used to be the guy in IT that complained when a user would ask me to do something that wasn’t “part of my job”.  I would give excuses as if I didn’t have enough time, I couldn’t get all my tickets done already or just tell them IT “doesn’t do that”. I would complain to my boss that our users kept asking us to do stuff that wasn’t our job and plead with them to put a stop to it. In fact, I would probably spend more time complaining to various people about a request than the time it would have taken me to just do it. So now when someone asks for help I am the first one to roll up my sleeves and admittedly, will even see things around the building and take the initiative myself.

I heard a great story once from a leadership speaker that really made me think and change my perception of assisting with special requests. The gist of the story was that a president of a successful company was travelling around the US doing in store visits with a larger group of executives. The store manager of that branch welcomed the group into the store, gave them a tour and then sat down for some discussion. After a moment, the store manager realized that the president was not at the table but was walking around in the parking lot picking up trash.

The president could have asked someone to clean it up.  He could have thrown a fit about how dirty the sidewalk was or even reprimanded an employee directly. However, what sort of impact do you think it had on that store manager to see the president out picking up trash and then going on about his business without saying a word? My take away — we as employees work for a company and should never be too proud to do whatever it takes to make our company successful. After all, it is in our best interest for the company to succeed. In the world of advertising, they say that new business is everyone’s business and I think as important; investing in the success of your company is also everyone’s business.

I think it is quite natural for IT to get these types of requests as we tend to be more mechanically inclined, already do a certain amount of manual labor and spend most days running all over the building. I understand that most IT is already excessively busy, and I get that not many other people in the company help. But doing whatever it takes to assure your company is successful is the one thing that is completely within your power to control.

By helping out with special requests when you can it will make your department more valuable, improve the brand of your team and really show management that you are invested in making the company a success. Your customer service will improve, not to mention make your users happy, and you will get a new sense of investment in the company that you work for. I’m not saying that IT should start painting the building, but the next time a user asks you if you can assist with moving a something heavy, consider giving them a hand with a smile and I bet you will both be happy with the results.

I read a lot of articles that talk about how many US businesses outsource their support staff. Companies say outsourcing has many advantages such as reduced costs, increased efficiency, and more time for the company to focus on core competencies. If companies were to find new ways to utilize support staff, they could stop outsourcing, improve their companies’ level of support and grow their business.

Most companies view IT as just a support group as we discussed in an article a few weeks ago. We said that IT departments need to rebrand themselves, and I think this is key. If a company were to use the full potential of their support staff by inserting IT employees into all areas of the business, they could bring those jobs back and get new benefits out of IT employees.

Consider a scenario where you do job shadowing with IT staff — where the IT employee would work part time along side another department employee, a benefit not afforded by outsourced support. This would allow IT to identify efficiencies where technology could benefit workflow and offer personalized solutions. The IT employee would also start to gain insight to additional areas of the business.

You now create a more knowledgeable IT employee that will be able to provide targeted solutions to that team in the future. In addition you create a more technically capable employee in the other department which improves productivity overall. However, there is also the potential to have an IT employee that gains interest in a new position by becoming strong in another discipline. Not that all IT employees want to change careers, but IT may not have a lot of growth potential in many companies and this could offer an alternate career path. It may even be easier to replace an entry level IT employee after you promote them than one from another team.

Maybe this idea wouldn’t stop outsourcing every IT job, but it is surprising that many companies do not consider new ways to use IT employees. IT departments are full of smart, driven and technically capable people that are eager grow their careers. Instead of continuing to try to educate your employees in technology, maybe you should try to educate an IT employee in a new discipline. There could be many other ways that a company can insert IT employees into their business, and I would love to hear some of your ideas in the comments.

I have been creating many solutions lately that utilize Google Docs as the backend for administration or database for the data. I was having a conversation with a peer the other day and they asked me, “Why do you continue to use Google Docs rather than utilizing a database like MySQL to store your data?” I had never really put a lot of thought into it until he asked me, but after some time, here was my response.

Sized just right — even in a large company many of the solutions we create are not large robust web applications and do not have a large user base that is going to be completing thousands of requests per minute, or store massive amounts of constantly changing data.  They are smaller tools utilized by smaller teams and departments with more slowly changing data. These solutions don’t require the robust features of a database to store the data, thus something like a Google Spreadsheet will handle the task quite well.

Administration — Google Docs is already a familiar and robust collaboration tool that is very comfortable to our users. By utilizing a spreadsheet as our administration interface, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to build a custom one.  This saves not only development time and resources, but it maintains consistency, as we only have to train users on one interface. Combine this with the ability to view and edit Google Docs on multiple platforms, including mobile, and you have a great administration interface that would be difficult to recreate on your own.

Reduced infrastructure — because Google Docs is cloud hosted you don’t need to manage another database system.  The data for your solutions will live in the cloud and be highly available and redundant as long as you have an Internet connection.  This can possibly eliminate the need for more hardware, software, backups and management time from your support staff. This can also be a distinct advantage for smaller companies that just cannot afford to invest in infrastructure or hosted solutions.

Safe and available data — there are many articles that discuss the positives and negatives of cloud hosting company data and I am not going to argue that point, but if you accept the risks of cloud hosting your data, there are many advantages.  For Google Docs, in addition to the service naturally being highly available and secure, you also get to take advantage of version control. You can see the history of changes made to your documents at any time and restore to a previous version if necessary. I know a lot of custom web solutions that don’t offer transaction log restores.

Easy provisioning and security — for many custom tools you need to develop an account system with logins, groups, security and controls.  Google Docs is already an established part of your company domain so you can just utilize the built-in account system, and one of the greatest features of Google Docs is the ease in which you can grant and revoke access to your documents within your team. By utilizing the built-in security you again don’t need to focus any development effort to that piece of your solution. In addition, you can also create company wide or individual groups to allow faster sharing options for teams and departments.

Flexibility — With the flexible API it is easy to create custom data entry or reporting interfaces from a Google Document.  This provides a lot of flexibility as you can mix and match based on your needs.  For example you can allow a group of users access to the document directly to do data entry and management, while having the API feed a custom webpage that only displays a subset of data to users in a simpler and more branded interface.  By being able to easily get data in and out in multiple ways, you can offer maximum flexibility in the ways you enter and display data in your solutions.

Google Docs will not be the answer to every web solution. However, with its collaborative features, provisioning, security and robust API, you already have half of the tools required in most custom web solutions.  This allows you to create some quick turn custom solutions and spend more time being creative and less time rebuilding the basics.  Create a couple of easy solutions with Google Docs and I bet you will produce some very cool results.

I was reading a great article the other day on 99% blog called “What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space” and it made me wonder how this applied to IT support. One of the clear connections I made with my staff was how I encourage them to just to take a break and get out of the office to help maintain a small bit of sanity.

Support technicians have it tough working a high stress job that requires them to be on point at all times. For my staff, I feel like it becomes increasingly important to offer them a chance to clear their head, drop their blood pressure and regroup.

Here are a few tips to consider that will allow your support staff to get a way for a little bit each day and save their sanity:

• Eat Lunch Out — Sounds simple enough, but when support staff eats lunch at their desk or in a common area, users cannot help themselves to continue to ask questions. For staff to truly disconnect you should encourage them to get “off campus”.
• Project Time — Give each of your support members a block of time once a day or week to work on non-support related projects.  Even allow them ownership of those projects that will allow them time to flex their creativity and feel good about producing a product.
• Personal Time — Allow each support member the opportunity to have some personal time at work to get organized, catch up on industry news or complete outer department initiatives.
• Support Rotation — I have mentioned this before, but consider placing your support staff on a rotating schedule.  Getting an 3-day weekend here and there can be rejuvenating.
• Time Off is Off Limits — Set a rule for your support team that when a member is out of the office, they are off-limits.  No emails, calls, texts, etc. Allow them to maximize and enjoy the little time they get away from work. Supplement this policy with good team job sharing,  training and documentation.
• Creative Support — Offer support in a different method such as a help bar in the lunchroom or small training classes throughout the day. Rotating your support staff into some non-traditional support venues can make the job more interesting and break up their standard routine to avoid burn out.

To have a successful digital workflow the most important step is the ability for users to approve an item and track the history of those approvals.  Approvals can come in many types; from a pull down menu, automatic user logging, check box to toggle yes/no and even an email. Web-based approval systems typically handle all approvals directly in the solution, however from time to time IT can benefit from keeping things simple and providing users a method to simply place a signature on a digital document.

There are many ways to accomplish digital signatures. Some solutions are complex, have many security controls in place, and involve getting things like security certificates or custom signature files. Other solutions are a bit more simple like using Adobe Acrobat to stamp a “digital signature” into a PDF document with it’s own tracking and history embedded. However, each of these solutions can be difficult to use and closed so that they only work if everyone is using the same software.

Of course some companies IT governance practices require more strict guidelines on digital signatures, but if you are less concerned about the overall security practices and just need a way to mark your X, there are a few simpler options.  So the next time your HR department makes someone sign a form or an employee needs to sign their expense report, consider using a digital signature to reduce printing and create a true digital workflow.

Here are a few quick ways to create a digital signature. You can use applications that can manage signatures like Adobe Acrobat or Preview; or you can just save the signature as a file to recall when you need to copy and paste it onto your document. Regardless of the methods you choose, IT should always promote digital workflow tools as you identify where they can benefit your users.

• My new favorite method is to use the free Preview application that is part of Mac OS 10.7. Apple has added the ability to quickly capture your signature from the built-in camera in your Macintosh.  TUAW had a great overview article of that new feature.
• Using a smart phone or tablet, sign your signature in a note taking application then email it to yourself as a PDF.
• Use a scanner or copier that can scan-to-email to scan your signature and email to yourself.
• Use a dedicated application that can import a PDF files and capture digital signatures.  There are many great digital signature applications out there, like PDF Expert (our favorite, simple PDF form editor) or Sign Docs for iPad.
• Use an online service, which there are also many.  Some are proprietary but some like DocuSign are quite flexible.

Creating digital signature in Apple OS X Lion’s Preview from Digital Workflow CLE on Vimeo.