[PLUG] End user testing tools - was: Email question

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Thu Jul 9 18:17:05 UTC 2009


> >On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:24 PM, linux-yug <linux-yug at xprt.net> wrote:
> If an end user were to call you saying they cannot send email through
> their local hosted POP3/SMTP server, how would you go about
> troubleshooting the issue
...

On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 07:55:46AM -0700, Donkyhotay wrote:
> Depends on your customer and most likely when dealing with servers you'd 
> probably get a better answer but in my experience whenever I ask "what 
> happens when you try to [whatever they are complaining about not being 
> able to do]?" I'm usually answered with "I just told you it doesn't work!"

Oh, goody!  Tell them that the email maintenance form will be arriving
in their mailbox in a couple of days, they can fill it out and send it
back, and if they filled the form out right, you might fix their email.

Alternately, have your good buddy in telecom disconnect their telephone,
so they can't bother you.  In drastic cases, your good buddy in the 
county health department can quarantine their cubicle.

... :-)

Seriously, most of the questions you want the answers to can be asked
with a data gathering application, which the user can run, then print
out the response (or if the printer isn't working, read from the 
screen).  Such an app, customized for a particular organization, could:

(1) ... put the user in adult problem solving mode, not "mommy-I-got-an-
owie-I'm-gonna-throw-a-tantrum" mode.  Most of what drives tantrums is
powerlessness - give them some power, a program to dominate, not you.

(2) ... collect much of the debugging data automatically - connectivity
status, programs added, etc.  

(3) ... present the data unambiguously - the user is reading the
page/screen, not blovating about bad computers or incompetent sysadmins.

(4) ... produce a faxable printed page, bypassing the net.

I just maintain email for myself and my wife and my small businesses. 
However, if I was working as a sysadmin and supporting more than half
a dozen users in a homogenous computing environment, I would find the
time to develop, deploy, and upgrade such an application so I could
speed up the solution process and minimize the yammering idiocy in my
life.  There would still be too much yammering, but at least I could
delay it until after the basic repetitive questions were answered.

And I would lobby to get the app approved as standard operating
procedure by management.  Most managers love approved procedures
and standardized workflows.  That way, when some clown goes ballistic
when you ask for data from the app or form, it is their personnel
file that gets the "needs psychiatric help" memo, not yours.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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