If you’re having trouble finding good candidates for your Helpdesk, you might want to take a fresh look at someone who is probably already on your staff.

Your Tier 1 Support is in the Wrong Place

Lots of us started there. Depending on the size of the company you work for, you might still be doing some of it.  Classic Tier 1 support calls are often things like password changes, mouse and keyboard issues, other things often resolved with the end user either rebooting their machine and logging out and back in.

And I’m almost certain that you have the wrong people handling that job, particularly if that person is you or someone one your team who is also responsible for other more technical projects. Stick with me on this for a minute.

I’ve always been a big advocate of the administration departments and the IT departments working closely together and I think that any administrative or executive assistant worth their salt can handle most Tier 1 Helpdesk tickets. Here’s why: they already have their hand on the pulse of pretty major areas of your company and often work directly with executives and managers.

They know what guests and visitors are coming to your location – relevant IT tasks include providing WiFi passwords to guests, explaining how to use the phones and A/V systems and alerting IT ahead of time to guest that need additional resources.

They know when Execs are grumbling about IT issues that can become emergencies (noisy hard drives, problems with applications) and can let IT know ahead of time of pending maintenance issues.

They can easily be cc’d on emails regarding upcoming password expiration for key executives or managers and make sure those people complete those tasks in a timely manner. Resetting passwords and unlocking accounts is a easy activity that can be delegated out to admin staff with a quick training session. With the proper permissions, you can only give them the abilities they need and nothing more.

Opening tickets, resetting voicemail passwords for phone systems, replacing batteries in wireless mice, swapping out broken keyboards, changing printer toners, basic troubleshooting of printer jams, updating job titles in Active Directory… That’s just off the top of my head.

So what good could come of this? First off, there is a big lack of women in systems admin roles. I was just on a WiT panel last week discussing how to get more women into this role. Turns out, 3 out of 4 women on the panel started in administrative roles. It’s a great way for someone to get a glimpse into the “plumbing” of how systems and network administration keep businesses running.

Second, most executive assistants are great managers of time and of people, and can often see and understand the big picture of how a company runs, all characteristics that make successful sysadmins. Letting them handle some of the front facing issues can also take away some of the “mystery” of the IT department.

Integrating these two functions can provide a great cost savings to your company, can provide a pipeline of future staff to pull from when you have an opening in the IT department and as a bonus, you’re doing something to help more women begin their technical careers.

So go ahead, steal the receptionist.

In my troubleshooting steps, I checked testexchangeconnectivity.com and it also reported errors with autodiscover.

The normal troubleshooting steps include checking whether you can get  to OWA, but you can’t use https with a managed account! 

I then checked on the parental controls and tried to add the OWA site to the list of allowed websites, but that did not solve the problem. I must have googled for 30 minutes trying to find the fix and stumbled upon this fix which was the solution. It worked! With thanks to http://heednotsteve.wordpress.com

• open the terminal utility (found in Applications/Utilities/terminal)
• type host then space then the exchange server name 

• 

• copy the IP address it returns
• type host then space then paste the IP address from the previous step
• the terminal will return a domain, copy the address after the domain name pointer: 
• Copy that address and paste it into the list of allowed sites. 
• 
• Outlook magically starts working, with other parental controls intact!

learn IT today, use IT tomorrow

TechDays-SF 

and you can’t beat the price given the quality of such presenters as Mark Minasi, Jeff Hicks, Darren Mar-Elia, Steve Evans, Laura Hunter, Christa Anderson, Kevin Remde + many more we have lined up. We have a 200 attendee capacity. It will again be $300 for the two days. In addition, we have added the event to Lanyrd - a popular site for listing and interacting with conferences in a social way. Plus this year we will be utilizing EventBoard to host the Mobile app and allow you to provide feedback on the sessions

These apps really allow you to make quick decisions about emails, without the fear of losing them. I love the combination so far.

Both of these apps add labels to your Gmail account, as that is the mechanism they use to filter your mail.

Mailbox on iPhone - What’s different?

The Mailbox app uses gestures to handle each email. For example, if I swipe a message gently to the right, it will archive it. If I swipe all the way to the right it gets deleted. If I swipe gently to the left I have options for snoozing a message. This feature is awesome as it gets the email out of my inbox but brings it back at the day or time I choose. The snooze options are thoughtfully designed, Later Today, This Evening, Tomorrow, This Weekend, Next Week, In a month, and Someday. Guess which one is my favorite? Swiping all the way left moves the message into folders (labels in gmail) called To Read, To Buy, etc and these can all be customized to your liking.

query session /server:servername

Once I sorted out which session I wanted to kill, I used this command:

reset session [ID] /server:servername

Thanks to How To Geek for the reminder http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/command-line-hack-for-terminal-server-has-exceeded-the-maximum-number-of-allowed-connections/

The Voucher code is NEW2P and it can be used as many times as you would like through February 28th, 2013, feel free to share with whomever you would like.

There are lots of ways to take advantage of this limited offer from our award winning website www.Newark.com to our knowledgeable and friendly team waiting to take your call at 1 800 463 9275. You may also send your quote to quote@newark.com or email a purchase order to order@newark.com.

My order arrived today so I’ve got to get to tinkering.

Jessica DeVita

Providing same day service isn’t always possible, but when we can do it we will. I love saving the day for a great client who has been with us since day 1.

WHAT: Girls in Tech LA partners with Microsoft and UberGeekGirl Jessica DeVita (Microsoft MVP for LA) to present a Windows 8 mobile and desktop apps building workshop! At this all-day workshop, Microsoft evangelists will thoroughly train from soup to nuts. By mid-day you’ll be building an app with an all-star team! Cash prizes to be awarded.

WHO: Calling women college students and professionals throughout LA – aspiring and experienced female coders, developers and app-builders! Required: Very basic programming experience.

WHERE: Microsoft Office in Downtown LA

WHEN: Date: Saturday, January 19, 2013

WHY: Girls in Tech LA realizes the untapped pool of aspiring female developers and we make it our goal to provide opportunities for growth, education and exciting challenges. Why Windows 8? Microsoft Surface is selling out, Windows 8 mobile is going gang busters! Join Microsoft and Girls in Tech LA to learn how to make money with your app and capitalize on the next generation of tablets. We’ll even show you how to market your app in the Microsoft app store!

BRING: A laptop (Windows or Mac)

To register: Windows 8 unleashed

http://www.channelpro-digital.com/channelpro/201209#pg1