April 1, 2014

Through my time at the Student Help Desk, I realized how important it is to provide details and if details are not provided, ask questions. From the consultant side, it is very hard for us to help students/faculty if there is a lack of details. However from the client side, details is the least of their concern, they just want to let the consultants know of the issue not realizing that there is a deeper cause.

I had the pleasure of answering a short email. There was little to no information and I had to ask a bunch of questions to make sure that the issue that is happening is the one I can help solve.

One thing that Diane wanted to highlight was the IT System Status on the DoIT Page. This page helps us know if a system is working or not. It lets those who check the DoIT website if blackboard is down or if solar is down. It is very informative and not many people utilize it. From a consultant perspective, it can help us diagnose an issue. The issue could be the program itself or the user’s way of opening a program. Certain browsers will pose a problem where as some websites (ie.Solar) work on less popular browsers (ie. On the Mac, Solar works better on safari than chrome, at least for me). Some people can open Solar on Chrome and other’s can’t.

I highly advise students to take a look at this before going to their friends and asking them of solar works for them. If solar is down, chances are it’s not working for anyone.

Another thing I want to highly about the DoIT website is Maintenance Schedule. Some people don’t realize that these programs need to be updated and there are set times where they need to be updated. Updates have been prescheduled and everyone is able to access when it’s going to happen. I find that when a lot of people do not know what is going on, they think that something is broken.

This will help students plan a lot more effectively when it comes to accessing these various programs. Unfortunately this is not something the students can control so they would have to work their schedule around the maintenance time.