Call Center

Went To Kingston Again Today

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Gus, Dan, and I took a road trip to kingston today to see a demo of some call monitoring software. it was really cool software. It can record calls our reps are on (we can do that with this package already), view screen shots of what the rep does on the call, and QA how they do and give them a rating. Nifty stuff.

I learned that Gus drives crazier than Dan. I also learned that when the NYC AC is working it is more comfortable in NYC than in Kingston. I survived the drive so I am happy. I am back home now. I was on the way out the door to meet up with people from work for a drink but I got a call stating that our dam reports website was not updating. I don’t know if anyone will be around by the time I get downtown.

Allot To Write About

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I have allot to write about, but for some reason don’t feel that up to writing today. So here will be a quick recap of the weekend.

I continued to throw stuff out of my apartment in anticipation of my move next month.

I am also getting ready to ebay a bunch of tech stuff I have. I realized that allot of my crap is not worth that much anymore used. So it is easier to just keep it and or give it away.

Had dinner with Carrie, and my grandmother tonight. Morgan also! My grandmother was in to visit my cousin who is sick. She took us to dinner. it was actually pleasant. That is not always the case with my grandmother.

Got a hair cut on Saturday. My regular barber wasn’t there. Not sure what his deal was. His father did my hair. Didn’t do a good job. it is ok, but he didn’t listen to me when I gave him instructions. That may be the last time I go to that place since I am moving. I need to find a new place in the city for next time.

We had an issue with one of our Call Manager Servers Saturday that caused it to fail. The second machine in the cluster took over fine, but we had about 15 seconds of down time while that happened. Kai is working on getting a patch for it. I spent allot of Saturday working on the phone system because of that, and other issues.

The plus side is I did some more work on our IVR. I even setup our own for Support, to prove the concept. An IVR for support is overkill but we had extra 800#’s and it shows that they system can work.

This blog entry was written while listening to Machine Head by Bush

Back From My Trip

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I have been away. I am back now. The trip to Kingston went well. Dan and I left Tuesday afternoon. He rented a soccer mom white mini van. We piled in all the gear we needed to take with us and we drove up to the office. We got there around 7:45PM Tuesday. Dumped our cargo and went to dinner at the hotel. We stay at the Holiday Inn. People around there say it is the nicest Ho/Motel. It is ok, but not the greatest.

We ate dinner, and had a few drinks. There is nothing else to do up there. We got up early Wednesday so we could be at the office by 8AM to meet the electricians.

As far as I could tell things went over without major issue. We left at 3PM Wednesday. I was going to stay over till thursday so I could finish overseeing the cable work, but it was well under way and Kai had it under control.

It was funny Dan and I have done 3 physical moves for our company and several construction projects together. This time we were standing around going what do we do now? There wasn’t much for us to do, and we got nervous because of that. Of course in reality it meant that things were running smoothly, but it is a weird feeling if you are not used to it:)

While we were away, the AC in NYC went out again. Or shall I say the temporary AC’s went out on the hottest day of the year so far. Also problems abound on the project to fix the permanent units. It was supposed to be done by Friday, and the completion date will likely slip.

It was so hot Wednesday that Jayson and Gretchen came over and we all went into the pool after I got home from the trip. We ended up at the out back for dinner at like 10PM. I love that place, but I didn’t want to go, since I was trying to save money. Unfortunately the deli by me was closing and we couldn’t get anything there. Oh well. I wish my only problem was HAVING to goto the outback because everything else was closed. I can live with that.

Packing

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I am on my way home to pack for a trip to Kingston. Dan and I are going for a minimum of one night. I may end up there a second night. I don’t want to be there for 2 days so I will do everything in my power to leave Wednesday night with Dan. We leave tomorrow afternoon right after work.

We are shuttling up some computer equipment also, so we will need time to fill up the van with stuff.

I need to make sure I have clothes and my laptop charger and misc stuff packed tonight. I originally wanted to go see the new Harry Potter movie with Jayson and Gretchen, but I can’t stay in the city for the movie and be able to pack tonight.

For that reason I and many others, I cannot wait till I can move into the city.

Road Trip, But Not A Fun One

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I went to Kingston Wednesday. I came back from Kingston Wednesday. That sum’s up my day Wednesday.

Not sure when I will do that again. The train was delayed both ways due to track work. That is the second time in a row that happened. I think this may be a summer project or something. I don’t want to deal with that again.

Kai is on vacation in St. Thomas, so I went up to meet with some electricians about some new construction work we are planning. I also wanted to give Brian a hand. I don’t want the guy to be too overworked while Kai is away. I ended up not doing too much work with him. Stuff in NYC occupied allot of my time. From problems with our new fulfillment FTP system that was going live, to VLAN issues with users. I did get some work done on a new computer build (we got a new model desktop in) but I am no where near completion.

I got or thought I was getting a migraine in the afternoon right when I was getting on the train to go home. I took 2 butabitol’s on the train and felt better. I also slept or at least rested comfortably for 30-40 minutes on the train because of them (or so I think).

Remote Agents And Terminal Server

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While I was awake and not sleeping last night, I thought about my remote agent design issues. Currently we have schematics of different electronic and home appliance parts on CD’s we use to look up stuff. The problem is they take up a huge amount of drive space. We get updates every month that need to be added to the existing data. This is fine when a computer is on our network, we just run the update from our file server. What do you do when you have remote computers over a VPN WAN link trying to get the same update? Pushing out 500 megs to 2 users is possible, but what about 20, or 200? It becomes unfeasible due to bandwidth limitations.

One option is to not give the remote agents this software, but they rely on it. My thoughts then turned to Terminal Services. What if all the updates are on the central server, and users just connected to the server via terminal services. That way I don’t have to worry about anything on the local machine except for an IP address and terminal client working.

This is contingent on our phone control software working with Terminal Services. I believe it does, but an answer to that question is easy enough to get.

The next problem is cisco soft phone. I doubt it would work through terminal services. We may need to go with a physical cisco IP phone at a person’s house. It adds cost per user, but it may be necessary. Also going with a hardware VPN solution is looking better than a software solution. If anything goes wrong with the remote computer we would be responsible to manage it. We cannot troubleshoot software issues like vpn over the phone, and we are not equipped to send someone onsite to fix problems like that.

A hardware VPN device that we can remote into and verify it is working, along with terminal services is looking like a good solution. it is not the cheapest but maybe the most feasible. We would require someone to have their own computer, and all they would need to put on it is terminal client. That takes 5 minutes to setup. Wire up a VPN router from cisco or linksys plug in a phone and they are up and running.

Now all I have to do is sell everyone on the solution and make sure it works from a technical standpoint.

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Mozilla Vs. I.E.

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Over a year ago I saw a few articles about Mozilla.org.. Then I saw Gus using it, and all he could do was rave about it. I gave it a try, and I haven’t looked back since. I now use it on my Mac’s, PC’s and any Linux machine I use. Switching is like switching to a Mac from a PC. You always see everyone else using Internet Explorer and I try to convert them. Being the software and hardware standards maker at my company also allowed me to attempt to push it out to everyone.

When we built out our new Call Center, I put in the computer image a setup for Mozilla. No one really used it, but I wanted it there. A few months ago we had an issue with I.E. for a day and we got some people to try it out. Guess what, they liked it. That fateful day also got me to develop a way to push out favorates to our Rep’s. That was the final technical reason for not using Mozilla.

Kai then began a campaign, some would say religous crusade to get people to addopt Mozilla. He touted the huge memory advantage of using tabbed browsing, and how cool pop up blocker was, etc. People slowly started to see what we were saying for a year, that Mozilla is good.

Now we have well over half of our call center using the software. That number is increasing every week, since we are also encourperating its use in the training sessions for all new hires.

The only down side was I never realized how many people were using the software. Our developers never wrote our internal application to run on Mozilla. For a year I used it and it worked fine, but last week we had a new release go out that caused issues with Mozilla. The problem is all sorted out now, and all our dev guy’s know to write code to work with it.

I am happy that I was able to get such so many people to addopt using Mozilla. Maybe they will start using it at home also? You never know. Thanks to Kai, Brian, Keith, & Gus for their parts in getting the system out their over the past year and change. Thanks to Nelson for being my first Beta Tester (as always).

Construction Delays

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Since I am out on Jury duty Dan has postponed the cube redesign scheduled for this thursday. As of now it seems I will be out all week. The newly scheduled date is next thursday.

Also on the construction front is the preparation for new cubes in Kingston. We have one cable quote, and we are waiting for a new one. Once that is done we begin plan’s on Phase III of our call center build out. I guess Phase II would be the adding the remaining cubes. Phase III would be the plan to double the call center size with new space. That plan is underway now. We meet architects on Thursday to discuss the designs.

It looks like Kai and Brian will loose their office when we do the construction. The kitchen won’t be big enough for all the people we plan on holding. The IS office can be moved and a wall can be broken down and the kitchen can expand into the IS office. Because of the size of the office when the construction is done we will need a second telecom room to accommodate the new cable runs we will need.

With all this construction I at least know what my summer will be like.

Kingston Again

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Tomorrow I have to goto Kingston again. This trip is to see the plans for our expansion of our call center. If you consider phase 1 opening the call center. Phase 2 will be to fill out the call center with the max amount of seats in the current physical space. Phase 3 is what we are going to discuss. That will be to build another section of the call center that will double the total area when completed.

I will also meet with Kai and Brian about any open issues we have going on. I know Kai and I need to talk about adding licenses to our phone system. We are maxing the system out at peak times recently.

Dan and I are taking the train up together. Glenn will meet us there by car later in the day. We should be getting a ride from him back to the city in the afternoon.

Productive Day

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I had a really productive day in Kingston. Kai, Brian, and I met and got some due dates on a few projects done. I got a new project from Gus regarding upgrading our FTP system also. Fixed some issues in both offices, and answered a few trouble tickets.

It was one of those days where I worked and got allot out of the way, but it feels like I didn’t do very much. I know it is that way because I was in meetings and other planning sessions, but I still feel like I got no projects closer to completion.

I took Kai, & Brian out to an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. Not many other places to go up there that will be good for most people. That is why we go there every time. I like the food so I don’t mind. It is no angelo & maxi’s or Outback for that matter, but it is ok. I am on the 5PM train out of Kingston (RHI) but it was an hour late so it left at 6PM. I was supposed to be on the 6PM train but it was also late. I didn’t want to wait so I got on whatever train showed up first going to NYC.

It will be a long day today. I won’t get into my apartment until 8:45PM the earliest if I am luck. Lets hope this train shows up when scheduled (7:40) so I can catch the 7:49 train to my apartment. The jury is still out on that one.

I was active (either physically or mentally) all day, so I was awake. Now sitting on the train I am finally getting tired from the work and allergy medication.

This blog entry was written while listening to Washin’ and Wonderin from the album “Nasty Little Thoughts” by Stroke 9