• GENERAL

Explanation of Outlook Today/Welcome message
- Outlook opens to the last folder viewed, rarely the Outlook Today window
- Not necessary to explain in the handout (?)
Different menu views and how to expand menus
- Covered in all classes
- Not necessary to explain in the handout (?)
Preferences for sorting contacts
- Alphabetical by default
- Further sorting an advanced feature
Keeping under quota
- We don’t enforce quota
Organizing Tool
- Assumes too much and can be difficult
- Advanced feature

• SENDING

Request A Read Receipt
- Rarely used
- Advanced feature

• CONTACTS

Adding Contacts From Scratch
- Redundant, covered in the next section “Creating A New Contact”

• TASKS

Using Tasks Pro
- Tasks Pro falling out of use

• CALENDAR

Inviting Members/Invitations to a Meeting
? Advanced feature

Here’s where Allen gets his:

RedKap Coveralls

downed power lineOriginally uploaded by elphmorgan.

No fried squirrel to be found but the power line across the street from the Deli was down on the ground sparking and smoking. Power was browned out in the ATS and the Next Door and out in the Deli. We ran around and gracefully shutdown all servers then shut down everything else.

Pictures of the scorch marks left in the cement sidewalk…

then close-up…

Well, the reboot of NUPU looked like it was going well last night… For the first three seconds. Then as I had remoted the screen started filling up with help windows. Quickly. As it reached a hundred of them I had gotten to Ctrl-Alt-Del and as that opened it started filling in the comment window with 11111111111111111. I stabbed at the restart button and waited while the count of help windows went from 197 down to 1 and then everything went black.

I started a ping session, noted when it stopped responding and then waited. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. No NUPU.

The drive to Mail Order was uneventful.

When I got to Mail Order I found the server room to be what felt like 110 degrees, but after bringing in a thermometer saw that it was only 90.

Nupu was stuck in recognizing the harddrives and making this pathetic screeching sound, like a kitten under a boot making it’s last gasps. Okay, that may be a bit too vivid.

I pulled the front face plate off of NUPU and the screeching stopped momentarily - I hit the restart button and then replugged in the keyboard and mouse that had popped out of their sockets (being plugged into the front.) As it rebooted I headed out to look for cool. I cranked the A/C in the office to high but it didn’t feel very cold. I then went into the admin office and set the thermostat to FAN ON so that it would at least vent the air from the server room = there’s an air intake in the server room, but no air vent blowing in.

When I got back to NUPU the pathetic mewing had returned and it has stopped at harddrive checks. I pulled on the front faceplate again and the mewing stopped and the boot commenced one step, then the sound returned. Then in a flash of groggy heat-laden insight I yanked the keyboard and mouse plugs out of the front of the machine and the sound stopped and the booting commenced. I followed the cords back and found a backup tape cartridge sitting on the keyboard effectively pressing several keys. One quick swipe to rectify that and plugging the keyboard and mouse back in and the server came up from boot just fine.
The drive home was uneventful.

The latest release of NeoOffice 2.0, alpha 4, has been revised to run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Beta release is still schedule for August 29, 2006.

Download the lastest version of NeoOffice here

The IT geeks in the IT department take to heart a special recipe for customer service, based on the ZCoB recipe for handling customer complaints.

IT Steps to Great Customer Service
1.    RESPOND
•    Respond within 24 hours
•    Ask questions (helps solve and communicates engagement)
•    Provide a fix or a time assessment for a fix
2.    RESOLVE
•    Resolve within time period estimated or renegotiate before deadline
•    Accurately resolve bigger issue
•    Be polite
•    Be enthusiastic
•    Communicate (make sure they know the progress and when the issue is resolved)
3.    DOCUMENT
•    Send an email to the client and IT saying what you did or enter in tracking system
4.    FOLLOW UP
•    After resolving the issue, check back with the client
•    Go the extra mile
•    This may restart the process!

This recipe has worked very well for us. Recently, we’ve found a way to set the bar even higher for customer service!

Apart from our online helpdesk ticketing system, we often hear about problems through calls to our cellphones, personal visits to the office, and face to face requests when we go out to the different businesses. Most of the time, we try to solve them right on the spot. These issues had been going down without a trace.

We’ve implemented a new guideline for handling support issues: LOG EVERYTHING. Even the tiny “it’ll take me two minutes” ones. So far, the effects on our productivity and service have been great!

What are the results?

Our number of trouble tickets increased! That’s a good thing. We are now getting a more accurate picture of the technical health of the ZCoB.

Patterns emerge! When we started logging all the problems we encountered, we saw trends in the tickets and were able to address the larger encompassing issues.

Better communication = faster service! By logging all the issues as they come in, all members of the IT staff can contribute their solutions to issues that otherwise would not have been on their radar. Also, any IT geek regardless of expertise in an area can refer to old tickets to find the appropriate solutions. This helps us resolve problems faster and get our customers happier in no time!

This allows us to make better use of our human resources. Every ticket gets evaluated against the other tickets in the system. The most urgent ones are prioritized and get immediate attention. This way, the last IT geek in the office won’t run off to fix a squeaky printer when there is a critical issue in the system.

Emailing customers info about great food and services from around the ZCoB has been happening for a while. The IT department likes to call it enews, and we’ve helped make it a better way to share the Zingerman’s experience by email

When emailing a large group at once, ‘Cobbers were spending a lot of time creating and sending a message, and more time maintaining a list of recipients. This was done differently in each business, too - some used Excel, some used Outlook, some used special software - and none seemed satisfied.

The new web-based enews service stores address lists, saves messages, schedules delivery, and provides automated maintenance of new subscribers and unsubscribe requests. This saves senders a lot of time and energy.  And because of the service, Billie was able to make great looking, web-friendly email templates with the same look of our websites. Check out the Bakeshop daily specials emails and see the difference.

Before

After

Hey,

So my Macbook has been randomly shutting down for the last couple of days and Wednesday it happened 6 times while I was using it. Called 1800-SOS-APPLE and after giving the Apple Tech my email address he says “That wouldn’t be Zingerman’s Deli would it?” He proceeds to tell me how much he loves our food and that they eat here whenever they come to visit his in-laws in Dearborn. He also admits to having had a mail order a sandwich kit sent to where he lives in Texas. It was easy to tell that he really meant all of the nice things he had said (this is level 2 tech support mind you) and seemed to carry a lot of enthusiasm for our products. The tech ended up giving me the choice of sending it in for repair or having it replaced with a new one(tough decision right?) It’s cool because they really didn’t need to send me a new machine and it’s totally outside of their warranty obligations to completely replace it. Anyway, it’s nice to have a good customer service experience outside of the COB once in a while, especially with a computer manufacturer.

-Brian

Hannah just popped her head out of the Merchandizing space to tell me that she couldn’t get on the Net. (And it’s not just Google this time.) So I went over and did all the troubleshooting steps Elph just taught me this morning. And voila! Fixed! Yay!!

Developed using AJAX!

Displays the daily score. There is no need to refresh the page to get the latest score, thanks to some nifty Javascripting.