IT support, take One

When working in IT support, there are endless possibilities to develop the way you work.

Not long ago, the typical IT support role was not itself supported by effective tools. A lot of the stuff was being tracked using spreadsheets and other ad-hoc tools, that did not support the “flow”. Information got really splintered and spread across places, without it being actively updated or available in an easy way.

IT support tasks can be roughly divided to a few archetypes. Although not an official list, this is my view:

• information giving
• access granting, invites, initiation of a user account into a system
• software support — installations and availability of software suites
• licensing questions
• generic support for using a particular software

Support can be given in a few basic levels.

On-site support technician takes care of some of the daily running issues as well, and makes sure that users can receive tutoring for issues that are easier to handle by actually showing, hands-on.

Remote IT support engineer works by having a remote connection, possibly ability to view the Desktop of the user, and talking to the user.

Modern IT is rather standardized nowadays. Often we have a pretty standard way of working:

• laptop
• charger
• company phone
• standard “off-the-shelf” software like MS Office or the like

Onsite, it’s more diverse. What brings a great variation to the tasks are various onsite hardware setups, nowadays we are used to meeting rooms with communication gear such as the camera, sound set up, and possibly customized software.

Preparation is key to success

Like with many jobs, preparedness and team work is key to success. Software and IT goes forward quite fast, and that’s been the case for as long as I remember. Sharing effectively the new knowledge coming out of real support cases is one the key elements to working in IT support.

Whereas things were often really static, even for months, now you can expect some updates and changes to software on a weekly, even daily basis.

What are good strategies here?

It sounds on the surface that you can’t be a master user of all softwares out there. True. You cannot do that. There’s simply too much to follow, if you took this strategy as a coping method.

Rather, work with users: be curious; ask, get to know new things, and then help and find out. Soon you will see the issue coming up on another case. Share your knowledge to your team. Keeping up with the pace is best done by taking a open, sharing attitude.

Even though digital systems and software are kind of “picky”, in that they still insist on doing things in a particular way, and quite often can tolerate deviance from this path, there seldom is a doomsday scenario lurking behind a wrong choice. If in doubt, share, have the issue in your daily Standup, discuss over it, and get back to the customer.