How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer
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One of the most important skills in IT.
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This makes me understand the need for documentation and wikis a lot more. Do you guys find that not everyone documents their process well, or is it overall a common thing that everyone does?
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@mary said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
This makes me understand the need for documentation and wikis a lot more. Do you guys find that not everyone documents their process well, or is it overall a common thing that everyone does?
Documentation is one of the hardest things for people to do well, and one of the most likely to be skipped. It's hard to imagine any shop not struggling with documentation. Getting a "documentation culture" is key to good support. Especially as shops try to scale past one or two people, or beyond a "one room" shop where everyone can just talk to everyone else directly.
A good doc repo (like the wiki that you mention) to track state, and a good ticket system to track action, as so important. But until you are on the disaster side of it a few times, it's hard to understand how blind you are without them.
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@scottalanmiller said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
t until you are on the disaster side of it a few times, it's hard to understand how blind you are without them.
Documentation is also super expensive. It can in some cases take more time to document something than it does to implement it. Many IT folks live in a constant state of things to be fixed, updated, etc.. so spending time on documentation is something management often doesn't see the value in until, well, until the disaster Scott spoke of.
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@Dashrender said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
Documentation is also super expensive. It can in some cases take more time to document something than it does to implement it.
This is where MSPs struggle. Customers sometimes give you a hard time if you try to do a proper job. They want quick and dirty, but then later want documentation that they didn't want to pay for.
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So is IT always dealing server based problems?
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@connorsoliver said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
So is IT always dealing server based problems?
When there is a server problem it is ALWAYS an IT problem. Even if that server is cloud hosted, IT will deal with the provider directly until it is resolved.
That being said not ALL issues are server based. Workstations and network devices account for many issues as well.
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@connorsoliver said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
So is IT always dealing server based problems?
Not sure how you mean the question. Are you asking...
- Will server issues every go away? Then.. no.
- Is IT always responsible for servers? Then... yes.
- Will servers always exist? Then... yes.
- Will servers always have issues? Then... yes.
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Very Interesting, but sometimes it is difficult to document all the issues we resolved because we have many tickets or because we are not sure where to do it properly, of course we document what we are doing on the tickets, so would be nicer that tickets can also be like a WIKI to search resolved tickets to find out how to resolve similar tickets, well that is just an idea.
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@brianwinkelmann said in How to Troubleshoot - CompTIA A+ 220-1001 Prof Messer:
Very Interesting, but sometimes it is difficult to document all the issues we resolved because we have many tickets or because we are not sure where to do it properly, of course we document what we are doing on the tickets, so would be nicer that tickets can also be like a WIKI to search resolved tickets to find out how to resolve similar tickets, well that is just an idea.
Good ticket systems can generally be searched, to some degree. But it is generally considered better to document elsewhere because customer specific details are rarely relevant.
Rule of thumb...
If you need to document something that includes secret customer details, do so in a private wiki.
If you need to document a general fix or process then use a community like MangoLassi to publish it publicly.
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@brianwinkelmann An organization of any size almost needs someone dedicated to documentation to do it right in my opinion. They might be able to get away with doing it half the time and some other role the other half, but one person will do it a lot quicker and standardized than everyone being responsible for their own documentation. Of course you have to have the right company culture for it. My work does not, no one wants to share what they did or how they do things. I think they just hack at it so much they dont want to share or take the time in the first place.
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@scottalanmiller You can also use a website for this. I have some private pages on my website where i list things I need to look up occasionally. They aren't secret details or anything but just key things I did for this software or how I helped this user. That kind of stuff.
