Troubleshooting in IT. How to quickly gain expertise 
Tags: debugging, it, hardware, troubleshooting
Published: 2021-01-31 15:56:48

   My freshman year I took on an internship with Westfield State University in order to learn more about IT. My supervisor Valerie Depina had informed me that the director, Lynn Zayac, was also a sociology professor. On Top of the IT work, some interns were tasked with making animations to help Lynn give her students visuals, or learning objects, to better understand concepts. Myself and a few other interns  had created a few learning objects using Adobe Edge Animate. We would collect sprites off of open source software such as canva.com and use them inside the animations. 


Another one of my responsibilities during the internship at the department was trouble shooting. Massachusetts is one of the best states in America when it comes to online learning. UMASS Lowell is known as the best school in America when it comes to online learning. In order to compete, in 2016, Westfield State decided to bolster its efforts in the online learning space. The center for Instructional Technology started to host  “Web Camp.” This camp was used as a way to teach professors at Westfield State how to use BlackBoard, Plato, Screen-cast-omatic, office 365, and various other technologies in order to help them teach students online. During Web Camp, the interns served as player coaches because not only did we have to learn the ins and outs of all the different softwares, we also had to help out some of the instructors who were having issues with their systems as we ourselves were learning along with them. 


Some of the issues we encountered during webcamp were with synchronization. One professor would try and access some of his word or excel files in order to complete the web camp exercises. When trying to access the files, he noted that some did not appear visible. I asked him If he had saved all of his work onto his tablet and he swore that he did. After restarting his tablet and checking the same file again, I started suspecting that there were synch problems going on in his system. We checked out some of his wifi settings, made sure his One Drive information was up to date, restarted the tablet, and was able to find his files. Other issues also arose later on in Web Camp when Professor’s had to re-subscribe to Office only to have a discrepancy between the Office 365 ID and password. This was an easy fix as you could just reset the password. 


After my first semester as an intern, I was hired as a student staff member. Valerie liked the help I gave to the professors so she decided to move animations onto the interns and have me focus on the help desk. My duties for help desk consisted of many tasks like answering help desk tickets during and after school hours, maintaining software updates to all in house devices, ensuring that all devices (laptop,desktop and tablets) were clear of any malware or bloatware, keeping stock of essential equipment, and troubleshooting issues for students and staff members of Westfield State both in person or over the phone. Myself and the other student staff members would rotate our shifts when answering help desk tickets. Often times I would stay on call during night and weekend. These questions would range from students asking to reset passwords to students notifying us that professors had uploaded incorrect documents in which we would have to contact the professor to fix the problem. However, issues would sometimes popup that were beyond my control. In cases like this I would have to reassign the ticket to either the supervisor or the head of the department in order to implement some administrative changes. 

 
Troubleshooting over the phone was one of the harder aspects of moving over to the help desk. I worked as a student staff member for the help desk from 2017 to 2019. This was before the pandemic and before zoom was popular. In order to properly diagnose issues, I would have to carefully communicate with folks who would sometimes have a hard time navigating their operating system. I’d open my laptop and walk through each and every single step carefully so that the client never misclicked anything. Constantly keeping up with them by asking questions like “Do you see the plus button to the right of where its asking you for your information? Click that and enter all the necessary information its asking for.” Once, during my junior semester, a few students and I were all taking an Elements of Systems Programming class together. I remember two of them being hardcore gamers and would allocate a significant portion of their RAM to gaming. This would hurt them in the class because when working on in class assignments, their machines would slow to a halt. They did not allocate enough RAM for their Ubuntu systems to run at a fast enough pace to follow the instructions of the professor. They knew I worked for the department, so one of them decided to give me a call. Matt called me first looking to speed up his Ubuntu system since he couldn’t afford to let his grade drop any further. Since I was relatively familiar with Ubuntu at that point, I was able to troubleshoot his problems enough to the point where he ended up allocating enough RAM for his Ubuntu to run at breakneck speeds with the power of his gaming laptop. Matt tried helping Ethan allocate his memory but since he wasn’t experienced communicating, Ethan eventually ended up calling me on the department line. We went through the exact same process. 


A few times issues would come in areas where we weren’t prepped for. We had a few students and professors who would come in with bricked iPhones or tablets. We still decided to help them out anyway by searching on reddit forums and watching youtube videos. Eventually we were able to figure out how to boot up the devices and provide excellent customer service while also adding more techniques to our toolbelt. 


I’ve gained knowledge quickly about effective troubleshooting methods mostly because of my resourcefulness. If I’m working in an area in which I’ve never encountered before, I pay close attention to fail statements and input those same exact fail statements into Google, Bing, Youtube or post questions to reddit forums or discord servers. The reason why I’m such a fan of forums and online servers is because I like to remain in areas in which the people who I’m associating with are much more competent in the specified field of study than I am. This ensures that the only advice I comes from top tier professionals that I can rely on. It also forces me to retain their knowledge and put it into my own toolkit so I can troubleshoot unfamiliar problems with more ease.


During the pandemic I decided to catch up with a few friends who had gone on to get hired due to their background in IT. One friend specifically mentioned how his company mandates that when new tech has been deployed, every common inquiry from clients requires a knowledge article to be written. A knowledge article is a detailed document about certain problems, how the client most likely ended up at that error, and how to solve the error and keep it from happening. This document usually consists of photos, embedded videos, directions that will need to be typed into certain input fields, and many other visuals that can help guide non-technical clients. One friend had sent me one of their knowledge articles to give me a better idea of the concept. It seemed like such a simple yet smart way of communicating ideas. I’ve used knowledge articles to give simple solutions to errors and  to better express my ideas and showcase my expertise in other fields of study. Instead of taking up time between the two parties to set up an appointment and one trying to instruct the other, its a smarter idea to have documentation ready so that the other party can have a way or fixing issues themselves at any time.