IT Help Desk Qs

[Rubicone]

If someone who has worked in a Help Desk environment can answer all or any of the following questions I would greatly appreciate it. TIA.

1. Which of the following problems would you assign the highest priority? Explain why.

• The Marketing Department Colour LaserJet printer isn’t working.
• The E-mail server is down.
• A hub is malfunctioning in the Corporate Accounting Department.
• The CEO of the company’s workstation is locked up.

2. You receive a call from the CEO regarding a problem with their home multifunction fax/printer. He needs it to be able to send and receive an important fax. Your supervisor is on vacation and there is only two Technical staff in the office. What do you do?

3. A person has just sent a request to the help desk that they are unable to print a report from a proprietary application. Please explain how you would go about troubleshooting this issue for each of the situations described below.

• No error messages are reported on the client machine.
• The user receives an “SQL Time Out” error.

4. A user has just called that their account is locked out. How could this lock out occur and how would you solve the problem?

5. A problem has been reported that a heavily linked excel sheet is not opening for a particular user. What could be wrong and how would you go about solving this problem?

6. A remote site has called in that they are unable to work on their system. What would you do?

7. The VP of Marketing has reported a problem with the Weekly Sales Report. This report is highly visible in the company. What would you do?

8. The help desk is suddenly flooded by calls where users are reporting a similar error message. What would you do?

9. The bookkeeping department is reporting that the month end trial balance has a variance. What would you do?

10. Compose a company wide memo to warn everyone about the latest virus threat.

[AzKidd69]

Question 1> Email server then CEO ( that way he doesn't freak when his box comes back up and his email is borked), then the hub then the printer ( unless it is the printer that prints out paychecks and today is the day to print em. IF so printer is #1)

Q2>Troubleshoot over the phone, see if you can track down a friend for a favor if T/S over phone fails, go do it and let the lusers suffer.. lol

Q3> not sure right now. but the SQL error.. make sure the SQL DB is up and the user/app is succesfully logging in

Q4> they called.. sorry no help for you sucker. carry your butt to MY office. (security reasons)

Q5>rights? network connectu\ivity? someone else have it open? too many users?

Q6> tell em to call back with more detailed info.

Q7> depends on the problem

Q8>take the phone of the hook, then investigate and fix...

Q9>fixing numbers is bookkeepings job....

Q10>if bored, and after making sure A/V updates pushed to workstations, and the email gateway A/V has up to date definitions

[Jack Hannibal]

Q1
Priority 1 - E-mail server, as this impacts the most staff and impacts client communications
Priority 2 - the hub, as this also impacts multiple customers
Priority 3 - CEO
Priority 4 the color printer, rated the lowest as they should be able to direct putput to another color printer

Q2
Empathize with him and make a best effort on the fax issue. If a certain resolution is not had within ten minutes, tell him he will need to come into a local office. Have him bring the fax machine in only if it was purchased by the company for him.

Q3
No error on the client:
Determine if there is an error on the printer itself.
Confirm if others also encounter the same error when printing in the proprietary app
Confirm if the customer and/or others can print to this same printer using another app

SQL time out:
Confirm if others also encounter the same error when printing in the proprietary app
Confirm if the customer and/or others can print to this same printer using another app
Reboot
Reinstall the app
Have the customer use the proprietary app on another system to confirm if it is workstation or id specific

Q4
Determine which account (windows, AD, proprietary app etc.). Follow established security processes to ensure you are not being duped.

Q5
Does the issue occur if the file is copied locally?
Confirm if other customers have the same issue
Has it worked previously for the customer
Confirm their access
Reboot

Q6
Have them provide more specific information
What particular process/app isn't functioning?
What errors are encountered?
What steps are being taken to produce the issue?
How many customers are impacted?

You need more info to troubleshoot further.

Q7
You need more info to troubleshoot further.

Q8
Confirm the outage promptly.
Modify you upfront greeting to confirm to the customer support staff are aware of the issue and are working on it
Get somebody working on it promptly to minimize the outage impact

Q9
Not a helpdesk issue. Redirect them to another appropriate group or to the customer's superior

Q10
I am not sure this is a question.
Assuming the help desk is responsible for company wide communications, create a memo identifying the virus issue and also confirm steps are being taken to minimize the potential virus impact. Hopefully, the group responsible for ensuring dats on the mail and file servers have processes in place to auto update the dats.