Jeff, I was in your boat and one thing I went to was a ticketing system. I first went to Keystone but then say Tom Limoncelli's book "Time Management for System Adminstrators" It is a great thing to read and have on hand. From that I started using Request Tracker by Bestpracticals. (RT) www.bestpracticals.com. It handles requests directly and also via email. You can have your folks send their requests to an email address and then answer them through RT.
I added the Asset Tracker portion and use that for tracking compnents at my 20 sites I manage. It also has an RTFM section (Frequently asked questions). I run an Intranet Website for my documentation as I started this before Wikis were invented but have recently started one for the day that I get hit by that perverbial beer truck and they need something. Read Tom's book and you will gain a lot of incite. John Boris JEN-A-SyS Administrator Archdiocese of Philadelphia "See you at PICC'10, where all Sysadmins will meet. May 7-8" http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/ >>> Jefferson Cowart <j...@cowart.net> 04/22/10 3:22 AM >>> I currently work at a smallish site. I am one of 2 system/network administrators and together we manage ~75 servers (fairly heterogeneous mix of Windows 2000-2008, Linux, and OS X), a half dozen different small storage arrays, associated tape backup software/hardware, about 3 dozen switches, wireless, server room management, various low level applications (active directory, exchange, DNS, DHCP, etc.), etc. along with a number of support requests that come in from our user support and application groups. The other administrator spends a fair amount of his time on our VoIP infrastructure and our skill sets differ a significant amount. While I'm working on resolving that with better documentation and such (We have an internal wiki we use for documentation and my co-workers are getting used to my answering "It's on the wiki; go read there and then ask if it doesn't answer your question."), the result is I get a fairly steady stream of interruptions that get in the way of medium and long term projects. I frequently find myself dealing with so many little things throughout the day that by the end of the day I feel like I've been busy but can't really point at what I've done during the day. One thing I think would be helpful would be to better track where I'm spending my time. Once I've got that data I can better understand the time sinks and take appropriate action (e.g. perhaps there's some narrow area that if I were to do some better cross-training of co-workers would let them deal with some issue themselves rather than having to involve me). What techniques/tools/etc. have people found that are useful to do that? Any other general time management suggestions for that sort of a small environment? -- Thanks Jefferson Cowart j...@cowart.net _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
