Training, what do you recommend?

**DFW_Tech_Kenny** · June 6th, 2002, 02:57 PM

My senior supervisor, person that is over my current boss, is asking the techs what "training" we feel would help us in our jobs. Also he wanted to know what "training" would help the Help Desk Techs do their job better.

Basically I'm a "field" tech, I resolve all calls the Help Desk can not correct over the phone, this ranges from printers to software to basic networking. They only things I do not handle are "server" requests and "networking ( wiring )". TIA.

**Can't Catch Me** · June 6th, 2002, 06:02 PM

how about how to find a good sunset?

**SubZero** · June 6th, 2002, 06:20 PM

moving to tech to tech.

**EvilCabbage** · June 6th, 2002, 06:49 PM

Cisco CCNA is a good course to take, Redhat Linux are also offering certification of sorts, if thats your thing.

It depends on what direction you want to take with your career, and how much of your own time you are willing to dedicate to it.

I have just picked up a bunch of books on Delphi programming, and im shopping around for some books on Lotus Notes administration, as I am still undecided as to what direction I should take, but I am slowly starting to focus some more.

Plenty of courses out there dude, do your homework, and decide what would be best for you.

Good luck

**DFW_Tech_Kenny** · June 7th, 2002, 08:16 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by EvilCabbage:
Cisco CCNA is a good course to take, Redhat Linux are also offering certification of sorts, if thats your thing.

It depends on what direction you want to take with your career, and how much of your own time you are willing to dedicate to it.

I have just picked up a bunch of books on Delphi programming, and im shopping around for some books on Lotus Notes administration, as I am still undecided as to what direction I should take, but I am slowly starting to focus some more.

Plenty of courses out there dude, do your homework, and decide what would be best for you.

Good luck<hr /></blockquote>What I'm looking for is training that everyone thinks would help techs in general perform their job better. Also if you know of certain training that would help the Help Desk techs perform better, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've come up with a short list including Win XP and Office XP ( will be our new platforms in the not too distant future ) but other than these two, I'm unsure of what else there is out there for us ( techs ).

Sorry I didn't make it clearer in my first post. TIA.

**DFW_Tech_Kenny** · June 10th, 2002, 09:57 AM

TTT.

Come on people, if you where in my situation, what training do you feel would help you improve your ability to perform your job? I'm sure some of you have been sent to different training classes, seminar's, etc. to help you with your job. TIA.

**silencio** · June 10th, 2002, 03:55 PM

In my experience, most training is centered around test prep and not real world job duties (emphais on the word centered). If the test is a good gauge of real world work duties then the class may be worth it.

I've taked a number of classes. The most recent was an Exchange 2000 Enterprise design class (3 days). I hoped we would get into specific planning in great detail. I wanted to see numbers on users, database size and scaling to specific hardware requirements and the amount of replication traffic x # of users/servers with x amount of data would generate. I wanted to see fault tolerant planning, backup and restore considerations. What I got was 3 days of creating administrative groups and a book for about $1100. That was my only Microsoft class and I don't take Microsoft classes anymore.

I did take 3 good classes. The first was a 1 week CCNA class designed for the old CCNA test. It was actually a hardcore test and a hardcore class packed with great, usefull information. At least it seems that way at first. It was like algebra, daunting at first but once you understand, it's really pretty simple.

The other good classes were both Compaq server training classes. One was on Storageworks and one was on NT4 troubleshooting. In both cases you got to play with the hardware and the material was deep.

I'd say analyse your trouble tickets. Look at the problems that most frequently come up and make sure that every one of your help desk guys knows that material cold. Look at the trouble tickets that usually get bumped up and If there's a definable pattern there, see if there's a class that relates to those calls, maybe that's the class to take.

**confus-ed** · June 11th, 2002, 03:50 AM

For the 'Help desk techs' (Bah humbug!)- Comp TIA A+ , pretty basic stuff but at least they'll start to use the right words for cards & wires, and finally know what plugs to what why <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Top quali very widely known & doesn't expire!

For you ? Well that, A+ (easy peasy!),perhaps an MS course for your current o/s & then as others have said 'how long is a piece of string?'

You need to say precisely what you do & with what kit & what s/w......

**DFW_Tech_Kenny** · June 11th, 2002, 02:23 PM

Thanks for the replies. Basically here is what I currently support:

Dell Desktops and Laptops ( mostly OptiPlex and CP - C610 )

Windows NT 4.0 ( 90% of systems ) soon to migrate to XP

MS Office 97 ( 95% of systems ) soon to migrate to XP

HP Printers ( ranging from pesonal to high usage network printers; 80% LaserJet )

Tektronix Color Printers ( about 20 of these )

HP Scanners ( about 250 or so, HP ScanJet II - 7400C )

Basic network troubleshooting ( plugged in to port; seeing DNS servers, etc )

Dial-up for laptops ( PAL at the moment, migrating to VPN )

Also support a myraid of small applications, about 2000+ , many are specific to our organization.

Taking all of the above into account, is there anything else you would recommend, maybe some printer support from HP ( do they even offer classes on this ? ). TIA.

**drslot** · June 13th, 2002, 05:44 AM

If any of the employees are from Saudi Arabia, they should avoid those airline pilot courses.

**]-[otRod** · June 13th, 2002, 06:01 AM

When I worked in a tech support help desk the company put us through some basic 1 or 2 day courses that mostly covered skills relating to interacting with customers on the phone. (Having the knowledge relating to the subject being supported was required before being hired into the position...)Believe it or not, they really did help by introducing techniques and methodology for controlling a support call. Even though someone may be proficient in their knowledge of a particular subject, often they dont have equivalent skills in effectively relating that knowledge to others when troubleshooting a problem. One resource you might want to check out is <a href="http://www.course.com/catalog/subcategory.cfm?category=Help%20Desk" target="_blank">Course Technology Help Desk Titles</a> . They have cirriculum that focuses on 1 day training to help introduce fundamental help desk and customer support skills that anyone working some kind of phone support position would benefit from. Check out their ILT (Instructor Led Training) courses. Hope this gives you a start!

**Fubar** · June 13th, 2002, 06:39 AM

If you're talking about in-house tech support for a corporation ask for training in how to detect lies. For some reason a certain percentage of users feel like they just can't tell you what really happened or admit they screwed up. So they lie about it. Some lie because they don't know what happened but they have to tell you something. But every tech i've ever trained has come back to me and said the above it true!

You might try doing some in-house training like physcians do in Mortality & Morbidity conferences. They take cases that had bad outcomes and a group tears it apart and analyzes what happened and why. This could be good for a tech support group if good records are kept.

There are courses offered in how to run a help desk. Could be usefull. Never been to one however.

The best advise I can give you is to have techs talk to each other and keep all your support calls in a database that is searchable.

Good luck!

**confus-ed** · June 14th, 2002, 03:26 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by DFW_Tech_Kenny:
Thanks for the replies. Basically here is what I currently support:

.....

Taking all of the above into account, is there anything else you would recommend, maybe some printer support from HP ( do they even offer classes on this ? ). TIA.<hr /></blockquote><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/syllabi/2272Bfinal.asp" target="_blank">Implementing and Supporting Microsoft Windows XP Professional</a>

There's loads of others, more specific still...

Unless you really like toner & ink all over you then get service contracts for your printers or extended warranty, its cheaper than bits and they usually break straight away or not at all. You can do specific HP printer training if you must, I mean like! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

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