Forum closed pending upgrade, flawed system?

[Aiwa]

That's not how the system functions. The queue is ordered based on when the ticket was submitted. So if a ticket entered before you provided details and got changed to 'ready' status it would push others down the queue.

[bigPaws]

But the queue (i.e. "Your X in the line to be upgraded") wouldn't show up to the client until their ticket was marked as ready. They are queued by the timestamp when the customer submits the correct login details, not from the original creation date.

[Aiwa]

But the queue wouldn't start until you're ticket was marked as ready. They are done in the order from when a customer submits the login details, not from the original creation date.

I understand that's what you're after... But the goal is to get tickets in and out as fast as possible in the order the tickets were created... You don't want a ticket hanging around for longer than it has to... That would only further enrage those customers that have had tickets open for that even longer... There will be those clients that are late getting their details to IPS, but there could also be clients that have provided details but there are further issues... such as hosting, permissions, etc... It happens...

non-priority support and priority support tickets are all put in the same system... But priority support tickets are flagged as such and put at the top of the queue so they can be handled within the proper SLA timeframe.

Breaking the systems apart for priority and non-priority would most likely only complicate things for both staff and for us clients as there would be the possibility that their tickets are put in the wrong queue, etc.

I'm just explaining how the system works... And the logic behind why it is set up that way, IMO... Keep in mind, IPS uses the IP.Nexus support system... So if you are interested in seeing how it works on the admin side, Install Nexus and play around with it...

[bfarber]

I just want to say that us taking backups on your behalf (even storing them on the server) is simply not feasible. We don't always have phpmyadmin access, and we will not typically log in to your server via SSH unless there is a special circumstance. Backing up a 2GB database takes a long time, and frankly is outside the scope of our support (unless you are hosting with us, of course, in which case it is done daily automatically). That's setting aside any implied liability ("you made the backup and now it's corrupt, it's your problem"), problems it may cause on the server (taking a 2GB database backup at peak traffic time on your server may cause resource issues that affect other users on the same server) and so forth.

I get where the suggestion was leading, but I don't see it as feasible in the real world.

[Mikey B]

Thanks a lot - me too. Having just taken over this old 2.3.x forum from it's previous owner of 12 years, I'm keen to get it going again.

If you have any questions, well, you know what to do :)

[Wolfie]

Wouldn't it then be relatively easy for the software to count the number of tickets with this 'ready' status assigned? From this, you could then establish, through logging in to the client area, your position in the queue. I know this system couldn't give any indication on the time you've got to wait (I appreciate that's impossible by the nature of the work), but at least it would say "There are X upgrade requests queued before you".

Technically you only enter the queue once you've provided the necessary details, so that (people entering and leaving queue) wouldn't apply.

The priority queue could have its own position numbers within its own queue - that way those paying more would be sure they're in a smaller queue too - an added 'feel good' benefit of this suggestion.

But the queue (i.e. "Your X in the line to be upgraded") wouldn't show up to the client until their ticket was marked as ready. They are queued by the timestamp when the customer submits the correct login details, not from the original creation date.

Here's a scenario of why this idea would be faulty. Let's ignore the 'priority support' status, so it's the same for all clients.

You submit an upgrade request. You receive a reply for information you haven't supplied yet. You respond back with the information and you start checking your ticket status. An hour later you see you're in the queue at number 30. You check back an hour later and see that you're at number seven. You're all happy because it looks like you're less than an hour away from being upgraded. You check five minutes later and notice that you're at number 12 and so you're like "what? why did I get bumped backwards?" but instead of opening another ticket to ask about it, you just wait patiently. You check a little while later and notice you're the next in line (at one). So you're not eagerly awaiting and you check back every 10 minutes and see that nothing has changed. Two hours later, still the same and you're like, "What's the hold up? Come on, get on my ticket already!" You can imagine how many would get all bent out of shape being the very next in line but nothing happening.

Okay so from the IPS point of view..

Tech spent value time going through the tickets to see which ones had all necessary information and for ones that needed additional information, provided a response asking for it. Those that have the information get changed to the queued status. Let's say that doing that takes up 30 minutes because of the number of tickets. Now on to the queued tickets. Going through, some of them are rather simple and everything goes smoothly. But along the process, there are eight tickets where the provided details are incorrect or something else is going on (can't connect, slow connection, permission errors when uploading the newer files, whatever) so communicate with the client to get it sorted out. (After that but before any of them respond, you happened to check and saw you're at number seven, tech manages to get three more done and those eight have responded and when you check you see you're now 12th in line.) Okay so working on the upgrades, another 11 get handled and then it's 'quitting time' for the day. (You're now the next in line and when you see this you start checking eagerly to see when it's being worked on, unaware that the techs are done for the day.)

That's just one example of how things could go. I know that if I saw I was next in line and then everything stopped, I'd get REALLY mad because I'd be wondering if somehow others behind me were getting assisted or if I was getting bumped back somehow (I refer to above example) or if the techs decided they're done for the day right as it was my turn (and if that's the case, why did they have to stop when *I* was next in line?) Even if it were displayed as to if they were still open or not and with the hours clearly displayed, if I saw I was next in line and they were closed (where as they were open a few minutes before), you can imagine a lot of people would be furious because they would want the techs to do "just one more" ticket, that being yours. You can also imagine that a lot of people would probably submit tickets all upset and demanding that their upgrade get worked on and wanting an apology for things happened. Those tickets take time to respond to and that's time that could be spent on other tickets.

It's not like calling a help desk where each call is answered and you move up the line each time a call has been completed, because if the person calls back, they aren't moved to the head of the line. So in that circumstance, you could get an update every couple of minutes if you've moved up in the queue or if you're the next one in line, otherwise you're hearing some hold music at a moderate volume and hearing that lets you know that you're still connected. (Same for 'live chat' support.)


I also want to point out that the time spent going through the tickets to verify everything needed is available (just to move it into the queue status) also takes time. If the tech opens a ticket and sees the ticket has everything needed to proceed with the upgrade, why not just do it instead of putting it in a queue and doing the same with a lot of other tickets? Let's say that each day, roughly an hour is spent requesting information and moving tickets into the queue (30 minutes at the start and end of each day). That's an hour a day that could have been used for doing actual upgrades. Obviously, there will be tickets that a tech needs to ask for additional information (because you just know that people tend to forget stuff despite it being asked for when making the ticket). But that time for moving tickets into a queue, just think, if that time had been used for doing upgrades, then when you were 'next in line', would have been upgraded that day instead of being next in line until the next day.

(PS. Given that I've not been one of the lucky ones to get an upgrade in the first 24 hours, I'm guessing that there must be a queue for regular client upgrades at the moment? I just hope that this feedback, which was meant to be constructive rather than negative, hasn't led me to being blackballed by support!)

I know you said it was 'tongue in cheek' but just to address the comment anyway, I've never heard of someone being treated unfairly because of suggestions/comments/etc. I've seen the staff take a bit of abuse here on the forums and still seen the 'offenders' continuing to make new posts after that and never a word of being mistreated because of what they did. In fact, I was upset one time and made a post, to which I was contacted to sort things out and didn't get treated any differently after that.

Again, I know you said it was 'tongue in cheek', but just wanted to mention that, to which I hope it puts you at ease if you did happen to have any doubts to how IPS operates with its clients.