Job Shadowing Case Study

For my Job Shadowing assignment, I choose to shadow James Mascolo at Ongoing Operations in Hagerstown, MD. Ongoing Operations is a disaster recovery company that works with numerous Credit Unions and other entities to ensure that in the event of a disaster their data is secured. They are a very small company that offers these disaster recovery solutions all over the United States. Along with disaster recovery, they offer normal help desk functions to certain clients, such as trouble shooting computer issues to making sure all their backups are update and are working properly. At Ongoing Operations they also offer their customers a sales team to inform them of what hardware and other services they might need to efficiently run their business with technology. Though they are a small company, they utilize their technology very well in using remote applications and virtual environments to effectively support their numerous clients all over. James Mascolo,

who I have been shadowing for 16 hours is a Level 2 Support Engineer/Technician that does all the basic troubleshooting, by taking calls, checking to make sure backups are running like they should and escalating issues to Level 3 when needed. I shadowed James throughout 4 days totaling 16 hours. Those days were 3/30, 4/6, 4/11 and 4/13/2016 from 12:00pm to 4:00pm. Later in my report I will talk about the other two people I interviewed regarding their roles they play at Ongoing Operations. Their names are, Tyler who works with Level 3 Support and Traci who works as a Project Manager. This certainly was a great place to shadow as I had not really done anything with disaster recovery before. So for me it was a great learning experience to see how a company handles these types of situations that if left unattended could be catastrophic for a company.
Ongoing Operations utilizes a plethora of tools and applications to allow their business to run smoothly and to ensure the safety of their client’s information. For speaking to their customers they use Vonage, VoIP to allow them to be in the driver seat of their communication with their customers. Also, to maintain communication with all the employees that are scattered around the United States for Ongoing Operations they utilize Skype, or more specifically, Link, which is Windows version of Skype. This tool allows them to call or even message other employees for quick questions and resolutions for issues in real time. And, I stress that this is extremely helpful as they run the communication themselves rather than having another company control it. Another tool that they use is Help Desk Manager which is their ticketing system. I was very impressed when I saw this piece of software as it was so clean and easy to read. When I interned at The City of Hagerstown and in their IT department, they used Kaseya, which to me seemed extremely chaotic compared to Help Desk Manager. I feel having something as clean and as organized as Help Desk Manager only aides in the effectiveness that is Ongoing Operations and their Help Desk staff. What is also very nice with this tool is that everything is color coded which makes it easier to see if another tech makes a comment on the ticket or even if the customer makes a note on the ticket. Another great feature is, Ongoing Operations and their staff are able to communicate within the tickets without letting the customer see. This is very useful to keep company important information hidden from others who do not need to see.
Some other tools that they use are CU Control/Solar Winds which is a Remote Desktop tool that allows them to monitor everything on the client machine and all other hardware that is associated with the client and their hardware that is used for their company. Ongoing Operations also uses Shadow Protect and Image Manager to monitor and maintain backup images. This also allows them to create them as well. They also use VMware/VSphere for their virtual environments. And, to manage all of their virtual environments they use Ciruus which is an interface to Active Directory which allows them to create users instead of using Exchange. Moving to some of the hardware that Ongoing Operations uses are Cisco switches and routers. Also for their VPN access when employees need to work from home they utilize the VPN off of the Cisco Firewall. Another tool that Ongoing Operations utilizes is GoToAssist for certain users. GoToAssist allows them to remote into the client’s computer and watch the client to see where a mistake is being made or to see exactly what problem the user is having in real time. Ongoing Operations offer numerous services to their clients, which some clients go for all or some of the services depending on their wallets.
Moving to their incident management processes, Ongoing Operations utilizes a fairly generic system. Tickets get assigned to Level 2 support based on whoever has the lowest ticket count. Level 2 support evaluates the ticket and works it and if necessary for certain issues will escalate to Level 3 Engineers to further assist the clients with their issues. Normally this would be network issues, server issues and backup issues that Level 2 cannot do. As for their Best Practices new clients and existing clients will first speak with their VCIO (Virtual Chief Information Officer) who are technically Account Managers who go over with their clients, the products Ongoing Operations offer, the hardware that the client will need to utilize the products that they offer. Once the clients are done with the VCIO’s they begin speaking with the Implementation Team which is where Traci comes in. Traci is the one that will get the servers implemented and setup to fit the needs of the clients and anything else that the VCIO’s sold the clients. Something that Traci told me that I feel, supports how efficiently Ongoing Operations runs at is, “Employees run the company” (Traci, 2016). After this, they are then given to the support team which is the Level 2 Support Team, then it will head to the Level 3 support team if it is unable to be assisted by the Level 2. I was also able to speak with a Level 3 support member by the name of, Tyler. He deals a lot with implementing virtual servers, dealing with networking issues, and backup management. Something that Tyler told me, which I think is relevant in world of technology is, “If it’s not broke, don’t touch it” (Tyler, 2016). Too many times, people try and tweak something that is obviously working fine, but because they did that on their home computer feel that they can do it on their work computer. That just is not the case in a work environment, as a simple tweak you do at home, can open you up to security risks, or simply just break everything in your work environment.
For Ongoing Operations their physical layout of their work areas are fairly simple. They operate in a fairly large building with a section that has all their offices that their employees work in. They have a very large and cooled data center, which houses so many servers and backup tools for obvious reasons. They also have an area that has many cubicles, with proper internet connections, telephone lines and everything else a business would need if god forbid disaster strikes at their clients business and they need to send all their employees to an off-site location to work. I find that this is incredibly useful as their clients can come here to Ongoing Operations and work like they were doing at their business, like nothing ever happened. All their information is stored here and they can easily pick up where they left off.
As for stress management at Ongoing Operations, which is obviously very important in a help desk environment as these calls with customers can be very stressful.

Employees will normally take walks around the building with colleagues and talk about things other than that of work. This is an extremely helpful way at combating stress as it allows you to separate yourself from your job even for 5-10 minutes. It also allows you engage with someone other than screaming customers who are upset that they are even having issues in the first place. Another great tool they have and which is quite entertaining is they have a blow up clown for a punching bag. This blow up clown will rock back and forth when you hit it, which allows their employees to let off a little steam and laugh for a good bit while they are on their breaks. I find it very important that a company and its employees can see that things will be stressful and in having an object like this to cool the tension, is certainly a wonderful tool to have to combat

stress.