Scope of IT Manager for cashless catering system.

[genesis]

Hi

 

We are running cashless catering system and we have a student reception staff who registers the finger prints of the students and also put the dinner money etc...

On the student’s reception, we have installed a PC that has access to the Cashless catering console.

 

Now whenever there is problem, such as if the accounts not showing correct balance, the student reception staff raises a call with me and I in turn raise the call with the cashless catering support company and email again to the staff after that it is resolved.

 

Sometimes it is difficult to understand as what she is experiencing with the system and I think if the staff calls the catering system company directly whenever she has a problem and it will be quicker than coming through me.

Also the student reception staff when raising a support , she can learn any suggestions given by the company and correct herself for any mistakes .

 

The cashless system company have their remote access software and have asked me to install on the cashless catering server and so that they can have access to the server where required- When support call is raised.

 

I want to be clear with my scope of work, I think the support issues the staff raised with me is something the staff can do by herself and it takes lot of my time acting as a middle man as I have other higher priorities of maintaining the network

Please suggest and your help much appreciated. Not sure how it works in your schools.

 

Thanks

[Davit2005]

The only issue I see is that you probably want to be aware of the support company making changes as these may well come back as problems to you if there are any problems. Not saying they will but...

 

I'd like to add to that by setting the member of staff expectations regarding urgency of non-operational/service issues in the nicest possible way.

Edited November 26, 2018 by Davit2005

[Fazza]

We provide IT Support so for use that means we act as the middle-man for most systems from cashless catering to finance systems - the only exception is SIMS where our Data Department look after all issues (except installation issues).

[FN-GM]

We provide IT Support so for use that means we act as the middle-man for most systems from cashless catering to finance systems - the only exception is SIMS where our Data Department look after all issues (except installation issues).

 

Completely agree with this. In my opinion the idea of an IT Support department is to be the central point of contact.

[supportman]

I'd look at your system choice as well, we previously had Tucasi which was a nightmare to manage with their terrible sync software which basically didn't work. Parent pay is much better and had no issues therefor no need for IT Support.

[Fazza]

Completely agree with this. In my opinion the idea of an IT Support department is to be the central point of contact.

 

It also means that we can see how reliable a particular service is and give advice to our internal customers on if it's acceptable or not and if not get involved by contacting the company involved and try to get to the bottom of what the issue and come up with a resolution to prevent any more calls to them etc. as most end users wont think to do this.

[ADMaster]

It depends on the nature of the issue. The food service supervisor and I have worked together for many years. She is pretty good at determining what is a program support question vs an IT issue. If she is unsure she will ask me.

If it is a computer / network other IT issue, I will fix or be the middle man. If it is how do I do X or generate report Y, then I don't want or need to be the middle man. Sometimes she will ask if I know how to do X, but if I don't then I say call support.

[SecretSquirral]

I'd look at your system choice as well, we previously had Tucasi which was a nightmare to manage with their terrible sync software which basically didn't work. Parent pay is much better and had no issues therefor no need for IT Support.

 

Hi

 

You are soooooo correct the client we used was horrendous, constantly crashed, temperamental, caused no end of issues for our customers and to be fair the support team too. So i am happy to say we've not had Sync for about 7 months now so those issues have been irradiated permanently.

[supportman]

Hi

 

You are soooooo correct the client we used was horrendous, constantly crashed, temperamental, caused no end of issues for our customers and to be fair the support team too. So i am happy to say we've not had Sync for about 7 months now so those issues have been irradiated permanently.

 

Did you move to Parentpay?

[SecretSquirral]

Did you move to Parentpay?

 

Oops. Sorry New Year first post. I forgot to say I work at Tucasi, i put that as i post on here in my own time not as a representative of them, so no I haven't moved to another provider

 

It's an interesting thread, as a provider I get asked when do we stop supporting the customer? Something is 100% outside our control but the customer is still suffering so we can't not do something. It's difficult as we've spent time going through customers' firewall logs and doing packet captures to get to the problem of why they experience something that no other site experiences; which on one occasion caused a complaint because the Third Party IT company invoiced the school for their time and they wanted us to pay for it even though it was a SSL Inspection setting on their firewall causing the issue. \o/

 

Glad the new system is working out for you and sorry for any recurring nightmares about the Sync issues!

[supportman]

Oops. Sorry New Year first post. I forgot to say I work at Tucasi, i put that as i post on here in my own time not as a representative of them, so no I haven't moved to another provider

 

It's an interesting thread, as a provider I get asked when do we stop supporting the customer? Something is 100% outside our control but the customer is still suffering so we can't not do something. It's difficult as we've spent time going through customers' firewall logs and doing packet captures to get to the problem of why they experience something that no other site experiences; which on one occasion caused a complaint because the Third Party IT company invoiced the school for their time and they wanted us to pay for it even though it was a SSL Inspection setting on their firewall causing the issue. \o/

 

Glad the new system is working out for you and sorry for any recurring nightmares about the Sync issues!

Ahh OK thanks, yeh we moved away from Tucasi after years of waiting for them to build a proper cloud platform. We moved to their hosted database solution but it wasn't web based and we continued to get sync issues. Hopefully one day the company will move onto a reliable cloud offering. The way the software worked was actually fine.