- Enforce Zero reconfigurations:
Deepfreeze is a very effective way to keep a public workstation from recording any changes. It can be annoying if it is not up to date, but cuts down on technical support since not one bit is changed from one boot to the next! - Simplify your equipment:
Change all your workstations at the same time. That way your problems will all be the same ones. Supporting a wide variety of machines is labour intensive and, over time, costs more than the equipment. Thanks for reminding me Don. - Move less information:
Stop moving paper and start documenting. Start a Wiki for support questions and help desk: source: techrepublic.com.com helpdesk
There are a lot of wikis available to try. Mediawiki is the engine behind Wikipedia, and is available for free. Again, though, you’ll probably want to have a decent systems administrator on staff to get that package going. If you want to get started on a wiki, but don’t want to worry about hosting your own, I’d recommend PBWiki. They offer a free hosted wiki solution for those who want to get their feet wet. We’re using a local TWiki installation in my office, and my colleagues are fleshing out our knowledge base with topics I couldn’t begin to address on my own. You see, I support a group of quantitative social scientists. My users are answering each other’s questions and solving some of their own problems without my intervention. - Take images of your computers before users start messing them up.
- Store all documents (even "My Documents") on servers or in the Cloud.
- Move your software to "the Cloud". The PC can become a "dumb terminal" easily replaced by any other PC in the event of a breakdown.
Background:
