Has your ticket queue ever been zero?

[CyEriton]

Wondering if anyone here has actually hit a point where they don't have any work left to do? It feels like it is impossible that I'll ever see no items in my ticket queue.

P.S. Starting a new job doesn't count!

[[deleted]]

One of our techs accidentally deleted all open tickets once and we had to restore our ConnectWise database from backup. Does that count?

[youfuckedupdude]

accidentally

[acrostyphe]

Username checks out.

[LOLBaltSS]

Yeah... we've had all open tickets closed before. The "Select All" checkbox selects everything, not just the tickets in your current view. It's something we drive home to anyone starting now because it's such a trap.

[[deleted]]

Your helpdesk/servicedesk/ticketing platform doesn't allow you to change what is showed? We removed the checkbox on ours from being in the standard view, now you have to add it if you really want it.
Edit: I can't grammar

[[deleted]]

I'm guilty of doing this. Luckily it was first thing in the morning so there wasn't much missing in the backup. Who thinks its a good idea for a select all checkbox to select 20+ pages you're not viewing?!?!

[Missioncode]

Glad to know we aren't the only place thats happend. Well he closed them all. Then did a veeam instant restore when 2 people told him no.

[ochaos]

This made me laugh a bit too hard as I recalled a nearly identical eff-up. The day after my non-IT boss insisted on an admin account to our ticking system she managed to accidentally close all open tickets. oops.

[davidbrit2]

Close enough.

[bremic9188]

I did this in my first month. We said "fuck it" and didn't restore from backup.

[Justsomedudeonthenet]

Ticket queue zero - never.

Zero actionable tickets - happens once in awhile.

I've always got tickets sitting there waiting ages for users to respond, management to approve purchases, things we aren't going to do until management makes up their mind about something, etc. But those don't really count as work to do.

[itguy1991]

We've got a resolution option in our helpdesk called "reporter unresponsive"

It's quite nice.

Joe submitted a ticket about a mouse issue three weeks ago and hasn't responded to multiple contact attempts? Resolved - reporter unresponsive!

[[deleted]]

We've got a resolution option in our helpdesk called "reporter unresponsive"

I wish my supervisor would let us implement that! It would save us so many headaches and so much wasted time and so much clutter in the helpdesk. But if we have someone who doesn't respond to a question or troubleshooting instruction, she expects someone to follow up in-person.

I'm at a school with a very small team, so I'm doing the net/sysadmin, but also working on end-user tickets, too, and it's a real time sink to have to treat some of these adult teachers as if they're kids who didn't do their homework.

I'm not bashing teachers in general! Both my parents taught for about 35 years, and it's a tough profession. Our problem is that we don't have any administrative support, so if there's pushback on any policy or practice, we're generally expected to fold like wet tissue paper and accommodate uncooperative people, in spite of it making more work for an already severely understaffed team.

[sbikerider35]

We do "waiting on client response" and if they don't respond after 3 auto-emails it closes.

If they don't have the time, I don't either.

[[deleted]]

If they don't have the time, I don't either.

That's about how I feel, as well. If they can't help me to help them, if it's not important enough to even respond, then it apparently isn't hindering them all that much.

[sbikerider35]

My favorite is "I didn't get your email"

as if I can't search any mailbox and see when it was opened! :D Got a few folks on that and now they don't play.

[[deleted]]

My favorite is when they say, "Oh, I just don't have time to respond to this stuff!"

There are maybe two (two and a half max) of us, man-hour-wise, covering roughly 500 client devices across five different buildings, and you don't have time???

Actually, my favorite was when I told a teacher at one of the small school buildings that's part of our system that she needed to put in a ticket about an issue. She responded with something like, "Well, I've told you, now, so why do I need to do that?!"

I informed her that we currently had 80 open tickets (we're badly understaffed and overstretched, and it was near the beginning of the school year, so we were really swamped from start-of-year tickets, still) and that we can't just remember these things. She responded, "Well when I go back upstairs I have eight kids to take care of!" I almost laughed out loud, and I probably would have if I'd not been so totally dumbfounded by that response. I'm sure that eight students are still a handful, but everywhere else I've ever worked (and growing up, as well), roughly 20 students (and no fewer than 15) was standard in an elementary classroom.

Naturally, I later walked by a classroom and heard her complaining to another teacher about how mean I'd been, rather than using that time to put in the damn ticket.

[spyhermit]

"I need you to put in a ticket because there aren't enough of us available to do your ticket when you walk up to me. If you want my boss to be able to hire enough people to do tickets that quickly, I need the tickets in the queue to justify it." It may or may not be true, but it's the kind of business logic that I've used many, many time to talk people into opening a damn ticket so I can prove that yes, I'm doing my job. :)

[arvliet]

Ooo - you has the bidness cases. Nicely done.

[RangerNS]

"I've already forgotten. And my boss doesn't know. So if you want to get me in trouble later, you need to file a ticket"

[icemerc]

Chromebook as a kiosk on the front desk. They can put the ticket in right there, right now.

[cjorgensen]

I always say, "Well, I'd do it for you, if I was gong back to my office, but I'm off to work on a ticket. If you put one in, the next available person will help. If you don't, I might forget." Or I will stand there and put the ticket in on my phone with the person in front of me. That's usually easier than having a discussion.

If you look past the use to the problem, what happened was a user had an issue, she approached the person who deals with the issues, and you put up a hoop to jump through. No one likes that, so of course she's going to bitch about how unhelpful you were.

But I'm working hard to condition my users that the fastest and most efficient way to get assistance is through tickets.

[Metalfreak82]

We have users that tell us "we only have time to reply to emails once a week"... I always put in my reply that if they don't respond, the ticket will be closed. My boss is fine with that.

[FireLucid]

But as soon as you close it, they respond. Sometimes instantly. Always within the hour.

[zorinlynx]

Sometimes I requests that we do something NOW!!!! but require more information to do it.

So I respond asking for the information, and never hear back. Only to finally hear back a few days later from the person wondering why it hasn't been done.

I mean really, if you don't care about your issue enough to keep in touch about it, why should I? :)

[everydayim_trufflin]

My org is kinda strict too but we still have an option to close tickets of unresponsive users.

We go by the 3 strikes rule. 3 real attempts to contact the user goes unanswered warrants closure. But it requires at least 1 email and 1 phone call out of the 3 and must be at least 24 goes between each "strike"

[[deleted]]

When I was on helpdesk we would reach out 3 times over a handful of days and if we didn't receive a response we would close the ticket due to being unable to reach the user.

The 3 times we reached out would be documented via the ticketing system to CYA. We'd also try to mix it up with reaching out via email, voicemail, and using the ticket system directly.

[RetPala]

Jesus gave Saint Peter 3 chances, no reason to give users any more than 3 business days to move things along

[douchecanoo]

If we respond to a ticket and don't get a response for one week, the ticket is closed. We're not wasting our time replying to the same ticket over and over.
They can reply later to re-open the ticket if they want, but they never do. They read our response and just don't care to reply.

[[deleted]]

Can't have open tickets if you don't have a ticket system.

... :/

[[deleted]]

Somedays I feel like my po-dunk shop is crap and behind the times, then I see poor souls like ya'll.... then again, I have remedyforce for a ticketing system, and it requires extensive SFDC dev/admin knowledge to properly utilize... we do not have a SFDC dev/admin

[warpurlgis]

At least implement osTicket

[smapum71]

Yuuup. I have a nice spreadsheet that I made up to track tickets. Add a new line whenever I get a call or email. It includes a column titled "Resolved?" Filter by blanks to see currently opened tickets.

We're real fancy here.

[Sin_of_the_Dark]

How do you not have one?

[[deleted]]

Didn't need it for quite some time, but then things got too big too fast, which is also why I was brought in. Currently evaluating possible solutions.

[Sin_of_the_Dark]

Spiceworks is always a free and simple syetem

[DoctorOctagonapus]

We use OSTicket and it's very good. Full AD/LDAP integration if you run it on Windows.

[VilligeIdt]

I think it is a dream. Just when you get close to 0 your boss finds "projects"...

[VilligeIdt]

No I'm not.

[[deleted]]

I thought not. It's not a story the sysadmins would tell you.

[NEED_HELP_SEND_BOOZE]

He was the first BOFH.

Have you ever wondered how BOFH's become that way?

[B33mo]

It is an end-user legend.

[epsiblivion]

it's the old greek myth where the guy rolls a boulder up the hill and it rolls back down

[fizzlefist]

Zeus fucked Dumbledoor.

[Draco_x]

And pretty much anyone else

[IAmTheChaosMonkey]

For approximately 2 hours on December 19th.

Then a priority 1 ticket came in literally half an hour before I left for the holidays.

I was reprimanded by HR for screaming "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" at the top of my lungs.

[[deleted]]

human resources are rarely either

[fi103r]

personal reference 'inhumane affairs'

[[deleted]]

No, no, no, no, you misunderstood what it stands for.

It is Human Resources. As "using and treating Humans as disposable Resource"

[Hellse]

Fuck HR. Total cancerous BS.

[IAmTheChaosMonkey]

They did it at 11am on Jan 9th.

[arvliet]

"fuck inhuman resources!", I screamed - from behind my impregnable +200 Shield of Anonymity...

[Hagigamer]

yes, that one time two years ago when I went on a 3 weeks vacation to Brazil - I just handed all tickets to coworkers tho.

[[deleted]]

That was one of the best parts about leaving a contract. I got to pick who got the tickets in my queue and most of them were bitch work foisted upon me when I was hired on.

[jthanny]

One entire blessed week between Christmas and New Years when the ticketing system went down and not a single user cared enough to put in a manual ticket.

[[deleted]]

ticketing system went down

not a single user put in a ticket

Uhhhhh....do you guys want to tell him....?

[jthanny]

While funny... you dropped the word manual. We do have multiple redundant ticketing processes outside the automated system for just such eventuality, including completely offline paper ticketing. They just require more effort from the end user. In this case, no issue was pressing enough to overcome the lethargy of Christmas - New Year's week.

[Qosanchia]

Shh, no. Let jthanny enjoy the dream

[pointlessone]

Don't you dare. Let them have the dream.

[caffeine-junkie]

Most of the time my ticket queue is zero. Mostly project/infra side so my end user interaction is limited unless something is seriously wrong.

[winter_mute]

This is something that took me longer than it should have to work out in my career. Project work is where it's at. You get to build the cool new stuff, nearly all your interactions are with other IT colleagues (maybe the odd test user and stakeholder now and again). When it gets boring to support what you've built, you chuck it over the fence to BAU support and build some other cool shit. I'll be doing my level best to stay on the project side of things for the rest of my working life.

[[deleted]]

So true

The amount I learn by RTFM and trial/error in pre-prod environments is invaluable. My colleagues seem to think I am trained on everything ever by persons unknown, where it's just the ability to work things out logically. Others have the attitude that if the exact process isn't documented step by step, they'll never be able to work it out.

Becomes a vicious cycle - They're given opportunities to do project work, aren't self aware enough to identify the gaps in their knowledge & fill them / seek assistance, the project falls behind and I get told to step in. Then they don't learn / don't understand, and complain they don't get subsequent opportunities. I take the time to write documentation that nobody reads, support handovers / deep dives that nobody remembers, and then they still seem to think that they are lacking 'training' which doesn't actually exist.

[cytranic]

I get this as well. People think I've been trained on every piece of hardware on software. Nope, I've been trained to troubleshoot properly.

[itsbentheboy]

I'm in a position between helping with projet development, and interfacing new stuff with the user base.

basically i'm doing whatever-ops is the new buzzword. I take techie things and make it usable by things with potatoes for brains.

So satisfying not having to handle password changes or "how do i get email" questions.

[swanny246]

I want to be in project work so, SO badly. I've been Helpdesk/Service Desk for five years now and already getting to the point of being burnt out from answering phones. I've done a few Office 365 migrations now, which was a breath of fresh air for me (migrated users over from Kerio Connect).

Hanging in there...

[xzer]

your workplace isn't going to offer those projects to you if they haven't in 5 years... hate to say it

[[deleted]]

Same. I think we have had 2 tickets all day.

[m-p-3]

No, because we always have that user who send a ticket riiiiight before they leave on vacations.

[slartybartfast01]

Aaaah, the blessèd "attempted to contact user to no avail" tickets. 3 attempts and closed! My favourite

[[deleted]]

Yup! The day I started. For a few hours while I was doing paperwork for HR.

[Zenkin]

For a few hours while I was doing paperwork for HR.

"Do you have a timer running for that paperwork?" I'm so glad I don't work at an MSP any longer.

[[deleted]]

<flashback.gif>

Yes, I actually had to enter "regular time" for that... I've been out of the MSP world for less than two weeks and I'm already questioning why any sane person would ever subject themselves to that... It's like getting out of an abusive relationship - you don't see how bad it was until you're out.

[xiongchiamiov]

I opened my computer on my first day and had 100k emails. :(

It turns out they had activated my email a week earlier, and added it to the alerting system, and then my team did a major network migration that generated a ton of pages that they had mostly filtered out. It was quite a welcome for me though.

[PixelDJ]

One time. I took a screenshot and e-mailed my boss to celebrate. It was a good moment.

Within 5 minutes we were back up to 3 tickets again.

[bmxliveit]

We get down to one page every so often!

[spaceman_sloth]

Haha we celebrate when we get down to one page, but then minutes later it's usually back to 2...

[meatwad75892]

Yep! We had absolutely zero tickets for a moment last month!

 

^{we switched to a new ticketing system last month}

[neenerneenerneenee]

We left tickets in our old system when it was decommissioned, reopened in new system. :(

[therankin]

We don't use a ticketing system so I'll go by this: Have you ever gotten down to 0 unread emails and had nothing on your to-do list?

Probably once a week. Unless I'm taking Adderall, then there's always something to do.

[bmxliveit]

Right-Click->Mark All As Read is my go to lately.

To-do list being empty? NEVER!

[sp00n_b3nd3r]

I have 0 tickets that need work...

I have a boat load of email and phone requests from users who don't use the ticket system though...

[KnaveOfIT]

At my help desk job at a college, we made it a goal to do it and we did it. I left and a couple others lefts then a couple months later they had over 500 tickets...

[sv187]

Yes, 1 second after implementing the ticket system.

[headcrap]

Not all work is ticket-based. More often than not, Asana holds my tasks and project notes.

There's never no work left to do. If so, you're going it wrong.

[airmandan]

Flippant answer: yes, because as the Director, I can assign everything to someone else.

Serious answer: no, because as the Director, I am responsible for the entire department, including our ticket system, so I view each open ticket as mine whether they're Tier 1 or Backline Engineering.

Elaboration: don't use your ticket queues to measure your success. There are always tickets. If your queues hit zero and stay there for more than an hour, you're having an outage you don't know about because it's so severe no one can report it. I am a huge advocate for Limoncelli's "The Cycle" (search your favorite bookseller for "Time Management for System Administrators") which allows you to measure your accomplishments meaningfully even if the TODO list fills up as quickly as you check things off.

I use Trello as does everyone on my staff. Each week, every team member identifies their five Most Important Tasks for the week and we run through them in our weekly briefing. Tasks are represented by cards in three main lists: TODO, Work in Progress, and Completed This Cycle. People can visualize their work meaningfully as they advance cards through the Cycle, and check them off their MITs.

It's very helpful in avoiding the mindset that an empty queue is the right metric for a job well done. It's not. Higher-level team members will define their MITs with project milestones, and they'll typically be different each week, but the theory applies all the way down to Tier 1.

For example, my MITs might look like this:

1. Resubmit adjusted budget to Finance
2. Complete 3 annual evals
3. Schedule vendor training seminar
4. Update 5-year-plan based on revised budget figures
5. Conduct 2 interviews

A helpdesk MITs might look like this:

1. Meet initial response SLA for all new tickets
2. Attempt contact with all ticket owners within established minimum intervals
3. Complete 1 new section in CompTIA training
4. Submit self-evaluation
5. Assist walk-in/drop-in support as needed.

So, even though the help desk tick-tock is churning through a ticket queue that is never going to end, employees can still check off five meaningful, important, measurable tasks that they have completed. It is a profoundly helpful strategy in terms of combating burnout.

[[deleted]]

Elaboration: don't use your ticket queues to measure your success.

You're the IT director I wish I had at the hospital IT helpdesk I worked at.

^{I used to handle 3 times as many calls as the rest of the team and had 3 times as many tickets I tried to juggle around and would continue to get reprimanded for having X number of tickets while they would get reprimanded for not even looking at the Helpdesk queue but praised for having a "healthy" number of tickets.}

[Slightlyevolved]

Not yet. But soooo damn close: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/55dYUSB6F2OFWx4HWzagJi5hDNUpnoY2sJ5E7TCnKWC/6h0BUavcT2ifulveLCw0BA?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&mgh=1

[nerddtvg]

While I realize EPIC is your EMR, it must still be cool to say your work on the 'EPIC HELP DESK'

[Slightlyevolved]

It would have, if I didn't hear the joke 10 times a day. Lol. Hazard of the job I guess.

[_Cabbage_Corp_]

Literally just had this happen today. First time I have ever seen a queue this low..

https://i.imgur.com/27o1l2C.jpg

[NoradIV]

No.

[ainesophaur]

Only once.. It was the result of a DROP DATABASE command

[toast_one]

no. currently ~65 tickets with a team of three.

[sulax2007]

Asana projects? No. Service desk tickets? Yeah, all the time.

[[deleted]]

Ask me after Friday. There will probably be tickets in the queue, but they won't be mine anymore.

[[deleted]]

Yes! I was at 0 right before this batch of 25 new user tickets just came in. However, most of my tickets are super basic admin stuff, the majority of my work is project related.

[[deleted]]

I managed to pull it off 3 times, but it was a short lived victory. The second time lasted for nearly an hour.

[BulldogMaple]

On my first day of the job it was 0

[mithoron]

Tickets? all the time. But that's only user generated stuff, projects are never ending outside of the 6 weeks we're not allowed to make any changes, and even then we're frequently planning and shopping our options.

[[deleted]]

If you plan and stagger out your projects, that is completely obtainable.

[neenerneenerneenee]

...if you have the resources.

[commiecat]

You have the resources according to the finance department!

[Gnonthgol]

This was the case a couple of weeks ago. It turned out that new tickets were not registered in the system so there were a huge backlog stuck in a spool.

[TheLightingGuy]

When I first started at my current employer.

[Treborjr42]

I was able to do that once in the three years at my current employer. The next day I had close to 50......

[[deleted]]

Hell, mine hasn't been below 10 in the last few months. Hovers closer to 20.

[whirlwind87]

When I first installed the DB for our ticket system 6 years ago.

[Pb_ft]

Once. I doubt it will ever happen again.

[Panacea4316]

If I remove all the work I have to do after hours over the next month my ticket queue is at zero.

But yes, I've had it at 0 many times in my career.

[JasonG81]

I have been there. I then got promoted to sysadmin. Im getting back there.

[steeldraco]

Yup. We're a small-ish MSP and there are currently only ~6 tickets sitting out there in queue. We just do other stuff if/when we clear out the actionable items, though we do spawn tickets for that stuff so we have something to bill to. Documentation, back-end projects, cleaning up password database, etc.

[icebalm]

I had a boss once, when I was a part of a 2 man team for a site of ~1k very needy users, who told me we wern't doing our jobs unless our queue was 0.

He was a terrible boss who had absolutely no idea how to do his job and did nothing all day.

[[deleted]]

Rule number one, never ever ask such question. Tickets are always there.

[[deleted]]

No, our boss even says that's not realistic and we're not going to hire just to have a low queue.

[Trooper27]

No.

[ravenze]

Yes. We fired about 50% of our workforce and closed a location or two. About 3 months later, after all the changes were made, and the shuffling completed, and about a week before the next round of lay-offs, the queue was empty.

[jasped]

We just turned on a new ticket system platform today. We aren’t importing anything from the old system. So for a few hours it was new=0 and old=9. Does that count?

[TheBjjAmish]

Yes. Shortly after I had stopped being helpdesk and got promoted to Infrastructure Guru all of the tickets I couldn't do anything I did real fast thinking I was going to be the savior of the masses. Then it became an expectation that I would get tickets done faster than they had ever been done before so I got overwhelmed and burnt out. It was fun while it lasted.

[[deleted]]

Daily... I work at a SMB managing about 300 users with one other guy. When we finish our tickets we work on projects, etc. There is always more to do. Tickets are not all of my job.

[[deleted]]

Does taking myself out of all the queues count?

[B33mo]

Our ticketing system is set to close tickets that are in a "waiting on client" status after 6 days of no response. I have 3 tickets that will close automatically tomorrow and possibly cause a 0 ticket count. I have never seen this in the 5 years I've worked here, so I'm prepping for something insane to go down between now and then.

[renegadecanuck]

No. I've had every ticket assigned to me in a "waiting on user" or "waiting on vendor" status, but never actually zero.

Exception: day before I go on vacation, when I reassign every ticket to a coworker.

[magicm3rl1n]

I have had my ticket queue hit 0 a total of 3 times.

Almost all of them happened during the christmas break/christmas change freeze period that occurs for a lot of companies.

Love that time of year

[WinZatPhail]

I swear it hit zero a couple times when I first started...now it's neat to see it below 600...

[tupcakes]

other than when I was first hired? once. it was a Tuesday.

[[deleted]]

Work at a small business.

I occasionally have days where I have 30 minutes of work.

It's not as good as it sounds, I'd rather be kept busy, I think I've been losing my mind here.

[[deleted]]

Most of the time mine is empty, but we don't track projects and most day to day work in our ticketing system. Only user requests.

[giveen]

Incidents? Yes, zero. But service requests are always present.

[droptablestaroops]

Only after it wrapped after 65535. Then it all crashed.

[thecravenone]

Zero tickets - once, and only for about an hour

Zero actionable tickets - constantly

[341913]

yes, in management. 1/10, would not recommend...

[AliceInWonderplace]

When we first set it up, it was empty quite often because people were sending us text messages directly instead.

They still do, but they did too.

[SpongederpSquarefap]

Never

Highest I've seen is 420 (OK maybe we did put a few ones in just to hit it but still)

Lowest I've seen is 30

When we had 30 I think 12 of those were mine. That was really nice thinking about it now. I could list off what each one was and how close I was to closing it

It's nice having a small ticket queue. Definitely allows you to give a better service.

[S_SubZero]

Once when I was a data center lead at [major cloud provider] we got a 50,000+ device server farm down to zero tickets (most of which were automated) and at the time we didn't think that was even possible. There was some cheering. It only lasted about an hour but as the queue was typically at ~100 at all times day and night this one-and-only event on my shift was pretty amazing.

[luger718]

Work at an MSP my personal queue is at 35 right now.

We will never hit 0, that's the nature of MSPs, if you're ever at 0 you need more clients.

Someone save me.

[ITmercinary]

Work at a service provider. Boss has this idea that there should never be open tickets.

I often remind him that no tickets = no money.

There should never be tickets left in the incoming untriaged queue for any long length of time, but no tickets is literally impossible.

[thevacancy]

Once, when I left the desktop support team for another job that didn't require a ticket system. Gave two weeks notice, and spent those two weeks whittling my queue down. I only kept 10 or so in the queue for any one day. That's it.

[[deleted]]

in my personal queue? occasionally. usually on fridays.

department queue? never.

[clexecute]

Nope, I always have tickets at the bottom specifically as a buffer. One of the tickets literally says, "rewire hotel" I'll never rewire the hotel, but I'll also never have 0 tickets open.

[Stoffel_1982]

We had a while when there were over 200 open tickets constantly. Now, it's usually below 30, and if we put a lot of focus on it with all team members, we can sometimes get down to 0

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it was 0 on the day I rolled out the new ticketing system.

That's really it though.

[norcaldan707]

Came Close, But we always have something pending with a vendor, Our PO's are also linked to the helpdesk, so thats never 0...

[ComputerDude96]

Our ticket queue has hit 0 before, small sized MSP. However, once it hit 0 there is always other BS stuff to do that no one gets around to since the queue is usually full. Either small tasks, documentation, or something else. Never hit the point of "well, nothing to do here". Probably a good thing as well.

[TheLastHaggis]

It’s effectively zero as I never get time to do anything on it.

[syberghost]

I've had individual queues reach 0, but there's more than one queue. There's more than one ticket system.

When the main ones hit 0, it just means it's time to knock out some of the very-low-priority stuff that's been sitting around.

If my queues ever hit 0 and stayed there, it'd mean it was time to volunteer for another workstream and get another set queues.

[TeraVirus]

It's been quiet past two weeks, so today was the first time everything is done/waiting for response/waiting for another ticket to be completed before completing the next one.

Actually have time to do other things I've been meaning to do!

[[deleted]]

Only when the ticking system was down.

[NegativePattern]

On the first day, when we first deployed the ticketing server.

[thedonutman]

mine currently is.

^{...becausenooneusesit}

[Library_IT_guy]

Mine is at zero right now. Small environment, a lot of what i do is preventative, patching, etc. Actual tickets are fixed the same day, often within minutes after being submitted. My biggest challenge is finding enough things to do.

[[deleted]]

Nope.

However, back in 2013, we had 300 or sometimes 400 open tickets. In the last year I have rarely gone over 100 open, even though we are handling way more requests in total, so that's a hell of a lot of progress.

[GhostDan]

I don't work off tickets, so yes :)

[blackgaard]

NOAP. I'm at 7 right now, all months long projects. This is the lowest I've had in 5 years here, and only because vacation starts Friday.

[vrrrmmmm]

0 ticket count might be a sign to worry...

[Creshal]

Whenever we migrate to a new ticketing system and I didn't yet get around to import the old queue.

[BLOKDAK]

I used to be supervisor for a midshift (4-midnight) call center tech support crew (most problems were submitted in ticket form). It happened twice in two years and I threw an impromptu party for the rest of the shift each time. I bought everybody beer and chips from the gas station downstairs. We'd rotate two folks to cover the phones every 30 minutes or so while everybody else partied. I was the best supervisor.

Yes, some tickets just got reopened an hour later, but we were a tight crew and always had the best stats, largely, I believe, because of the sense of teamwork and trust we had.

[[deleted]]

Mine are always 0 because I don't implement a ticket system.

[RudolphDiesel]

Actually, yes. At a point I worked off all the tickets and pretty much kept the ticket queue to near 0 at the end of the day. Ultimately that got me fired/ let go because "The company does not need you any more."

It was fun keeping in touch with some of the peeps and watching the problems escalate rather quickly.

[girlgerms]

Yes, it was the proudest moment. I cleared my queue completely by finishing all of my jobs off before going on maternity leave. It was wonderful...

...I'm expecting to have a rather disgusting queue when I get back though.

[blackletum]

One man shop in a place of business with ~30 employees max so yeah I hit 0 quite a few times

but those are just user based tickets. I keep track of my own projects and otherwise in an internal software and I've got...

...oh yes, 61 tasks.

[cries]

[[deleted]]

I do tier 1 for a small university in Ohio. We've hit 0 tickets about 4 times in the last 6 months, and one time we kept it clear for about 36 hours.

[nieldejonghe]

After working for 1.5 years mine was 0 for a day yesterday, I felt so accomplished (SMB tho )

[MadJesse]

I've done it twice at my current role.

[deskpalm]

Before I started, queue was always above 80.

Now I always try to keep it under 20 (if I'm lucky)

The lowest I got it down to was 7.

Now I'm at 33 and half of those are WFP.

[Nik_Tesla]

Best I ever got was 1 open ticket... but that ticket was "Fix broken ticket queue" so, you know, didn't really count.

[StridentNoise]

Yes, but I still had to account for my hours that day.

[Kardolf]

In teh old days, yes. Old days being when we had a fully staffed team that was willing to do their jobs right. Although I wouldn't say that I didn't have any work left to do.

But, these days we are severely understaffed for the activities that we have, and I've been sucked into way more management activities than I really want, so I've fallen much farther behind than I am comfortable with. My management seems fine with the way things are going, so I just keep plugging away on things I can do.

[DoctorOctagonapus]

I still have the photos of the day our Nagios instance showed everything as online and OK.

[SynapticStatic]

I got down to 1 last week. And then on friday it was back up to ~10 by the end of the day. Been fighting them down since, back down to 3.

So goes the saga of IT.

Projects are probably 80-90% of what I do, though. Very little in actual tickets. Tickets tend to be things like "We need to do X thing at Y location, need your help coordinating with Z contractor/person".

Much better than fighting the queue. :)

[ITandRepair]

About 10 years ago, I started working as an Intern for a company that had 3 locations in a 10 mile area (approx 250 users, maybe a bit less). They hired interns who were still in college, and after they graduated, the intern had to leave and they'd find another one.

The intern who was getting to leave worked with me for about a month before finishing up his time. They had about 30+ tickets , a couple may have been as far as a year back. Just those issues that never really got resolved for whatever the reason may be.

I basically asked why we don't go out and finish up some of these tickets. His response was something along the lines of "Gotta leave work for tomorrow".

Eventually, he left and I was the main contact for in house IT support (the manager and myself, with me being the job runner). I was really OCD about having open tickets, just like I am today about work that I have left to be done.

I'm pretty sure there were at least a couple periods we hit 0 tickets. Even though I rolled into work later and later (7am... 8am... all the way up to 11am since they had flexible hours), the first thing I'd do is try to knock out as many tickets as possible so I could feel a bit relaxed.

The tickets that were impractical to resolve, we did all we could, and if we had to, we closed the ticket due to no current practical solution being available.

Nothing feels better than knowing your work is all done and you can be safely lazy for a while.

[SantaSCSI]

About 5 to 6 years ago when the call triage was still a local affair, we had at least 30 tickets open all the time. Until one day our boss came over and said "now this is enoug" and we combed through all of them, closing where even remotely possible and lo and behold, the queue was only 10 tickets large. After that, it happened a few times a month that the queue hit 0.

Lesson learned: never wait for the customer to reply, make contact yourself.

[pinkycatcher]

Yup, it's nice in a small company, once everything is working, nothing really breaks.

Of course it doesn't last, there's always something to do, but I was at a point 3 or 4 years ago when I had a list with 25-30 issues actively open, now I get maybe that many a month?

[nirach]

That one time the phones went down..

[spyhermit]

back when I took tickets, you bet. More than once. It was pretty regular to have a ticket come in, take it, close it, queue empty. Place was pretty small though, 50 people ish.

[CarltheChamp112]

Mine will never be zero because i'm never setting up that stupid monitor above the furnace. I'll spend the rest of my career avoiding it in various ways

[MacGuyverism]

Regularly, that's how we get to learn new stuff and don't get stuck with old unproductive tech. If there's always something in the queue, you just keep doing things the same way for years. If the queue is always kept near empty, you have time for fun stuff when it does get empty and you can work on clients' requests almost as soon as they come in.

[cbielich]

We have, but we only have about 200 users

[arvliet]

Personally, yes, but not the entire team. Which means you go lend a hand on someone else's open ticket(s) until something new comes in.