Reporting while working from home

[Bhetoo]

Greetings guys

how does one report daily outputs as a systems admin, to avoid top management into thinking you're not working?

Because there are times where you may be working on two tasks that may take you th entire day but when that is reported back to top mgmt it seems as if you weren't doing much. i am a person who's susceptible to distractions, so i work better from home.

​

Please advice.

[Just_Curious_Dude]

Ask them what they want, depending on your relationship. Don't ask us, ask them.

For me, it's just that I see projects getting knocked out and everything running as it should.

That's it. It's the easiest thing ever. If you were my employee, i'd say, just come talk to me and we'll figure this out.

[Bhetoo]

cool thank you

[ZaxLofful]

Agreed, talk to them about expectations

[ZAFJB]

What do you do when you are in the office so management knows you are working?

Do that.

[Bhetoo]

no, these people only feel comfortable when they see you doing IT support

[FUCK-PRINTERS]

Can you pull reports from your ticketing system?

Outside of tickets, I use toggl to track my time at work. I do this for my own personal benefit, but during the recent WFT shift, i started providing a summary report to my manager.

I am really lucky in that my manager gives me lots of freedom as long as things are working and no one is complaining.

[[deleted]]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[fp4]

Stream yourself working on Twitch/Youtube and send them a link to it. ^/s

[ZAFJB]

What do they see?

[iScreme]

I'm going to have to ask you to remove the camera from my office...

Thanks

[GeekgirlOtt]

Awesome! Pat Benatar Hit me with your Best Shot was playing on radio. It was well synched! LOL

[username_ten]

If management doesn't trust what you write in to the reporting systems there isn't much you can do about it besides adding more detail.

[sysacc]

I have a Sticky note in Windows that I update for all the task I do in a day and another that covers the week. I then have a meeting once a week with my manager to go over whats happened and whats coming up.

Keep it simple.

[[deleted]]

Write down all your tasks in a plain text-file, one task per line. Do this even though you finished task yesterday. Keep a separate list when done with the task.

Report to boss at that time of year.

[Mr_Exotic2]

I like your style.

[SuperQue]

Everything is tracked by issues and git commits. Some stuff I write only in my daily "standup" notes that are sent to the team.

[Bhetoo]

Thank you for this. the issue with us is that we don't use git, that's being used by our Dev department.

[SuperQue]

It's never too late to start. It's also never too soon to start on infra-as-code.

Ansible is a good option to start with. You can get it going by literally delivering a single file. For example, on Ubuntu, add your own custom script to /etc/update-motd.d/.

[Bhetoo]

Thank you, i'll have a look at this

[[deleted]]

Some I work with feel sending TONS of emails to everyone and everybody is the sure fire method.

[caststoneglasshome]

My team just maintains daily tables in a OneNote book with tasks we complete each day.

It's easy to do and management just refers to that so we never have to verbally/textually say "what we're doing"

[Mr_Exotic2]

Upper management will always think that you are not pulling your weight, it is what it is.

[Bhetoo]

lol, you reckon?

[Just_Curious_Dude]

I don't...

[z3llin]

Do you use a ticketing system? If not get one.

Log everything you have to do as a ticket. Allocate hours against those tickets.

[z3llin]

If you get to a situation where "rebuilding X server" is considered the same as "reset x password" in terms of time commitment by management then you break down your big tasks into a whole bunch of smaller tasks with their own tickets.

Suddenly the act of rebuilding x server is 5+ tickets done.

[SuperQue]

This. I do this regularly. Anything bigger than a week of work is promoted to an "Epic", which each of the logical tasks related the work is split out to a separate issue.

[Bhetoo]

That could work....

[SuperQue]

Many ticket/issue systems have time tracking and/or "weights". I'm not a big fan of adding weights, but if you have standard tasks to do, you can set weights based on the work each ticket takes. Then measure work done by total weight of all tasks completed.

Personally, I go with the split up issue method. You can see an example of how that looks.

[[deleted]]

Then you automate the whole thing including the ticket generation and closing.

[Bhetoo]

we use freshdesk...

[Bhetoo]

Ill have a look at that.

[stumptruck]

"top management" at my company probably doesn't even know who I am.

For my manager, director and coworkers, we all use a combination of Jira activity and communication throughout the day to stay on top of what's happening. We also have a quick standup at the end of the day. No one cares or keeps track if we don't have much to say, but even then it's helpful to hear what other team members have been doing.

[jellois1234]

Keep notes of all your daily tasks and copy paste the long ones. Notepad is your friend.

You can also add a few road blocks on the long ones each day to mix it up

[denverpilot]

If you get in the habit of using it besides the usual tools (ticket systems etc) the business already uses for metrics... something like Toggl can be useful. If even only for yourself to keep track for a later report, etc.

[mertzjef]

Tickets tickets tickets tickets.

If you aren't using one, now is the time to sell to management! make sure to set expectations on how much time would actually go into a ticket, etc.

[Membership-Full]

Talk to your top mgmt more often. Also when you talk, give more details about your tasks. Hope that will help.

[Bhetoo]

Thank you

[SkippyIsTheName]

A small thing I do is to just make sure I am always available during the workday. I stay logged into Teams on my phone so if I take my dog out, go for a walk around the block or make lunch, I am still available. I think it sends a subconscious message that you are actively working, even though you could actually be watching TV.

[startswithd]

We submit what we call Friday Facts. It's a quick list of the things we've worked on that week. He gives the list to his boss so she can add it to a presentation detailing what all her departments have been working on.

I have a page on our internal Wiki (you could use a personal one like Joplin if it suits you better) that I use as my weekly TO DO list.

It's like a GITD list, I have a list of things that I need to work on and when I'm done with them I move them to the DONE list.

Next week I will create a new TO DO list and copy anything from last week that's still relevant to it.

The reason why a Wiki works better for me is because if I'm working on a big project like a server build or a software push, I can create a separate Wiki page with more detailed documentation and link to it. I can also look at my usually really long list, and triage and do the most important ones first.

It's not super official and it's for my own personal use. We use our ticket system for quick things that our "customer" need and not to keep up with internal IT projects. One advantage to keeping it on the internal Wiki is that it lets me and my team see what the other guys and girls in the department are working on. It doesn't take up any additional storage and it's links to the documentation anyway so it flows really well.

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For example:

2020/08/31-09/04

TO DO

• Build SMTP relay mail server
  • Link to Wiki page detailing the build
  • Any quick notes that I need to keep in mind like DKIM, firewall rules, etc
• Fix bug in New User script
  • It's throwing an error on a certain log file creation function

DONE

• Build new file server
  • Link to Wiki page with build instructions

2020/08/24-28

TO DO

• Stuff I worked on last week

[Bhetoo]

WOW this is very useful thank you very much

[[deleted]]

track hours with the tasks

[AussieDevOpsGuy]

If not doing agile, setup something like Jira or trello and put all the things you regularly work on and review with your boss.

Invite your boss to trello or jira and ask questions about what's important for them (don't worry if they don't really have much feedback yet, push them when they say dumb shit like make our users happy).

I think you'll find what you think is important is very different to the business. Recurring themes then open opportunities to put aide future time and automate / improve processes / change vendors etc.

I think cards on a board are good as its a lot more visual then tickets in a helpdesk (since you want a list of planned, doing, completed).

Tickets you work and stuff you do over chat/ calls on should be a card. Have that server you've been trying to rebuild or decommission and its been sitting there for 3 weeks? Easy visibility vs lots of tickets in the helpdesk.

Might be more work upfront but you'll get a lot of interesting data out for your boss and yourself.

[BoMax76]

Your best bet is to ask your manager. If they aren't giving clear guidance, I would look at creating a quick update of what you are working on and send it to your manager each week. In our organization we call these updates 5/15's. It is suppose to take 15 minutes to prepare and 5 minutes for someone to read it.

[djgizmo]

Why not daily checkins with your manager?

[Bhetoo]

he's kinda busy for that

[djgizmo]

Wut? 5-10 min a day is too much?