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The New Whatever-It's-Called
Aug. 26th, 2005 10:07 amI think it's safe to say that yesterday presented my biggest challenge yet - just how do you soften up the comment "The module message system is a complete waste of time" to put it in to a test report? To be honest I could see his point, but in the end I settled with "Having an extra message system for modules seems redundant".
The tester that I'm going to contact this afternoon sounds like bad news as well. This morning he sent out a page-long email about "the new whatever-it's-called" and his suspicions of its "intuitive claims". We wouldn't mind, but all we'd asked him about was if one of his module codes was correct. He's got a reputation for pestering the department - the developer next to me has been unable to stop laughing at his email for about five minutes now.
I was introduced to the Helpdesk email system during the afternoon, as the normal helpdesk officer was away. Because it isn't term time, not a lot of people are actually asking for help - in fact, a more accurate name would be the Spam Clearing Desk, as the amount of advertisements that the account receives is truly astounding. Spammers seem desperate to offer the Virtual Campus a loan or dubious pharmaceuticals, as if either of these would do it any good. There are also a pile of emails intended for other people, because some of the staff at RGU ignore the prominent "Do not reply to this address" warnings plastered all over emails sent from within the Campus. This happens so often that there's a standard response reserved for "User cannot read".
With only a few days until the launch of the new whatever-it's-called, there's been a rush to get things sorted out and decide which of the more radical external test suggestions to implement to keep people happy. Options on the website's sidebar seem to be appearing and disappearing by the hour. It does look like it's shaping up to be good, though - despite all their requests for change, the majority of the external testers say that it looks immeasurably better than the old system, the iNet. Which isn't difficult, because from what I can gather the iNet was almost universally hated.
The only significant portion that doesn't work at all is the chat section, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be a huge problem at the moment. As one of our web developers said, "It's almost finished. We know exactly what the problem is - now all we need is a solution."
The tester that I'm going to contact this afternoon sounds like bad news as well. This morning he sent out a page-long email about "the new whatever-it's-called" and his suspicions of its "intuitive claims". We wouldn't mind, but all we'd asked him about was if one of his module codes was correct. He's got a reputation for pestering the department - the developer next to me has been unable to stop laughing at his email for about five minutes now.
I was introduced to the Helpdesk email system during the afternoon, as the normal helpdesk officer was away. Because it isn't term time, not a lot of people are actually asking for help - in fact, a more accurate name would be the Spam Clearing Desk, as the amount of advertisements that the account receives is truly astounding. Spammers seem desperate to offer the Virtual Campus a loan or dubious pharmaceuticals, as if either of these would do it any good. There are also a pile of emails intended for other people, because some of the staff at RGU ignore the prominent "Do not reply to this address" warnings plastered all over emails sent from within the Campus. This happens so often that there's a standard response reserved for "User cannot read".
With only a few days until the launch of the new whatever-it's-called, there's been a rush to get things sorted out and decide which of the more radical external test suggestions to implement to keep people happy. Options on the website's sidebar seem to be appearing and disappearing by the hour. It does look like it's shaping up to be good, though - despite all their requests for change, the majority of the external testers say that it looks immeasurably better than the old system, the iNet. Which isn't difficult, because from what I can gather the iNet was almost universally hated.
The only significant portion that doesn't work at all is the chat section, but it doesn't seem like that's going to be a huge problem at the moment. As one of our web developers said, "It's almost finished. We know exactly what the problem is - now all we need is a solution."
