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Hello Spiceheads,

I am the IT Support person at the company I work for and my boss is out of the office for the next few weeks. I was left with all of our needy end users that expect things to be done quickly. (They have become accustomed to me helping them out with stuff usually by the end of the day) Now I have to balance my boss’ roles of dealing with customers requests, our internal users and any systems issues we encounter. We usually split on-call issues, but now it’s all me.

I have no financial power so ordering equipment will have to wait. I have no authority to swap out servers or any idea what would happen if our physical servers shit the bed with our external hard drive backup solution. I brought up updating our environment many moons ago, but I was promised that on his return we would do some much-needed systems renovations.

Any tips on what to prioritize? I am so nervous that our systems are going to come crashing down and I’ll be stuck cleaning up the mess that is our manual windows server backups and re-creating an entirely new domain. (Only one domain controller).

Exhales deeply

15 Spice ups
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It will be fine just prioritize and take one day at a time.

4 Spice ups
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Start with answering any internal questions with, “have you filled out a ticket?” You may not have a ticketing system and you don’t literally need to say such a thing, it’s the attitude I’m getting at. As MikeSMn said, prioritize. Think about it now before the feces hits the rotating oscillator. What is the most important component? The systems? The customers? Or, is it the employees? Who can wait and who can’t? If a server pukes a lung, can you put a ‘back in an hour’ sign on the front door, letting customers know you’re closed for business for a bit? Can you lock your own door against employees complaining about paper not being in the printer? Do you have backups of your servers and desktops just in case you get hit with crypto and get your data drives hashed?

Prioritize, game plan any eventualities - Si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war.

2 Spice ups
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How many users do you have?

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Unfortunately, this is a clone of a prior topic that’s already been marked as solved.

Sysadmin out of work for the next two weeks - any tips? .
OP needs to close it.

@iknowbirdlaw

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Keep things ticking along. Do your job as you usually would. Don’t get stressed with it, life’s too short!

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Not sure how this link came to be. I didn’t post it twice or anything… hah.

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Just Kidding :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think you’re making a moutain out of a molehill. I am also a help desk person. I was just like you when my manager first was gone for an entire week to Hawaii and wasn’t able to be reached.

You’ll be just fine. Just prioritze the incoming tickets and then balance it with the project stuff. Breathe deep. You’re okay.

They obviously trust you, because, well, they left. Write lists, if you have to. That’s what I do.

3 Spice ups
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This happened to me a few times. I found that the best way to handle it, is a simple all users or global email that explains that due to him being out, request will have to wait and certain support won’t be available. That way if someone calls with a non-emergency request you can simply ask them if they got you email and if they lie then you can trace the email and send them a screenshot of the output. This has totally never happened to me.

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Don’t hit the bottle too early. Easy checklist to follow when your boss is out for an extended period of time:

  1. Prioritize tickets and keep the paper trail going.

  2. Backups - Make sure they’re running properly.

  3. Maintenance - Keep an eye on all of your equipment to keep them running properly.

  4. Documentation - If anything with high priority shows up for your boss make sure it’s properly documented for him/her to review.

  5. Take a breath - Take breaks even if you have to hide in the server room.

Do those and you’ll be fine instead of hitting the bottle.

2 Spice ups
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Also, how often are you having downtime or issues? Is it really going to all crash just because he is not there? Enjoy the freedom and relax it will be alright. Whats the worst that could happen?

1 Spice up
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Thought this was going to be that you were out of work of two weeks.

Prank him. Stuff his office full of packing peanuts.

Record all helpdesk stuff you do. If you need to you can always run a server on your laptop as a vm.

Good luck.

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This is the only advice I have. :slight_smile: