How to take a vacation

[Jeff Dinsmore]

I am the one and only Interface Person here at Chesapeake Regional – like many of you at your organizations, I’m sure.

My question is this:  How do you handle support for Cloverleaf when your’e away on vacation – out in the sticks, out of the country, whatever?

I’ve thought about the “cross fingers an hope” model, but that doesn’t sound like a 100% solution…

Any ideas appreciated – except those that include “No Vacations” 😉

Thanks!

Jeff Dinsmore
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare

Topic

[Elisha Gould]

Is there anyone that can be trained up enough to be dangerous?

We’ve had times when there’s only one, but management have been willing to find another person who can take on support while the primary is away.

Might be possible to contract an extra support person, but I’m sure there’s little niggles that need to be handled in a specific way which is difficult to document.

It’s not really realistic to be on support while on holidays, so I’d be putting the case to management that it’s in their best interest to find someone else to hold the fort, otherwise it’s their risk that they may be out of action for a couple of days while they try to find a contractor to work on it. This holds for if your sick or get hit by a car too, not just holidays.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN 😯 !!!

Them saying “we don’t have budget” is BS, they’ll have a lot higher cost if things go wrong with no-one trained up.

maybe tone it up or down depending on your relationship with management and how much you can get away with.

[Michael Hertel]

What’s a vacation?   😥

[Jeff Dinsmore]

Sounds like Michael’s in a similar boat…

Elisha,

It’s not necessarily a budget issue.  And I’m not being held hostage (most days).  Nor am I frightfully displeased with my life here.

For the most part, things are just fine.  But, for my sanity and the good of the hospital, it would be beneficial to have someone to cover emergencies while I’m away.

Our engine takes care of itself for the most part, so I get very few calls.

The issue we’ve seen with training someone up to the “dangerous” level is that the simple things they might cover are already automated.

It’s the more complex stuff that needs covering – and that’s where we’d run into problems.  Unless you work with this stuff every day, debugging a complex issue would be very difficult.

I suppose we could train someone to have a general idea of how to get around Cloverleaf and call Infor support if that person gets into something he/she can’t handle.

Jeff Dinsmore
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare

[Elisha Gould]

Yeah I figured as much, I’m just being daft, so take no offence.

still probably good to discuss it with management, even if its “cross skill” with another application person, so that if one of you are missing, there’s still someone able to do the basics.

[Max Drown (Infor)]

You could leverage Infor Services to cover for you while you’re away.

-- Max Drown (Infor)

[Rob Lindsey]

So Jeff, were you able to take a vacation yet?  If so, what did you end up doing?  Of course there are always contractors out there who might be willing to help out on an on-call basis.

Rob

[Jeff Dinsmore]

Not yet, but thanks for asking.

We’re knocking around a few different options.

I took Max Drown’s advice and contacted Infor Services.  They initially came back with a Big Number that would be prohibitively expensive.  But, we’re continuing to explore options there.

I’m also open to other suggestions, Rob.  If you know of a good consultant who might be interested in a short-term gig, you can email me directly at jeff.dinsmore@chesapeakeregional.com

Jeff Dinsmore
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare

[Donna Bailey]

I know the feeling…..I came from a hospital being the only cloverleaf person for several years….and then I got recalled for the Navy…..My hospital hired a contract programmer to come in while I was gone.  I was only gone for 5 months, but there wasn’t any issues.

I am currently working for that company and have to say, it’s a great option for that lone interface person.  It’s piece of mind when/if you go “off the grid” and don’t have any other options.   I can send you info for the company I work for.

With all that said…you need vacations!!!  It’s healthier for you!

Thanks,

Donna

Donna Bailey
Tele: 315-729-3805
dbailey@microstar.health
Micro Star Inc.

[mike brown]

Train your help desk to do the simple things like bounce interfaces, and rely on ALERTS to fire and just schedule your time when nothing is going on like updates, upgrades, systems downtimes. your users should accommodate that much..

and

whats a vacation… lol

[Daniel Murphy]

I agree with Mike Brown here.

I am also the Lone Ranger with the Interfaces. I trained the Help Desk and the Business Analysts to be able to manage all of the common issues that go wrong when the automated side fails.

The Help Desk covers simple things such as restarting processes and threads; where the Business Analysts have deeper knowledge of the inner workings of the Xlates and/or code that makes them work. Each are required to know that kind of information so that I may go away for a week and not need to worry. I also have trained one business analyst that is more general purpose and CAN do the work needed in my absence; just not as efficient nor as effective. When I return, I am briefed on what they did and I make any changes necessary to make it how it needs to be.

I made EXTENSIVE and COMPLETE documentation for things that require more than that; for example: Rebooting the Red Hat Linux Server, what to do should that goes off into an unknown state and becomes unresponsive, how to restart the interface engines, etc.

My documents come complete with pictures and verbiage just to make it clear on what to do.

That covers about 99% of the issues. Then there are the exceptionally rare cases; where I am needed to look into it. I usually take a computer with me and my cell phone, but even then I may not be reached. Text messages and voicemail always comes in after you regain service. Whenever I go on vacation, I just make it a point to make it out to an area that has service and play catch-up. The majority of the time, even when called, it is NOT an urgent need and can wait until my return.

That remaining 0.01% will just have to go unchecked until I return. 😉

[mike brown]

I did the same for documentation and I trained the night shift, day shift and weekend shift on the help desk to cover, it works outstanding with a few hickups. because as we all know the help desk rotates a lot.

The application owners handle the ALERTS and get pages when the vendor drops a connection and they call the vendor not the interface team.

I supplied visios, PDF’s and document, document document and you can take time off. but still leave yourself on the ALERTs so you know everything that goes on.

mike 😉

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