Josh monitored the boot process of the records server and when it was completely up and ready to start processing data, he let everyone know. "Ok, it looks like everything is up, let's bring up our test patient and try to create a new record," Josh typed into the chat session he had up. At the same time, he said nothing into the phone conversation on his Bluetooth headset. He couldn't have said anything into the telephone conversation if he tried. The phone conversation that was blaring in his headset was useless to him. It started out as a technical issue conference call with Andalon engineers and IT folks from the customer working out a problem when company officers on both sides joined the call and hijacked it. They dominated the call, changing the main topic of conversation from fixing the problem to assigning blame.
Josh intently watched a status screen on his left-hand monitor, his right-hand monitor was taken up by his email, the Andalon ticketing system, and Webex which is a Cisco created communications tool, it allowed him to chat via keyboard, share his computer screen, and more importantly, his customer can share their computer desktop with him. That way if there's a problem with a piece of software, he can see the problem for himself in real time from the customer's point of view.
This was a big call, one of their clients, a hospital in Rochester, had an issue creating a new medical record on the new roll-out of Andalon's hospital record system software. If this were a real issue with the software, it would mean that several dozen clients were going to face a similar problem and that could cause a hiccup in the anticipated Andalon IPO which had the Andalon Vice Presidents in a panic. The CEO, Anthony Friedman remained calm and occasionally sent a text message via Webex encouraging the guys. He was quietly monitoring the progress of the trouble call and having a background as a tech guy he understood the importance of letting the engineers be engineers.
Because this trouble call was important, the population of the call was big, almost all of Andalon's software team was on the call and had been beating their heads against the wall for hours. The hospital had their IT staff on the call and there were any number of vice presidents from both Andalon and the hospital who were now dominating the call. Most technicians became leery of saying anything on the call because the VPs insert themselves into every side of the conversations and Vice Presidents are champions of misunderstanding technical jargon. In the end the company officers were causing more problems than the technicians could handle.
Josh could understand their misunderstanding, there were so many code writers on this call, and they were answering questions on the phone and on Webex right now and Josh didn't understand a word they said. They were talking about things Josh only knows about peripherally and they were confusing the VPs that wanted straight answers in English. To separate the technicians from the executives, all the technicians were communicating on Webex, typing in their comments to a common chat, that way the executives couldn't hear what the technicians and code writers were saying. Executives tend to panic when the jargon starts flying, this arrangement saved tender nerves and overinflated egos.
When he and Terri joined the call Terri found the problem with expected data not arriving at the server, then Josh found a problem with a network switch owned by the hospital that wasn't passing the data correctly. The old software didn't care much about that switch, but the new software is very picky, very security conscious and particular of how the data arrives at the records server. Josh walked the hospital technician through verifying the switch configuration and sure enough, there was problem on one of the ports. He had them configure an unused port on the switch then had them simply move the cable from the bad port to the new port while he configure the software on the data server to accept the data from a different port. "When did I say we'd have this fixed?" he typed into the chat on Webex.
"You said three PM," replied Terri who was on the conference call also.
"Any status update Josh?" asked Brandon Mitchell on the telephone conference call. He was the Andalon Vice President in charge of Sales and Marketing that sold this software package to the hospital in the first place. He was the fellow who dominated the conference call driving the technicians away, he was also the fellow whose wife and daughter grabbed Josh's ass in front of friends at the company's Holiday party just minutes after asking Veronica to marry him in front of the entire company. Josh wasn't a fan.
"If you give me a moment or two, I'll have a complete update for you shortly sir," said Josh in his deep southern voice. He heard a snicker on the call and typed "Mute your mics" into the Webex conference. Josh doesn't mind cheerful banter on a call, but these executives are wired on far too much caffeine and maybe other substances and looking for someone to blame for this fiasco.
"I'm sorry," replied Jennifer Combs on the Webex. "But you sound like a Southwest Airlines pilot." The Webex window started to fill with laughing face emojis from every participant. Jen is an Andalon Field Technician and is seen quite often hanging out in Josh's office with her friend Terri.
The status screen showed an increase in medical records of one. "Ok, let's see if we can delete that record," Josh typed into the Webex. After a few minutes of bickering conversation by the executives in his ear the record count decreased. "Ok, looks good from this end," he typed into the Webex. He took a minute or two to update the trouble ticket then broke into the phone call. "Excuse me y'all but we have an operational system now. We had a port on a local switch passing data improperly, we switched to an unused port and ran a few tests and we're looking good."
"And it's 2:38 PM," said Brandon. "Didn't you say you'd have it up by two?"
Josh rolled his eyes, "I said three, sir." This problem was discovered on Friday night, the hospital IT and Andalon software writers had been beating on it for almost twenty hours before they called in Josh and his team at noon on Saturday. Josh decided to call this a thirty minute fix: two hours of listening to excuses and accusations and thirty minutes of actual troubleshooting and fixing.
He listened to several minutes more of conversation in his ear. All the technicians, code writers, and IT people dropped off, and there were approximately eight people left on this conference call, company officers for the hospital and Andalon and they were congratulating each other for their part in the fix. It was all down to the finger pointing now. When he said "local switch" he meant a piece of equipment owned by the hospital, and not an Andalon asset. The only thing Andalon did wrong was call the code writers for help instead of Josh and the technical team, thereby wasting nearly a day.
He sent a quick email to his boss Mark letting him know what had happened, then responded to an email from Brandon Mitchell who was demanding to know
exactly
what happened. Josh's response was quick, "Like I said, a bad port on a legacy switch, I fixed it. I will have the details Monday which I will share at the postmortem briefing." Then he sent the VP an invitation to the briefing which he scheduled for 1:00 PM which he saw on the calendar was when Mr. Mitchell had scheduled his lunch.
"If you don't have anything more for me, I'm going to sign off," said Josh into his headset. After getting a bit of grief for having to cow tow to The Princess he signed off with, "Ha, ha. Very funny guys. We'll see you in your daydreams." He shut down his laptop and popped it out of the docking station of the home office he shared with "The Princess."
And just then Veronica came into the room and hugged him from behind. "Was this a tough one?" she asked as she nibbled his ear. Veronica was now used to Josh being "on call" twenty-four/seven even though as executive assistant to Andalon CEO Anthony Friedman that's how she's been living her life since he hired her.
"Yeah, and it's not done yet, I still need to figure out how to prevent it from happening again, they want to do more installs next quarter.
Your
boss is selling this software as fast as he can make phone calls." He rubbed his eyes then patted her comforting hands. "And I have to come up with a plan before 1:00 PM on Monday."
"You'll do it, I know you will." He leaned back against her enjoying her comforting embrace and how good her encouragement felt. He gave her the same encouragement in her much more important job as executive assistant to the CEO. Veronica is a tall blond of stunning beauty, her brown eyes sparkle with delight now that she had a man who considers her his one and only. She stands five foot ten, the same height as Josh, which means that when she wears heels of any size, she ends up taller than him. Most shocking to her is that it doesn't bother him at all. She's dated business executives who demanded that she wear no heels and he would wear lifts when they were dating because of their terror of the height difference.
