Knowledge Base 6418:Planning your first 90 days as the new Remedy administrator
Adopting a new role and supporting new applications can be a challenging experience, especially whenthere are unknowns about how and why things work as they do. The new administrator is justifiablyconservative, afraid to make changes for fear of what it may break, and mostly reacting to problems asthey appear. In contrast, the experienced Remedy administrator, if properly prepared, can be a sageagent of change within your organization, recommending, evaluating, and championing improvements inyour system to reflect your evolving business needs. There is no single right path for going from one tothe other, but a frequent element in the successful journey is a bit of up front planning, evaluating whatroles will be required of the Remedy administrator and how best to facilitate them. A further reward of this exercise is that its outputs also facilitate training for your backup administrator, or transitioning theresponsibilities to your replacement when you move on.The paragraphs below discuss some ideas that you may want to consider in your development plan, andreferences additional resources, which may be helpful.The good news is that being an AR System administrator is similar in practice to being administrator of other applications. The same traits which make a successful administrator are applicable: being thoroughwhen investigating changes, being responsive to problems reported, deploying changes in an orderlyfashion, following a plan of preventative maintenance, and preparing for disaster recovery.
Define your current environment
A good first step in assessing your needs is to define your present environment. This step may not benecessary if you have been involved from the beginning, but in most cases it's good to come up to speedon developments previous to your involvement. This may include putting together a summary sheet of application and product versions, collecting any requirements definitions, design docs or logs maintainedeither by your predecessor and/or consultants. Also gather product manuals, media, internaldocumentation, and training materials.These are very tangible components and specific details. Another aspect of defining your currentenvironment involves understanding the role of these applications within your organization, what needsthey fulfill, what constituencies they serve, and how these will grow and change over time. Whatfeatures or roles of the application are areas of upcoming development? When evaluating your currentenvironment, try to get a grasp of both the size and shape of the application and administrative role, aswell as a feel for its progression within your organization.
Define your roles and needs to fulfill them
The next step of the evaluation should investigate your needs to successfully perform your administrativeduties. Below are some common administrator responsibilities.- Application configuration such as adding categories, groups, etc- Preventative maintenance, such as performance tuning, archiving- Addressing reported problems by users- Investigating and implementing application customization (in some cases)- Deploying application changes or upgrades- Backup/restore processThis needs assessment step is an important part of preparation, and should be based upon your role andcurrent environment as discovered earlier rather than a generic list, but below are some suggestions tostart with:
Familiarity with configuration toolsNeed to know what configuration steps are interdependent, or related, what the tradeoff in choosing oneor the otherHow do the different parts of the application work together? Are there different modes or roles in the application?What diagnostics are available to troubleshoot problems?What diagnostic modes are available?Where is the application and configuration data stored?What tools do I need?In preparing a list of needs, try to organize them into three categories: things you need to know frommemory, things that can be available as reference material, and tasks or things you'll have to do once tobe prepared.
Collect and assess resources
Once you've defined your needs, it's time to evaluate and collect resources to address them. These twosteps, defining your needs and evaluating available resources, are often done jointly as part of general “looking around”, but arguably you'll get a more complete list of your needs by making that list first,without letting the most available resources steer your impression of your needs.Generally available resources include documentation manuals, education courses, knowledge baseentries, and a variety of other technical resources available from the Supportweb web site.Electronic versions of the manuals are generally available for download from SupportWeb, where you canright click on the link and save the PDF file locally. Quite possibly, there will be additional manuals thatare related, either high-level conceptual overviews or advanced topics such as the Programmer's Guide,which you will not have in hardcopy so perusing the Documentation area of the website is a good way tolook at what resources are available.Likewise, course descriptions are available via the web site. In considering what courses to attend, goback to your summary of needs, both in your roles and your categorization of needs (what you need toknow from memory, vs. available as reference, vs. having performed at least once.) Courses providecoverage of the most frequently needed information, and provide a sound big picture of topics, layingdown a foundation that will be augmented by the manuals and experience administering the system.Let's say that in your evaluation of your current environment, needs and resources, you determined thatyour position will be an application administrator for the HelpDesk application, which will initially bedeployed and administered pretty much out-of-box. But within the next few months after deployment,your role will grow to collect requested changes, to prioritize and implement them, and then to beginwork on implementing the full Asset Management application. In the review of the available manuals andresources for the HelpDesk and Asset Management applications, and the Action Request System for thosecustomizations, you found the former to be too point-specific to determine the best way to approachconfiguration, and the latter way too detailed to know where to start.Since your initial role would be that of an application administrator, you may decide to attend theHelpDesk course first, or that one plus the Asset Management course, to get a feel for both though yourfocus on Asset will not come until later. The evaluation of your needs, assessment of other resources,and some preliminary thoughts on how to set it up, would make for a productive class as you would beable to address this questions during that time. Suggestions and ideas from the instructor or yourclassmates can provide insights if you come to class after a little thought into the issues.
Having decided to not attend the “Administering the Action Request System” or “Advanced Topics” courses just yet, you would exercise a bit of restraint in using those tools to make any customizations.That is, you would focus on other administrative duties and diagnostics, collecting requests andevaluating whether they can be done within the HelpDesk application itself. Perhaps a few months later,you would schedule these additional courses on development in the Action Request System, and armedwith some specific requests and your own experience, you'd get a lot out of the courses. This is just oneapproach, and others of course exist, but it's an example of how to let your needs and your timelinedetermine what courses to take, when to take them, and how to get the most out of the experience.Finally, as part of this step of familiarizing yourself with available resources, acquaint yourself with how toaccess Technical Support and the specifics of your Support Plan, as well as internal system supportpersonnel like your system administrator or DBA. During what hours can you reach these resources, andcan you reach them after hours? How should your report problems or make requests of these resources?What information will they need when you report problems to them?
Make a “To do” list
The last step in this process is to write a preliminary 90 days timeline for your preparation as the newRemedy administrator. Your timeline might include weekly tasks, or a “focus for the week”, and shouldinclude target dates for each task. Be sure to schedule classes early enough that you can position themappropriately in your plan. The discussion above and the steps you've taken for each step should youprepare to make an informed plan. Like all plans, it is subject to unknowns that can change it. Also, the90 days timeframe if fairly arbitrary, it could be as short as 30 days, but be sure to give yourself sufficienttime. Consider how much time you'll have available for your administrative duties, if you also performother roles for your organization.Remember that the objective is that at the completion of your plan, you'll be confident and accomplishedin your role of administrator, can efficiently and eagerly address problem reports and change requests,able to broadly address questions and suggestions about the abilities of the system and yourimplementation to address your organizational needs. So write your plan to accomplish that goal. Also see the following knowledgebase article for some ideas in preparing your plan:KB 6366: Suggestions for setting up a maintenance plan
A couple of additional resources of interest to new administrators:
On Diagnostics:KB 6278: A primer on reading filter and workflow logsKB 6161: Setting up a dev server, how and whyOn Customization:KB 6216: A checklist for unit testing application customizationsKB 6196: Suggestions for rolling out application customizationKB 5451: Customization requests addressed to Support vs. Consulting
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