• Support
• TeamLeader

Support Team Leader's stuff

"wot I need". WIP for more general info on Support Team, go to Support/Team or support. This is stl's hidey-hole.

ToDo List

Specials, one-offs, projects:

• Develop the data retention practice as per SP.

  • Technology/Support/DataRetentionPractice

  • Werner's mail/thread "Support mailbox structure" 20091205.

Routine, all the time, continuous:

• Recruit: Triage, SE

  • Assurer => Triage => SE => CM => Arbitrator

  • transition the Triage members into SE
• review documentation:

  • HelpingCAcert and Support Team family

  • SecurityManual is my page

  • advise policy group on Security Policy section 8 Support.

• respond to board
  • prepare annual team report for AGM
• support to Arbitration

  • Watch the Support -> arbitration filings bridge

Longer term questions, cleanup, lower priority:

• mailing lists and privacy:
  • make cacert-support a PRIVATE or PUBLIC forum?
  • change the name of cacert-se to free up -se (sweden) ...
    • changed to cacert-support-engineer
• change SP
  • for ABC ?
  • for Triage?
• Create the Support Challenge
  • develop the fiddle process? Shift to CATS? Another way?
• Deprecate the mailbox.

  • also see DataRetentionPractice.

• cacert-support -- walled garden?

Help Team

STL's role

• direct and help to establish the cookbook or FAQ for the Helpers.
• Recruit to Triage.
• push the message to other t/ls to recruit for Help Team, etc.

Triage Team

• building now....

  Support/Triage needs you!

Requirements for Triage Team:

• Assurer
  • client cert in your email client (MUA) and browser
• has lots of tiny slices of time available
• comfortable with webapps like OTRS

• cool with reading English

  • comfortable with writing basic English
  • advantage in as many other languages as we can get
• organised, thoughtful, efficient
• understands/agrees basic thrust of CCA, DRP
  • agrees to SP
  • understands CARS
• got IRC

• We need more people outside Central European timezone.

STL's role:

• monitor the selections, and confirm their correctness. Give feedback.
• keep the speed up.
  • Set target. 1 hour?

• Recruit people for ABC => SEs, or for CM role.

  • The primary place to recruit Triagers would be from Help Team.
• on team changes, watch mailbox handover

Welcome:

1. check:
   1. whether Assurer (wp)
   2. personal recommendation
   3. small print (wp)

2. point to doco: Support/Triage (wp)

3. point to IRC: se (wp)
4. point to fiddle mini-C (wp)
   1. do Support-1, Triage-1 and Triage-2
5. need s/mime encryption, may get a community address (wp)
6. Send the Welcome Pack (==wp)

Start:

1. intro to team
2. bring into OTRS, #se, cacert-support-engineer@

   1. OTRS

      1. Admin / Users / Add User
      2. Assign Role to User

   2. manage subscribers

   3. se IRC needs to be fixed up.
3. try a few cases
4. add post-capable to cacert-disputes and cacert-support-engineer
5. chase email address + s/mime, and wiki page.

Support Engineers

Requirements for SEs:

• good grasp of CAcert in general, overall
• Assurer

• good with writing English

  • other languages in written form an advantage
• understands/agrees CCA, SP, DRP
  • is under SP
• good with diverse interactions, can interpret complications across borders
• has some (a few) larger chunks of time available, maybe an hour a day.
• flexible, "completer"
• has completed term-of-service as Triage
  • has done Triage-3, Support-1
• PG's list
  • Webinterface Handling
  • Handling Various Crypto-Related Application (Browsers, email clients, VPNs, OpenPGP, GnuPG, ...)
  • Understanding of certificates, the related standard, ...
  • Understanding of Security, Security-Policy and Guidelines, Social-Engineering Resistance, ...
  • CAcert's offerings, services, products
  • CAcerts organigramm, knowing who is responsible, who to contact

STL's responsibility:

• to monitor the actions taken, and confirm the instructions. Coach and discuss.
• keep the quality up, not the speed
• watch for rudeness, brushoffs

• recruit from Triage => SE

• push SEs => CMs.

  Please file DISPUTE to request Arbitrated Background Check over Santa Claus, known as St Nick <presents@co> . He is currently working as Triage within Support Department.

  The direct result is to propose him to board for the potential role of Support Engineer, as covered by Security Policy 9.1.4.2. However the ABC can be seen as broad and independent of Support work.

New SE:

1. check:
   1. whether Assurer
   2. personal recommendation
   3. small print

2. point to doco: Support/SE

3. point to IRC:
4. point to mini-challenge and full challenge when written
   1. Support-2
5. add to:

   1. SupportEngineerGroup (need wiki handle, optional?)

   2. Adjust the OTRS Role
   3. Request to appoint as SE to board

   4. add Admin flag, point to Admin Manual

Assets Checklist

When handing over the job, run through this checklist.

Team lists

Maintain a list of team participants at Support/Team. Early job: send an individual ping to everyone listed to confirm participation and aliveness.

Support System

• The application administration rights for OTRS:
  • "admin" currently for Michael (STL) and the admins below.
  • underlying application (SSH?) is with Mario (otrs-admin) and Nick (backup otrs-admin).
• wiki page admin rights over the Secure pages for SEs.
  • Mario (wiki-admin), Michael (STL).
• The support@co Mailbox needs to handed over, also when triage people leave.
  • Actually it is being deprecated, so the task is also to clean it up. See the Data Retention project.

Mailing lists

Need visibility (subscribe) over these:

• support mailing lists:

  • cacert-support mailing list so as to see the action, help any major confusions, and identify some better practices

  • SE, triage, help, ...

• cacert-disputes mailing list (case-management list) so as to confirm that fowarded disputes are not being dropped.

Wiki

STL should own and admin the SupportEngineerGroup page, and manage the private pages for SEs. Search Text on that page name to find. Use this sparingly as usage of access controls is generally a bad thing. Ask wiki-admin@ for help.

IRC

Support uses the chat room "se" for support people. Generally, Triage and SEs are on there only, plus a few invited guests.

Currently it is not set up as a proper secure channel.

Doco

All doco is indexed from helicopter view at support. Major page is Support/Team. Read and review.

Liason

Liason is conducted with

• Arb team somehow (currently through u60 being on Support forums).
• Board (by Iang being member).
• OA team (Mario).

Fiddle Ontology

Done by Iang under his SO Period

1. got control of mailbox
   1. investigated the folders

   2. reviewed styles of messages going out, in Support/Triage

2. reviewed SP as against triage plan, mailed out to policy, etc

3. Guillaume's template emails for SEs in their page

4. Training on system operation for SEs dox in Support/SE/Manual from session with PG 20091120 MQ.

5. reviewed / updated the Guidelines for Support of Arbitration

6. started on fiddle mini-C questions for Triage and for Support
7. documented the process of new Triage
8. bringing in the first people: Neo + Werner.

9. documented the Triage -> help forum question.

10. Neo wrote the sieves. Turned my filters off.
11. Forums:
    • create a #se in IRC.
    • created cacert-support-engineer list

12. casa + JS => Triage

13. long debate with Arbitration to get mails flowing back and forth between Arbitration and Support. Still not resolved.
14. debate with treasurer about how to deal with Payments.
15. Paypal issued debated, dispute initiated.
    • intervened to stop breaches of SP.
16. reported to Board 20091206
17. Brought in new people:
    • casa
    • JS, added
    • Jm3 halfway?

18. reviewed Security Policy

    • proposed change to add appointed assistants of channels only.

19. developed the Support/Team documentation and structure

    • figure out the triage thing Support/Triage

    • added the password practices page
    • wrote, proposed, added the community help forum page
20. initiated review of issues.co by team as t/l is too busy and can't tie his own shoelaces
    • favourable comments from Marty1
21. Support reported to Board.
22. 3 ABCs done.
    • reviewing Support fiddle mini-C questions
    • reviewed the ABCs.
    • proposed in agenda/motions to board.
23. Support reported to Board, Board approved 3 new SEs.
    1. notified, added as per checklist below.
24. Started Triage recruitment again.
    • Triage in progress: jm3, Faramir, Fred?
    • Adding Dominik.
25. Mailed out for ideas on T/L.
26. OTRS / issue is moving. Now handling the tasks as primary method.

27. started the DataRetentionPractice from Werner's mail!

28. Board / neo is now T/l
    • ABCs

• CategorySupport