I’ve just had a phone call from Sky Broadband customer services. They suggested that the original problem was not mainly their fault, in that BT have a direct number they should have used to resolve the problem without having to involve the customer. They also said this lapse in communications between the two organisations was a very rare occurrence. They did however recognise some room for improvement in their procedures and did apologise for any shortcomings. Strangely – without prompting – the man from Sky mentioned the need for common sense to play a part in the technical support process.

Hopefully an instructive – though deeply irritating – experience for all those concerned.

I’ve learnt a few lessons, or more accurately relearnt a few quite old lessons:

• Free or cheap services often cost the most
• The likelihood of a quick resolution to a technology problem decreases exponentially in line with the number of organisations involved
• Any problem resolution system that has a rigid set of procedures with no ability to use judgement or common sense can be disastrous for both the customer and the poor unfortunates operating the system
• Almost whatever you’ve done to a customer, if you make an honest and concerted effort to sort the situation out, you’ve a chance of recovering the situation.

On about 11 September my father’s phone line ceased functioning. BT eventually gave me a repair forecast of 15 September. This date passed with no resolution.

After repeated phone calls and struggling with the automated fault report services and the internet-based fault report service which twice told me there appeared to be a problem and then automatically closed the query without doing anything, I eventually spoke to someone who said they would find out what was going on and resolve the problem within the next 24 hours. They were courteous and helpful and the problem was apparently resolved well within the time period specified. During the conversation they mentioned an issue with the broadband on the line, but gave no further information.

Whilst the phone line itself then worked, the Internet light on the SKY broadband router showed absolutely no sign of life. I telephoned the SKY support line and related the situation regarding the problem with the phone line. The support person claimed to have checked the line and reported ‘the good news is that there is no problem at the exchange’.

We then spent ages disconnecting, reconnecting, changing filters etc. etc. to no avail. This morning I took a laptop to my father’s house so that I could have access to router, phone and computer as suggested by SKY support.

We went through a similar process with SKY support again, including removing the front of the BT master socket and connecting the router directly to the test socket. Still absolutely no response from the Internet light on the router. Convinced by now that it was an exchange problem, I asked SKY support to confirm that the line was OK at the exchange – they said they had and it was.

Given connecting directly to the test socket of the master socket hadn’t worked, I was even more convinced that the problem had to be at the exchange. I phoned BT and, after ages fighting my way through a voice mail system determined to prevent me talking to a human being, eventually spoke to someone who said that there had been a problem with the SKY ADSL equipment at the exchange, SKY had been given the standard 48 hours notice to sort this out, in fact additional time had been given, but BT had then returned the line to a normal PSTN line to restore the phone service. They said I would have to phone SKY to sort this out.

I phoned SKY again and after more voice mail and a hold system that seemed designed to convince you that you had been cut off (near silence, very quiet music well in the background) I was referred from one support technician to another and once more went through the problem. They said the line in question was not a BT line, BT had not updated their database and I would have to contact BT again. By this stage I had become somewhat fed up and suggested that I did not intend to phone BT or SKY anymore and suggested that they just get the issue sorted out.

I decided to give email a try and on the Internet found a customer service email for Sky Broadband, and the email address of the BT CEO – I sent them an email recounting the above story (with copies to OTELO and BBC Watchdog – well you never know…)

28 September 2007

Seconds out, round 2.

Following an email to the CEO of BT and a customer service email address at Sky Broadband, within minutes I had had an automated response from Sky Broadband as follows – well I would include it, but the lengthy disclaimer at the bottom prohibits me from disclosing its contents to anyone. Anyway it suggested that they would reply soon. In contrast, a team manager from BT Openreach’s High Level Complaints department phoned me within a couple of hours promising to send an engineer to try to sort the problem out the next day. He gave me his mobile phone number, and sent an email confirming the details of the phone message and apologising that the problem had arisen in the first place.

Definitely BT 3, SKY 0.

29 September 2007 – 12:15pm

I received a phone call on my mobile phone from a BT manager who had organised an engineer’s visit to the exchange who confirmed that the issue was with the SKY equipment at the exchange and unfortunately, he was not allowed to touch that equipment without first talking to SKY (or something like that). Apparently, the only thing to do was to phone SKY (again) and ask them to contact BT and do whatever had to be done to sort the problem out.

With a feeling of immense trepidation and resignation I phoned SKY. I didn’t think it was going to be easy, but I really hadn’t thought it would be as bad as it was. Now firstly, for all the good it will do, I’d like to apologise to those people at the SKY call centre that I spoke to if I wasn’t as calm and courteous as perhaps I should have been. However, organisations that inflict a support system on their customers, and their staff, that seems to have no mechanism for using judgement or common sense bear a heavy responsibility for the effect on both customers and staff. I first spoke to someone at technical support, explained the situation and asked to speak to someone who could deal with the issue, they put me through to someone who seemed unaware that SKY actually had any equipment in BT exchanges, they said all they could do was to put me through to …..(ominous organ music)

Technical support.

Now, as soon as that happens you know that you might as well put the phone down, crawl into a corner, roll yourself into a small ball and whimper a bit. I wish I had, but instead I allowed myself to be transferred back to technical support. I feared that I would spend my life in some terrible loop – a bit like the one in a Doctor Who episode where Romana (or was it the Doctor) had to wiggle K9′s tail at exactly the right time to break free. This didn’t happen. Instead I got nowhere at all. In spite of explaining clearly, very clearly, even more clearly and then e x t r e m e l y c l e a r l y, that I knew what the problem was, I just needed to talk to the right person to explain it to, the technical support person said they had to check the line before they could pass the query to ‘level 3 support’ (I wonder how many levels there are?). That would have been OK, even though as I explained, explained and explained again, SKY had apparently checked the line twice in the last week without finding a problem – strange when BT claim they converted it back from an ADSL to a PSTN line two weeks ago. However, they couldn’t check the line unless I had access to the problem phone line – which I was 40 miles away from. No argument would persuade the support person to put me through to anyone else. Apparently, all I could do was to drive to my father’s house and phone SKY from there – in spite of having already done exactly that twice before in the last week. Before I ended up crushing my mobile phone like Popeye and a spinach can, I ended the call and took a few deep breaths.

A few minutes later, I phoned my BT contact, and recounted the story of my lack of progress with SKY. He said he was sorry but he could see no other solution than to do as SKY had demanded, but he did give me a contact name, phone number and a job reference.

BT 6 – SKY -435

The story continues….

The logic of the lbw law

In the unlikely event that any reader is not fully conversant with the cricket LBW law, I’ll just set out the basics:

If the bowler bowls the ball so that it hits any part of the batsman’s body (usually the leg, but not necessarily) then the batsmen is out if the ball is going on to hit the stumps as long as: the ball has not touched any part of the bat before hitting the batsman – usually known as an ‘edge’; the ball has not pitched outside the line of the leg stump; and the ball has not hit the batsman outside the line of all the stumps when the batsman is playing a stroke. The BBC has an excellent description on their site:

Ways of getting out: leg before wicket

So the main ‘conditions’ we need to check for are:

Was the ball going to hit stumps? (Hitting)

Did the batsman get an edge? (Edge)

Did the ball pitch outside leg? (Outside leg)

Did the ball hit the batsman in line with the stumps? (Hit in line)

Was the batsman playing a stroke? (Playing stroke)

Here is the Excel spreadsheet with the appropriate conditions:

I have used True and False as the entries so we can use the various logical functions to evaluate the result directly. We will be using:

• IF() – evaluates a statement and returns one result if true or an alternative if false
• AND() – allows you to check multiple conditions – only if all are true will the result be TRUE
• OR() – allows you to check multiple conditions – if one or more is true the result will be TRUE
• NOT() – reverses the logic of a statement – i.e. turns a TRUE FALSE or a FALSE TRUE

If we try and express the logic of the LBW law in English we get something like:

If Not Hitting or Outside Leg, or Edge then ‘Not Out’

If Not Hit in line and Playing stroke then ‘Not Out’

Turning these two statements into logical functions we get four ways of not being out:

OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge)

AND(NOT(Hit in Line), Playing Stroke)

Combining these gives us:

OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge, AND(NOT(Hit in Line),Playing Stroke)

This is an OR() function with four arguments, the first three are relatively straightforward, with the fourth being an AND() function with two arguments – both of which must be TRUE for the batsman to be saved. We can now wrap this up in an IF() function which will return ‘NOT OUT’ if any of our four ORs are TRUE and ‘OUT’ if they are all FALSE:

IF(OR(NOT(Hitting),Outside Leg, Edge, AND(NOT(Hit in Line),Playing Stroke),”NOT OUT”,”OUT”)

Let’s see this in Excel using the cell references:

Setting up and applying range names

Not the easiest formula to understand! To make it more comprehensible, let’s set up range names for all the TRUE and FALSE cells. First click on cell C3 and then, in the Excel name box type in Hitting:

Remember to press the ‘Return’ key after entering the name. Repeat the procedure for the next four cells:

• C4 – Edge
• C5 – OutsideLeg
• C6 – HitInLine
• C7 – PlayingStroke

Had we created the names before entering our formula, they would have been used automatically when we clicked on the appropriate cells. However, we can Apply the names retrospectively. If we click on our ‘Verdict’ cell then select Insert, Name, Apply (Excel 2007 – Formulas ribbon, Define Name, Apply Names) we can select all of the relevant names, then click OK to change our formula to use the range names rather than the cell references:

Our formula now looks like this:

Check boxes

Finally let’s add some check boxes to make it easier for the umpire to choose the right options in the heat of a tense test match.

Display the forms toolbar by choosing View, Toolbars, Forms (Excel 2007 – Developer ribbon, Insert). Click on the Check Box form control and ‘draw’ it next to the ‘Hitting’ label. Delete the associated text, then right click on the control and choose ‘Format Control’. On the ‘Control’ tab, set the cell link to C3 (where the TRUE/FALSE text for ‘Hitting’ is):

Now click on cell B3 and use the fill handle to copy it down to B7. All the check boxes should be copied down. Right-click on each one and set the cell link to the appropriate cell.

See if your understanding of the LBW law agrees with mine!

Start from current slide

Often people exit from their PowerPoint presentation in order to demonstrate another application by pressing the ‘Escape’ button. Having done what they want outside PowerPoint, they then need to resume the presentation. More often than not, they will click the menu option Slide Show, View Show or use the ‘F5′ keyboard shortcut (PowerPoint 2000 and later) to start their presentation from the first slide, then advance through each slide until they get back to the right slide. There are some more elegant ways to do this:

• Don’t exit from the presentation with the ‘Escape’ key but use ‘Alt+tab’ to cycle through to the other application, then cycle back again when you have finished
• Use the ‘shift-F5′ (PowerPoint 2003 and later) shortcut key which starts from the current slide rather than the first slide
• Use the ‘Slide show from current slide’ button at the bottom of the navigation pane
• If you have started from the first slide, right-click on the slide and choose ‘Go to slide’ from the shortcut menu and choose the required slide. If you have decided to use the right mouse button to go back rather than display the shortcut menu (see below), then you can access the menu from a semi-visible ‘pop up toolbar’ at the bottom left of the slide screen (this icon is completely invisible until you move the cursor into the bottom left hand corner of the slide) or use Control-s (PowerPoint 2003 and later) to display the list of slides.

Right-click to go back

Go to Tools, Options and the View tab. In the ‘Slide Show’ section you can turn off ‘Show menu on right mouse click’. The right mouse button will then operate as the ‘PageUp’ button to go back an action.

Keyboard shortcuts

As well as F5 and Shift+F5 you many find the following other PowerPoint shortcuts useful:

B or W – show a Black or White screen – useful if you suddenly notice the slide displayed is one you meant to delete or hide!

Number + Return to go to that number slide (if you know it!)

Power management settings

If you’re prone to talking a lot, you might experience that worrying feeling that something strange has just happened on the screen behind you. Often this is because your screensaver has started up. So, before you start your presentation make sure you turn your screensaver off, and also check your ‘Power Options’ in Control Panel – you should find a ‘Presentation’ option which keeps everything turned on.

Remote control

Depending where on the Bill Wyman to Mick Jagger continuum your stage presence lies, you might find it useful to invest in a device to control the presentation remotely –without the indignity of walking around holding a wireless mouse. I recently bought a USB ‘Sweex’ Wireless Media Presenter for about £15 that does the job simply and effectively and includes a laser pointer – lots of more sophisticated options are available.

Nothing on the screen?

Most of these are an insult to your intelligence – but it’s always worth checking – I’ve been guilty of a few in my time….

Assuming everything is plugged in and working OK independently:

• Have you pressed the key combination that shows your notebook screen on the external projector?
• Have you plugged the monitor lead into the correct output of your notebook? (Usually not much choice – the normal analogue monitor port is usually blue, and the more recent ‘DVI’ port is white)
• Have you plugged the monitor lead into the correct input of your projector – some projectors have an input and an output port – easy to choose the wrong one!
• Is one of the monitor cable pins bent or broken? If so panic, or carefully bend it back into position – though it might just break off completely – then you can really panic. (Refer to the golden rule…)
• Have you selected the right input option from the projector’s menu? Perhaps the last person to use the projector had it connected to a DVD player to watch the footie – is it still looking for the s-video rather than PC input?
• These days the notebook will probably adjust itself to the projector resolution automatically, but if you can’t get the screen to appear it would be worth reducing the resolution of the notebook screen to that of the projector – right-click the desktop, choose Properties then the Settings tab and adjust the slider as appropriate. As a final desperate measure, try turning the notebook off, connecting everything up and turning the projector on, and then turning the notebook back on. If this has already failed try doing the opposite – disconnect the notebook and projector, turn everything on and then connect.
• A more recent problem is the ‘too clever by half’ notebook that insists on you using the projector screen as a second screen rather than showing the same image on both – sometimes the Advanced button on the Settings screen will take you to a screen that includes a tab that will allow you to select ‘clone’ mode. On other systems there might be a graphics-card specific management program that will allow you to select the appropriate setting. One of my notebooks seems to make its own decision on clone v. multiple monitor mode…

Compatibility

Beware of PowerPoint version compatibility issues. It’s quite irritating to have spent hours on a particularly complex animation effect only to find that the notebook you end up using has an earlier version of PowerPoint that can’t cope with the animation. Though it must be said that most particularly complex animation effects are pretty irritating for the audience when they do work.

Try the built in presentation ‘packaging’ option within PowerPoint – different versions have different names e.g. in PowerPoint 97 it’s ‘Pack and Go’ and in 2003 it’s ‘Package for CD’. With USB storage devices being so cheap, putting the packaged presentation on one of these, rather than a CD is probably better – though doing both is better still.

Favourite PowerPoint stories and tips

Oh for the days of overhead projectors where all you had to worry about was dirty fingerprints and a spare bulb!

If you’ve got any good PowerPoint horror stories (preferably not relating to presentations that I’ve done!) or good tips, please add them as comments.

In a way, I’m finding getting to grips with Office 2007 at bit like one of those old-fashioned adventure games where you blunder around in a dark maze and then occasionally triumphantly find something you’ve been looking for for ages. Help is a bit like the cryptic clues you used to get. Great fun, but not currently helping my productivity a great deal…