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Meet the Computing Infrastructure Support Help Desk Staff

Although the Help Desk staff may often just be a voice on the other end of a phone line, the people who staff the desk bring their own strengths and skills to the operation.

Although she retired earlier this year, one of the key contributors to the Help Desk's increasing success was Martha Morimoto, better known as Marty. A Lab employee since 1972, she was one of the first employees on board when the Lab's central computer Help Desk was established by the Computing Infrastructure Support Department in 1997.

"I'm leaving with the satisfaction that the central Help Desk has made great progress and it's in good hands," Marty said. "The proof is in the customers' attitude toward the Help Desk -- they now seem to believe it's always existed to help them with practical solutions."

Prior to coming to ICSD, Marty worked on computer/networking projects "in the field" for almost every Lab division, and she nurtured and managed a group of system administrators in the Engineering Division. This background proved to be valuable to Marty in her work at the Help Desk. Before the central Help Desk was set up, she and Leon Salcedo were the new ISS Help Desk, and were part of the LETS and Purchasing development projects when LETS and Oracle Purchasing databases were introduced at the Lab. In that role, she helped some 2,300 users, many of whom had never used a computer before, log into the new systems. Callers who reached her could get a thorough explanation and any needed follow-up. Sometimes that meant Marty got out from behind her desk and went back to the field to fix the problem on the spot.

"When she decided to retire, Marty left us with an established rapport and high level of customer service to live up to," said Desktop Support Manager Charlie Verboom. "While we've returned to full staffing, the Help Desk's value reflects the contributions of both current members and those who helped launch and build the service."

The computer support Help Desk members are (from left) Susan James and Terry Patterson, front row, and Nat Stoddard, Josie Galvan and Henry Couden. Photo by Tammy Campbell.

Here's a look at the current Help Desk staffing consultants and a short description of their specialty areas:

Josie Galvan, group lead for the Help Desk, has more than 10 years of experience in the field. Her background includes Novell Administration, PC desktop support, help desk support and postmaster duties. "In the early days of networking, I knew early on -- my niche was user support," Josie says. "Networking was such a new concept for people -- there were always questions being asked and networking issues to tackle." Combining her interest in computing and networking makes her well suited to the evolving area often referred to as Help Desk Support.

"I am very happy that I was involved with the startup of the CIS Help Desk, but we're not done yet!" Josie said. "We are always looking for better ways to improve our services and I can guarantee we will continue to do so."

Susan James has been a consultant at the Help Desk since early 1998. Although Susan's roots are in Silicon Valley -- she grew up in Santa Clara -- she didn't really get into computers until 1994, after her career path led her through variouus government health organizations. She picked up on-the-job training as a network administrator and computer lab technician for the Division of Business and Computer Studies at Napa Valley College. Now, she's up to her ears in computers.

Susan made her mark with the launch of the CIS Help Desk web site in 1998 offering almost one-stop browsing for obtaining a wide range of computer support services at the Lab. Her specialities at the Help Desk include Novell, NT, and UNIX administration. She also assists with the administration of the distributed printing network at the lab as well as the Help Desk web site. She presently holds several Microsoft and Novell certifications and continues to pursue studies in LAN administration and networking at local colleges.

She enjoys helping computer users, whether by consulting on the phone or making it easier to get help online."The Lab network is vast and complex and there is no end to challenging computer problems at the Help Desk," Susan said.

Henry Couden has worked on the Help Desk for two years. Many of the tricky questions about Microsoft Office seem to end up in his queue. The last one, for instance, was a Word problem where the customer wanted recipients of the Word document to only modify the "forms" area of the document and nothing else. Then there was a previous Word problem in which there was a mystery line that would not go away no matter how much reformatting was done to the document.

Prior to working with the Lab's Help Desk, Henry worked at a computer help desk for GTE in Pleasanton. "Not nearly as challenging," said Couden. "We only had one networking system to deal with, Novell, not three like here at the lab, Novell, NT and UNIX." He has also worked as a "one man show" as the only DP person for an architectural/engineering firm running Novell and Microsoft office products. His major interests now seem to center on web development and getting a handle on the peculiarities of UNIX administration.

Terry Patterson has been on the Help Desk for nearly a year. Before that, he held down Help Desk duties at Levi Strauss in San Francisco and Chevron Corp. in San Ramon, and before that he spent 10 years as computer operations manager at a clothing company. The wide variety in Lab desktop systems make the job here more interesting -- and challenging. "At Chevron there was a uniform NT environment and everyone used HP computers with identical software loads," he said. "You could quickly figure out the problems." Patterson calls himself "a jack of all trades" on the Help Desk, but is often dealt the questions regarding Netscape applications.

Nat Stoddard is the newcomer to the Help Desk, having joined in January after three years at Bank of America in San Francisco, where he provided network and application support. At the Help Desk, he especially enjoys working with Macintoshes, being a fan since the days of the Apple II. He is currently working on becoming an Apple-certified technician.

If you need computer support, contact the Help Desk by phone at X4357 (H-E-L-P) or by filling out this help request form.