I have been asked since I had "Rules for PCs" whether I had any suggestions for dealing with IS personnel. Whenever you are dealing with people, there is never an absolute answer that will work for everyone.

Have you ever heard something similar to the following?

Those IS people never return my calls.

Those IS people only show up when I am in the middle of a time sensitive assignment. Their so-called 5 minute fix tied up my PC for hours!!! I missed my deadline.

A user leaves me a message that their PC has an error message. They did not leave me what the message said. When I get down there, they did not write it down and will not let me have access to the machine. They said that they are busy and cannot be interrupted. As long as they stay out of certain programs, they can function. I either have to stay late or come in early. I have better things to do with my time.

In order to resolve the preceding incidences, I have used some of the following suggestions:

1. Request that you have a Department liaison. Work with this person to help them understand the special needs of the Department. Be prepared that this will be a rotating position. If the person is good, they will be transferred to work on other projects. The positive side is that you obviously had an excellent person. You will get an additional opportunity to improve your training skills when you get another liaison.

2. A new person should never be viewed as a negative. The positive side is that they will have a fresh view. They may see ways to improve your setups. If they are really new to the department, they will not be getting continually paged. You will have their undivided attention. Enjoy it while you can.

3. Since you will be the continuing person, emphasize to the IS person the need for documentation of what they are doing. You may not totally understand the steps but the IS person certainly should. If they do not have the time, make sure that you that write down what they are doing and why. The why is important because as upgrades are done to a network, there may need to alter how a setup is presently operating. An upgrade may allow for improvements in processing time, etc. The previous documentation that contains the why will help the new person understand what needs to be done.

4. By being the contact person in your department, IS will know one person to contact if they have questions about its applications. You can help them understand the necessity for upgrades. If the application is not creating error messages, they sometimes do not understand the value of an upgrade. Once they understand there is new functionality or new features, they will then schedule the upgrade. If this new functionality may mean less work for them, they will obviously make it a greater priority. One instance we had was that some printers would only print part of a document before producing an error message. An upgrade was suppose to address that issue. By emphasizing fewer printer calls, the upgrade was done that night.

5. Offer to be trained for performing some upgrades that are unique to your department or PC and leave them free for the more complex items. Your institution's IS Department may not issue the rights to do this. But it will be remembered that you were willing to assist in any way possible.

6. Communicate when someone is out of the office. That computer can be the test one to see the upgrade, fix, etc., really only takes a few minutes or whether problems will be encountered. This way the IS person can have time to diagnosis the problems correctly.

7. Maintain a list of your Department's personnel and your IS liaison's schedules. This way when emergencies come up you can develop a reasonable compromise on when it can be handled with the least impact to everyone.

8. Communicate what time of the day is the least acceptable for performing upgrades, etc. Then work with everyone to develop a consistent time on when these should be scheduled.

9. When leaving messages, please be precise. IS personnel are rarely at their desks. They are picking up e-mails and voice mails remotely. If you will be away from your desk or cannot be interrupted due to a project, leave that in the message as well as the approximate length of time. This way they will not be coming to see you at an inconvenient time.

Please send me comments on how you resolve them. I will put them in a later column.

Please remember this column is available for anyone to write on what they do in the Private Law Libraries Technical Services area. Anyone wishing to write a column, please let me know. It can be on creating Intranets, websites, etc.