Late night workout in Newcastle
25 January 2008 07:36 | ALMO, Bulk Update | Permalink
Well, not quite Newcastle - South Tyneside to be precise - and nothing to do with Kevin Keegan or Northern Rock (these spurious references are just to get our Google rating up!). No, Thursday night was a late night for the ASB Team in South Shields, updating thousands of Caseworks Case Records, to categorise those which are the responsibilty of the newly formed Housing ALMO.
We got an urgent call on Thursday lunch time for assistance in updating the "Domain" of all their cases. We agreed if they emailed lists of references, we would bulk update the cases on the SQL Server Database. At one point in the afternoon, lists were coming in from four different sources every half hour, and they carried on working on it until nearly 8pm. In the end, their email system gave up the ghost and they read the numbers out over the phone!
The panic didn't end there. When I logged in the next morning, three more emails were awaiting me! At lunch time, we had to do an out-of-schedule refresh of all their reports, so that they could be presented to an important Council Meeting. I used to work for a London Council, and well know the feeling of turning up, somewhat unprepared for a scrutiny meeting with figures hurredly put together just 10 minutes earlier. Andy, the South Tyneside manager in this unenviable position, seemed truly relieved and grateful for our input, enough for me to text him a later update on the figures an hour later.
We got an urgent call on Thursday lunch time for assistance in updating the "Domain" of all their cases. We agreed if they emailed lists of references, we would bulk update the cases on the SQL Server Database. At one point in the afternoon, lists were coming in from four different sources every half hour, and they carried on working on it until nearly 8pm. In the end, their email system gave up the ghost and they read the numbers out over the phone!
The panic didn't end there. When I logged in the next morning, three more emails were awaiting me! At lunch time, we had to do an out-of-schedule refresh of all their reports, so that they could be presented to an important Council Meeting. I used to work for a London Council, and well know the feeling of turning up, somewhat unprepared for a scrutiny meeting with figures hurredly put together just 10 minutes earlier. Andy, the South Tyneside manager in this unenviable position, seemed truly relieved and grateful for our input, enough for me to text him a later update on the figures an hour later.
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