My Previous Life - Analysis of Trouble Tickets

This is part of my #1YearOfViz series! Check out the archive here: http://bourbonandbrains.blogspot.com/p/one-year-of-dataviz.html

Before we get started this week I wanted to say that I haven't spent a whole lot of time on anything but I did publish this little quickie viz from last week (hey they can't all be winners right?!). I spent a good part of last week working on upgrading my dad's computer and hanging out with my niece... so while the viz got published last week it's taken me a while to sit down and write a blog post for it! I'm sure you can understand!

Me reading to the Niece (Regan)

It's really because after almost 5 years I finally took down my "ticketing" form that I used for people in my prior job as a sys admin at the University of Kentucky to submit trouble tickets (if possible). Of course there were TONS of people who couldn't submit a ticket online, due to connection issues or whatever, so they ended up calling in. These represent I'd guess about 3/4 of the total amount of tickets myself and my partner in crime would get through the course of our time there.

I worked at the University of Kentucky (UK) for 19 years in total... I literally worked there my entire professional career. I worked there longer than I didn't work there (I started when I was 18). It really became a second home to me. I was let go back in October as part of a "Reduction in Force" during a departmental merger. A lot of people would think I'd be SUPER mad about it but honestly this has given me the kick-in-the-butt I've always needed to pursue my career as a data analyst; which is something I found myself heavily involved with in my last 4-5 years there.

Click image for full comic!

A lot of people think I should be mad about the whole situation... but I'm not mad. Honestly I'm just sad (see comic to the left!) about the whole thing. I just felt very invested in the future of the University only to find out they weren't terribly invested in the future of me. Isn't that crappy?! Shouldn't I be mad about that!? The problem is WHO to be mad at... the people who actually let me go are nice people who really weren't given any other choice. They had to make some hard decisions and I fully expect they'll retire after the full transition period is done.

Over my time at the University I spearheaded several programs that I felt really made a difference both in our impact towards students and on things like the environment. One of the largest (and EASILY most painful) projects I worked on was the transition from personal printers, which at the time consisted of about 35% of my work-time, to large-scale networked printers via our UK contract with Ricoh for Managed Print Services.

Towards the end the large majority of requests came for adding/removing users, file problems... just hum-drum admin stuff. Which is one of the reasons I started poking around with Tableau in the first place actually! So yay boring work! I limited the time in this viz to only the time I was actually at work (even though the form itself stayed up until very recently).




Let's break down the numbers real quick:

• 1,882 Tickets submitted from 11/16/2011 - 9/29/2016
• 912 Distinct Days Tickets Submitted
• Approximately 2 tickets per day
• Avg Days to Complete = 7
• This number was driven up by a few VERY longstanding tickets that we couldn't do anything to speed up
• Median Days to Complete = 1
• I'm super-proud of this obviously!
• Avg Priority Rank (self-ranked by the way!) = 6.912 (out of 10)
• Median Priority Rank = 7
• Served 336 distinct usernames
• Worked on 666 distinct computer names
• Covering 22 departments across 19 different buildings

First here's a quick little look at tickets by priority:

Now let's get into it and look at Users and Departments:

Finally let's examine trends by department:

As always hit me up in the comments below or on Twitter @wjking0 if you have any questions!