Never tell them what to do and how to do it, give them a script.
I was just reminded yesterday the importance of scripting. We have a talented engineer who is currently in the field, and among other troubleshooting he has to reflash several units, which thankfully are all together. You can imagine in amongst the jetlag and distractions he will make some mistakes following a 10 step process, especially if he types out using autocomplete, or has to edit copy and paste commands.
What’s the solution? Well, we reduced the instructions from 20 step process using the GUI to using a sequence of three command lines, which needed to be modified on site to accommodate his local set up. That’s a step in the right direction, but the real answer was to force his local set up. We should have deployed a script with the binary file in a known location (preferably relative to where we placed the script).
Since multiple devices were to be reprogrammed the programming script has should also allow for repetition. This can be done with a simple prompt command and look for a Q or X on completion.
Error codes can be arduous to read, for my technician I would give a simple Pass/Fail message, an engineer I would let suffer full messages, especially with a new flow introduced into the field. I would love to turn echo off for the programmer, but that masks progress, so I normally leave that visible. One day I’ll learn how to write a script that spawns a task, then show progress until the other task silently completes.
Maybe when I get this script ready I’ll share it with everyone out there.
Glorified Plumbing 