Field engineers have busy schedules - with unforeseen occurrences happening every day. In this article, we’ll get answers from our field engineer, Victor Hanson, on what he encounters on a given day, and how technology can play a role in keeping him on track from the first appointment of the day to the very last - ensuring clients are well taken care of.
Welcome to the Technician Q&A, my name is Victor Hanson, and I am a San Diego Field Engineer for Pact-One Solutions. To better understand the inner workings of how we organize and resolve problems for our clients, I'm writing to answer questions and bring to light what we do and how we do it.
Can you describe what a typical workday looks like for you?
For most of our remote technicians, a typical day is spent responding to tickets that come in. Sometimes they will also have to work on rescheduling when the availability of the practice requires that we call a different time or day.
Other times a request or service requirement will necessitate a trip out to get hands-on, and they'll work with our dispatch team to schedule an on-site visit.
As for myself, I'm a team lead as well as a field engineer, and as such my day can vary wildly. Most often my day consists of working remotely on dental IT support requests that come in from our clients, advising or helping plan services for one of my team members, and creating documentation so we can better serve our clients the next time they require our assistance.
Some days I have other duties, such as an emergency that requires boots on the ground or working with our internal team to help resolve a tough issue, sometimes even elevating past myself for when we need a third set of eyes to help resolve something truly perplexing.
Most rare are when my day is completely planned out ahead of time for either a few on-site visits or a project (updating existing set-ups/network refresh, relocating offices, new office builds, relocating offices, office expansion) or two that will take most, if not all, of the day (sometimes even longer) to complete.
What are the most common questions you get from people who call in?
The questions I receive most often usually regard a questionable email, a link of some sort and what to do with it, or why an error popped up. Usually, the questions about an error comes down to what led up to a problem the user is having, what the solution was to resolve it, and how they can prevent something from happening again in the future.
Questions I receive while on-site usually include why we ask clients to restart workstations at the end of the day.
What do you enjoy the most about what you do?
I enjoy helping people as a profession. Originally, I wanted to be a surgeon or anesthesiologist when I grew up, but I realized heading out of middle school after some biology dissection labs that working on living things was not something I could do. My interest in technology eventually led me down the path of computer repair, and now into security and managed services.
When you started at Pact-One Solutions, did you have all of that knowledge? What are some of your resources?
I did come into this position with a lot of knowledge on hand, but that was more computer repair, security background, and network set-up from college. The amount I had to learn to be able to support dental software once I started was quite substantial. I'm learning something new every day as new versions of the software are released - there are new bugs to hunt down and features to figure out.
My resources include my college textbooks which are online and kept up to date (So cool!), my team members with more experience in the field, and working with the developers and engineers from software/hardware providers.
What’s the one piece of advice you would give to someone who would like to transition into a career in IT?
I would come into this with patience, a very open mind, and some creativity. Just because a fix worked for something in the past, doesn’t mean it's going to work again in the future. Things change version to version and some bugs can be insidious even. Having a lot of patience and a creative drive to problems solving will be a huge help.
Closing
All in all, the day in the life of a Pact-One Technical Service Engineer varies wildly from one day to the next - with new things to learn or problems to solve. I relish the challenge and enjoy it every day.
Thank you to Victor for sharing what it’s like to be in his shoes as a Technical Service Engineer. Have a question about this blog or dental IT services? Feel free to reach out to Pact-One Solutions with any questions or concerns. To get the latest IT and dental industry updates, don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Written by Pact-One Field Service Technician Victor Hanson
