Future Job Posting: DAS Consumer Advocate

This is not a current job posting - but may be a future role. I am writing about a very important role that is currently in demand, but almost non-existent in the market - this is the role of a DAS Consumer Advocate (DCA).

When do we need one?
More organizations (e.g., health-care industries, commercial buildings, public vanues, colleges, universities, etc.) are becoming aware of the need for a DAS inside their buildings. Some of these organizations are willing to consider a DAS for the building as one of the utility features. Since DAS is still in its infancy stage, there are not many people in any organization that understand the different aspects of DAS - legal and contractual aspects, network deployment, operations and maintenance, hand-set provisioning, etc..  Most of the time, someone proactive within the organization starts with Google searches, a few cold calls, start talking to sales departments of the wireless carriers, etc. Despite the tremendous amount of reconnaissance work she puts in, there is still room for confusion and missteps. When a Wireless Carrier identifies this customer to be a potential future customer with hundreds or thousands of devices and multi-year agreement, things can become even more complex. What this customer needs is a vendor & carrier neutral DAS Consumer Advocate (DCA).

Getting Organized: Field Book, USB Stick, Field Laptop

When you are under deadline and trying to finish commissioning a DAS, getting stuck for missing minor information can be very frustrating. Unfortunately, this happens a lot. Working at a DAS site demands you to be very disciplined. Purpose of the field book is to make the lives of technicians and Field Engineers easier by helping them to be organized. Give them information when they need most. Make it very accessible.

There are 3 things you can provide to accomplish this:


1. Field Book:
Obvious choice is to provide a hard-copy of these information in a file folder - or at least that's what we do. However, since folder is a dead-weight, only pack it with documents that will be accessed most frequently. We first compiled a Field Book for our installers and technicians over 5 years ago. We recently upgraded (much needed) that Field Book. It was surprising how much of the old data has changed. Anyway, following are some of the items we included in our Field Book:

• Frequency and Bands used in different markets by carriers
• Username, passwords, URLs or IP addresses of different DAS electronics
• How to change IP Settings in different Windows operating systems? How to get into Device Manager? (Yes, I forget those often!!)
• Quick Installation guides of the most frequently used electronics (Repeaters, DAS Head-end, etc.)
• How to set up a modem connections
• Various Tips and tricks, Debug codes for test phones
• Employee contact information
• Tech Support numbers of different manufacturers  

2. USB Stick (we call it Field Stick :)
Provide a companion USB stick with all Field Books. You can buy 8 GB of flash drive for less than $6.00. 8 GB will have plenty of space to pack all kinds of Spec Sheet for reference, frequently used programs, software and patch programs, and soft copies of all the information mentioned in the hard copy content.

3. Field Laptop:
This is the ideal solution if you can afford it for all of your technicians. A laptop which will be loaded with all the informations mentioned in the Field Book and the Field USB stick.

• Load it up with all frequently used browsers, softwares and programs (for example, MCT program for Mobile Access NMS, Skype, FastStone Capture, etc.). 
• Load up the browser's bookmark panel with frequently used IP Address based URL (e.g. 192.168.1.1, etc.). This can be really cool - because this can save a lot of time in the field.
• If you are using Windows 7 as OS, make sure you have the option to use XP version. Also, add some frequently used serial, USB cables, dongles - the usual suspects.
• If you have a savvy programmer in house, have them make a browser-based Switch Board. Basically, you will have all the links to your files from one place. This keeps things organized and streamlined.
• Make sure that your Field Engineers have the faculty of mind not to fill up the laptop with garbage files programs, malware, etc. It can ruin the whole purpose of getting organized and fast when you need to be.

Lessons Learned: Managing Document Version

Most of the times I end up using Excel to create trackers needed for a project. If more than 1 person are inputting data into this tracker than document version control can become an annoying little problem. You may have updated the tracker this morning, but then, in the afternoon, your team mate updates the tracker you sent out yesterday - not today. This happens a lot, if there is not any simple process set up for managing document version effectively.

We adopted 3 simple rules to maintain one of the major trackers we used in our Big Project:

1. We had a tab within the tracker where the last person updating the spreadsheet put his name and noted the last time he updated the tracker (See Screen shot 1). So for example, according to this screenshot, last update was done by Kevin on 4/13/11 at 2:33 PM.
2. Once he updated the file, he would save the file with a new name by adding his initial at the end and the time. So for example in Screen shot 2, original file name is "Master Progress Tracker", date updated was 4/13/11, and the time was 2:33 PM. That's a good amount of information packed into the name.  
3. We had 3 guys updating the report on a daily basis; so Kevin would update this ONLY in the morning, and Eric would update this ONLY in the afternoon, and then if I had any update I would enter them at night - and that's the protocol we followed most of the time.

Screen shot 1:

Screen shot 2:

These rules may or may not apply to all cases, but if you have a tracker that gets updated multiple times, some sort of ground rules can help maintain the sanity.

A quick note... why not construct the tracker for online update? Well, it was not possible for our particular project; since this was a very fast paced project, and also, we wanted to make the tracker evolve as the project dynamics changed. How about on-line spreadsheet such as Google Docs? This can be a viable solution - however, our stakeholders preferred to receive project updates in an Excel based tracker.