System Map: how can it reduce troubleshooting time?

Close-out package has a lot of benefits. But it should be built around one principal premise:
How much time can it cut down during troubleshooting?

Finding out the source of the problem is a big deal during DAS troubleshooting - especially if you have a short Service Level Agreement (SLA) to resolve issues with a tough customer. Most of the DAS elements being hidden above the ceiling tile, and spread out through a building does not make life easy. A System Map can help... actually quite a bit.

System Map is essentially a spreadsheet (i.e., hardware summary) that allows a technician to quickly trace DAS elements from head-end all the way to floor level where the antennas are installed.

Lets say you are asked to troubleshoot a MobileAccess DAS with 60 remotes. Customer tells you that there is no coverage from 4th floor to 6th floor in building A. Now how can you quickly find out what antennas are serving that area, which remotes they are connected to, which base units are those remotes connected to, and eventually which sector is that base unit fall under. You first response may be to look up floor plans and logical diagram. And that's not wrong. But if I asked you find all of that out in, say less than a minute, what would you do? This is where System Map can come handy.

We did our first System Map with this in mind. This particular System Map we constructed had more than 1000 rows (for 1000+ antennas) with 13 columns - that's over 13,000 fields to fill out. Now this may look daunting when you start, but if you take time and start filling this out during the deployment it's not as bad. When you start using it you will really start liking it. Here is a snapshot of the System Map that we built, I broke it up into 2 images since it's in landscape. Feel free to customize your System Map; but the goal should be same. A combination of floor plans, logical diagram, and the System Map, troubleshooting may become fun easier.