A Realistic Day in the Life Working in IT

what do it professionals actually do

daytoday my name is Jake I work tier one

help desk support at an MSP and today

I'm going to take you through my

yesterday's day every ticket I did there

are 13 in total so you can see what do

you actually do in the job when you work

in it this is something that I would

have wanted to see before I started so I

hope you find it useful let's get into

it firstly if you don't know what an MSP

is it stands for managed service

provider I work for a company that gives

it services to a bunch of other

different companies and we Focus Mo

mostly on financial institutions real

estate lawyers stuff like that one quick

caveat before I get into the tickets do

not listen to Reddit when you're

thinking about starting working for an

MSP it's been an amazing experience for

me you can learn so much you get

exposure to so many different

Technologies this has been my experience

obviously your mileage may vary uh also

I'm very fortunate there are three teams

on our tier one it's kind of a big MSP

and I'm on the team that gets the least

calls I get to do more like monitoring

maintenance and helping other people I

still do get calls but just not

constantly throughout the day however I

do reach out to clients as needed which

is pretty often so I'm making a lot of

calls throughout the day okay so here

are the tickets that I worked yesterday

I worked 8 to 4 and all in all I put in

4.5 hours actually working on tickets

this is actually a pretty high number in

terms of our tier one standard generally

it's quite low the first ticket I did is

one where a lady was having a error

message come up when she turned her PC

on from time to time it was showing that

there was two docking stations anytime

something like this happen happens the

first thing we're looking for is is the

device up to date her device was way out

of date and needed about 15,000 updates

including Dell firmware updates so over

the last couple days I've just been

monitoring this making sure updates go

through you have to restart it multiple

times I don't want to do it while she's

at work so I do it in the morning before

she gets into work or in the afternoon

before she after she leaves for work and

so yesterday I was just checking in on

her fortunately check the device it is

up to date and she didn't get the

message today it'll be kind of wait and

see and I'll probably close that ticket

on Monday secondly I had two fishing

tickets really it was three but two of

them were from the same person and they

kind of got combined so the first one

was a Dropbox fishing email that I did

confirm as a fishing email in order to

investigate that we look at things like

uh the source IP SPF DeMark dkm which

you learn about in Security Plus it's

kind of cool to be able to see that in

action um checking that IP in Cisco tals

grabbing all the links and attachments

if there are links and attachments

throwing those into virus total and

seeing is this a malicious link turned

out it was a malicious link or at least

a fishing link and so I just confirmed

him we blocked the sender we reported to

fishing from Microsoft so it filters it

out better next time and then close on

the way the second one was actually a

really interesting fishing ticket

because this guy had two people who were

kind of spoofing another email and he

noticed that the email was one letter

off from the other email which amazing

work by an end user to realize that and

they were acting like someone else

trying to get a wire transfer to go

through confirmed it was fishing again

same process unfortunately with fishing

all you can do is block the sender and

report it as fishing and hope that

Microsoft notices it next time it did

give the message that was you don't

usually get messages from these people

so you know Microsoft did well there as

well but that was a really fun ticket I

actually called him and discussed it

with him and told him how amazing of a

job he did and closed the ticket so uh

the third ticket I touched was an ad

sync password hash synchronization

ticket which basically means that active

directory wasn't syncing to entra ID

hadn't done it in like 45 hours 46 hours

and so I checked why is it that this was

happening did some research into the

error you know using Google Chat GPT

Microsoft documentation probably spent

like a half an hour researching I got

into entra and found where it showed

that it wasn't sinking and kind of why

and unfortunately then I just had to

escalate the ticket at tier one at an

MSP there are many times that you get to

a point on a ticket and you just have to

escalate it and it's kind of a pain but

it works uh my fourth ticket was an easy

one it's a printer ticket we get tons of

printer tickets as well uh printers are

worst enemies but also kind of fun cuz

you get to they're like Puzzles you get

to try and figure stuff out but so I had

to mount this printer by IP address

under the admin account of someone's uh

device they were getting an error that

was a driver's error but when when I

mounted it by IP address it didn't give

me any error so I mounted it and told

her yeah log in try and see if you you

can mount it by IP address um she was in

a meeting and so I'll check back with

her on Monday that was pretty easy uh

fifth was a Cisco phone line adding her

extension to a group um that was

actually an interesting ticket cuz it

uses Cisco's I think it's called unified

management call manager or something

like that where we had to kind of really

had to do a lot of research with a with

a T2 I think this took like half an hour

looking into how to get her line

actually added to that group and then

confirming that it actually worked

Cisco's stuff was super confusing they

had like hunt lists routing lists groups

and none of the name showed up until you

actually clicked search even though it

was like showed up as blank you just

click search with blank and then the

names would show up but that was kind of

cool and we verified that it worked and

you know Honky Dory and made a KB about

it as well so now in the future people

will know how to do that number six H I

helped a colleague add two laptops to a

uh domain Windows 11 adding to a domain

with Windows 11 is not super fun but but

we were able to do it so that was cool

used admin creds it was kind of easy

number seven I was trying to locate a

device that had not patched when we have

devices that don't patch for a certain

amount of time we have to try and track

them down reach out to the primary

contact figure out if we can get them on

the network and get them patched doing

things like checking the remote

monitoring agent the local IP pinging

that from the domain controller if it

pings fine that means that the device

might be up or the IP is just given to

something else we will also hop into the

domain controller and try searching the

file system by device name especially if

that IP doesn't work sometimes we'll try

Rd peeing in but none of this stuff

worked for this ticket so it was like 15

minutes of pinging around trying to find

it realizing like it's it's just not on

the network it's been it's been shut off

so reach out to the primary contact wait

back until they get that on the network

and I get to hop in and make sure

everything gets pushed through and

everything's up to date everything's

installed correctly eight was a ticket

that I had actually worked on two hours

the day before because it was a printer

that had moved offices and the IP

information had changed and so we had to

give it a DHCP IP address and then

changed that to static and it was under

a new subnet and we had to make sure all

the cables were it was a crazy ticket

but the printer wasn't working this

morning but it was simply because we did

everything under the admin account and

the lady who logged in didn't have it

mounted from the file server so I

mounted it from the file server

everything worked fine so confirmed that

probably half an hour talking with her

she was super nice everything worked

printed test pages and it worked so

thankful uh number nine was Another

Printer ticket I had a colleague who was

on site and had a duplexer that was like

jammed or not working it looked like one

of the parts was bent and I literally

just advised him on steps to take for

troubleshooting that and reaching out to

HP very easy number 10 was another very

easy ticket they wanted and someone

added to a domain admins group I had to

make sure I get proper approvals from

people internally in the company to add

that person to The Domain admins group

obviously that's pretty important for

Audits and stuff like that but we got

the permission we edit her very easy my

11th ticket that I touched on Friday and

this is all in one day was an adobe

ticket Adobe was giving some problems

hitching crashing Adobe does this all

the time so the first thing we do we go

into windows we we run a repair on Adobe

they have like a wizard that you can

just run a repair didn't work after that

reinstall Adobe get rid the whole thing

uninstall it and then reinstall it from

the website that usually works to

alleviate problems I've had once where

we had to reimage the entire PC and try

from there I think that one's good the

lady hasn't gotten back to me so we

reinstalled Adobe and hopefully that

solves things wait and see again it's

his ticket I was just helping him out

number 12 I had to set up two new users

in active directory we have a user that

we copy from that's usually the easiest

way to do it cuz you get group

membership copied over as well copied

both users got them set up checked

Microsoft 365 licensing this company

didn't have any licenses left reached

out to the contact fact and uh it turns

out that the last few people that were

terminated hadn't had their license

removed so I discussed what we're going

to do with their mailboxes with him it's

always best when someone gets removed to

make it a shared mailbox and get it with

somebody so that if someone's sending

them emails they it still goes somewhere

if you don't do that the mailbox just

stays alive for 30 days and then just

disappears permanently got their mailbox

stuff figured out took the licenses away

from the people who were terminated who

were not at the company anymore and then

allocated them to the new people I'm

still just waiting back on him if he

needs everything anything else set temp

password sent it to him and then the

last ticket that I got was kind of an

interesting one this guy was getting

emails that his Outlook wasn't sinking

something correctly there was a ton of

information in the sinking error emails

and it turned out to be a calendar it

could be a permissions thing it could be

something something else I I called him

and left a voicemail and he just didn't

get back to me it it was Friday so I

don't really blame him either and it

also wasn't like a super urgent thing it

was just like hey I'm getting these

emails and it's showing that it's not

sinking correctly you know what should I

do so I'm going to call him and just

peek around see what's going on use chat

GPT all throughout my day I'm using

Google Microsoft and chat GPT to help me

solve everything some things I've

already seen of gazillion times so I

know what to do but still always

referring to that stuff especially with

like the mailbox stuff I wanted to know

if the mailbox is converted to a shared

mailbox it's good but what if a

forwarding rule is set up then is the

mailbox good it turns out it's not I

learned that on on Friday so I'm

learning all this new stuff every single

day those were the tickets that I saw

just on Friday I could do this every

single day and there'd probably be like

10 different tickets every single day

you'll see some Trends though printers

come up often because printers are

always giving problems so that's a day

in the life it was relatively busy but

it was also chill because nothing went

drastically wrong with that day I hope

you enjoyed this video if you want to

see more like this like what I'm doing

in my dayto day let me know I'll be

happy to share more my days vary a lot

but today I could see a bunch of

different problems and it was really

nice to get that variation and you can

see working in an MSP no two days are

the same always doing different kind of

stuff it's always different clients and

they have different problems so it's

really fun well I would have like to

watch this video before I started an it

again I hope it's been useful to you

appreciate you guys have a good rest of

your day see you in the next one