New Starters: Your First Week IT Checklist
Welcome. This is everything IT needs from you, and everything you need from IT, in your first week.
Work through it in order. Most of it takes minutes, and getting it done early means you’re not sorting out a login problem on the morning you’re due on the floor.
Day one
Collect your account details. Your line manager or IT will give you your Invarium email address and a temporary password. If you haven’t received them by the end of your first morning, log a ticket or ask your manager — don’t wait quietly.
Change your temporary password. First thing you do after signing in. Long, unique, and nothing you’ve used elsewhere. See Passwords and Bitwarden before you choose one.
Enrol in MFA. You’ll be prompted at first sign-in. Have your phone with you. This isn’t optional and you won’t be able to work without it.
Set up Bitwarden. Sign in to the browser extension with your Invarium account and set your master password. Make it something you’ll genuinely remember — nobody can recover it for you, including IT.
Check your desk equipment. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset. Note your desk number and the asset tag on your workstation; you’ll need both every time you log a ticket. If anything is missing or damaged, report it on day one rather than working around it.
Sign in to Outlook and Teams. Confirm mail arrives and Teams connects.
Day two
Log in to ViciDial. Your supervisor will give you your agent number and campaign. Do a test login before your first live shift, not during it.
Test your headset properly. Check audio in and out. Find the inline mute switch and remember where it is — it accounts for most of the “no sound” tickets on the floor.
Bookmark the knowledgebase. support.invarium.co.zw. Add it to your browser favourites now.
Read the three core articles. How to Log a Ticket, How to Spot a Phishing Email, and The Cyber and Data Protection Act in Plain English. About ten minutes, and they cover most of what goes wrong.
Day three to five
Read the Acceptable Use Policy summary. You signed the formal policy at induction; the plain-language version tells you what it means day to day.
Read Handling Client Data. The seven rules apply from your first live call, not after a grace period.
Read Clean Desk, Locked Screen. Get into the Windows key + L habit now, before it has to be corrected.
Find out who your team leader escalates to and where the Contact IT page is.
Log one test ticket. Genuinely — raise a low-priority query so you’ve used the system once before you need it under pressure. Ask something you actually want to know.
Things to get right from the start
Never share your login. Not with anyone, including someone covering your break or a colleague in a hurry. Everything done under your account is attributed to you.
Lock your screen every time you stand up. Windows key + L.
Nothing written on paper. No customer details, no passwords, no reference numbers on sticky notes.
Nothing installed by you. If you need software, log a ticket.
Report mistakes immediately. Especially security ones — a click on a suspicious link, an email to the wrong recipient. You will not be in trouble for reporting quickly. Read Reporting a Security Incident so you know what to do before you need to.
What IT will never ask you for
Your password. An MFA code. Permission to install remote access software so we can “help.”
Nobody legitimate will ask for these, on the phone or by email. If someone does, hang up or don’t reply, and report it.
New starters get targeted deliberately, because attackers know you don’t yet know how things normally work here. Being new is not a reason to comply with an unusual request — it’s a reason to check.
If something isn’t working
Log a ticket at support.invarium.co.zw. Include your desk number, your asset tag, and what you were doing.
If you’re not sure whether something is worth a ticket, log it anyway. Nobody minds. Working around a problem for three weeks because you didn’t want to bother anyone is the outcome we’d rather avoid.
Your first-week questions are welcome
Everything above is written down precisely so you don’t have to remember it. Search the knowledgebase first, and log a ticket if the answer isn’t there — telling us what you searched for and didn’t find is genuinely one of the more useful things you can do in your first week.
Watch: What MFA is and how it works — about a minute, worth it before you enrol.
