Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

[TragicMonkey]

Strictly for the purposes of appreciating this particular gripe, do you think that savvy users who find themselves a (sometimes reluctant) resource for assorted relatives and friends could include themselves as people inside IT?

Because I think I can feel your pain.

My mother is having problems with the streaming service Britbox we got her for an Xmas present. What's the problem? I don't know. She starts explaining "it just stops when I'm watching something, like this episode of Midsomer Murders where this lady drank this cup of tea and..." an hour later I've gotten her ideas of what the plot was, and which actors she recognized from other shows, but not the technical problem.

So now I just cut her off early with a helpful suggestion that she ask my sister, who knows all about this kind of problem.

 

[arthwollipot]

Massive fustercluck going on right now. No-one know's what's going wrong but it's affecting pretty much everyone who's working from home, which apparently is nearly half the workforce. We're getting conflicting information about some computers that have reverted to the Professional version of windows rather than the Enterprise version but that's very obviously not the entire story.

How's your day going?

 

[JoeMorgue]

How's your day going?

You ever tried reading a Bitlocker recovery key to a 63 year old nursing assistant from your cell phone to her speaker phone while her dog yips in the background?

 

[arthwollipot]

You ever tried reading a Bitlocker recovery key to a 63 year old nursing assistant from your cell phone to her speaker phone while her dog yips in the background?

I think you've got me on that one. But how about this? A non-standard proprietary piece of software has stopped working. It's a business critical application, there is no workaround, and the whole team is affected. Team being 15 people. It qualifies for Priority 3, but given everything else that's going on...

 

[Hellbound]

I think you've got me on that one. But how about this? A non-standard proprietary piece of software has stopped working. It's a business critical application, there is no workaround, and the whole team is affected. Team being 15 people. It qualifies for Priority 3, but given everything else that's going on...

We had a data collection app where someone had mis-set a CRON schedule for a database info pull. They'd set it to * * * * * ?, So it ran every second. Just finished getting that one sorted.

 

[JoeMorgue]

It's slightly saner today. The users are getting settled into working from home and all the little quirks and remaining issues are getting knocked out.

 

[novaphile]

Last update, 89% percent of my service is working from home, full time.

Sadly a related agency performed an update that locked 90% of them out of Citrix for a day. Fortunately, barely any of my team were affected because of the specific method we're using.

On Thursday night, I was performing scripted data updates remotely, with assistance from four other team members (including a DBA) who were also working from home.

Miraculously, our work was completed and everything back online and fully operational before the Citrix outage (10PM).

We were cutting it fine towards the end, and I confess to experiencing a little anxiety.

(Worst case though, I would have had to drive in and complete the work locally, along with a couple of other team members).

If even had my first Zoom meeting with a couple of colleagues.

(We didn't connect via the government network)

Next week I get to find out if we can make webex work.

 

[grmcdorman]

Reportedly, my company (OpenText) as of early last week was 97% remote work. Mind you, we're a technology company; R&D, in particular, is mostly software developers (who, in theory should be comfortable with remote work).

 

[The Man]

No way I can work form home. The type of service we do is hands on, even when our hands are on a long stick or an IR remote control (much equipment is 12 to 20 ft in the air). Just got, finally, a company letter asserting I'm an essential worker in an essential industry. So far I haven't been challenged.

Some years ago I found that a universal leaning remote could work with some of our equipment and have been using one since then. I have some series of usual recovery operations programmed as macros. With a remote control camera enabled car or drone I could do some recoveries remotely. However, others would still require physical contact, whether that be with the long stick or us up on ladders and/or scaffolding.

 

[arthwollipot]

I am very glad that today I am working from home and not from work. I took a look at the wallboard and we had a 20 minute wait for calls. That's the longest I've ever seen it.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

ERROR MESSAGES PEOPLE!

Give us a little bit of information about the problem you're having, or you're just wasting everybody's time.

There is an upside to that...

My old company had a two business hour response time to new tickets and an internal policy that all new tickets should be responded to at close of business. "Could you maybe give us a clue about what software you're using and what the actual problem is?" was a legitimate first response.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Massive fustercluck going on right now. No-one know's what's going wrong but it's affecting pretty much everyone who's working from home, which apparently is nearly half the workforce. We're getting conflicting information about some computers that have reverted to the Professional version of windows rather than the Enterprise version but that's very obviously not the entire story.

How's your day going?

Well, all my dogs were total bastards today. Including the bitches. And one of them slipped her lead and ran away. But on the other hand I didn't have to go through logs , my hourly rate was better than I ever got in IT and most of my dogs are smarter than the users were. Those that aren't are cuter (okay to be fair there was this one young lady in... No not gonna go there)

 

[Sideroxylon]

Desk-side really are the foot soldiers. Last couple of weeks have been some rapid office set ups and bulk laptop builds. Running stuff between sites today. All the while taking this virus seriously with temperature checks and sanitising of hands and equipment. Help desk hand overs too.

 

[arthwollipot]

The thing that's been impressing me the most about this whole situation is how chill everyone is being about it. We have systems falling apart, well not quite but it seems that way sometimes. We have 20-minute wait times on the phones. We have a 2-day backlog of emails. And everybody we speak to is like "yeah, no worries, you guys must be swamped, totally understand, you're doing a great job".

Which is nice to hear.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Stop leaving me voicemails saying that "generic first name" person needs my help.

We're in the medical field. 95% of our 750+ users are middle aged or slightly older women. Half of them are named Sarah or Kimberly or Susan it feels like.

 

[Donal]

Mac users are the worst. Paying a premium to have a fancy shiny thing and they don't even bother to learn the basics. And added security requirements in Catalina are not helping.

Also: "this function required for working from home hasn't worked for months, but I need you guys to fix it now"

Your procrastination is not my emergency.

 

[theprestige]

Mac users are the worst. Paying a premium to have a fancy shiny thing and they don't even bother to learn the basics. And added security requirements in Catalina are not helping.

Also: "this function required for working from home hasn't worked for months, but I need you guys to fix it now"

Your procrastination is not my emergency.

I don't think that's fair. Most people aren't very computer-savvy. Certainly not to the point of proactively validating tools they're not actually using.

"This function I've never needed before, that didn't affect my work and isn't part of my skillset, turns out to be broken right when the company you and I both work for need it the most. As the experts in these things, I'm depending on you to get it fixed as soon as you can."

 

[theprestige]

Mac users are the worst. Paying a premium to have a fancy shiny thing and they don't even bother to learn the basics.

Also, having been both a Mac user and a PC user, and having supported both Mac users and PC users, my perception is there is no meaningful difference between them, in terms of computer-related skills and mindsets.

 

[Donal]

I don't think that's fair. Most people aren't very computer-savvy. Certainly not to the point of proactively validating tools they're not actually using.

"This function I've never needed before, that didn't affect my work and isn't part of my skillset, turns out to be broken right when the company you and I both work for need it the most. As the experts in these things, I'm depending on you to get it fixed as soon as you can."

We run department-wide work from home testing. People are either lying about their results or simply not participating. And if you find a problem when you are working from home, we have 24-hour coverage to assist. There's no reason to let something like that go for months and then expect us to have an instant solution while we are dealing with a deluge of problems.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

The thing that's been impressing me the most about this whole situation is how chill everyone is being about it. We have systems falling apart, well not quite but it seems that way sometimes. We have 20-minute wait times on the phones. We have a 2-day backlog of emails. And everybody we speak to is like "yeah, no worries, you guys must be swamped, totally understand, you're doing a great job".

Which is nice to hear.

Not all heroes wear capes.

You desktop/end user facing admins must be swamped with all the WFH these days.