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

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I had one of THOSE callers this morning for whom it was unacceptable that there was a three-day turnaround on new starter requests because they submitted this one six days ago and it was cancelled because they didn't provide all the forms and had to re-submit it today.

They literally said to me "your process failed". No - you not providing all the forms we ask for is not our process failing.

Hopefully they will do as I suggested and log a feedback job so that our Service Delivery team gets a good laugh.

ETA: Oh, also they sent the resubmitted forms to the wrong email address - the unattended do-not-reply robot that sends acknowledgements from Service Manager. That was our fault too, apparently.
 
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arthwollipot said:
I had one of THOSE callers this morning for whom it was unacceptable that there was a three-day turnaround on new starter requests because they submitted this one six days ago and it was cancelled because they didn't provide all the forms and had to re-submit it today.

They literally said to me "your process failed". No - you not providing all the forms we ask for is not our process failing.

Hopefully they will do as I suggested and log a feedback job so that our Service Delivery team gets a good laugh.

ETA: Oh, also they sent the resubmitted forms to the wrong email address - the unattended do-not-reply robot that sends acknowledgements from Service Manager. That was our fault too, apparently.
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Ask if they have seen an optometrist lately. If not, perhaps an appointment?
 
My application, A, is missing some data that another application, B, is supposed to be sending over. So I let the people in charge of B know this, several months ago. Today they finally responded, asking if I could kindly pull out of A all the data that isn't there but should be, so they can then use those results to know what they should enter into B so it'll come to A. And could I get that to them "ASAP", because this "has been a problem for months now".
 
TragicMonkey said:
My application, A, is missing some data that another application, B, is supposed to be sending over. So I let the people in charge of B know this, several months ago. Today they finally responded, asking if I could kindly pull out of A all the data that isn't there but should be, so they can then use those results to know what they should enter into B so it'll come to A. And could I get that to them "ASAP", because this "has been a problem for months now".
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Well get to it!
 
I have a "non-contractual" day showing on my holiday planner instead of a half day's holiday, leaving my 4.5 hours down.

I raised a ticket. It was closed with "ring this number." I rang the number, spent over an hour on the phone to various people, being passed from pillar to post. In the end I left a message on a voicemail.... and no one has responded in a fortnight.

I emailed the guy who closed the ticket. He said "email this team," I responded, "I will, but I thought one of the points of the service desk was that users don't have to chase their problems all over the shop." No response
 
TragicMonkey said:
My application, A, is missing some data that another application, B, is supposed to be sending over. So I let the people in charge of B know this, several months ago. Today they finally responded, asking if I could kindly pull out of A all the data that isn't there but should be, so they can then use those results to know what they should enter into B so it'll come to A. And could I get that to them "ASAP", because this "has been a problem for months now".
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We'll be entering some new data into sort keys that won't cause us a problem, but might cause a problem when it is converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. We were originally asked to work out whether this would be a problem in all the myriad applications that receive our data. I have managed to downgrade this to "inform other teams that they need to work out if they have a problem and tell them where to find the changed data if we can work that out"
 
Filippo Lippi said:
We'll be entering some new data into sort keys that won't cause us a problem, but might cause a problem when it is converted from EBCDIC to ASCII. We were originally asked to work out whether this would be a problem in all the myriad applications that receive our data. I have managed to downgrade this to "inform other teams that they need to work out if they have a problem and tell them where to find the changed data if we can work that out"
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Oh, memories of having to explain EBCDIC/ASCII translation tables to people who barely understand "the computer".
 
Filippo Lippi said:
I have a "non-contractual" day showing on my holiday planner instead of a half day's holiday, leaving my 4.5 hours down.

I raised a ticket. It was closed with "ring this number." I rang the number, spent over an hour on the phone to various people, being passed from pillar to post. In the end I left a message on a voicemail.... and no one has responded in a fortnight.

I emailed the guy who closed the ticket. He said "email this team," I responded, "I will, but I thought one of the points of the service desk was that users don't have to chase their problems all over the shop." No response
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Have you raised a ticket about the problem getting your problem sorted? ;)
 
Wudang said:
Oh, memories of having to explain EBCDIC/ASCII translation tables to people who barely understand "the computer".
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It's not as if the things need to be in sequence. Things with the same key have to be together, but there's no need for A1 to be followed by B1 and then C1, they're not grouped like that. Well, some are, but there would be a problem already if there were one, because the first character of the key is already affected.
 
arthwollipot said:
I had one of THOSE callers this morning for whom it was unacceptable that there was a three-day turnaround on new starter requests because they submitted this one six days ago and it was cancelled because they didn't provide all the forms and had to re-submit it today.

They literally said to me "your process failed". No - you not providing all the forms we ask for is not our process failing.

Hopefully they will do as I suggested and log a feedback job so that our Service Delivery team gets a good laugh.

ETA: Oh, also they sent the resubmitted forms to the wrong email address - the unattended do-not-reply robot that sends acknowledgements from Service Manager. That was our fault too, apparently.
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Okay, I have to ask: Does the do-not-reply email address actually contain the the phrase "do-not-reply" (or some variation thereof), as many such addresses do? I'm more than a bit curious as to just how stupid this particular user is.
 
CORed said:
Okay, I have to ask: Does the do-not-reply email address actually contain the the phrase "do-not-reply" (or some variation thereof), as many such addresses do? I'm more than a bit curious as to just how stupid this particular user is.
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ETA - actually thinking about it for a moment, if you saw this before the edit that was wrong. What actually happens is that replies to the automated messages get automatically appended to the ticket that they refer to. But they weren't replying, they were just sending the form to that address, which results in the message disappearing into a black hole.

Regardless, the correct address is very clearly stated on the form.
 
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Gah. I've mentioned before that I have to RDP to a jump server from which I can then RDP to the server that Active Directory runs on. Amazingly frustrating. The MFA that this jump server uses is better than the regular, though. It's a Yubikey - a dongle which plugs into the USB drive of my computer, that I activate by touching the little gold bit with my finger. It then generates an OTP so that I can log on to the jump server.

If the second-layer server isn't goosed for a certain amount of time, it locks, and I can unlock it just with my password. All well and good. But if the jump server also times out and locks, I have to do the full MFA, which involves not only entering my user ID including my domain (literally the only time I have to do that), but also my password, and my Yubikey.

Now I don't know about you, but I have user ID <tab> password <enter> firmly in muscle memory. This damn jump server totally disrupts that. It's domain/user ID <tab> password <tab> fondle Yubikey <enter> and my muscle memory goes haywire with that. My password isn't "password123" (not my real password). It's "password123<enter>". I go virtually nuts when I'm remote assisting someone and they type their password and then reach for the mouse to press the OK button. You know you can add just one keystroke to your password, right? But here's the thing. My password isn't "password123<tab>" and more often than not I hit enter before I get the chance to fondle the Yubikey. So I have to start over, because of course I do.

It's not productivity-killing, but it is annoying. Just wanted to vent a little.
 
arthwollipot said:
Now I don't know about you, but I have user ID <tab> password <enter> firmly in muscle memory. This damn jump server totally disrupts that. It's domain/user ID <tab> password <tab> fondle Yubikey <enter> and my muscle memory goes haywire with that. My password isn't "password123" (not my real password). It's "password123<enter>". I go virtually nuts when I'm remote assisting someone and they type their password and then reach for the mouse to press the OK button. You know you can add just one keystroke to your password, right? But here's the thing. My password isn't "password123<tab>" and more often than not I hit enter before I get the chance to fondle the Yubikey. So I have to start over, because of course I do.

It's not productivity-killing, but it is annoying. Just wanted to vent a little.
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Muscle memory is an unappreciated feature of product upgrades, yes Office I'm looking at you but you're not alone. Most tools I don't want to have to think about how I do a task, I want my attention on the task.
And it can impact productivity - switching from Eclipse(STS) to IntelliJ was enormous - both good tools but my fingers had to relearn how to autogenerate various code blocks, close windows etc etc
 
Wudang said:
Muscle memory is an unappreciated feature of product upgrades, yes Office I'm looking at you but you're not alone. Most tools I don't want to have to think about how I do a task, I want my attention on the task.
And it can impact productivity - switching from Eclipse(STS) to IntelliJ was enormous - both good tools but my fingers had to relearn how to autogenerate various code blocks, close windows etc etc
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My big peeve like that is that there is no universal standard on whether to put an "Okay" button on the right or left of a "Cancel" button. Every day to remote into work I have to trigger a program on my computer then verify myself on my phone; the former has the Okay on the right and the latter on the left. I've had to redo the process many times because I click Cancel by mistake. If I were doing either action by itself it wouldn't be a problem, but seconds apart it's too close. We need a universal agreement to put those two in the same order everywhere.
 
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