Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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theprestige said:
Like every other ticketing system, Service Now is great right up until the moment when the client ignores its basic features and starts customizing.
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As I've said before, I'm cautiously optimistic about the implementation in this case. It appears that a lot of thought has gone into its development. The anxiety I'm feeling is simply the change anxiety I've felt all my life about doing anything I'm not familiar with, so it's a familiar feeling.
 
arthwollipot said:
Sooo... we've had a confirmed case of COVID in the building.

I've been WFW through the current lockdown as I have an Essential Worker permit because I don't have the space at home for the ergonomic equipment I require due to my WHS assessment. The case isn't on my floor - it's two floors up - and all the staff on my floor who have been to that floor have tested negative. But we're all WFH tomorrow until we know more. I'm pretty sure we'll just be a "monitor for symptoms" contact, but it's annoying. I haven't WFH for a while now.
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arthwollipot said:
The followup to that is that half an hour after my shift ended, I lost all internet access for about five hours. I checked with my ISP and there was a widespread outage.

I'm back in the office today. There was a confirmed case in the building - two floors up from me. All the people from my floor who had gone up to that floor tested positive, but they wanted us all to WFH for a day to make sure.
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Did something change, or is the latter an error? :)
 
Kid Eager said:
That’s like one I had from earlier this year. I tell business line manager that for their new enterprise app to work properly, the business rules for record assignment and approval levels need to be defined. They say “okay”. I look at them. They look at me. Time passes. I say “you need to provide those business rules.” Their response: “just use the ones the app comes with”. Me: “You need to provide the logic and the who , for the rules to work.” Them: “why don’t you put some together for me and then I can see whether I like them or not…”
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Dilbert:
https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-03-21
 
arthwollipot said:
The followup to that is that half an hour after my shift ended, I lost all internet access for about five hours. I checked with my ISP and there was a widespread outage.

I'm back in the office today. There was a confirmed case in the building - two floors up from me. All the people from my floor who had gone up to that floor tested positive, but they wanted us all to WFH for a day to make sure.
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I had an on-site meeting yesterday in the office of <REDACTED> and arrived to find it closed, locked down and being sterilised by robots.
If they didn't have a no photography rule I could have gotten some wonderful shots for a re-do of The War Machines.
 
Kid Eager said:
That’s like one I had from earlier this year. I tell business line manager that for their new enterprise app to work properly, the business rules for record assignment and approval levels need to be defined. They say “okay”. I look at them. They look at me. Time passes. I say “you need to provide those business rules.” Their response: “just use the ones the app comes with”. Me: “You need to provide the logic and the who , for the rules to work.” Them: “why don’t you put some together for me and then I can see whether I like them or not…”
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Submit a plan: All records assigned to BLM. All approvals assigned to BLM's boss. When they complain that the assignments have to go to other people, then ask if they want you to draw the names out of a hat or something. Then they'll get mad and start yelling about who needs to do what, and at that point hand them a notepad and pen. *

* Not responsible for advice taken.
 
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gnome said:
Submit a plan: All records assigned to BLM. All approvals assigned to BLM's boss. When they complain that the assignments have to go to other people, then ask if they want you to draw the names out of a hat or something. Then they'll get mad and start yelling about who needs to do what, and at that point hand them a notepad and pen grenades. *

* Not responsible for advice taken.
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Longer term versus shorter term fix.
eta: Tell the judge I said it was okay.
Also not responsible for advice taken.
 
We survived our first day of ServiceNow. And as far as I could tell it wasn't horrible. We had the usual morning rush, the ServiceNow Teams chat ran gangbusters all day, we identified quite a few opportunities for improvement, but nothing crashed and burned, so I'm considering that a win.
 
arthwollipot said:
We survived our first day of ServiceNow. And as far as I could tell it wasn't horrible. We had the usual morning rush, the ServiceNow Teams chat ran gangbusters all day, we identified quite a few opportunities for improvement, but nothing crashed and burned, so I'm considering that a win.
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"We're safe now!" said Daphne Victim, standing at the top of the grand staircase in the haunted house. "What could go wrong?"
 
"We need you to come back with us!"
"There is no way I'm ever going back!"
"Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease???"
(looks at pleader, holding for a beat, appears about to reply)

And... scene.
 
TragicMonkey said:
"We're safe now!" said Daphne Victim, standing at the top of the grand staircase in the haunted house. "What could go wrong?"
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It was the subject of today's daily catch-up, and everybody seemed to have a positive impression. It may just be the contrast with SCSM, but it's looking like the general reaction is good.
 
Conversation I wish I could have.

User: "Hey Joe. It's me. The person who has a problem everyday!"
Me: "So yeah I have a question. How many users are at this company?"
User: "About 400."
Me: "Gotcha. And you guys have 3 guys to handle IT problems?"
User: "Yep."
Me: "Okay so at 3:400 ration, each IT person has about 133 people to support."
User: "Right."
Me: "And there's 8 hours in the workday."
User: "Correct"
Me: "If you divide 133 people by 8 hours, that means each user gets .06 hours or about 3.6 minutes of IT time a day.
User: "Correct."
Me: "How much of my time do YOU take up in an average day."
User: "I dunno about a half hour minimum."
Me: "Do you see where the math stops working here?"
 
arthwollipot said:
It was the subject of today's daily catch-up, and everybody seemed to have a positive impression. It may just be the contrast with SCSM, but it's looking like the general reaction is good.
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Dude, you are just risking more lightning strikes by saying such things. You may as well stand around the cemetery in the last ten minutes of the second movie in a planned Dracula trilogy declaring "he's definitely gone forever this time!"
 
"I'm going to go stand over there under with Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, Pa Kent, Carmichael from Gears of War, the Star Trek Red Shirt, the Black Guy in a Horror Movie, the Movie Cop who's one day from Retirement, and Sean Bean."
 
Reoccurring issue #3,573.

Me, the other techs, my boss, and one of the team leads / managers / supervisors will sit down and have a discussion that goes something like this.

Team Lead: "We're rolling out new software/computers/processes soon. Here's how I want things done."

IT Dept: *Deploys the software/computers and/or initaites the process per their instructions."

The actual techs/workers on the team: "Immediate loud screeching about how they can't work because this isn't how they work, this isn't the process we told our supervisor we wanted to use with the new system, this is all wrong, IT fix it, we can't work because IT messed up the upgrade/install/rollout."

Basically I wish when supervisors/managers would tell us "Here's what my the people under me want" either it was actually what they people under them want or the people under them got the word that "This is how your boss wants it, suck it up."

Usually the functional manifestation of this is a supervisor who assumes his underling follow some official streamlined ISO 9XXX procedure when in real life it's much more tribal knowledge, do what works kind of thing.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Reoccurring issue #3,573.

Me, the other techs, my boss, and one of the team leads / managers / supervisors will sit down and have a discussion that goes something like this.

Team Lead: "We're rolling out new software/computers/processes soon. Here's how I want things done."

IT Dept: *Deploys the software/computers and/or initaites the process per their instructions."

The actual techs/workers on the team: "Immediate loud screeching about how they can't work because this isn't how they work, this isn't the process we told our supervisor we wanted to use with the new system, this is all wrong, IT fix it, we can't work because IT messed up the upgrade/install/rollout."

Basically I wish when supervisors/managers would tell us "Here's what my the people under me want" either it was actually what they people under them want or the people under them got the word that "This is how your boss wants it, suck it up."

Usually the functional manifestation of this is a supervisor who assumes his underling follow some official streamlined ISO 9XXX procedure when in real life it's much more tribal knowledge, do what works kind of thing.
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During my many years in mechanical engineering I was on the tech side of this. I was a little fortunate that my combination of seniority and knowledge made it possible for me to mostly ignore this type of crap and just do what worked. I did occasionally feel a little sorry for those lower on the rungs than me because, on occasions when the process became of overriding importance to management, I would go to my own techs and tell them “Here is the technical answer/solution. Fit it into the process”. I was a bottom line sort of designer and it kept me employed for 43 years.
 
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