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

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arthwollipot said:
Sharepoint very much depends on how it's set up. It can be set up so that it works excellently, if the engineers setting it up know what they're doing. If they don't, it can be a pile of dog's breakfast after it's come out of the dog's other end.
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My favouritest thing, is that new admins seem to like deleting all the existing content, and don't seem to understand why that's a bad idea.

Thank us that we had Confluence on site to fall back on every time that happened.

Screeetch! All documentation has to be on Sharepoint!!! Screeeeeeetch!

Yes, we keep putting it there, and dickhead admins keep deleting it.

"Oh those projects are finished so we deleted all the documentation."

"Derp. Derp. Derp. Derp."

(Let's not talk about all the different instances of Sharepoint because of 'special' managers, all of which become instantly inaccessible to anyone at a drop of a hat.)
 
*recorded message*: Thank you for calling the job followup line. Please have your User ID and your job number ready.

*five minute wait during which the recorded message repeats four more times*

*me*: Good afternoon, job followup line, can I have your User ID please?

*them*: Uh, yeah, hang on... wait a minute...

*me*: ...

*me*: ...

*them*: Okay, is it... uh... no, wait, is it BLBLBBRT?

*me*: Your user ID consists of your first and surname initials followed by a 4-digit number.

*them*: Oh, uh... I'm not sure... wait, hang on...

*me*: ...

*me*: ...

*them*: Uh, okay, is it BLBLBBRT?

*me*: Your user ID consists of...

*them* No, wait, not that, it's, um, hang on... uh... is it AB1234?

*me*: Thank you. Can I get the job number that you'd like me to look up?

*them*: ...uh, wait, is it... uh, hang on.

*me*: ...

*me*: ...

*them*: Let me see... uh, wait, uh, I don't think I have one of those.

*me*: Thank you, I just palmed my face inside out. Have a nice afternoon.

*click*

The preceding transcript may be slightly exaggerated for comedic effect. But not by much.
 
arthwollipot said:
*recorded message*: Thank you for calling the job followup line. Please have your User ID and your job number ready.

*five minute wait during which the recorded message repeats four more times*

*me*: Good afternoon, job followup line, can I have your User ID please?

*them*: Uh, yeah, hang on... wait a minute...
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Those are the people who wait in line at the fast food place for twenty minutes then haven't thought of what they want to order when they finally get to the front of the line.
 
novaphile said:
My favouritest thing, is that new admins seem to like deleting all the existing content, and don't seem to understand why that's a bad idea.



Thank us that we had Confluence on site to fall back on every time that happened.



Screeetch! All documentation has to be on Sharepoint!!! Screeeeeeetch!



Yes, we keep putting it there, and dickhead admins keep deleting it.



"Oh those projects are finished so we deleted all the documentation."



"Derp. Derp. Derp. Derp."



(Let's not talk about all the different instances of Sharepoint because of 'special' managers, all of which become instantly inaccessible to anyone at a drop of a hat.)
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So it's content management procedures that are the problem, not the product.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Never trust Outlook. According to Outlook my job title is the one I had four years ago, my desk is located on a floor that doesn't exist in the building I worked in five years ago, and my phone number is a landline to the building I worked in ten years ago.
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And that's the way you like it?
 
Sigh. "I don't understand why the Apples report doesn't exactly match the Oranges report! Please explainnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!"
 
TragicMonkey said:
Sigh. "I don't understand why the Apples report doesn't exactly match the Oranges report! Please explainnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!"
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I was once responsible for IT for a major insurance system. We produced two monthly summary reports. First, the total value of all claims paid as of the date of the claim and, second, the total dollars paid in a given month. I swear half my time was explaining why the two numbers differed. (The second half was spent on why the number is the first report was bigger than what we had reported in the previous cycle.)
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I was once responsible for IT for a major insurance system. We produced two monthly summary reports. First, the total value of all claims paid as of the date of the claim and, second, the total dollars paid in a given month. I swear half my time was explaining why the two numbers differed. (The second half was spent on why the number is the first report was bigger than what we had reported in the previous cycle.)
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I was once called upon to explain discrepancy between two separate runnings of data concerning patient ages. I had to explain, very slowly and carefully, that during the interval between runs all of the patients continued to age and some of them had had birthdays.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I was once responsible for IT for a major insurance system. We produced two monthly summary reports. First, the total value of all claims paid as of the date of the claim and, second, the total dollars paid in a given month. I swear half my time was explaining why the two numbers differed. (The second half was spent on why the number is the first report was bigger than what we had reported in the previous cycle.)
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One of my customers had gotten a new bookkeeper and few months later she called me. She said that for the last three months the payments received on accounts was equal to the previous month's billing, but this month the payments received were low.

I tried telling her that while it's good that people had been paying their bills promptly and that over time payments would be expected to average out to pretty much equal billing, there was no guarantee of that in any given time period.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to convince her that those numbers didn't have to match, and in fact it would unusual for them match exactly. (It turned out they hadn't matched exactly, but actually had been pretty close). I walked her through the process of sending monthly statements and late notices, and I think at that point the light dawned.
 
JimOfAllTrades said:
One of my customers had gotten a new bookkeeper and few months later she called me. She said that for the last three months the payments received on accounts was equal to the previous month's billing, but this month the payments received were low.

I tried telling her that while it's good that people had been paying their bills promptly and that over time payments would be expected to average out to pretty much equal billing, there was no guarantee of that in any given time period.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to convince her that those numbers didn't have to match, and in fact it would unusual for them match exactly. (It turned out they hadn't matched exactly, but actually had been pretty close). I walked her through the process of sending monthly statements and late notices, and I think at that point the light dawned.
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HOW new was this person in that profession? Where was she educated in this? Surely this is BAU for accounting in practice?
 
Norman Alexander said:
HOW new was this person in that profession? Where was she educated in this? Surely this is BAU for accounting in practice?
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She was a temp brought in just to cover for a couple of weeks while the regular person was out sick, then kept on when the other person died rather suddenly.

I think it was more a case of she got dropped into a new situation and with software she had never seen before and was working off very incomplete notes. It was "run this report, do that, check those numbers" all without any real explanation of what anything was. She caught up pretty quickly, all things considered, but that was an odd bump in the road.
 
I'm going to invent time travel just so I can track down the first bored middle management type who said "Yah know what... all these cords look too messy I don't want to look at them" and remove them from the timeline.

You desk has zero cable management features, is mounted against the wall, takes up the whole length of the wall (it's not really even desk but more of a built in counter kinda thing) and you have every possible device known to man plugged into it. You're gonna see some cords.

Yes I can zip tie them and cable sleeve them, but you want everything on your desk rearraigned every 8 seconds.

And of course this desk is a cluttered nightmare of random just... stuff built over years.
 
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Dear User,

I know you are very upset that your file watcher job loses its connection when you have an outage, but truly this is the nature of outages.
I'm assure you I am not conspiring against you in any way though you seem to think so.
 
Faydra said:
Dear User,

I know you are very upset that your file watcher job loses its connection when you have an outage, but truly this is the nature of outages.
I'm assure you I am not conspiring against you in any way though you seem to think so.
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You weren't conspiring before, you mean. Now you can write a script that mimics an outage at random intervals, just for that one thing.
 
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