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

Status
Not open for further replies.
So we have a procedure where if a person leaves the department or goes on extended leave, they are to submit an Exit Advice Notification (EAN) form so that we can remove them from distribution lists, account for owned assets and resources, and close their account. Sometimes people do not do this, and colleagues have to submit it on their behalf after they have left. It is always amusing how delayed this can be. The previous latest I had seen was someone who departed in July last year.

I have one here who departed on 30 June 2018. That's a record.
 
When someone leaves here, the primary account must, by federal regulation, be disabled within 24 hours. All secondary accounts (stuff they could access but that’s blocked because the primary account doesn’t work) removed/disabled within 30 days.

It’s a bit different here :). Of course, part of what I protect is access to the power grid (including several nuclear plants).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
At my workplace, from which I never post...

... the moment a person's end date is reached in the HR system, a process called "obituaries" runs and all of their access to EVERYTHING is deleted.

By EVERYTHING I mean:
ID card no longer opens doors;
ID card no longer operates lifts;
Every computer system on every domain;
Every email account (secure and non-secure);
ID card no longer operates time system.

All of this happens if someone forgets to put your contract extension into the HR system.

In 12 years, this has happened to me 3 times.

:(

It takes a long time to fix.
 
novaphile said:
At my workplace, from which I never post...

... the moment a person's end date is reached in the HR system, a process called "obituaries" runs and all of their access to EVERYTHING is deleted.

By EVERYTHING I mean:
ID card no longer opens doors;
ID card no longer operates lifts;
Every computer system on every domain;
Every email account (secure and non-secure);
ID card no longer operates time system.

All of this happens if someone forgets to put your contract extension into the HR system.

In 12 years, this has happened to me 3 times.

:(

It takes a long time to fix.
Click to expand...

As a consultant with contracts of typically 6-9 months in duration this happens to me on a semi-regular basis.

The "funniest" incident was the time where someone had typoed the wrong expiry date into the system and all my access was revoked two months before my contract ended.
 
erlando said:
As a consultant with contracts of typically 6-9 months in duration this happens to me on a semi-regular basis.

The "funniest" incident was the time where someone had typoed the wrong expiry date into the system and all my access was revoked two months before my contract ended.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm with you on that, one of mine was a typo.

After it happened the second time, I took steps to record all my access near the transition date, so it wouldn't take so long to restore if it went wrong.

The third time it happened was absolutely out of the blue, and I was caught flat-footed. (My termination date was a typo and I can't even see that system).
 
I may have told this story before. At the major bank I worked at someone updated the group directory to show me working in another area. This had all sorts of PITAs with access privileges etc so I contacted the team.
"Hi you incorrectly moved me from team A to team B. Please revert, thanks."
Them: "You will have to follow correct procedure and get a change request signed by your senior manager. We will review and it should be actioned in a few weeks"
Me : "Better idea since we follow ITIL here, right? You give me the Change Request number this work was done under and I raise an incident ticket marking it as a failed change for you to revert the whole change. After all we should follow process"
Them "We'll make the change tonight. It will take effect tomorrow.."
"Thank you".
 
Wudang said:
I may have told this story before. At the major bank I worked at someone updated the group directory to show me working in another area. This had all sorts of PITAs with access privileges etc so I contacted the team.
"Hi you incorrectly moved me from team A to team B. Please revert, thanks."
Them: "You will have to follow correct procedure and get a change request signed by your senior manager. We will review and it should be actioned in a few weeks"
Me : "Better idea since we follow ITIL here, right? You give me the Change Request number this work was done under and I raise an incident ticket marking it as a failed change for you to revert the whole change. After all we should follow process"
Them "We'll make the change tonight. It will take effect tomorrow.."
"Thank you".
Click to expand...

Oh thank you. We're supposed to be ITIL. I am so going to use this new magic sword that you've given me...
 
Last month IT decided it would be a good idea to preserve laptop battery life by pushing system setting updates that stop all laptops in the company from charging batteries beyond 75%.

That may be feasible for some workers who stay at their desks all day, but a great many workers here spend nine hours a day in meetings or travelling between sites.

Now every meeting is a fight for power outlets. Very few of us have the knowledge or access (God bless whoever forgot to delete the temporary Windows 7 testing admin account!) to change power settings.

Today I have a two hour meeting with a cross-section of bigwigs from all over the company. It starts at one PM, when everyone's power should be running low. I happen to be familiar with the room we'll be in, and know that it has no outlets reachable from the tables. This is going to be fun.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Last month IT decided it would be a good idea to preserve laptop battery life by pushing system setting updates that stop all laptops in the company from charging batteries beyond 75%.

That may be feasible for some workers who stay at their desks all day, but a great many workers here spend nine hours a day in meetings or travelling between sites.

Now every meeting is a fight for power outlets. Very few of us have the knowledge or access (God bless whoever forgot to delete the temporary Windows 7 testing admin account!) to change power settings.

Today I have a two hour meeting with a cross-section of bigwigs from all over the company. It starts at one PM, when everyone's power should be running low. I happen to be familiar with the room we'll be in, and know that it has no outlets reachable from the tables. This is going to be fun.
Click to expand...

For some reason my company laptop never says it's charging when plugged in. I have to shut it down and leave it plugged in (I also leave it open as I don't know if closing it would make a difference) in order for it to charge at any level. One of the main reasons for having the laptop is to be free to move around the plant, to where ever the problem is, with it.
 
I have two kinds of laptop users.

"I literally have not once ever removed my laptop from the docking station on my desk and essentially just have an expensive, hard to upgrade desktop."

and

"I never plug my laptop in and nothing short of RTG that NASA uses on deep space missions is going to last long enough to keep me satisfied."

The battery thing TragicMonkey mentions does seem odd to me though. That kind of battery condition maintenance has been essential for a couple of technology generations now. Unless there is some variable I'm not getting someone is operating off out bad info.
 
Stop telling me you are "stupid with computers" or some version of that. We design this to be very easy and in plain English.

What you really want to say is "I'm too lazy to do this right". Especially when I have to tell you how to open tabs in Safari and how to find the Apps folder in OS X on your own Macbook.
 
arthwollipot said:
We're not technically ITIL, but in practice we are. The area I'm moving into is Service Requests.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

I've often struggled to understand your workplace, but this helps...

I think the equivalent for us would be "Desktop Services" i.e. anything to do with installation or configuration of software installed on a person's computer.

I'm at the far end of that chain. I maintain a large application which is still partially under development, and often have to perform data updates, and in the non-production environments database schema updates (as well as all sorts of unusual system configuration at the back end of that application).

However I also receive a lot of incidents and service requests, typically to do with failures in the insanely complex systems integration space.

Weirdly, I have to raise service requests to get anything changed on my own computer. Typical turn-around is three weeks. (This is a nightmare)

Now imagine a host file, that you need to change three times a day, and you can't because your have been forced to use a locked-down desktop.

I'm thinking of building a pirate VM somewhere in the computer room so that I can get my work done...

I used to have VMs for each client deployment for each environment to get around this, but the powers that be have decided we are not allowed to do that anymore.

You can see why I'm counting down to retirement.
 
It's not "my email systems'" fault that you emailed a scan of your driver's license and social security card to an e-mail group that was roughly 1/3rd the company instead of to just the 4 HR people. Best I can do is show you how to recall an e-mail. Also the original e-mail from HR instructed you specifically to NOT e-mail your documents but scan and upload them to the company portal, probably for literally exactly this reason.

Also the

COMPANYNAME__SPECIFIC_OFFICE_LOCATION__HR_REPS(AT)COMPANYNAME.COM

that you were trying (wrongly) to send to isn't even similar to the

COMPANYNAME__ENTIRE_GODDAMN_COMPANY__TOTALLY_OTHER_GROUP(AT)COMPANYNAME.COM

that you actually sent it to.
 
Last edited:
TragicMonkey said:
Last month IT decided it would be a good idea to preserve laptop battery life by pushing system setting updates that stop all laptops in the company from charging batteries beyond 75%.

That may be feasible for some workers who stay at their desks all day, but a great many workers here spend nine hours a day in meetings or travelling between sites.

Now every meeting is a fight for power outlets. Very few of us have the knowledge or access (God bless whoever forgot to delete the temporary Windows 7 testing admin account!) to change power settings.

Today I have a two hour meeting with a cross-section of bigwigs from all over the company. It starts at one PM, when everyone's power should be running low. I happen to be familiar with the room we'll be in, and know that it has no outlets reachable from the tables. This is going to be fun.
Click to expand...
I recommend:
A long gang-socket.
An external battery pack.
A bootable thumbdrive with a password editor.
Arsenic.
 
catsmate said:
I recommend:
A long gang-socket.An external battery pack.
A bootable thumbdrive with a password editor.
Arsenic.
Click to expand...


The long extension cord and gang outlet solution has a possible side benefit.

You could rent the extra outlet space to less foresighted attendees.

"Ladies? Gentlemen? The bidding will commence fifteen minutes before the meeting begins. After that it's a flat rate."​
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom