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

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I've kept track of this. It's at the end of my work day now, and so far today I have had to type a password 12 times, and use some kind of MFA token five times. I'm pretty sure I missed a few, too.
 
Ugh. They've got me doing VoIP again. I hate VoIP. Whoever designed Cisco Unity needs to be severely chastised and sent on a usability crash course.

Right now I have to check an entire team of 45 staff to see if they have voice mail set up, and to set them up if they don't. Fortunately only 11 do not.

What a pain in the bum.
 
arthwollipot said:
Ugh. They've got me doing VoIP again. I hate VoIP. Whoever designed Cisco Unity needs to be severely chastised and sent on a usability crash course.

Right now I have to check an entire team of 45 staff to see if they have voice mail set up, and to set them up if they don't. Fortunately only 11 do not.

What a pain in the bum.
Click to expand...

The two are sort of exclusive. Cisco products have a reputation for being user unfriendly. I've worked with Asterisk (almost defines "unfriendly") and FreePBX, a web front-end to Asterisk and much nicer to work with.
 
Blue Mountain said:
The two are sort of exclusive. Cisco products have a reputation for being user unfriendly. I've worked with Asterisk (almost defines "unfriendly") and FreePBX, a web front-end to Asterisk and much nicer to work with.
Click to expand...
Setting up extra lines and speed dials is the absolute worst. We can't just assign them arbitrarily. No - we have to assign them according to a template, of which there are dozens, with names like "8861_1L 2-4S 5U 6-41S" and we have to find a template, based on this name, that most closely matches the button layout that the client has requested. The client, of course, has absolutely no knowledge of these templates or their limitations.
 
Pet peeve: referring to software products by the name of the company that provides them. Open the document in Adobe. Request to install Kofax. Diagnose problems in HPE.

Really annoys the crap out of me. But there's nothing I can do about it.
 
Ha!

I went to downforeveryoneorjustme.com today, because a website wasn't working for me.

On a whim I put twitter.com in the search box and this is what comes up.
 

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Well that was unexpected. I just got a call on the escalation line - this is the line that T1s use when the call they are on is too difficult and/or is taking too long. The call was really easy to resolve but that's not what was unexpected.

The guy was super complementary about the level of service and professionalism he has always had in his dealings with us. Especially when compared to his old department. It was almost weird.
 
Again if you put a trouble call in I need a way to contact you.

90% of my troublecalls are:

- A contextless e-mail that says "NEED HELP!!!!!"
- No call back number, no extension, no site (a lot of our users are mobile and go site to site.)
- Don't answer an e-mail asking for more information.
- Finally track them down only to be told that they weren't the ones that needed help, someone else did and the whole process now has to start over.
 
arthwollipot said:
I've kept track of this. It's at the end of my work day now, and so far today I have had to type a password 12 times, and use some kind of MFA token five times. I'm pretty sure I missed a few, too.
Click to expand...
I've still been thinking about this.

I have three accounts. A normal one for non-admin in the unprotected environment (ab1234 (this is not my real user ID)), an _a account (ab1234_a) for admin in the unprotected environment, and an _f account (ab1234_f) for admin in the protected environment. I also have a fourth account for non-admin in protected, but I don't usually need to use that. Here's how my morning starts.

  1. Log on to unprotected
  2. RDP to jump server, using _a and MFA
  3. In jump server, RDP to admin server, using _a (yes, this is a double RDP. Something something something security)
  4. Log on to RAS in unprotected
  5. In RAS, log on to protected, using _f and MFA
  6. Log on to Azure in protected, using _f and MFA
  7. Log on to Papercut (used for printing) in protected, using _f but no MFA
  8. Log on to Exchange Admin in unprotected, using _a
  9. Log on to O365 in Exchange Admin in unprotected, using _a and MFA

If I don't keep switching to my protected window and my admin server window, they go into sleep mode and I have to wake them up again using the appropriate account. If I leave it long enough, both the jump server and the admin server go to sleep and I have to wake them both up. When I go to lunch I have to wake my screen up, then wake up those other windows. These are all additional entries of passwords.

There are other times I need to enter a password of some kind, like checking the email quarantine or accessing the Skype server. In most cases I've got the browser to store the password, and honestly I don't have to use them very often.

Is this absolutely bonkers or do you have to enter your various passwords many times just to do your job?
 
arthwollipot said:
So - not bonkers then?
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Nope. I have four basic accounts (normal for regular net and protected, and admin for each). I get the added fun of the admin accounts being managed: the password changes daily. So I also have to sign into that system.

And we use two different MFA systems, one for each network.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Hi, I'd like to follow up on a job I've logged?
Do you have the job number?
1234567
Okay, this is a relocation request, it's scheduled for today, as requested.
Oh, okay. Thanks.
*click*
 
arthwollipot said:
Hi, I'd like to follow up on a job I've logged?
Do you have the job number?
1234567
Okay, this is a relocation request, it's scheduled for today, as requested.
Oh, okay. Thanks.
*click*
Click to expand...

They know it’s scheduled. They were looking for confirmation that someone was actually going to act on it. There is often justified scepticism that someone will show.
 
Sideroxylon said:
They know it’s scheduled. They were looking for confirmation that someone was actually going to act on it. There is often justified scepticism that someone will show.
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In some cases it's just confusion. They lodge a request, they get a confirmation of the request, and then nothing until someone shows up at their desk. It's not confirmation that they're looking for, it's reassurance.

Did I mention the other week about the call I got where the caller was so complementary about the service he had received and how much better we were than the IT at his old department? That was a good call, which I passed along to the whole team.
 
It's 2021. I wish users would accept that there really is not functional way to troubleshoot "fax" issues.

It's a technology the predates the Civil War that has literally no reason to exist nor upside to being used. It either works or it doesn't. Do any faxes from this fax machine make it anywhere? Yes? Well then there's not a whole lot I can do beyond that. The telecom industry has all but forgotten that faxes even exist and they offer basically no support and I have no way of troubleshooting a purely analog fax transmission.

"If I send a fax to this number it cuts off after page 24 some of the time" is literally a problem I have no way of addressing.
 
Grrr. The project I'm currently working on is to develop a single authoritative source for certain critical numbers-- the much vaunted (and mentioned) "source of truth" to replace the multitude of conflicting reports the division currently uses.

So what's the latest ask? One party wants to have different criteria for their version of the One True Data. So there will now be Two True Data, conflicting with each other, and both will be considered "the source of truth".

I'm the only person involved in this who sees this as a problem.
 
Why do I have a hunch I'm safe in assuming that one of the "Sources of the One True Data" doesn't want to have responsibility if the "One True Data" is wrong.

I've met a lot of "The Buck Stops Here with Me, but Where the Blame Stops is a Lot More Negotiable" people in my time.
 
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