"[Office Story] You want it WHEN????" Topic

Disclaimer: You should know it already. If you don't know what I am talking about go check another site….

So I'm sitting in my cubicle today. Things are whirring along nicely. We've only got a dozen Sev2 system outtages and 1 Sev1 outtage…
The phone rings.
I answer and take the necessary info, and then after verifying the information from the client, it goes something like this…

Client: (known as "C"): "I'm the administrator for a sharepoint and I need to add some folks for a meeting in about forty minutes. Can you help me?"
Me: (trying to be good humored.) "Sure I can help you with this." I then proceed to guide her through the Request IT application to request access for individuals for sharepoint….the way it's supposed to be done.
C: "Nooooooooooo….you don't understand. (insert whiny sound here) I need to add a group of people for this sharepoint and I need to do it NOW!"
NOTE: Readers not understanding sharepoint are to be advised that a person that opens a sharepoint is considerd the "de facto administrator" of said account, and anyone wishing access to that sharepoint has to go through the proceedure of requesting it, getting validated, verified and approved. It takes about 3 days.
Me: "Ummmm…ooooooooookay….you are the administrator. The proceedure is to have them request it, you approve it and then submit it to Request IT."
C: "I don't have the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!" Hmmmm..she's starting to stress her vowels. Could she be related to Goth Chick from my old job?
Me: "Um..ma'am…just how many people are we talking here?" I ask her politely.
C: "Oh…at least 600 plus." She says non-chalantly.
Me: "Excuse me? You want over 600 people automatically assigned to your sharepoint?"
C: "Yes."
Me: "It can't be done like that."
C: "Yes it can! My boss said it can! And I have to have this for yada-yada (insert bigwigs name here)…(Note: when people start dropping names it's their way of trying to shake you.).
Me: When did you know you had to do this?
C: "Oh about two weeks ago, but I forgot."
Me: "So now you need 600 names just "dropped" into a sharepoint because you forgot?"
C: "Well I was busy!" (Like no one else is.)
So I put her on mute, contacted my super, told him what was going on, and his answer "It can't be done that way."
"She's not going to like that." I tell her.
"Life's hard. It's harder if you're stupid." He said.
"Hey! That's a John Wayne line!" I told him.
He just grinned.
I got back on the phone, (with him listening on a headset), and dutifully informed him that A: This isn't possible because the system isn't set up that way, and B: If we were even to send a sharepoint ticket up with this, we would need the names and domains of ALL people needing access, and so "Did she have that?"
C: "Noooooo…I'm not even sure if all of the people that I want on this list are on the access list." She said.
Me: "I'm sorry ma'am. It can't be done the way you need it."
C: "But *insert bigwigs name here* needs to have this done NOW!"
Me: "Ma'am…if you wish, I or my supervisor will be more than happy to bring her in on a conference call with you and explain the situation of access to sharepoint to clarify any possible errors here."
Supervisor grins and nods, Good one…
C: "No! That's not necessary. I'll handle it myself. THANKS for nothing."
Me: "Yes ma'am have a nice…."
CLICK!

And I guess I have to let y'all in on a secret that over 90% of our stupid call are from holes in CALIFORNIA!!!!

What is it with them???

Submitted Respectfully;

Murphy

Where is the San Andreas Fault when you really need it?

PM me with your phone number. This hole in California will happily call you. I can make her look reasonable.

Allen

same with this california ahole

Jeeze-Louise Murph, your job sounds like mine!

"California is like a bowl of granola, what ain't nuts and fruits is flakes."

A good deal of my family lives there and they are NOT exceptions to the rule. But I am sure there are at least a few Californians who are very nice people.

On a related subject: has anyone been watching " The IT Gang" ? It's is now in its 3rd series and is hilarious. Murphy's story would fit right in.

'Life is hard – it's harder if you're stupid'

OMFG – I'm going to remember and reuse that line!

"California is like a bowl of granola, what ain't nuts and fruits is flakes."

Thirty-year-old Gallagher jokes aside (and he said "Los Angeles"), California has no monopoly on people who think they know their technology but don't. California just has a higher level of technology to be ignorant of, that's all.

Hmmmm, here's a different opinion, I hope you won't mind.

When I need people added to my sharepoint site or set up as users on a terminal service server I write applications for, it takes about 5 minutes. I'm not a network administrator.

I don't know what set up you're using there, Murph, but in my opinion, the purpose of IT systems of any type are for sharing of information. When you said three days I literally blinked. Given how people "network" (I mean personal networking as opposed to actual LAN/WAN type networks) and so quickly connect these days and how short attention spans of customers are, 3 days is a very long time to process something as simple as Sharepoint access. I would think such a long delay could even result in lost accounts and so does my best old army buddy who's a bank VP with a US bank that has done very well. My opinion, of course and obviously, I'm in a different milieu, my philosophy is that information systems are for sharing information and making it readily accessible.

Anyway, just another viewpoint. If it were me, I'd be after someone's head (not yours of course, but the folks who have such a 70s type system set up).
--
Tim

Ditto…the 3 days is likely for the required confirmation processing. The more bureacratic process there is…the longer it takes to get even a five minute job done, mostly to get permission to do said five minute job.

and for the record…born in california. escaped before being dipped in silicone! ;)

So it is a dipping process they use. I often wondered about that.

California-bashing aside..

A business needs to occassionally be nimble.

If I ran a line of business, and one of my assistants made an ommission resulting in this sort of disconnect, I would:

A. have a firm talk with the assistant to not let this happen again.

B. climb as far up the ladder as possible to reach someone who would understand that sometimes STUFF happens, and force I.T. to respond more quickly.

The role of any support organization is to HELP a business to DO business.

The answer here, is that the Sharepoint COULD have been done.
It just would have taken hard work.
That supervisor should have at least tried to pull in resource to make it happen. Maybe not in 1 hour, but maybe in 4. OR get authorization to circumvent the policy or isolate the exception.

Sooo, congrats Murph.
You and your supervisor (2 people), managed to stymie 600+ people without even attempting a workaround. Nice work.

In Murphy's defense, did the 600 (hmm sounds like a bad SF novel) have Active Directory Accounts? What sort of groups are already built? I have had folks ask to add folks outside our network to Sharepoint, I'm still waiting on the policy decision for that one.

Dremel/Google/Ditto – it is possible, of course, that
it's at the CLIENT'S request that the process exists
as it does – take time to verify/confirm, prior to
adding to the Sharepoint. Most clients won't really
understand how insisting on multiple layers of
checks in the name of 'security' can really cost
time.

Greatest problem we had at IBM when introducing new
clients to services was making really sure that they
knew they could 'security' themselves into inflexibility.

It's entirely possible Ed. I just know, working municipal guberment, that anytime we depart from established policy on anything our attorney breaks out into hives. If something happens or goes wrong, even if not our issue, because it didn't happen per policy it makes it that much harder to defend ourselves from suit.

I'm not saying it's wrong or right…merely saying that this is the world we've made…unfortunately.

My understanding from what Murphy said isn't that they blocked or stymied anyone.

From the sound of it, the silly cow requesting the access didn't know how many people really needed it, hadn't attempted to find out the information and hadn't attempted to find out if the people already had the necessary access to enable things to happen.

If you want something like that to happen fast in an organisation it's usually best to get all the info first, not jump up and down and expect someone else to pick up your !

Hells horses! I am so glad I don't work in an office. How do people stand it without their heads exploding?

Brother Murph, Does the required 3 day set-up time have anything to do with Sarbaines-Oxley compliance?

@ Ditto Bird and Dremel Man: You might want to read this section:

B: If we were even to send a sharepoint ticket up with this, we would need the names and domains of ALL people needing access, and so "Did she have that?"
C: "Noooooo…I'm not even sure if all of the people that I want on this list are on the access list." She said.

If I read this correctly, then the problem wasn't just a matter of policy; the caller did not have the necessary information to do the task at all, much less in the time allowed by policy (or possibly even technically… collecting over 600 disparate addresses and domain names might not be a trivial effort).

While I agree that IT exists to serve business and make things happen, the fault in this instance falls more heavily on the caller than on Murphy and his supervisor.

She had two weeks to get this done, she forgot. Now with one hour to go, she wants Murphy to do what ahe was supposed to do. And when he can't, it's all his fault.

And people wonder why some folks walk through their offices with guns shooting.

Henry

I'm from California, and Californian's, at least when I lived there, were very accepting of everybody. At that time, there were relatively few native Angelenos, most people moving there after WWII, having seen something of the world or snowbirds who got sick of the "four seasons", and I'm not talking about the musical group.

People elsewhere, though, have an absolute dread of those of us from California, and particularly LA. When I moved to NC, they used to call me a damned Yankee until a) I told them I wasn't a damned anything and b) I proved by my personality and behavior that their stereotype was incorrect.

When I moved to Oregon, I had friends, until I told them I was from LA. All of a sudden, I wasn't the man I've been my entire life. There, they had radio commercials encouraging people to direct Californians to Devil's Canyon, not the scenic route, the dropoff.

I was on the verge of getting full-time jobs twice in NC. When I told the interviewer I was from LA, both times, he stood up, shook me by the hand and escorted me to the door.
No job.

The problem isn't with Californians. It's with people who are so full of hate, hostility, contempt and stereotypes that they can't think straight.

I've personally never treated anyone like that, no matter where they were from. What's that got to do with who I am or how I've always conducted myself?

Today, there's no such thing among people who have an unreasoning hatred of Californias as showing them who you are and what you're about.

The rest of the country needs to get over it. Whatever it is, I didn't do it to you, and neither did any other Californian.

Highjack of thread complete.

JW

By the way, I've had so many people from other states lie about me, backstab me and try to ruin my reputation that I can't count them all.

The funny thing is that I've never done any of that to anybody, but they're entitled to treat me like that because where I was born.

Convoluted reasoning is alive and well, and living in at least four states that I know about.

JW

A few clarifications here…
1: When I posted "three days", what Google said was correct. It's a very beaureaucratic process that involves the administrators manager, approving or disapproving members, then sending the request to IT/Security to make sure that those people are on their groups, and have the correct access, etc…
2: An administrator of sharepoint has the authority and ability to add or subtract people. She simply didn't want to do it, and due to her mistake, was trying to pass the buck.
3: The only way that we as an organization can approve that many people is if they are already in already approved set up groups, then we can give "group membership" in the sharepoint. Unfortunately she didn't have any groups.
4: Like I said, she didn't know truly how many people she really needed, and she didn't know if the people she needed on this thing had the proper access to be able to access it.

And for those in California. Not all of you are A**holes. We just have a very bad problem with our California offices doing things like this, and trying to "cut corners".

California-bashing aside..

A business needs to occassionally be nimble.

If I ran a line of business, and one of my assistants made an ommission resulting in this sort of disconnect, I would:

A. have a firm talk with the assistant to not let this happen again.

B. climb as far up the ladder as possible to reach someone who would understand that sometimes STUFF happens, and force I.T. to respond more quickly.

IT can only respond quickly IF you have the information required and can request it in a REASONABLE amount of time.

The role of any support organization is to HELP a business to DO business.

The answer here, is that the Sharepoint COULD have been done.
It just would have taken hard work.
That supervisor should have at least tried to pull in resource to make it happen. Maybe not in 1 hour, but maybe in 4. OR get authorization to circumvent the policy or isolate the exception.

Yes it could have been done, but NOT in the time frame that she was demanding. This was one of the major points of this discussion. She had had TWO weeks to get this set up and half an hour before it is to start is suddenly trying to find a way to "pass the buck".
We DID try to get it but the way that Sharepoint is set up in our company at OUR level, we can't do this, and all we could do would be to send a very rudimentary ticket to the Sharepoint tier which they would've sent back and said "She's the admin, she can add them."

Sooo, congrats Murph.
You and your supervisor (2 people), managed to stymie 600+ people without even attempting a workaround. Nice work.

Not sure how we stymied 600 people when the person that wanted this had already screwed the pooch on it. See above for the attempted workarounds.

I'll be waiting for your apology…

Jack;
I can understand your frustration. When I moved to Houston a couple of years ago from Las Vegas, I was told by one supervisor, "I want to hire you, you are the person I need, but I can't because the boss will see that you are from Vegas, and well…"you aren't from around here", and he only hires locals…"
So the mentality is pretty exclusive.

Living in Vegas though, I've seen how the folks from So. Cal had come in and pretty much taken over the place and tried to make it like Southern Cal.

So I can understand some folks resentments.

Like I said. A good majority of our "anal rententive individuals" that we get on calls are from that state.

In the UK, Londoners have a similar reputation in the rest of the country.

Murphy, your first mistake was expecting people who dont understand your program and how IT to think this is funny. People that dont fix things dont want to understand that it cant be done. and if you put HR or manager next to their name it only gets worse.
Second mistake is letting that person get away you should have made her bring her in bigwig so you could explain it to him and then make her look bad. cause will no doubt do it to you.

Procrastination on your end does not constitute an emergency on my end.