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...so run around flailing your arms in the air screaming incoherently. At least that's what I do now, it's more productive. One of our customers wants an external contact to have read-only access to files on a share we have. It's just a bunch of word documents and excel files. The ticket comes in with them requesting a VPN. They don't need a VPN, I said to myself. Why, I'll just set up an FTP share on the server we already have. Let me get the boss's approval!  : "We don't do FTP." :Is it because of security? There's also SF...: "WE DON'T DO FTP DROP IT":Ok...can I set them up a remote desktop connection through citrix or give them an RSA SecureID fob? I'll have to set them up an XP box in vmware, and it'll be a pain in the rear end for them since they won't necessarily be able to pull files out of it, plus it's more time consuming to set this up.: Sure. Charge them for the keyfob.*fast forward to the conversation with the customer*  :What do you mean it's 200 dollars?! Is this what you do with the other vendors? Plus this isn't what we want at all. Can we get a VPN?: Hold on, let me check with our networking team, can I put you on hold?*runs down the hall to talk with our networking guys*  : We might be able to do a VP*their boss barges in* : Hold on right there...we can't just set this up the customer can't just go around barking orders, they need to involve everyone in IT we should have 5000 meetings and this needs to take 2 years. Send the ticket back to the project manager.Ok. Fine. Back to the customer. : Ok, I need to talk with the project manager....I'll call you back...: Why is this taking forever? *namedrops high director's name*: There's no technical barriers here preventing this, just no one's letting me do anything. I'll get back to you.What. The. gently caress. Seriously? I LOVE MY JOB Feel free to divulge the contents of your ticket queue to SH/SC so we can sit in a circle consoling you like parents to a child who just had their first period, or maybe mock you mercilessly.
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Dec 1, 2008 19:16
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I love the meetings to setup a conference call to setup a meeting at a time when everyone who needs to be involved can be present, except they're the ones that aren't either at the original meeting or the conference call.
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Dec 1, 2008 19:20
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Put a shortcut on the desktop that points to the ftp server, name the shortcut "VPN connect". Email customer a username and password for their new "VPN". Edit: Seriously the last time your customer used ftp was probably the student edition of ws_ftp and he doesn't understand how ftp is integrated into windows now. That is the only reason I can see him giving a response like "we don't do ftp". supervillain fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Dec 1, 2008 |
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Dec 1, 2008 19:32
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no, the problem is, he could easily do that. Except HIS boss won't let him with the following reasoning. Because.
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Dec 1, 2008 19:41
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Do we work together?
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Dec 1, 2008 19:45
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There's nothing more frustrating than being the guy that has to deal with the end user, and immediately taking a request back up the chain to get it dealt with, and then STILL taking poo poo when the request isn't complete a couple of weeks down the line, suddenly everyone looks back at you even though you passed that poo poo on and did all you could
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Dec 1, 2008 19:50
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Ashex posted:Do we work together? You know, I almost thought the same thing, and then realized that there's no way we would stand up to a customer about an FTP server 
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Dec 1, 2008 19:58
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D13F00L posted:Ok...can I set them up a remote desktop connection through citrix or give them an RSA SecureID fob?
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Dec 1, 2008 20:00
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Casao posted:You know, I almost thought the same thing, and then realized that there's no way we would stand up to a customer about an FTP server I secretly wish that someone I worked with was a goon so we could rant about work in YOSPOS. Then I realize that if someone I worked with was a goon and knew who I was, I'd be hosed.
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Dec 1, 2008 20:06
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Why not just email them the files.
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Dec 1, 2008 20:14
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Pissflaps posted:Why not just email them the files. : "WE DON'T DO EMAIL DROP IT"
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Dec 1, 2008 20:22
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Alex007 posted:
I think I'm in love.
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Dec 1, 2008 20:28
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Ashex posted:I secretly wish that someone I worked with was a goon so we could rant about work in YOSPOS. I got hired through SH/SC so someone is always watching me 
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Dec 1, 2008 20:31
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We had a similar problem with one of the "heads" in our department. He was in charge of putting together a billing and reporting system, among other things. For this project we are required to receive data from one of our partners, we use this data to cross reference billing information with our records in case we ever have a billing issue. Here are the problems we had... a) He asked us to setup an FTP server for our partner... to receive sensitive billing/client information.. b) My coworker and I advised that this was a bad idea and that we could setup an SFTP server but really we should use some sort of secure request interface or something. He did not agree but we did setup an SFTP server regardless of his feelings. c) Instead of using the SFTP server we setup he had the partner email this sensitive billing information through our corporate mail server, which our group does not control or secure. d) To make things worse, to import all this data into the billing/report database he used outlook MAPI calls. He asked us to install outlook on our production servers so that this could work (only because we wouldn't let him run this on his desktop). He also said that if we wanted the email to be secure we'd have to run exchange servers in production to receive the email, which we are very against because there's no need for it in our environment. He is no longer with us, not because he had horrible security policy but because he actually didn't complete any of the projects he was assigned. My coworker has now taken over the development of this project and there is absolutely no usable code. We now use our partners secure web API that they've always had to pull the data we need and import it into our databases for reporting using report server (which he was against too for some reason).
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Dec 1, 2008 21:54
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I used to work for a company with an idiot IT manager. He made decisions based off magazines he read. Put a system admin in place that didn't know ANYTHING except reboot when the server is on the fritz. His best achievement .... changing policies for every person in the office. One person could do this, then the next time no they couldn't, then the next person yes, then no, yes, no, yes, no. I quit, then later he got fired. I hated that place working under him.
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Dec 1, 2008 22:42
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"I just brought in a computer from home to have as a resource in the classroom... is it possible to have it connected to the network so that students can access internet, etc??? if not, that is okay, it will just be a word processor... but the problem is, i turn it on and get a wierd screen that says something like i need to download programs or something... is there any way that I can have a tech kid come in and check it out? it worked before ................ just let me know... thanks soooo much!!!!!!!" -an English teacher, whose problems did not include a broken keyboard
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Dec 1, 2008 22:50
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Don't worry, even outside of IT, this kind of crap happens. I'm facing it in my job at the moment. So how do I get this locomotive to this area of the depot for 30 minutes of testing on a track that is used, at most, one time a day and has four other identical roads that can be used instead of it, that all start and end at the same point? YOU MUST SEE THE NETWORK CONTROL GUYS AND ORGANISE A BIG EXPENSIVE AND TIMECONSUMING SETUP Ok so let's say I manage to jump through those hoops, can we -then- use this piece of track to do our safety-critical headlight aiming? NO THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WORK ON EQUIPMENT THERE AS IT IS UNDER AN OVERHEAD LINE NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT THEY WOULD BE DOING NO MORE THAN STANDING ON THE WALKWAY ONE MUST WALK ALONG TO ENTER THE LOCO THEY ARE STILL WITHIN THE THREE METRE SAFETY ZONE YOU CAN NOT DO IT. ok so where can I actually do this stuff? NOWHERE. PS: I WANT IT DONE SOON HURRY UP.
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Dec 1, 2008 23:00
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I do application development for one of my states municipal departments through a separate institution . There is the web team, the engineers, and the application dev team. Sometimes the web team needs help with something and contacts the application dev team. It's my turn to help the web team with a problem with transferring large files. I learn the ugly truth. Our institution's site is being hosted on dreamhost. I think that's about all I have to say.
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Dec 1, 2008 23:18
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PnP Bios posted:I do application development for one of my states municipal departments through a separate institution . There is the web team, the engineers, and the application dev team. Sometimes the web team needs help with something and contacts the application dev team. Heh, H110Hawk already posted in this thread...
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Dec 1, 2008 23:46
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supervillain posted:Put a shortcut on the desktop that points to the ftp server, name the shortcut "VPN connect". Email customer a username and password for their new "VPN". A friend of mine works for a pretty big company and this is sort of what they do. They just basically set up a terminal server and named it vpn.companyname.com. I'd love to know how that went down. Also, what's with the smiley scripts? I don't know, it's just the 'in' thing to do. die die die you stupid human being.
NotWearingPants fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Dec 1, 2008 |
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Dec 1, 2008 23:55
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Nam Taf posted:Don't worry, even outside of IT, this kind of crap happens. I'm facing it in my job at the moment. It would be pretty cool to work with trains I think
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Dec 1, 2008 23:56
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From a former life, names changed to protect myself although I could care less about the subject: I worked for a large company of the sort that gets to dictate terms to the likes of Microsoft and Apple. One fine fiscal half, an advertising company was acquired. Some employees of the advertising company were kept. Others were dismissed. A subset refused to sign certain papers and thus were disappeared. One of the employees that survived the culling was a man who, for the purposes of this story, shall be named Jack Brentwood. Jack's job was to create banner advertisements. At the old company, he received certain concessions from IT as befitting his stature. This was not the case at his new employer, despite his unwillingness to believe such a thing. Upon arrival and orientation, his user account was created. The automated system in place doled out his new username, which was jbrentwood. He did not like this. A ticket came into my queue, requesting in very firm wording that his account be renamed to "ImJackBrentwood" (caps inclusive). Now, requests to change user names is nothing new. Women requested them all the time to dispose of their maiden names. However, this was generally discouraged given the extremely large infrastructure in place at this company. Instead, an offer was made to create an email alias with the desired new name. Ninety percent of the time, this was acceptable. If it wasn't, we could change the name, but the user would be unable to log in to any network services for round-about four hours. Jbrentwood was insistent that we rename his account. An email alias would not be acceptable - he MUST be able to log into any internal service using "ImJackBrentwood." To reinforce the fact that he had to be able to log into any internal service using "ImJackBrentwood," he attached his email signature, which contained his Skype name, AIM screenname, Yahoo screenname, MSN screenname, and Twitter, all of which were "ImJackBrentwood." Presumably, the passwords for all of these services were either identical or variations on a theme, but this was mere theory on my part. It was the only sane excuse I could think up - perhaps he had a strange condition that necessitated muscle memory in order to fill in a username box. And so, jbrentwood became ImJackBrentwood, and there was much rejoicing. A month later, another ticket came into the queue which I immediately grabbed due to the unusual username - ImJackBrentwood. ImJackBrentwood, it seemed, required some internet-facing web space on which to store preview advertisement banners for clients. This was not a simple request. Any content that faced the internet at large was handled by a very specific group of gatekeepers. What ImJackBrentwood required - a windows file share where he could drag and drop files to appear magically on the public internet - was flat out against the rules. The company had many services that were exposed to the internet and allowed user-generated content. Surely one of those would suffice? Negative - the 20MB quota would not do for such important tasks as previewing advertisement banners. And so ImJackBrentwood's request was escalated, per policy, to the first gates of Network Security. Network Security understood the request, and described an enormous list of checks, bylaws, and regulations that would have to be satisfied before an easement could be granted between ImJackBrentwood's explorer.exe and The Internet. All of IT rested that evening, for no one had completed the herculean task of satisfying Network Security's boilerplate regulations without support from The Almighty. A week later, an email roughly the size of a professional athlete's prenuptial agreement appeared in the ticket. Network Security's bluff had been called by ImJackBrentwood! Newspapers were stopped and the ticket, per policy, was duly sent to the Black Gate of Sysops. The Sysops denied the request within fifteen minutes. ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated. The BoFH on duty denied the request within ten minutes. ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated. The King Sysop denied the request within five minutes. ImJackBrentwood raised a fuss and had the ticket escalated. The Emperor Sysop of the Western Hemisphere examined the ticket, and wrote an email which to the best of my memory read verbatim: quote:Dear Sir, ImJackBrentwood resigned a month later and moved to Mexico.
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Dec 2, 2008 00:21
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In a previous life I was an application developer. My PM didn't know up from down and included me on a project planning meeting that had the agenda listed as: "Decision Meeting: Color coding for change control, development notes, and documentation". I declined the meeting since, there was no reason why a developer should be, nor anyone for that matter, in a meeting deciding on what color binders, and tab sheets should be used for internal documentation. 10 minutes after declining the invitation I got a snippy email from the PM with the phrases "team player", "coordinated effort", and "disappointed". I no longer work there.
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Dec 2, 2008 00:24
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PnP Bios posted:It's my turn to help the web team with a problem with transferring large files. I learn the ugly truth. Our institution's site is being hosted on dreamhost. I think that's about all I have to say. I'm sorry.  Seriously though tell them to use a honest to god file transfer client and it should work fine. Our WebFTP or whatever stupid web based program they are using is only there to appease people like my mother. Squeaky wheel and all.
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Dec 2, 2008 00:26
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Reported By Assignee Group Asset Shithead employee Nitr0 Severity Urgency Impact Active? 5 - Normal. Service 6 YES Change Charge Back ID Call Back Date/Time Root Cause Description Second unlock screen comes up after unlocking PC, but already unlocked. What the gently caress does this even mean? I hate everyone.
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Dec 2, 2008 00:33
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Nitr0 posted:Reported By Assignee Group Asset I'm going to guess it means they were using Remote Desktop when they wandered away from their computer, and that when they unlock their workstation they jump right into a Remote Desktop session that has also locked from inactivity. To contribute, the only entertaining one (?) I have for today: Ticket #1031, 9:31AM posted:receipt printer not working!!! Ticket #1032, 9:32AM posted:receipt printer not working!!! Ticket #1033, 9:32AM posted:receipt printer not working!!! Midelne fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Dec 2, 2008 |
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Dec 2, 2008 00:47
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Nobody has access to remote desktop except IT. I phoned him and he didn't take a screenshot and he couldn't re-produce it so I closed the ticket with the IT notes as "Idiot"
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Dec 2, 2008 00:59
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I work on the Build & Deployment Team for a large Internet software development company. This means my job (aside from handling Builds and Deployments) covers basic investigation of Test Environment problems, configuration issues, and Problems Nobody Else Wants To Deal With. All of my users work in Software Development (devs, testers, or PMs). It frustrates me to no end the number of support requests I receive that simply say 'The site is not working please investigate'. FYI, 'the site is not working' can mean either the hostname/IP was not found, the web server is timing out, it's throwing a 404/friendly 404, the HTML content isn't rendering properly, product searches aren't returning results, or test purchases are failing. No error messages. No repro steps. No expected/actual behavior, just 'the site is not working'. Jesus Christ, people! How can you work in Software Development, yet write worse bugs than my mother when she calls me because her e-mail stopped working! (father deleted the gmail shortcut from the desktop). Also, people only come to me if they're blocked, so nearly every e-mail I get informs me of how many people I'M PERSONALLY BLOCKING (by not having fixed their problem yet) and demand an estimate on a fix (when I still have to fight with them to get enough information to even start diagnosing their problem).
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Dec 2, 2008 01:16
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syphon^2 posted:All of my users work in Software Development (devs, testers, or PMs). It frustrates me to no end the number of support requests I receive that simply say 'The site is not working please investigate'. FYI, 'the site is not working' can mean either the hostname/IP was not found, the web server is timing out, it's throwing a 404/friendly 404, the HTML content isn't rendering properly, product searches aren't returning results, or test purchases are failing. No error messages. No repro steps. No expected/actual behavior, just 'the site is not working'. The one that takes the cake is this one though: The network is slow. There is nothing else, it just says the network is slow. Well, we have about 350 buildings on our network, would you please have the decency to tell me which part of my network is slow? Once, one of these tickets that made it to us was from the Windows team, so we actually looked at it. They were saying that our network was slow from where they were (their PC are at 1Gbps, the distribution layer connects to the access layer via 4 (2x2) 1gbps links in portchannel to the backbone which connects at 10Gbps up to their cluster who's at 4x1gbps). After telling them to check their servers, they came back to us saying the cpu was fine, nothing else. After getting the Unix team in (they can generate an insane amount of bandwidth somehow), we tested every single link one by one, even the 10Gbps to see if our equipments were at fault. They were not. The problem came from Windows share who became very slow when a lot of users were browsing them. And who figured that out? Funny enough, it was the Unix team.  We often get tons of software error tickets, because everything is the fault of the network. Almost none of these tickets are descriptive, so we actually have to call back the person and ask them, for the second time, what is the problem.
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Dec 2, 2008 04:14
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quote:Idiot 2nd level flunkie> "lol" indeed. Please kill me.
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Dec 2, 2008 05:00
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When a ticket comes in to build a server, install a new site, configure a client FTP, troubleshoot client connectivity issues, architect the production configuration for a new product, or anything at all? I do it. This is why small/medium companies are great 
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Dec 2, 2008 05:09
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Etherealm posted:The one that takes the cake is this one though: My favorite call ever -- we have a ticketing system, but I get most of my calls directly from my users via pager -- all I could get out of the user was "My words are gone." I gave up on deciphering that one by phone and went to take a look. This user's My Documents folder -- we're a Windows shop -- had been previously remapped to a private network folder, and had reverted to the default local location. So she opened up My Documents and all of her Word documents -- her "words" -- weren't there. She could think of no better way to describe the problem, apparently. She's a nice lady and normally much more eloquent. No idea what was going on that day.
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Dec 2, 2008 05:16
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I think you guys are lucky to work for places big enough to have ticketing systems for problems. Every little problem our clients have we have to deal with like the world will spin backwards if we don't.
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Dec 2, 2008 05:25
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guppy posted:Oh god yes. "The network" is apparently the source of everyone's woes. Usually this is code for "some particular website that we don't control is slow." Occasionally it translates as "Windows takes too long to boot and I'm impatient." The network is occasionally seen causing trouble with its mischievous cohort, "the server." I get a variant on this of "Outlook is slow". This ticket is being submitted into the system probably 30-40 times a week by multiple parties. "Outlook is slow" can mean the following: 1. The site lost WAN connectivity. After asking users about their ability to browse company's Intranet site and going to Google, receiving negative answer and inquiring how in the world did they expect Outlook to work, I get nothing. 2. I have a few sites with really bizarre routing and switching infrastructure that has not been updated in 10 years. These sites also are "daisy-chained" onto the company WAN. Between the lovely switches and routers and very busy WAN link, Outlook is indeed slow. That's even with local WAN optimization devices. However, it's not just Outlook, everything is slow. The users know about it, the managers know about it, nobody wants to pay up, yet we get constant tickets. 3. Local site WAN is congested (variation of #2). If one office has 200-250 users on couple T1s, sure enough, that WAN link is going to be dog slow. Downloading bunch of crap and surfing the web does not help. However, sure enough, it's Outlook that is slow. 4. Main site lost connectivity or is congested. This does not happen often, but has happened couple times last couple years. Again, it's sure enough to be "Outlook" that is slow. What, Sharepoint Portal is not working? Does that have anything to do with "Outlook being slow"? 5. Finally, there have been a few times when Exchange is being a dog for whatever reason and indeed "Outlook is slow". On average, out of say 6 month, #4 and #5 may have happened once each for an hour or two, yet without doubt, we get "Outlook is slow" tickets. The kicker is that I get to look at a lot of these even though I am 3-4 layers removed from users normally. It's just a tremendous waste of time. I even wrote up a few canned responses that I use now days, substituting site name, user name, server name, and time. Edit: forgot to add #6: User PC is 3-4 years old, has 512mb of RAM, and is running about 20 different background tasks. Yet the ticket is "Outlook is slow".
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Dec 2, 2008 06:57
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 Hey the internet is slow.  Hmm really? We have an 8 meg link and no one should be seriously taxing it. Let me take a look. Yeah I really need this fixed, I need to download XYZ software (I am looking at the network monitoring software while he babels on) It has been a full minute, haven't you figured out what is going on? Yeah someone is running torrents, hold on I am cross referencing switch port numbers to cube location. Um Wait a second, this is your cube.... 
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Dec 2, 2008 07:31
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Rock Tumbler posted:It would be pretty cool to work with trains I think It is! I certainly like the work! It's better than stocking shelves at a supermarket, that's for sure. However, we're a government-owned private organisation, only recently going from a public government mob to a private government-owned one, so there's still a lot of legacy red tape around the place. It really is a daily battle to try to get things done in some situations. I can understand why many of the things are done (for example, the 3m exclusion zone around overhead wires are because 25kV AC is not fun to get near when standing on a metal locomotive with metal wheels connected to metal tracks buried in the ground) but it can cause some annoying headaches in some situations. In a more tech-related example, the company is very much driven by the "keep it conservative and stick with well-known stuff" idea, but in all the wrong ways. Very little non-commercial, non-mainstream software is trusted. It's hell to even get a PDF creator, such as CutePDF - one has to argue significantly as to why it's needed on one's PC, despite the fact that it's simply just drat useful to have. I haven't even bothered asking for, say, Google SketchUp to help with some basic 3D CAD stuff, since it's free and has no support for the software it's likely considered to be unacceptable to be run here. I don't even need the full version to export to other drawing files or anything - I just want to be able to do a quick render, hit printscreen, and attach it to a 2D AutoCAD file to give a bit better ability for clients to visualise what I'm trying to do. Red tape can be frustrating 
Nam Taf fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Dec 2, 2008 |
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Dec 2, 2008 07:36
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Etherealm posted:It looks like my current job. I work in networking and we often get tickets along the lines of 'The Internet is slow'. So what, seriously, I can't guarantee the speed of the internet. Worst is, all these tickets are opened by our call center by employees trained for this. So you'd think they'd make half decent tickets, but apparently no, they can't. I work on a team managing a WAN/LAN that is state-wide (NSW, AU) and has 180 campuses attached with at least ten switches for each location. It's really awesome to get calls like this - no location, an incorrect phone number and that's it. It'd be nice even if they told us where they were so we could check the switch for alarms. The worst part is that we're sopposed to be Tier 3, Tier 2 refuses to troubleshoot anything if it even looks remotely network related and we end up with poo poo like fried nics and port patching in our queue which is slightly ridiculous.
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Dec 2, 2008 11:41
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Here's a great one our helpdesk logged yesterday: "if they had a fan or a mini fan would the remote back up still work" maybe my helpdesk can't be expected to know what a SAN is but they should have some notion that a fan isn't going to effect the backup.
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Dec 2, 2008 13:34
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The best ticket I got was from a guy who used our FREE web hosting service (was basically offered to hook customers in and get them to sign up for a proper package) to host his businesses website on Once he'd burned the 100 meg bandwidth in about 2 hours, he sent 3 identical tickets bitching about his site being down, which I responded to with the standard explanation that his free account did not have a support contract and that he’d used his allowed bandwidth for the month etc. He then phoned in and proceeded to yell at me about how he paid for Google ads for his site and now it’s down and demanding it be put back online immediately. It was only a small company and I used to work on my own in the evenings so one idiot who didn’t pay us a single penny ate up an hour of my time where I couldn't deal with anyone else 
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Dec 2, 2008 14:11
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 05:37 |
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Another common one: "The Internet's not working." "Can you get to Google?" "I don't know." "Can you try right now, please?" *click click click* "Yeah, that works." "So what can't you get to?" "Well, there's this site..."
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Dec 2, 2008 14:23
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