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

[Darat]

What a crazy day it has been. We are now migrated fully to the Single Protected Desktop, which means that our regular network environment is rated to handle information up to security clearance Protected (one level below Secret). Our old Protected environment, that we had to RAS into using Citrix Workspace, is more or less gone. So that's nice. But boy, did we get a lot of calls this morning.

Wait until you have to update it to handle secret level stuff - our government did that recently and I tell you Whatsapp is a beast to support!

 

[Darat]

That is so wrong. You'd think email was new and something people don't have any exper

I continue to be astounded at the number of people who apparently still don't know how email subject lines work. The number of times we receive an email with the entire problem typed out in the subject field... or rather most of the problem in the subject field, since it is size-limited and gets truncated...

..

 

[arthwollipot]

Wait until you have to update it to handle secret level stuff - our government did that recently and I tell you Whatsapp is a beast to support!

I believe it. At least we've gone full Microsoft Azure Cloud, so we get Teams and Outlook instead.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Dear Users: learn the expected etiquette around instant messaging. For your company, is it considered a serious breach of protocol to ignore "Do Not Disturb" status? Because in the company I work for, it is. It's the sort of thing that shows up on performance reviews and affects your actual damn income. And when my boss asks for screenshots because she wants to have a word with your boss's boss's boss's boss it's probably not going to work out too well for you.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I believe it. At least we've gone full Microsoft Azure Cloud, so we get Teams and Outlook instead.

My company's been using Teams for three years now, I hope that perhaps eventually we'll have a single day in which Teams doesn't have some kind of issue.

 

[gnome]

Dear Users: learn the expected etiquette around instant messaging. For your company, is it considered a serious breach of protocol to ignore "Do Not Disturb" status? Because in the company I work for, it is. It's the sort of thing that shows up on performance reviews and affects your actual damn income. And when my boss asks for screenshots because she wants to have a word with your boss's boss's boss's boss it's probably not going to work out too well for you.

I thought "Do not disturb" status PREVENTED others from getting messages through in a way that interrupts what you're doing.

 

[BowlOfRed]

I thought "Do not disturb" status PREVENTED others from getting messages through in a way that interrupts what you're doing.

Slack allows the sender to override it with explicit action in some cases. If I DM someone that is "snoozed", I get a popup similar to:

"XXX is not currently receiving notifications. They will get this message when they next connect. Send notification anyway?"

 

[TragicMonkey]

I thought "Do not disturb" status PREVENTED others from getting messages through in a way that interrupts what you're doing.

They kept trying, then they switched to spamming my email inbox. That's very much frowned upon in my company.

 

[Dr. Keith]

They kept trying, then they switched to spamming my email inbox. That's very much frowned upon in my company.

Now you’re just bragging. My boss was bitching about one of my people having do not disturb on their phone. I reminded him that they were at a funeral and that calmed him down. He thought they had just taken the day off.

 

[arthwollipot]

My company's been using Teams for three years now, I hope that perhaps eventually we'll have a single day in which Teams doesn't have some kind of issue.

Well, it was down for about four hours yesterday and we discovered just how many people absolutely rely on it, but for the most part we're finding it's working pretty well.

 

[novaphile]

..

Oh well done Sir, well done!

 

[arthwollipot]

I just heard someone on the phone ask a caller a question. The caller obviously didn't hear it clearly and asked him to repeat it. He repeated it - using exactly the same words at exactly the same pace and volume, and even exactly the same inflection.

When someone hasn't clearly heard what you said, repeating it like a tape recording would repeat it probably won't make it any clearer. You need to actually be clearer than the first time you said it.

Also, it's much better if you don't speak in a near-monotone.

 

[Wudang]

Also, it's much better if you don't speak in a near-monotone.

I worked with some great colleagues in India but one's native language must have been massively agglutinative as whole streams of sentences merged into one long monotonic word. I could never understand him.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I worked with some great colleagues in India but one's native language must have been massively agglutinative as whole streams of sentences merged into one long monotonic word. I could never understand him.

For some subcontinental accents, and pub-level Glaswegian, they speak English but are utterly unintelligible. An translator from English to English is needed.

 

[Wudang]

For some subcontinental accents, and pub-level Glaswegian, they speak English but are utterly unintelligible. An translator from English to English is needed.

I grew up "doon the watter" from Glasgow and lived in Glasgow for years and the accents are all crystal to me except one area (was it Brigton?) where I swear all I could hear was glottal stops and schwas. I wondered if it was some form of Morse with schwa for dot and glottal for dash.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Dear Users.

If I'm remoted onto your machine to fix a problem that you asked me to fix, you can't keep typing/mouse moving/doing stuff on your computer.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Dear Users.

If I'm remoted onto your machine to fix a problem that you asked me to fix, you can't keep typing/mouse moving/doing stuff on your computer.

Tell them that to fix their problem they need to go find a left-handed screwdriver and/or a tin of tartan paint, or get a ream of unopened copier paper, or go get a coffee...anything to make them walk away from the PC. Then fix it while they are gone.

 

[Wudang]

Dear Users.

If I'm remoted onto your machine to fix a problem that you asked me to fix, you can't keep typing/mouse moving/doing stuff on your computer.

I have to admit to struggling as a user here. Watching the remote admins at <big bank> fumble around remotely on my PC with the speed and elegance of a lobotomized sloth on valium made my hands twitch.
"Please wait sir while I check what programs you have installed"
My fingers : "We have windows key appwiz.cpl loaded and ready. Ready on your command"
Me: "Hold. Hold. Wait."


God, I love the techs at my ISP (Zen). We quickly establish I know windows and unix but not broadband and they just tell "OK pull up a command prompt and type....".

 

[arthwollipot]

Tell them that to fix their problem they need to go find a left-handed screwdriver and/or a tin of tartan paint, or get a ream of unopened copier paper, or go get a coffee...anything to make them walk away from the PC. Then fix it while they are gone.

When I first started using remote control tools, we were specifically forbidden from doing this. The guidelines were very clear. We had to ask permission to initiate the remote control - we weren't allowed to say "this will pop up and ask you to confirm, please just press yes". We were to instruct the user that they must monitor what we did at all times - they weren't allowed to leave their desk for the duration of the control. And we were required to disconnect before ending the call and advise them that we were disconnecting.

It's a whole bunch less strict now, but I still balk at saying "just press yes".

 

[BowlOfRed]

I have to admit to struggling as a user here. Watching the remote admins at <big bank> fumble around remotely on my PC with the speed and elegance of a lobotomized sloth on valium made my hands twitch.
"Please wait sir while I check what programs you have installed"
My fingers : "We have windows key appwiz.cpl loaded and ready. Ready on your command"
Me: "Hold. Hold. Wait."


God, I love the techs at my ISP (Zen). We quickly establish I know windows and unix but not broadband and they just tell "OK pull up a command prompt and type....".

Yeah, I don't do anything similar at my current job, but at my last one I was constantly calling tech support lines and often needed to webex to show them things. I loved the folks that would let me drive. I was much faster in almost all cases, I usually knew what they wanted to gather already, and I didn't have to worry about them doing anything I was uncomfortable with.

In fact, given it was webex, it must have been years ago. Does anyone still use them for tech support, or has everything moved over to Google, Teams, or Zoom?