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

[novaphile]

erm... Dude, ties are a badge of competence.

i.e. if you need to wear one, you ain't.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Ties are an open invitation to erotic strangulation!

They're also germ repositories because they tend to not be cleaned. Think of all the microscopic sprays of saliva and mucus a tie catches, day after day, and never cleaned...

On second thoughts, I must decline the invitation to erotically strangle you.

 

[Donal]

Haha. I wear a tie at work anyway. Not because I have to, but because I like to remind myself that I'm a professional and I take my job seriously, and really I just like wearing a tie. No-one else wears one. I'm the guy with a tie.

I wear a tie every Tuesday. Mainly for the alliteration. At my previous job, I'd just randomly walk in with one so people couldn't tell when I was interviewing.

 

[Faydra]

Congratulations, Arthwollipot! Great news!

 

[Faydra]

The passive-aggressive award for the month goes to this user.

"Looks like our teams folks missed reading your email and I believe no body responded to your request to provide you a list of active jobs or a confirmation to proceed without them. "

- sure we ignored you but we didn't tell you you COULD either.

and the writer of this email was on the original 3 emails I sent notifiying I was gonna do the stuff.

This has amused me greatly, been snickering over it all day.

 

[arthwollipot]

erm... Dude, ties are a badge of competence.

i.e. if you need to wear one, you ain't.

No, they're just a form of personal adornment and a way to express individuality. Anyone who is attributing any kind of symbolism to a tie is just making stuff up. We're long past the time where a tie was part of a uniform and no-one in the business world will take you seriously without one, except at upper management levels, and I'm well below that. I wear a tie because I like to wear a tie. I also wear brightly coloured shirts, and that's not symbolic of anything.

 

[arthwollipot]

I love the way people just don't fill out forms properly.

We have a Terms and Conditions form that all new starters have to sign. There's a space at the top for the user ID, and a checkbox at the bottom for the witness to check saying that they've seen photo ID. When we do the form in the smartcard office we make sure both of these are filled out correctly. People who send the forms in independently or from interstate never do. It's not that they only occasionally don't, it's that they absolutely never do. I've never seen a form come in from interstate with these bits filled out properly.

The other thing about the T&C is how people send them in before the IT account has actually been created. We need to save the form against their account so it can be found if needed later. If we save it against someone else's ID, it effectively goes into a black hole.

Oh and yes. In the time I worked in the smartcard office, I was rather surprised about how many people actually read it. More than I expected.

 

[arthwollipot]

When typing the word "account", it's very important to not miss the o.

 

[zooterkin]

I love the way people just don't fill out forms properly.

We have a Terms and Conditions form that all new starters have to sign. There's a space at the top for the user ID, and a checkbox at the bottom for the witness to check saying that they've seen photo ID. When we do the form in the smartcard office we make sure both of these are filled out correctly. People who send the forms in independently or from interstate never do. It's not that they only occasionally don't, it's that they absolutely never do. I've never seen a form come in from interstate with these bits filled out properly.

Sounds like the form needs to be redesigned. I doubt they're doing it willfully.

 

[Hellbound]

Sounds like the form needs to be redesigned. I doubt they're doing it willfully.

Yeah, have to agree here. There’s something wrong in the form or the instructions.

Heck, if 10% of my users are doing it wrong, I’ve messed something up and will try to add clarity where I can.

If the in-house ones get it right, can you get whoever helps there to write up instructions to include with the form for the rest? Maybe make the instructions the first page you have to click to before hitting the form? Something needs improvement there


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Wudang]

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Nicking that

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

 

[arthwollipot]

Sounds like the form needs to be redesigned. I doubt they're doing it willfully.

Yeah, have to agree here. There’s something wrong in the form or the instructions.

Heck, if 10% of my users are doing it wrong, I’ve messed something up and will try to add clarity where I can.

If the in-house ones get it right, can you get whoever helps there to write up instructions to include with the form for the rest? Maybe make the instructions the first page you have to click to before hitting the form? Something needs improvement there

I can't see how it can be made more obvious. The User ID field is right at the top of the form, and the checkbox is immediately below the witness signature. I'm 100% certain that they just don't bother. I should be rejecting them. But I'm sure that if I did, it would be seen as petty. If I bring it up with my TL, he'll roll his eyes and tell me not to worry about it.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Another hour spent on tactful email. Director wonders whether instead of testing an automated extract by having it automatically generate and send a file, could I just manually make a file and send that instead? I had to gently explain that we're trying to test whether the application can do it, not whether I can do it. We know I can do it. But the point of automating it is so nobody has to do it.

It's like cheating on an eye test then wondering why your glasses aren't working.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I can't see how it can be made more obvious. The User ID field is right at the top of the form, and the checkbox is immediately below the witness signature. I'm 100% certain that they just don't bother. I should be rejecting them. But I'm sure that if I did, it would be seen as petty. If I bring it up with my TL, he'll roll his eyes and tell me not to worry about it.

Could you make the second thing a popup warning, and accept the "OK" they click to get rid of it as the input you need?

 

[KAJ]

There's a space at the top for the user ID, and a checkbox at the bottom for the witness to check saying that they've seen photo ID.

Does that mean the checkbox is maximally removed from the information to which it relates?

 

[arthwollipot]

Could you make the second thing a popup warning, and accept the "OK" they click to get rid of it as the input you need?

It's a paper form that the user needs to physically sign, which is then scanned and emailed to us.

 

[arthwollipot]

Does that mean the checkbox is maximally removed from the information to which it relates?

No, because it relates to the signatures, which are at the bottom.

 

[arthwollipot]

Grrr...

Dear users. Please learn the difference between a shared mailbox's name and its email address. When we ask you to suggest a name for the new shared mailbox, we do not want you to give us an email address. The email address is derived from the mailbox name using a convention.

Also, when we ask for the User IDs of the people who should be given access to the shared mailbox, we do not want their email addresses. We want their user IDs. Giving us only their email addresses creates more work for us, and we're already well backlogged because I'm the only one doing these requests and I'm still finding my feet!

 

[MetalPig]

and the checkbox is immediately below the witness signature.

I would put that checkbox *above* the signature. If they are like me they'd think they are done filling out the form when they get to the signature.