Question for IT professionals

[TxGoat]

wow.. so many inboxes
you poor guy Tx having to put up with all that

Think of it this way, 100+ people sharing an inbox, one message gets sent to that inbox, that's 99 unnecessary email transmissions on the network, all because one admin doesn't want to take ownership.

I had a similar situation at one of my clients. I went with an old-school, extremely effective solution. I created an account on the domain and called it scheduling or rooms or whatever. I gave it an extremely complex password that was like 27 letters so it's practically hack proof. I created calendars under that account and shared them with everyone. Voila. If I need to change someone's permissions on a calendar, I can easily do that. If they need another calendar for some other use, it's easy to do. Everyone can see the schedules for the rooms and you can easily audit who is making changes to them as well.

That may work but what I'd prefer is to have 1 person as the admin so that if there are scheduling conflicts they can decide who gets the room for the allocated time and who has to reschedule. As much as I'd like to employ a "first come first served" policy, considering our parking lot policy is "execs up front even if they come in at 10:00am and leave at 3:00pm" I'm sure if they have a schedule in place their schedule supersedes some lower level supervisor that's already scheduled a team meeting.

 

[A.Nonymous]

That may work but what I'd prefer is to have 1 person as the admin so that if there are scheduling conflicts they can decide who gets the room for the allocated time and who has to reschedule. As much as I'd like to employ a "first come first served" policy, considering our parking lot policy is "execs up front even if they come in at 10:00am and leave at 3:00pm" I'm sure if they have a schedule in place their schedule supersedes some lower level supervisor that's already scheduled a team meeting.

Then have that one person access that scheduling mailbox with full control.

 

[spearss91]

I currently work at a manufacturing site where many of the employees are of "advanced age" and seem to really be set in their ways. Probably the hardest part of my job (other than the unrealistic expectations of the technically challenged) has to do with employees that don't know how to use software or use it incorrectly.

As IT professionals, how much training are you ok with providing employees throughout the course of a day? For example, there is an admin that's been with the company for a long time and is always asking me how to do things in MS Office, how to remote in from home, and other basic functions that I feel she should already know as a qualification for her position. Where do you draw the line?

For the record, I'm the "IT" guy not just when it comes to IT, but I'm it, I'm the guy that chases down network issues, password resets, hardware failures, telephone failures etc. As much as I don't mind helping people with minor software questions (is a relief after troubleshooting a printer for 3-4 hours) I feel that sometimes my time is being monopolized by people that should already know how to do what their job.

In the IT sector if there is a person who don't even use the MS-office properly, i don't think so they have any technical knowledge of this Sector..

 

[johnlgalt]

I beg to differ - there are plenty of IT people who have lived their entire lives in *nix/ Darwin, and related sectors. Plus, mainframes and mini-mains are still around, so people that code in HPUX or AS/400 are still around today as well. If they choose to run nothing but *nix or Darwin at home, then they may not be all that conversant with MS Office. But, they may, in contrast, be a wiz are Libra Office, Open Office, Word Perfect, etc.

 

[TxGoat]

Then have that one person access that scheduling mailbox with full control.

Therein lies the problem. This admin doesn't want that responsibility. She just wants the system to schedule everything, and doesn't want to share out calendars. I personally think that she's trying to pawn off the responsibility to the IT department. The sad part is she doesn't know who needs to have access to room scheduling, yet she's the administrative assistant. Go figure.

 

[Mayhem]

I worked in Level 1 and then Level 2 network support for OS/2 at IBM Austin. One of our favorite things to do to abusive customers was to rub the foam mic cover on the side of our faces while talking. It sounds like static.

Then hang up. Didn't have to do this but once or twice while in Level 2.

The job was actually a lot of fun. We didn't have scripts and were able to actually use our brains and tools to fix the customers' issues. Didn't pay worth a damn though.

 

[zflamewing]

Tell me about it. I did the same Tier I and II for IBM Global Services, Radiant Systems, and a few others, including a well known ISP.

I wore out the mute button on 3 phones!

I used to Work for a well known ISP as well and I had friends that worked Raidant Systems P.O.S. stuff. I can sympathize for the Call Center tech types. I did 4 years in consumer ISP support 6 months on the biz side before jumping to the corp help desk....is that frying pan to the fire?

 

[entrecon]

My background is in training and I have just graduated into higher levels to where I am now a Business Analyst. I love to train so I am always willing to show folks how to do stuff. I believe I have come to be the go to person and therefore added value to my position. If they start looking to make cuts I don't think there would be anyone on the staff that would point a finger in my direction.