The Rapture, continued

The saga of our own personal Rapture (otherwise known as the new service desk tool) continues.

The problem of everyone receiving email notifications for everything has been resolved. Not by the area managing the service desk software, however, but by users discovering the settings allowing them to specify what they'd like to be notified about and passing this along by word of mouth.

Naturally everyone did the obvious thing, and and now no-one is receiving any notifications at all.

And on a (possibly) unrelated note, Gollum (one of the chief suspects for requesting the mass auto-spamming of all staff) has disappeared on several weeks' leave. Presumably this had been planned for a while, but it wasn't actually revealed to anyone who needed to know - including, it appears, the team he manages.

The perils of being one's own authority

"Hi, I placed a request for some software two weeks ago, but my financial approver says they haven't seen it turn up in their queue to be authorised."

"Hmm, let me check that... Okay, that would be because you listed yourself as the financial approver, so any notifications will go straight to you, not them. I've fixed that up for you."

"Oh. Thanks."

The best part is she's received a reminder every day for the last fortnight informing her the request was waiting for *her* to authorise, and hasn't once questioned why she's been receiving the notifications ... presumably because she didn't read them and simply deleted them on sight.

It's not the end of the world.

We missed out on the Rapture, but we're now experiencing the next best thing: our new service desk tool went live today, and some of the decisions behind it have been ... inspired.

The standout decision, however, would have to be the one where it was decreed that everyone needed to receive an email notification each time a new request or incident was logged anywhere else across our division. We're not quite sure who to credit that one to. Rumour suggests either Gimli or Gollum, and while the latter seems the likeliest culprit, it also bears some of Gimli's hallmarks. In any case, we're anticipating a reversal of that decision in the very near future, but whether it comes before peoples' email quotas explode is debatable.

It's all very exciting, though.

(Oh, that's interesting - it turns out I'm receiving duplicates of some notifications because some fool has included me in the management structure.)

Snapshots

Between a slew of public holidays and simple workload, I've been a bit remiss in updates for the last few weeks. So here are some snapshots of recent events, culled and compiled from random howls of despair into the abyss that is Twitter:


Something In The Air

• On learning that a friend's career-pathing documentation is being recommended for use across similar organisations nationwide: "Does it include an option advising staff to just shoot themselves in the head if they work here? Also: congratulations. Plus, I appear to be having a morale problem today."
• My cynicism appears to be expanding to occupy the morale vacuum.
• Internal email: onoz! The evil smokerz have breached the organisation's security perimeter and, more importantly, organisational policy! (Possibly it's actually the smell of burning morale, in which case I'm probably to blame.)
• This bodes well: Lotus Notes couldn't even launch this morning without falling over and dying.
• Really, why am I providing tech support for home-use installations on peoples' personal PCs? It's an endemic problem amongst clients, desktop support, and my teammates: the organisation's official policy is "Home Use Is Good", but no-one actually wants to provide the resources to support it. It's all part of the warm, fuzzy aura of enabling staff development while allowing them to work unpaid using their own resources.
• Cynicism buffer has now melted.
• Lotus Notes fail! Haven't had one of those in, oooh, nearly 15 working hours... That must be some kind of record!
• "Mailfile has failed over" ... really, that's a phrase that should just never appear in any software interface for any reason.

Team Efforts

• Client: "It says I can use this software on my home computer, too, but I can't get it to run."
  La Mondaine: "Try installing the newer version on your work PC. That will help."
  Client: "WTF?"
• "LONG TIME NO HEAR!" the Stress Fiend bellows down the phone. Yes, I'm sure it will be...
• Stress Fiend says: "I'm going to lunch now."
  Stress Fiend means: "I'm going to dither for the next hour while you starve to death."
• Team planning day of doom awaits. Send rescue teams... Or airstrikes if rescue teams are unavailable.
• Feel slightly grubby at being the one who came up with the team's mission statement today.
• Experiencing the traditional start-of-week horror that I may end up on the same bus to work as La Mondaine.
• Oh, and it's just me covering all the operational stuff again today. Really, for all the opportunity I have to actually do my job they'd be better just scrapping my position and replacing me with one and a half grunts.
• You know, this whole "Let's not hire competent replacement staff" thing is really starting to wear a bit thin...
• As amusing as La Mondaine with no voice is in principle, it would still be nice to have someone else here to answer the phone.
• Thank you, subhuman teammates, for once more deciding that rather than choose the simple way, you'll try the complex, breakable way first.
• Has anyone else noticed how much despair sounds like bitterness?

Clients: A Superstitious And Cowardly Lot

• Dear client: how about instead of asking me what lies at the other end of that link on our website, you click it and find out. It's only a URL, after all, not a wormhole through space and time.
• Silly client. Of course if you give me the wrong email address you aren't going to get the stuff I send you...
• "No, sir, I'm afraid your version of MacOS has actually become more obsolete in the last year rather than less. Yes, I'm afraid it was very much on the cards that this was going to happen."
• No, you idiot client - just because you've added something to a shopping cart doesn't mean you've actually submitted an order.
• "The clients don't know which version of the software suits their computer at home." If they can't even use Google to check some basic information about their own property, why are we letting them log in to our systems?