When Do You Tell An End User They're SOL?

Obviously, you really can't, but boy do I wish I could. Like in the case that someone is over their email limit and instead of concentrating on the act of archiving their email they are playing on Facebook at the same time. Suddenly, all the mail is missing....sorry I guess you learned your lesson...one can dream I guess!

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Tackle

Huh?

You wish to "clear out" someones mailbox because they are using Facebook? Setup a policy to block fb if it's such an issue.

demonfurbie

shortly after arriving

RobertKaucher

Tackle wrote: »

Huh?

You wish to "clear out" someones mailbox because they are using Facebook? Setup a policy to block fb if it's such an issue.

If you read his post, you will see the end user war archiving their email and was distracted by playing on FaceBook and did something that ended up deleting her/his mail as a result of not paying attention to what she or he was doing.

The irony here is amazing.

the_Grinch

Wish I could block Facebook, sadly we do no control the network

Trifidw

I'll do everything I am able to, to help them do their job.

it_consultant

the_Grinch wrote: »

Obviously, you really can't, but boy do I wish I could. Like in the case that someone is over their email limit and instead of concentrating on the act of archiving their email they are playing on Facebook at the same time. Suddenly, all the mail is missing....sorry I guess you learned your lesson...one can dream I guess!

I never delete an email, and I don't organize it for users either. I have attempted this before but it doesn't work because, like you alluded too, they don't learn their lesson. Furthermore, anything that is even slightly out of order will be immediately blamed on you.

I let the email stop flowing, I demonstrate how one might organize their email, and then I let them at it. At some point, even your most idiotic and needy users need to take some ownership over their computers and their workflow.

I just counseled one of my techs who called me asking "What is dreamweaver", which I replied "Its how you make a dreamcatcher". At any rate, the web developer found herself unable to FTP the website changes to the host. The host changes the FTP password every 365 days. Predictably, this person complains every year that she can't get to the ftp site. I told my tech to tell her to call the hoster and ask for the password and to write down how she dealt with this problem so if (and it will again in exactly 1 year) it happens again, she can easily resolve the situation.

CodeBlox

When they call up to the helpdesk stating that all of their documents in the user profile (desktop, my documents, etc..) are all missing and now only the folders are present. Had a few calls like this over the past week and pretty much had to tell the customer they were SOL. Local drives aren't backed up and that's the responsibility of the user. It was weird though, only the folders were there and nothing else.

Tackle

RobertKaucher wrote: »

If you read his post, you will see the end user war archiving their email and was distracted by playing on FaceBook and did something that ended up deleting her/his mail as a result of not paying attention to what she or he was doing.

The irony here is amazing.

Mail just doesn't delete itself though, I can't even think of how it would happen in the described situation. Maybe it's just that I haven't been doing this long enough to see someone "accidentally" delete all of their mail. Move the folder and not be able to find it -see it all the time.

Either way, it's very crucial to get their mailback and get them running again. No excuse not to have a good backup, whether or not you like the person and what they do.

it_consultant

Tackle, I have some advice. Don't get overly excited when someone says their mail, files and folders, or anything else is "Missing". In Grinch's example, the mail was 'missing' in the sense that it wasn't where the user is used to seeing it. If they hadn't been playing on facebook they would have noticed where it was going.

Like I said before, I NEVER delete or move email for users. That is a task they get to do themselves. They don't come to my office and arrange my paperwork when it gets messy.

Claymoore

CodeBlox wrote: »

When they call up to the helpdesk stating that all of their documents in the user profile (desktop, my documents, etc..) are all missing and now only the folders are present. Had a few calls like this over the past week and pretty much had to tell the customer they were SOL. Local drives aren't backed up and that's the responsibility of the user. It was weird though, only the folders were there and nothing else.

Probably some malware - [Insert some utility-sounding name here] 2012 - that just marked all the files hidden. It happened to my wife, but lucky for her I know PowerShell (and DOS).

[I]get-childitem "c:\users\username\my documents" -recurse | attrib -h
[/I]

Usually as soon as you say "So, about those backups..." you are telling them they are SOL.

Devilsbane

Set up a quota. Large at first and slowly resize it down. This is being implemented where I work because there are some people with 10 or 20 gigs in their email databases from the past 10 years. They contend that ALL of those emails are still relevent.

If you don't want to start removing old out of date documents, then you can stop receiving new ones!

it_consultant

Devilsbane wrote: »

Set up a quota. Large at first and slowly resize it down. This is being implemented where I work because there are some people with 10 or 20 gigs in their email databases from the past 10 years. They contend that ALL of those emails are still relevent.

If you don't want to start removing old out of date documents, then you can stop receiving new ones!

I tell them to stop CC'ing themselves on outgoing messages. My wife does this, and I know a lot of property managers do too.

the_Grinch

Yeah, the user ultimately moved the entire "On My Computer" folder to the deleted items (Mac user). We got it back, but I wanted to tell her it would take a day to drive home the point that you need to be working at work and paying attention to what you were doing. Suppose it was an important Photoshop file that had to be sent out that day and you deleted it? If it's gone, it's gone not a lot I could do for you and if you were not on Facebook there wouldn't be an issue. The University imposes a 1 Gig limit on mailboxes and this user has been given multiple training sessions on how to archive and delete mail. As Devilsbane stated, once you hit 1 Gig no more send or receive for you. Oddly, lots of time for Facebook, but no time to do archiving...is it Friday yet?

Devilsbane

it_consultant wrote: »

I tell them to stop CC'ing themselves on outgoing messages. My wife does this, and I know a lot of property managers do too.

It would be nice if email programs would save your outgoing messages automatically in some folder so you didn't need to copy yourself. You could call it sent or something like that.

the_Grinch

That would be an awesome feature DB, I think you got a million dollars idea there

If his wife is like my users though, I usually tell them to delete sent items first...

cknapp78

the_Grinch wrote: »

Wish I could block Facebook, sadly we do no control the network

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I miss those days. I used to spend hours trying to convince my manager to let me start blocking certain internet traffic. He finally let me. Of course that was after our old Network Admin decided to fill our storage server with over 2 TB of ****. Needless to say, he was let go and I moved into his slot about a day later. Did an investigation into why the IT budget was being sucked dry and found out he the entire company (200 desktops and 22 servers) was using pirated software. Company CEO knew about it too. When my IT Manager and I went to him with a budget for updating all licenses, he threw us out of his office. Started watching network traffic about 4 days later and found that the CEO was spending most of his days online gambling. My manager and I started looking for jobs the next day. Last I heard, the Network Admin was selling used cars somewhere and the company was out of business since the CEO was caught embezzling money. God I love New Jersey

Novalith478

That's a great story. I would've started looking for jobs as soon as I discovered pirated software. Not only is that a potential lawsuit, but it speaks great deals towards the reputability of management.

cknapp78

Well I was willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe the Admin just had them snowed. Once I realized it was part of a larger problem, I had my resume ready that night. 2 weeks later and I was gone.

shodown

I tell my customers they are SOL all of the time. I see so many unsupported solutions it makes me want to puke. I usually only support best practice solutions since I'm the one who's called to fix them 99 percent of the time. If they have done something out of the scope of the signed contract I tell them they are SOL and good luck, but if you are willing to pay a billable rate I will look at it best effort.

it_consultant

Devilsbane wrote: »

It would be nice if email programs would save your outgoing messages automatically in some folder so you didn't need to copy yourself. You could call it sent or something like that.

Outlook 2010 and conversation mode. Of course she is on 2007, she would probably use the convo mode and stop CC'ing herself if it were available. I know plenty of people who would just complain about that too. I know why people do it, I just think they need to make more liberal use of the search feature as opposed to ballooning their mailbox.

mikedisd2

the_Grinch wrote: »

Obviously, you really can't, but boy do I wish I could. Like in the case that someone is over their email limit and instead of concentrating on the act of archiving their email they are playing on Facebook at the same time. Suddenly, all the mail is missing....sorry I guess you learned your lesson...one can dream I guess!

Well I've never done this but still, if this was the dumbest thing I'd ever done, man I'd be higher than a pimp in a crackhouse, if y'know what I mean.

joshmadakor

RobertKaucher wrote: »

If you read his post, you will see the end user war archiving their email and was distracted by playing on FaceBook and did something that ended up deleting her/his mail as a result of not paying attention to what she or he was doing.

The irony here is amazing.

I lol'd

CodeBlox

Claymoore wrote: »
Probably some malware - [Insert some utility-sounding name here] 2012 - that just marked all the files hidden. It happened to my wife, but lucky for her I know PowerShell (and DOS).
[I]get-childitem "c:\users\username\my documents" -recurse | attrib -h
[/I]
Usually as soon as you say "So, about those backups..." you are telling them they are SOL.

I'll even check the total size of the user profile and it doesn't seem to reflect a lot of documents the person claims to have (PST files, lots of ppt and doc files). Not sure if the hidden attribute prevents it from being added into the total size. Happened three times in the past two weeks and I told each of them there was nothing I could do.

RobertKaucher

Tackle wrote: »

Mail just doesn't delete itself though, I can't even think of how it would happen in the described situation. Maybe it's just that I haven't been doing this long enough to see someone "accidentally" delete all of their mail. Move the folder and not be able to find it -see it all the time.

Either way, it's very crucial to get their mailback and get them running again. No excuse not to have a good backup, whether or not you like the person and what they do.

This is a question of the company's policy - not ideology. There may in fact be times when there is no backup of a users data as a result of the user's action that have no bearing on IT at all. That being said, the OP clearly was willing to assist the user he was simply voicing his displeasure with the situation that we all have seen at one time or another where another person's incompetence creates hours of work for you. This is why we have phrases like "Dear Lord, Please Grant Me The Ability To Punch People In The Face Over Standard TCP/IP." Not because people in IT actually intend on punching their end users in the face.

YFZblu

Most recently? I had to do a malware re-image and restore the user's profile. User got malware AGAIN shortly thereafter, and company policy requires a re-image with no profile restoration before being allowed back onto the network in that situation.

Needless to say, she wasn't a happy camper

MAC_Addy

We block FB and I'm glad we do. FB and a couple of other websites are the only websites we block. I have people ask me all the time why it's blocked, they can't seem to grasp that what I'm telling them, which essentially I'm telling them that they probably won't do any work.

Now, I pretty much had to tell someone they're SOL this morning when I sent out a huge list of instructions on how to update their iPhone. I told them to sign into iTunes, authorize their computer, back it up and then update. I had about 5 or 6 people (out of 650+) call me telling me that my instructions were wrong and that they lost all their 'data'. When they're talking about data, they actually mean their pictures and music. Not real tangible data. Since our mail runs of Exchange, they just had to input their credentials and it'll load all their e-mails and contact list.

I re-read the information back to them to see if they actually read what I put. I could hear them quivering because they hadn't actually followed my instructions at all.

Tackle

removed.

quinnyfly

What does one do when yr paid to be nice, but all we really wantt to do is!!!!!
I am hearing you brother, absolutely.....

the_Grinch

I do try to be nice and generally stay in a good mood, but some days I am like "oooohhhh 7 pm can't come soon enough." I understand customer service, but often I tend to think we do a disservice to the end user when we don't educate or at the very least let them stew in their stupidity for a period of time. At some point, there will be a time where we cannot get their stuff back and I'd like to better prepare them for that eventuality.

it_consultant

I am about to deal with a "serious" acrobat issue which I promise you is the user not understanding how to use the software. It is extremely challenging sometimes, you want to say "How have you not learned how to operate your computer yet!?". Especially this user, who is a bit of a power user in terms of the software she needs to use. I migrated her from XP to Win 7 64 bit and it has been a constant trickle of stupid issues.