old support, new user...

[greenmansgrove.livejournal.com]

Just joined recently, thought I'd add this, as I just got off the phone with a clearly very competent user...
As a bit of background, I work as a network consultant for a small company in the city of Chicago. We specially in supporting small businesses (<100 users, for the most part) that don't want to pay for a full time IT support person.

Office manager at a law firm we support called to say that user Ra had not received any mail from user Ru since yesterday. I logged into their server remotely and checked the message tracking system, which showed that the messages had been sent and received at the times claimed. I contacted Ra to let her know that I'd be logging into her computer, which would lock her out while I worked. I then started logging in using her username and password... and got a warning that user Ab was logged in, and would be disconnected.

Turns out that Ra had come in this morning and sat down at her desk, not even thinking about the fact that she was already logged in. She shares the workstation with another user, and he'd left himself logged in overnight. Oddly enough, she wasn't receiving any of her mail because they use Outlook and Exchange, and the mail profile is linked to the user profile.

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

When I find people have left their computers (mail) logged in after hours, I mail a note (on that computer) that there needs to be some reminding of policy done.

Soon I may feel the need to send random love notes.

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

Problems? Simple to solve, and another hour on the books. Sweet!

[canray.livejournal.com]

Wimp.

Download some nasty cyberpr0n, set it to loop, and turn the monitor so that everyone can see.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Pfft! Something like that is way too obvious! All they have to do is deny it, and they'll be believed!

Love notes to thier boss (reguardless of gender) are WAAAAY more scary!

[r3700l3r.livejournal.com]

If they use exchange and are authenticating to a win server just add a lockout policy and lock the desktops after 15minutes if inactivity. that's mandatory where i work plus it would keep the compu-tards from messing things up for each other. Though you're a consultant and depend on the twits to screw things up so never mind. :) I used to be in almost the exact same situation. I was never sure which was right, allow them to keep making the same mistake and get paid to fix it each time or nip in the bud so i don't have to hear about it repeatedly...