You want access to what?

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

Too long no activity in here! I will have to post something myself... though it's not funny. Just me venting. Bah.

.... HA! Just as I was about to type this all out, I got an update for this story that makes it even better.

Got an email from a manager here saying that a user in another department was having trouble submitting an account request form. No details, of course, so I get in contact with the user and ask what's up. ("If error message, what?" Etc.) She complains that the form tells her that her email address has to be in the form of (yada, standard email here) and hers isn't like that so it won't submit. I find it odd that this particular form requires that kind of email address.

So off I go to double check the html and javascript validation code. Nope, any email address will do. I tell her this.

User still cannot submit form.

I ask her to tell me exactly what she's typing in for each field. (It took me months to figure out that the reason some form submissions were vanishing into thin air was because our ticketing system can't handle an ampersand in a property field...) So maybe there would be a clue there. Also asked for a screenshot, not really believing she'd be able to do it.

And of course she couldn't, but she did paste in everything from the form. Enough to realize immediately that SHE'S FILLING OUT THE WRONG FORM. Yes, this one requires a specific type of email address. Only staff from Dept. A can request these accounts. You are in Dept. X. Maybe the big bold h3 header at the top didn't make it clear enough which form you're filling out.

For a moment I thought she was a Ph. D., but no, she's the Ph. D.'s secretary and for some reason puts her bosses name and rank into her email signature.

Aaaand this is the part I just learned. There are five checkboxes asking what kind of access the user is requesting. She didn't check any of them. So now we have an account request form for the secretary of a Ph. D. who wants no access to anything.

Update: She know wants to know why she can log in but can't see anything. "Because I created your account with access to nothing, just like you asked."

** not really what I'm going to say. But close.

Comments

[codecattx.livejournal.com]

Oy.

So if she does not want access to any of the restricted systems, why, oh why, is she filling out the frelling form?

[cheezemeister-x.livejournal.com]

"So now we have an account request form for the secretary of a Ph. D. who wants no access to anything."

I think she's probably the smartest person at the company! I know my job would be much easier if I had no access to anything.....

[firon.livejournal.com]

I think I'd just have answered that the request was completed without issue. She requested no new access, and that's exactly what she got.

[anonymissity.livejournal.com]

+1

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

This

[major-error.livejournal.com]

Inspired by those honor student bumper stickers:

"Your boss might be a PhD, but you're still an idiot."

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

Actually, if someone submits a new user request with no access defined, that's exactly what I create. New account in AD, no email address setup in Exchange, no printers, no shared groups, nowt. They can bitch all they like, but guess what, you get exactly what you ask for, nothing further!

[jecook]

This is what I've been having to deal with with our HR department for the last... oh.... 6 months or so.

We have this reasonably spiffy* provisioning system that trolls the HR database for new hires and provisions their account/email/group access depending on their job code.

However, in order to do this magic, it relies on a database that contains all the job titles and their entitlements. our department updates said database when HR tells us of new jobs codes and the access they are supposed to get.

Guess what happens when they forget to tell us about the new job codes and just transfer the (soon to be cranky) employee into their new job code that's not been set up in the entitlement database?

*is getting really tired of having to resurrect AD accounts and repairing exchange mailboxes due to HR's fuckups*

[uapyro.livejournal.com]

I think these are even better when it happens to a person you know!

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

Shush, you.

I'll show you the actual forms later if you want. There's no way anyone with at least one eye could mistake it for another form. I actually got to be on the phone with her today and hold her hand. It's resolved now anyway. Whew.