It’s how it’s been used in most locations in which we’ve had it.
My current customer… nope. For starters, it’s set up in such a way that if you go through the sharepoint’s own webpage you can’t open docs or excels unless it feels like letting you; half the team can open them in read-mode but not edit; why and how and when we can work appears to depend not only on the version of word or excel but as well on the version of windows and the phase of the moons of Mars. OK, so set up the site as a network location and work from there. But of course, that defeats the whole check-out/check-in process.
But this same customer doesn’t know who or how many corporate computers each employee has; it’s not the first company with a real bad case of Too Much Money that I’ve encountered, but it manifests in interesting ways. Their computer setups are generally screwy.
Yes and sort of. I’m an OCD bluffo traditionalist, so when I started using Sharepoint some years ago I would always click on the menu next to the document and check out the document prior to opening it. When done I would save and check the document back in. I don’t know if it’s a configuration thing, but there’s a second way to open documents in Sharepoint: simply click the name.
The problem at least here, is that when you do it that way Sharepoint doesn’t know if your plans are to just read or to edit the document. It seems to open it readonly, but not consistently. When we get into a crunch on a deadline, we always run into problems where the BA who needs to update the document gets repeatedly locked out of it by the people who are just reading it. Then we have to send barely polite emails around telling people to close the fucking document already.
I see your SharePoint and raise you a Windchill, PTC’s database system. It works great for our engineering work, but TPTB don’t want to shell out the cash for a real document control system and insist on using what we already have, which is already terribly configured and nigh useless for anything not originating from a PTC program like Creo.
The fact that there’s almost no available documentation online while the system is ridiculously complex makes for shit turnaround. Combine that with some people just ignoring the automated emails for promotion/change/rework requests and the requirement by head honcho to be an approver is enough to make my blood boil. That he’s complaining about the backlog of tasks when over 40 of them are HIS “lost” approvals makes me wonder what the job market around me is looking like.
I swear, I wonder what goes on between the ears of the people in HR.
I was given a lay-off notice a little while back. Part of the “separation process” includes receiving (via email), signing, and returning (via email) a “transition letter” that lays out my separation information. I printed it out, signed it, and used our copier to scan it and email it to HR a very handy little feature.
Yesterday I got an email from my boss saying HR never got the letter and I needed to send it. This puzzled me, obviously, so this time I emailed the PDF to myself and then emailed it on to HR.
It bounced.
Thinking perhaps that there was a typo in the address, I clicked the handy mailto link in the original PDF and emailed it gain using the link address.
It bounced.
So first they give out the WRONG number to call for information on this letter if you have questions and also don’t bother to include the name of your local “HR partner”, and now their email address is bad.
I’d be swearing a lot more, but I used up all my vitriol on the fucking Republicans.
The boss of our company is unhappy with the keyboard on his laptop and wants either a replacement laptop or a new keyboard.
A few things to note:
This is a $2000+ laptop.
He has a docking station at his workplace, meaning he spends most of his office time with a different keyboard anyways.
The company is having a preeeeetty rough time financially.
Setting up a new computer will take at least half a day of work from a member of the IT team; replacing the keyboard means we have to call in a technician.
I’ve seen plenty of people ignore the keyboard on their desk and use the laptop keyboard, and then complain about how difficult it is to use. :rolleyes:
I was led to believe that getting our new laptops would be a simple exchange. Of course not. Why have the programs we need already installed? Why bother making sure they were up to date? Instead, herd us into a room and have us spend 90 minutes doing it.
More than half of the people in the room had major issues. My laptop had not been activated on the network, so wouldn’t download the required programs. The lady next to me was very uncomfortable with anything technical, so when the “guide” told us to click start, she freaked out “WHERE IS IT? I CAN’T FIND IT!” - that’s pretty much all she did the entire session.
I think it depends on the laptop - back when I was working, I was issued a 14 inch laptop, dang if I can remember which model offhand. Whatever the predominant business lease was in 2005. My laptop of choice was an 18 inch laptop set up high end for gaming. The keyboard was worlds better than the 14 inch as it had a number keypad, no little nubbin and was more or less a full sized regular keyboard. The 14 inch laptop had no number keypad, and was cramped and had the stupid nubbin in the middle.
I am perfectly happy with my current laptop - an ASUS RoG - maxed out for gaming. Back lit keyboard, damned thing weighs a ton though - but I wouldn’t part with it for anything. I have it rigged to play well with my ASUS Transformer tablet and my Kyocera cell phone. I had played around with my brothers mac, Ipad and Iphone 4, and honestly, I really really dislike Apple products. I want the flexibility I get from android paired with wincrap. [not fond of some things Windows does, but most of the stuff I have been beta testing will not play well with Apple or Linux. sigh]
I’ve declined a couple of computer upgrades at work because of this very issue. My desktop was upgraded a few years after I started working here; it took IT a month to get my AutoCAD and Inventor licenses sorted out. They still haven’t seen fit to install the driver for my upgraded graphics card (we’re running Windows 7 - anything like that requires administrative access), so I get to run through a slew of error messages every time I start AutoCAD. Yay.
The notebook you are looking for is a 13". Can you even see the difference between FHD and 4K on a monitor that small? Why are we looking specifically at notebooks that “look awesome”? Yes, I agree that the HP Spectre looks badass! It’s also extremely expensive and ill-suited for what we do at our job, and I am 99% sure that the head of the IT would not have made this directive if he wasn’t certain that this was all that the CEO cared about.
With all due respect to the CEO of the company, this is for all intents and purposes a machine used to write emails, handle spreadsheets, and show clients pictures of things. You do not need 4K. You do not need 16GB of RAM. You do not need a laptop smaller than first-gen tablet computers, which seems to exist exclusively for silicon valley douchebags to woo other silicon valley douchebags - we are not in silicon valley. You do not need keyboard backlighting that doubles as a goddamn flashlight, or for that matter a keyboard which exactly fits your specifications (and what do you reckon happens when it turns out this new laptop we bought is just a wee bit too soft or doesn’t provide enough feedback, eh?). You need a USB port, a docking station, an Ethernet port, a VGA port, and a notebook that looks presentable. We have plenty of perfectly serviceable laptops here that don’t cost you several times my monthly salary.
It’s not that I have a problem with investigating these things. It’s my job, it’s what I do, and I like my job. It’s just that I feel increasingly chafed by how trivially we’re willing to spend money on shit we really don’t need for the CEO. Who, I might add, canceled the fucking company christmas party last year because of financial difficulties. Hey, can I maybe have that stupidly expensive laptop the CEO doesn’t want to use? My last laptop broke after 4 years of use because it was a cheap piece of shit.
OMG, I just learned of another workplace/Sharepoint :eek: :
If you remember my earlier posts in this thread, I mentioned that they migrated us to Sharepoint online last month and how much SLOWER everything is. I noticed today that lots of the files and folders in our project workspaces are missing so I asked our SP administrator. She told me that the IT team has it on their schedule to migrate those in the fourth quarter.
WTF? They migrate us to the new SP but deliberately don’t migrate the workspaces that we use on a daily basis?
When we were talking about whether we’d stay after our contracts ended, I told my other self-employed coworkers that I wouldn’t and that part of the reason was one of ethics.
Today we’ve been told to stop being such a PITA about “Integration is open!”. Instead of doing certain stuff in Development, copying it to Integration, checking it there, and only after check and approval copying it to Productive, “we just keep all systems open and do whatever’s needed wherever.”
I’m starting to think the ethical thing would involve a flamethrower. But tomorrow is my last day, and let’s hope the next bunch have their heads stuck a bit less far up their asses.
As a patent writer 95% of my rants are about inventors (although my law firm recently migrated all of our files to Sharepoint and I’m cooking up a good rant about that).
Yet again I have to badger the inventor for information about the invention. I get partial answers, but not nearly as much info as I need to write the patent. So I do some research on Google and cobble as much together as I can and send it to the inventor for review. Of course it’s wrong, because I’m missing key info. Which they should have given me in the first place!
Then they complain later about how expensive the application is. It wouldn’t be so expensive if I didn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out their invention because they won’t give me enough information! :mad:
Please print off a color copy of that Most Interesting Man in the World meme where he says “I don’t always test my code, but when I do, I test in Production” and leave it on the wall before you go.
Fiscal years can be anything an organization decides they are. Generally start on the 1st of a month, but even that isn’t always. By far, the most common has the fiscal year the same as the calendar year.
So, I’d noticed that meetings in the schedule of our secure email app now have a helpful map icon, which launches your map app and shows you where the meeting room is.
My meeting across the street that’s coming up this afternoon is apparently in Lamar, Colorado. That’s quite a walk from Illinois! I’d better get going.
Even worse is the meeting after that, which is located down the hall from my office: it’s apparently in Porto Alegre, Brazil. And I’ll probably have to fly economy.
