Tales from $University Helpdesk: Living the Dream Tech Support |
- Tales from $University Helpdesk: Living the Dream
- "I want one too"
- What's a "Recycle Bin"??
- iDelete
- Is it connected? That's too complicated, do if it for me.
- I'm the Manager!
- When SLA goes wrong.
- Exchange server isn't functioning properly
| Tales from $University Helpdesk: Living the Dream Posted: 10 Dec 2019 04:44 PM PST Heroic Origin Storytm: I'm a physics student working part time at my University's Service Desk. I mainly do password resets for professors, tell parents that no, I won't reset their kid's password without the student requesting the reset, and telling people "no, you're not allowed to turn off the 2-Factor Authentication". Some context: A little over a year ago, our university was hit by phishers hard, using spoofed email addresses for social engineering. Since then, we've required that all faculty and staff (anyone with access to anything important) use 2-Factor Authentication from $2FA Vendor. Users have the option of having the system call a phone number designated by the user, use an android or iOS app, or use a physical key-fob number generator that is capable of generating single-use codes, similar to various OTP apps (like Google Authenticator). We always recommend that users come to us and grab a key-fob if they have issues, that way they can use their primary method (generally smartphone app notification prompt). If, god forbid, your phone is dead, and your key-fob has fallen down a well, users can call us, we can then use our dashboard to give them a bypass code for the 2FA. We can set it for a set number of logins, or for a set period of time. So if you're out of town at a conference until Tuesday, we'll give you a code that's good until 9am Wednesday at which point you will walk yourself down to our office, and we will issue you a key-fob and make sure that your phone app is configured correctly, and register your office landline or cell as a last-ditch option since you couldn't be bothered to do that when you first signed up. Enter the star of our story today. She's an English professor, who is very busy and it's not her fault and why for the love of god can't I just make it work? I got called in to work early this day, things got a little.. heated. My manager was hanging out at one of my coworker's desk, which was only unusual because $Coworker1 was on a call. Things were tense. $CW1: I understand, this will be the last code we give you. We need you to come in to the service desk at your next convenience - Ma'am, I'm sorry this is frustrating, we're doing our best to fix it. This code will be good for three logins over the weekend. I get the story, this user calls in once a week on Monday, complains their 2FA isn't working, and gets a bypass code from us for five days (she's always too busy and can't come in until the end of the week). Then she doesn't come in, and calls in monday and talks to a different tech, gets a bypass code, wash, rinse, repeat. When $CW1 pulled her logs during this call, he saw how many keys she had been issued in such a short period of time the decision is made that we'll have her department's tech check out her setup and get whatever her issue is resolved, and that we are not going to issue her codes going forward. Last thing we need is pieces of paper on a Faculty Member's desk with bypass codes on them. $CW1 goes on lunch (we get a half hour lunch) Two minutes later, my phone rings. $Me: Technology Service Desk, this is $StarvingCollegeStudent, how may I help you? $User: This is Professor $Firstname $Lastname Marquess DFA III. It's not working [I knew it was our user whom we had just been discussing, but played dumb] $Me: I'm sorry to hear that, may I ask with what you are having an issue? $User: I spoke to another gentlemen a few minutes ago, the code he gave me isn't working. I thought I could use the $2FA on a government page and I guess I can't and now I need a new code. $Me: Okay, let me look something up real quick... yes I can see that you were just issued a bypass code, and you've had three in the past week or so. Will you be able to come in to the service desk? We can give you a keyfob that will give you codes so that you don't need to keep calling us. (Bluffing, as student staff I don't have access to this panel, I was given this info when I was briefed on the user) $User: You don't understand! I have papers I need to grade. I don't have the time. I would, if I had the time. I don't have the time. I need the code so I can get these papers graded over the weekend. Just give it to me. $Me: I'm sorry, $Firstname, but because you were just issued a code, I cannot give you another one. However, we can solve the problem so that you don't need a - $User: Just give me the code! You don't understand!! I'm running out of time! I have time constraints!!! #Me: Please Hold. I inform $Manager and we both walk over to $Security_Director's office down the hall. We let him know, he confirms that we made the right call in not giving her another code. He'll give her a call as soon as he wraps up his current call. I go back to the user $Me: $Firstname, I just checked with $Security Director, he'll be contacting you shortly to resolve this issue $User: Okay. Because, you don't understand. I need the bypass code so I can get passed $2FA So I can submit these grades for my grad students! This is a very tight deadline! $Me: Yes, I understand, that is why the $Security_Directory himself will be giving you a call shortly. $User: Okay call end. Well, that was annoying. I go to chat with a coworker that walked in during the call and update my $manager. As we're talking, my phone rings. Same phone number as before. $Me: Technology Service Desk, this is $StillStarvingAnswerIsStillNo, how can I help you? $User: This is $Firstname $Last $Me: Hi $Firstname! $User: Hi. The code is not working. This is not working. I can't get it. $Me (seeing that only 2 minutes have passed since we last spoke): Has $Security_Director contacted you yet? $User: No, I - $Me: You need to wait for his call, he will help you resolve this issue $User: No, You don't understand! I don't have the time! I can't wait! This needs to happen now! I tried to do it your way! I tried to give up my job to someone else! I'm running out of time, i'm supposed to be grading these, sadkjlflasjdkf - $Me, interrupting: $FirstName, I do understand, however, I can not give you another code to bypass the 2-factor authentication, for security reasons. I understand that you're having issues with $2FA, that is why our security administrator will be calling you. So, we can either work together to solve the problem, or I can end this call. $User: Okay. $Me: Alrighty then, now, he should be giving you a call momentarily, in the future, we can give you a keyfob if you're still having issues with the app or - $User: I NEED THIS FIXED NOW YOU AREN'T LISTENING! I NEED - $Me: Okay, have a nice day. And I hung up. That's the first time I've ever had to hang up on a caller that wasn't a telemarketer. I let $manager know, he understands and backs up my decision after I explain how the call went, and asks that I document what happened and email it to him. As I'm writing it up, my colleague's phone rings. It's $user. He politely declines to violate policy for her, and offers to fix the problem that she's having with $2FA. From what I was told, she was very polite and calm the whole time, and it turned out that she had blocked the number for $2FA, she had chosen "call me" as her preferred verification method, then proceeded to block that number. $Security_Director called her while she was on the phone with my colleague. After they were finished, $Colleague came over to my desk. $CW2: So, uh.. She says she's sorry. $Me: Don't care. A few minutes later, $CW1 came back from lunch. $CW1: Hey guys, I miss anything exciting? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2019 05:33 AM PST (I was told this deserves its own posting instead of being a comment. Mods please delete if this is a bad idea.) About 25 years ago I was a junior PC tech at a company and one of the sales guys needed a new monitor for his PC. No big deal, I unpack a new one and install it. About an hour later another sales person calls me and says he wants a new monitor too. I walk over to his desk and checks his current monitor and it's nothing wrong with it. I talk to him and explain that I cannot replace it because it's nothing wrong with it. Now, I like this guy. He's a star salesman and also a very nice guy (rare combination, I know) so I tell him that if the monitor where to break, for any reason (wink-wink), I will replace it. He nods, says he understands and I walk back to my desk, waiting to hear that the sales guy "accidentally" knocking his monitor over and down on the floor. 20 minutes later the sales manager walks in my office and is angry and starts yelling about me not supporting "his boys". I explain the policy and asks him to take it to management if he has a problem with it and if there is a change in policy I would happily replace the monitor for the sales guy. Sales manager walks away and says he will take it to the CEO. One hour later the CEO, the sales manager and the sales guy walks into my office and "want to straighten things out". I'm 21 or 22 at the time and it's my first job so I'm way out of my league here but I stand my ground and point to the policy and ask the CEO to grant an exception if he want to go against his own rules, but also explain that if we change the policy or break it we have a staff of 250 people who all would like new monitors for their PC's... CEO chews on that for a minute and turns to the sales guy and asks: "why do you want a new monitor? Is there anything wrong with the monitor he already have?" Sales guy says: "no." CEO, looks confused, and asks: "what then!?!?!??" Sales guy looks a bit ashamed (like a small kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar) and says: "well.... the other guy got a new one..." CEO looks midly amused and annoyed at the same time (not sure how the swung that but it was a feat to watch for sure) and just says to the sales guy: "grow up kid. you get a new monitor when IT says you are getting one." He then turns to the sales manager and says: "you. my office. now." I later got a email from HR asking if I want my one time bonus as paid leave or in cash, adding a note from the CEO where he thanked me for doing a great job. This was NOT common at this company where the CEO was feared, to say the least. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2019 07:53 AM PST An employee emailed me to let me know her shortcut to our shared drive is gone, it's usually on her desktop. I start a remote session with her, and open the Recycle Bin. Tada. There it is. I pointed this out, and told her, if it's in the Recycle Bin, that means it was deleted. To which she replied "accidently" (yes, she misspelled the word, verbatim response here). I said, "Yes, but typically if something goes missing, you will want to check the Recycle Bin first. That's where things go when they get deleted. Accidentally or otherwise." And that's not even the worst part. I then proceeded to talk to other employees in the office, to which they had no clue what the Recycle Bin was either, or where it was, or what it's function was. "Wait, where is it?" "I didn't know that either!" Jesus !@#$ing Christ. How, in 2019, do people NOT KNOW WHAT THE RECYCLE BIN IS AND WHATS ITS FOR?! I work in the social/mental health field, and granted, these people are middle aged, but still, most of them have been working here for YEARS. Yes, that's right, YEARS. Like 10+ years in some cases. How....the....!@#$ are they JUST NOW learning about the Recycle Bin??? Sorry, I just can't even today. I'm so dumbfounded. I don't want to work here anymore -_- EDIT: The other employees involved in the conversation saying they didnt know about the Recycle Bin were - HR manager (6ish years employed), administrative employee (8ish years employed) and..... MFing CEO, who has been in business for over 20 years, and has had to work with computers since day 1. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2019 09:56 AM PST The boss is out sick, I'm out of coffee, and I cringed at the student I had to give this bad news to no more than 10 minutes ago. Our school has a videography class which the students will typically use iMovie on our school iMacs in order to get their assignments done. With their semester video project, however, they are also allowed to use their smartphones to film as well as edit (with appropriate software, of course); not recommended, but it's allowed. A student came in today and informed us that they are trying to send a video they made to their teacher through Google Drive, but it's not able to be viewed by them. She showed us the video file in question…. The file was the "iMovie project file" with the ".imoviemobile" extension, not the final rendered video. She selected the "Share to Google Drive" option without doing the render first. Strike 1. She still had the video project on iMovie in her phone, but she deleted the raw videos attached to the project, rendering the project useless since the videos are now in Recently Deleted instead of the Camera Roll. Strike 2. No worries! Just do a Recover All in the trash bin and restore it all back! ….. She deleted them all out of the trash bin permanently… Strike 3…. And let me get your first reaction out of the way: yes, we looked in her iCloud account online, and no, they're not there either. A local iTunes backup? Nay nay. I gave her a few options to get her footage back (recovery software, etc.), but she kept believing that Apple might be able to help with recovering her data. I wished her well and she was on her way. Lessons learned here: 1: Check your finished product BEFORE you send it anywhere! 2: Do not delete ANYTHING until you are certain the finished product is what you want it to be. 3: Backup backup backup! Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Is it connected? That's too complicated, do if it for me. Posted: 10 Dec 2019 10:35 AM PST So I'm not actual IT, just a PC gamer and engineer who enjoys some of the stories. Keep in mind for this story that I've never actually owned a TV; I do everything on my computer. Last night I'm at an event at a community center, and we're supposed to watch a dvd, but the person running the event cant get it to work. I notice that the person is fiddling with the remotes and the devices, but hasn't glanced at the cables. I mention this, and the person immediately says that is too complicated and I should do it because I sound like I know what I'm doing. So I go up and take a look. The TV input is set to HDMI and the device they're trying to use is a combo vhs/dvd player. I look behind it, power is plugged in. The player has component cables coming off of it that are black, and the component cables plugged into the TV are grey. Looks like some gaming console is plugged into the only component input instead. I also notice an HDMI cable running from the TV to the bluray player, which isn't working. I look at the bluray player, and notice the power cord is running under a box fan. I look behind the box fan and the power cord isn't plugged in. So I plug in the bluray player and away we go. When I read all the posts talking about users refusing to do even the simplest troubleshooting because they aren't computer people, I thought you guys were exaggerating. But no, I guess people really do refuse to do the simplest tasks because they think it's more complicated than it really is. I mean, how hard is it to follow the path of a cable. You can even do it by hand if the cable management is too poor to do it by sight. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2019 12:21 PM PST This incident gave me a little chuckle today. I'm not really in tech support but I work in support for a SaaS platform so a lot of the issues we deal with end up being tech support. This just happened. We typically give access to our platform to certain amount of user per account. We also have our own, "manager" log ins to get into the customer platform in case anything needs to be fixed by us. When a customer goes into Settings in the platform, they can see the list of their usernames as well as our "Manager" username in that list. A customer emailed me asking to see the list of their users so that they can remove outdated users. Now they can fully do this themselves but this customer is not very technology friendly so I decide to save us both some time and take a screenshot of the users and send it to them. This is the customer's response: Thanks sunlovecats, I am the Manager, so maybe Manager can be removed? We will have more changes in the next couple weeks too, so I will be sure to let you know. I almost wrote back "No Karen, You're KarenM and I AM the Manager here!" SMH [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Dec 2019 06:31 AM PST Good morning, TFTS. I figured I could take a little time out this morning and share a story with you from my early days in support when I worked for a cable company. I worked in a business support center so every call that came into us had the "business grade" internet or cable, which didn't really mean much other than dedicated technicians and a much higher bill. It's pretty brilliant, when you think about it. Anyways, I joined the team as things were in a transition. The company used to have six call centers nationwide, with each one taking a specific region of the country. Each one was well staffed and call volume, from what I was told, was quite manageable. However, things changed and two of the call centers were closed. Their regions were split up between our department and another in Texas. Call volume had skyrocketed to almost double the normal traffic and people were a bit stressed. I adjusted quickly but could understand why people were leaving due to stress. The manager, who looked like a female version of Skeletor in a suit, was a hellbeast that gave no fucks about employee well-being. About six weeks into the job, we were pulled in groups for a meeting about updating our job expectations. The director listed out the changes:
I expected a guy to just burst into the conference room and start waving a gigantic red flag to all of that. I think most everyone was already broken by this point. Since I had only been there a few weeks, I fell on the sword and asked the obvious question and counter to the decision:
The explanation was a half-assed one about being quick with questions and wasting absolutely no time. "White glove" treatment still had to be utilized since these were businesses, of course. Nothing screams "white glove" like a ten minute SLA where you may not even scratch the surface of the issue. This was going to end badly. Everyone knew it. We just didn't know to what extent. The first week of this was absolute hell. An average day for a person was now over 70 calls with no breathing time in between. Anyone who dared used the bathroom not on break or lunch got a talking to by leadership and, if it persisted, "coaching". Yes, we are apparently 12 years old and need hall passes to do our business. A couple of weeks later, one of the analysts finally snapped. However, it wasn't for the reason any of us expected. He got on a call that had a lot of problems. I was sitting next to him and I heard him talking about spotty internet and bad phone connections. Those calls could be 30 minutes just to get the faintest idea of what was causing the issue if it wasn't just a bad eMTA. So, naturally, he hit the 10 minute mark without any idea where the problem was. His supervisor walked over and asked how close he was to being done. He shook his head and waved the person away because he was trying to do the troubleshooting. Five more minutes pass and the same supervisor comes over to tell him to get a tech out and end the call. He shook his head, continuing on because he had no good information. At the twenty minute mark, Skeletor comes over. She's not happy and stands there with crossed arms. My co-worker puts the call on mute.
My co-worker sighs as if he's going to do it. The manager walks away but, instead, continues the call. It seemed like he was finally getting somewhere. Of course, the manager shows up and she's way more upset and he mutes the call once more.
Skeletor has had enough and pulls the plug from the back of his desktop. Did I mention we used Avaya One-X so all of our calls were done through the computer? My co-worker absolutely loses it and starts screaming at her. It was only a couple of minutes but it felt like an eternity watching these two yell at each other. More F-bombs were dropped than a Lewis Black political rant as the supervisors came rushing over to separate them. My co-worker yells "F it! I don't need this" and storms out of the building. The supervisors take Skeletor out of the main call center and into a side room. The next day was quite the affair. Skeletor had been put on leave and co-worker had been asked to come in to speak with HR about the situation. To our surprise, he agreed but it was clear he didn't want the job back. His meeting with HR was over an hour and a lot of things came to light. Apparently Skeletor had pushed for some of the changes just to show she was innovative in cost-saving measures, thinking it would land her a higher level job. Instead, she got canned for pulling the plug on an active call with a customer. I wasn't there for much longer as I took a standard help desk job a couple of months after this incident, but things had improved a bit. The SLA "requirements" were loosened and the new manager actually seemed interested in making sure nobody was losing their minds. Co-worker ended up going back to school after all of that, which may have been a blessing in disguise. I lost contact with him a couple of years ago but last I had talked with him, he was working a cushy government job. I don't know what happened to Skeletor after she got the axe. I'm sure she convinced some other company that she was in the right because corporate America is a wasteland. [link] [comments]  |
| Exchange server isn't functioning properly Posted: 10 Dec 2019 08:24 AM PST I got a call at about roughly 2 pm one day, seems like a pretty standard call. The person starts off by saying that she has a exchange account - as technical support we can't deal with this - and how she is having all sorts of troubles getting her email up. No problem. "Maam can I have you go to google dot com, and search remoteintothiscomputer?" 'What's google?' O..kay. This is the first time I have had to deal with a customer who does not understand the concept of internet, but regardless it's my job to be patient, -and i get paid by the hour. Doesn't matter.- After explaining how to do this, explaining what a web browser is and having her open up Microsoft edge, her nickname for it was "the blue e with the yellow stripe." Presumably someone changed the icon to the internet explorer icon, taking me about 20 minutes just to get to step one of the process. She downloads the remote application and we continue from there, whom begins telling me her life story upon the third step, another twenty minutes pass. Finally I am able to get her to download the program and we go from there. Ah, I see the problem immediately. She is complaining about how our partnered company worked on their computer and they were not able to fix it, but managed to get one step to fixing it. the issue was that the certificate was not being recognized or accepted, so naturally I just did the fix. Check automatically allow, then next. The woman proceeds to flip out and start screaming at me, because the solution was naturally the certificate cannot be allowed otherwise she can't get the email to open up. This was the first, and only call I told the customer if they don't stop yelling at me I would hang up, they didn't listen. Because the customer knew what the issue was, but had to be taught how to open up google dot com shows how wonderfully technologically literate she is. After ten minutes I told the customer "Okay ma'am, when you get a A+ and networking degree feel free to give us a call back." Click. About an hour later she calls back and we are able to help her again, unknowingly to her, the agent I was training was talking to her and I fixed the issue (Set up as exchange when it is an imap server.) [link] [comments]  |
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