Rights Issue

Well, we took what I would consider a major step in our upgrade by migrating our users from their current Novell shares to new Microsoft shares. For those of you who don't understand, instead of reading their data from a Novell server, users are now reading their data from a Microsoft server. This was really a pretty substantial step because now we can actually begin shutting down pieces of our Novell system...which is pretty good.

Of course, this move couldn't occur without some major issues. One of the biggest is rights to directories, which was supposedly going to be handled by some migration software we purchased. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the software failed so as people logged in on Friday morning, they were greeted by not being able to access a major portion of data that would allow them to work efficiently. This caused some serious consternation among users as we frantically tried to restore rights. I ended up manually altering the rights to nearly 1,000 folders during the course of Friday. While it was not fun, it worked and it appears that users now have everything they need on a Microsoft server.

The worst part of Friday occurred when a page went out around the entire building that went something like this (and, you'll have to imagine the attitude): "Would someone from IT call 881 immediately!" I "immediately" picked up and the phone and the conversation went something like this:

ME: What?!?
HER: I can't get to X
ME: Yeah, I know...we're working on it. Why did you page?
HER: Because no one answered the phone.
ME: Did you call the help desk?
HER: Yes.
ME: No, you didn't or I would have heard the bell.
HER: Well, I called A, B and C and they didn't answer the phone.
ME: Well, you didn't call the help desk and everyone is trying to fix problems. Don't page.
HER: Ummm...well, ok.
ME: Seriously...don't do it again if you want help.
HER: Call me back when it's fixed.
ME: I'll get to it...

Well, that wasn't too bad but apparently for the 30 seconds I was on the phone with her, another IT guy was calling her too...and everytime it would beep to go to voicemail, he would hang up and call back immediately until she got off the phone with me and answered. While I was a bit short and blunt with her, I guess he was downright me. She was found later in the street crying...

It was a stressful day Friday. And I've been in to work today trying to get 8 Vista machines ready for our pilot users. They completed training on Friday and are going to be pretty disappointed if they don't have machines to use on Monday. The process for getting our machines working is tedious but I think I'm very, very close to actually having a working computer. I'll know more tomorrow. In the meantime, do NOT page the IT department if you want assistance!