posted on Friday, January 21, 2005 12:06 AM
by
bradley
The stuff we take for granted
I'm sure people wonder what exactly is my job. Sometimes that's a very good question. Somedays it's just standing over the shoulder and telling someone in the office how to attach a file to an email. Somedays it's trying to visualize what a client is looking at over the phone. Sometimes it's trying to visualize what my partners are looking at on the screen. So many times I have to walk over and see what they are looking at and more often than not, I say “oh yeah, just click there”. And they'll say...where? “There, I say... right there”. I can see the obvious “click“ but they can't.
It's funny that just right after yesterday's post about documentation that was prompted by a newbie SBSer in the newsgroups who came looking for real basic documentation as he was helping to set SBS up in his small firm... comes an article about “the basics”. I chaired the Top Technology survey and helped “craft” the descriptions. And in our survey of fellow “uber geeks”, the top issue was Security [gee that's a surprise]. But when the Ohio Society put it out for ALL of the membership to revote on their idea of the top ten...what was their top issue?
Finding out where to click.
Learning technology was their biggest issue.
It's even obvious in my firm that there are those that are the “technology enablers” and those that ...well are still just dealing with the technology. John Pocaro back on blogging again, has some great productivity tips about handling email overload that they do in Microsoft. But they are a pretty darn consistenly agile firm.
The “real” SBSers are still a bit lagging behind, I think. What are my goals this year as compared to his daily tasks?
- To get more people to use the shared calendaring. I have a few but not all using it. Some are still relying on paper calendars. Lose the paper this year.
- We're doing pretty good on saving in file shares but my weekend loss of a desktop reminds me to put a better, stronger emphasis on redirection of the “my documents“ and remind folks to NOT store on local hardrives. SeanDaniel.com talks about how the My document redirection is for “backup“ purposes.. I'd add how about for physical security purposes? I can and do physically secure the server... I can't the desktops.
- If the item is of a personal [personnel] nature, I'll be setting up access controls for that location and deny everyone BUT the people that need to have the information
- Install Lookout on all the desktops
- Have more training sessions and do more “picture“ how to's. People remember with pictures not words in my office.
So I think this year I need to concentrate on taking the concepts that I take for granted and making them more normal for everyone else. So that folks will just know to click “there”.