I have an interesting problem at work with respect to IT and email.

We all use laptops and travel for business use.

Now, we also all have win2k / XP Pro installed and use Office, including Outlook.

Of course, all our email is done using an Outlook Exchange server which also has the useful web interface so you can check email over http.

However, due to our teccy (or non as the case may be :() IT people, they do not let the web interface of the exchange server open to the outside the firewall, so we cannot say check our email from home or a cafe or whatever.

The only way we can access email is by being "inside" the company firewall.

Now, if we're out of the office on location doing some installation or something, in order to get inside the company firewall, we have to use an AT&T dialler. Then we have this safeword token thing which is like a calculator in which we put in a pin number. It then spits out a password which is only valid once etc etc.

All of the work we do at the moment is in the Middle East.

And guess what, there ain't any AT&T access numbers - apart from Israel. But of course, you can't dial into Israel from any of the neibouring countries... Instead we have to dial internationally to the UK which as you can expect costs a whopping fortune from a hotel room. Oh, and 'cos it's long distance, the speeds are poor and you regularly get cut off. :(

When actually working on site, often we can't dial out 'cos all the customer's offices are on a digital exchange with no analogue pstn phone line :(

And of course, we can't use their corporate fast leased line on the internet 'cos we're on the wrong side of the firewall to pick up email.

It's the same when working from home. We have to dial up this 0800 number (which AT&T surcharge at $15/min. Yep, that ain't a typo!). Shame I can't use my nice 1Mb cable connection and VPN into the Company's network.

Anyway, this is all quite depressing, so the point of this post is actually to try and make people laugh.

How you ask? Well, my work colleague with whom I'm meant to be going to Beirut over the next week or so for a month's site install starting the ball rolling by kindly "pointing out" are crappy system. A bit of a snowball really - everyone else contributed by adding their two pennies worth

I've changed all the names and company references, etc, but you might find it entertaining reading

[quote=a chap I'll call

Do you feel better now?

(And it is funny!)

Pathetic, ain't it?

We've recently employed a new IT manager, who's obsessed with security. He's having real trouble understanding that he's working with techies now, and gets really p1ssed off when we question his new "policies", as we know as much about the company systems as he does!

Exchange web access -particularly with Exchange 2000 and 2003 -is very safe and secure -we use it all the time. Your IT folks are just doing the usual "we're in charge" bit, which isn't really acceptable in a modern business. And I'm a techie!

Phil

Phil - at least security is arguably useful, and he's not just bothered about what time people turn up and whether they're wearing a shirt and tie...

Rob.

Phil - at least security is arguably useful' date=' and he's not just bothered about what time people turn up and whether they're wearing a shirt and tie...

Rob.[/quote']True. At least I don't have to wear shirt / tie every day in the office. I should take that as a plus point - not sure whether I could cope with a new shirt / tie every morning

At least I don't have to wear shirt / tie every day in the office. I should take that as a plus point

Yes you should! And I'm not even customer-facing...

Your company isn't the only one that hasn't got remote sussed though...at our place they have provided us with laptops, mobile phones, and shortly subsidised broadband connections. Will we still have to come into the office every day? Yes...

Rob.

Phil - at least security is arguably useful' date=' and he's not just bothered about what time people turn up and whether they're wearing a shirt and tie...

Rob.[/quote']

Yep, too right.

The IT manager isn't my boss, luckily, but our management gave us clearance to wear casual clobber at work -and they've tried to change it back ever since! I'll dress up when I'm facing customers, but I'm convinced that wearing a tie cuts of the blood to the brain.

All our management wear ties.........

Phil

Phil - at least security is arguably useful' date=' and he's not just bothered about what time people turn up and whether they're wearing a shirt and tie...

Rob.[/quote']

True, but then in our office no once wears that and we ARE customer facing. because we spend a lot of time resolving problems at the desktop, this sometimes involves crawling around under desks etc... we would look more untidy and dirty if we did.

True, but then in our office no once wears that and we ARE customer facing. because we spend a lot of time resolving problems at the desktop, this sometimes involves crawling around under desks etc... we would look more untidy and dirty if we did.

It used to drive me nuts when I was a field engineer, and had to dress up. Then you'd have to crawl under a desk, or muck out a filthy server, and you looked worse than if you'd dressed casually!

Funny how there's always more reason to crawl under desks in an office full of Nice Young Ladies, though...........

Phil

True, but then in our office no once wears that and we ARE customer facing.

I expect in this day and age a lot of customers don't really care so long as you fix their problem...

Rob.

I expect in this day and age a lot of customers don't really care so long as you fix their problem...

Rob.

Very true. You could turn up in a cape, wetsuit and wellies as far as customers care most of the time. I once had a customer complain that one of my engineers turned up wearing white socks! I just told our manager that we must have a bloody good service organisation if that's all they can find to complain about!

The whole smart dress thing is invariably driven by marketing types, who want to present a "professional image"

Yeah, right.........

Phil

Where I worked we had silly little key ring that had a six digit number that changed every minute. To access stuff sat behind the firewall you had to get a GPRS connection and enter your token digits to get access to everything. Once logged in could access evrything I normally used in the office - outlook, net etc.

Got none of that now, just a bloody great big lighting rig.

Oooh, we use the 6-digit generator key ring things too.

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of GPRS though!

Rob.

I've still to figure out if the numbers our system generates are time-related. I think not, although the IT dept insist they are.

I mean, if they were, how come I could use a code the following day it was produced ?

And anyway, over a period of several months, surely, the clock of the calculator thingy you carry around with you would drift compared to the one on the server

Problem we had was guys working in water treatment works would be by large electro magnetic fields which used to make the display either flash all 8's or Prog9.

As for the time drift the server knows the previous, the current and the next set of six digits so you have a three minute margin for errors. We tried to use a software token but had problems with the time on that, so due to time contstraints and the lack of an atomic clock went for the keyfob answer.

Using GPRS was a godsend, the system we replaced used an old Nokia 2110 to connect via GSM using a 'laptop' called a Telepad - utter sh1te.

Now they have GPRS as first choice, but if that fails it switches to GSM automatically, plus the option of using the LAN or PSTN.

Isn't IT great?