Other Companies IT departments
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Yep, I've had this happen to me on a number of occasions. Eg. One of our users complained that a customer couldn't email to us or open one of our PDFs.... it was a large customer and they needed that info NOW!. Turns out the client wasn't connected to the internet.
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I have a client that does a yearly holiday mailing, which involves exporting contacts from their CRM and doing a Word mail merge. Every year I walk their office manager through it the first time (she usually has to do it 2-3 times as she finds addresses that need to be cleaned up). She takes notes, but since it's a task she does every 12 months, I don't expect it to stick.
My wife doesn't understand why they need me to do it, but eh...if they want to pay me my going consultant rate to do it, who am I to say no?
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@scottalanmiller said:
I've never had this happen. You mean that other companies expect you to do work for them? Do you make them open a ticket?
We get it all the time. "We're a smaller company." Our exchange isn't working right at the moment and can't send emails. Can you help us configure it so we will be back up and your user can get their email they need as well?" Um No.
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Right now we have a company that keeps trying to invoice us. (meaning we pay them). And their EDI system isn't working and they want us to help fix it so the PDFs won't be corrupt - So we can pay them.
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We are a smaller company and I've gotten this request before too. Though really, the one that frustrates me is having to call and harass larger companies to fix their &(&^ because it's constantly broken.
One hospital we connect to frequently has a pool of around 30 Citrix servers. At least 3 of those servers have problems. Whenever we connect to those specific server we can't print.
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I always show them the Exchange logs and tell them, the issue is not on our end. Problem Solved
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@IRJ said:
I always show them the Exchange logs and tell them, the issue is not on our end. Problem Solved
Same here. Though I usually also say I am available to consult on it if they need help.
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@Dashrender said:
We are a smaller company and I've gotten this request before too. Though really, the one that frustrates me is having to call and harass larger companies to fix their &(&^ because it's constantly broken.
One hospital we connect to frequently has a pool of around 30 Citrix servers. At least 3 of those servers have problems. Whenever we connect to those specific server we can't print.
I just had the one hospital call me today. They needed VPN access to the EMR at the doctors office a while ago. They refused to set up a site to site, so after messing around with them I ended up finally doing a PPTP. They called today because they can't print to their printers from the EMR at the Dr's office......So I politely reminded them of their decision.
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@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
We are a smaller company and I've gotten this request before too. Though really, the one that frustrates me is having to call and harass larger companies to fix their &(&^ because it's constantly broken.
One hospital we connect to frequently has a pool of around 30 Citrix servers. At least 3 of those servers have problems. Whenever we connect to those specific server we can't print.
I just had the one hospital call me today. They needed VPN access to the EMR at the doctors office a while ago. They refused to set up a site to site, so after messing around with them I ended up doing a PPTP (it's insane). They called today because they can't print to their printers from the EMR at the Dr's office......So I politely reminded them of their decision.
huh? A local hospital wanted a VPN to you for your EMR?
Even when we hosted our own EHR, it was available online from anywhere. this was never an issue for us.
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@Dashrender said:
@johnhooks said:
@Dashrender said:
We are a smaller company and I've gotten this request before too. Though really, the one that frustrates me is having to call and harass larger companies to fix their &(&^ because it's constantly broken.
One hospital we connect to frequently has a pool of around 30 Citrix servers. At least 3 of those servers have problems. Whenever we connect to those specific server we can't print.
I just had the one hospital call me today. They needed VPN access to the EMR at the doctors office a while ago. They refused to set up a site to site, so after messing around with them I ended up doing a PPTP (it's insane). They called today because they can't print to their printers from the EMR at the Dr's office......So I politely reminded them of their decision.
huh? A local hospital wanted a VPN to you for your EMR?
Even when we hosted our own EHR, it was available online from anywhere. this was never an issue for us.
It's a Medent platform on a physical server the network. The original billing company that had partnered with Medent did it the same way, except they used a site to site.
There is a patient portal that can be accessed from anywhere through Medent, but the actual billing and Medent software connects directly to the physical server.
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I'm ok with this to a point - it's nice for everyone to help each other out. For instance when I supported QuickBooks Enterprise we'd regularly talk to SMB "sysadmins" who might be in over their heads and needed some help getting their network in order before we could get QBES to work. My rule of thumb was if it was something easily fixable that I knew the answer to, that was no big deal. But if I'd have to do major investigative work to find out the problem, then they can pay someone to do that for them.
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I don't do it at all. I have too much work to do. And it's a liability to do it as well.
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@Nic said:
I'm ok with this to a point - it's nice for everyone to help each other out. For instance when I supported QuickBooks Enterprise we'd regularly talk to SMB "sysadmins" who might be in over their heads and needed some help getting their network in order before we could get QBES to work. My rule of thumb was if it was something easily fixable that I knew the answer to, that was no big deal. But if I'd have to do major investigative work to find out the problem, then they can pay someone to do that for them.
I see where you are coming from here, but I believe the responsibilities should be different for an IT employee of a company vs. an employee of a software company that supports many IT departments. I can understand how a software employee would want to help to ensure their customers are able to use their software even if they have to go out of their realm of responsibility.
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My question would be... how does someone from the outside get access to internal IT staff at your company?
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@scottalanmiller said:
My question would be... how does someone from the outside get access to internal IT staff at your company?
Easy, Users can foward calls and emails. Which is really bad because Technicians are suppose to be first point of contact anyway, but they go around it because they think we will do something about this.
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@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
My question would be... how does someone from the outside get access to internal IT staff at your company?
Easy, Users can foward calls and emails. Which is really bad because Technicians are suppose to be first point of contact anyway, but they go around it because they think we will do something about this.
Is it ever any different?
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@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
My question would be... how does someone from the outside get access to internal IT staff at your company?
Easy, Users can foward calls and emails. Which is really bad because Technicians are suppose to be first point of contact anyway, but they go around it because they think we will do something about this.
My boss is the master of these sorts of issues as we deal with lots of companies daily.
When we receive an email asking for stuff like this that we're not responsible for she replies with a very nice and friendly email that includes our hourly rate and a quote to fix it and asks who to bill for the work.
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absolutely @MattSpeller But I look at everything as a consultant anyway, if i'm called, i bill
