Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 2 (1994)

June goes spare, Credit Control play their trump card, Amrat gets enthusiastic and Windows for Workgroups arrives.

Tues 1st
Suddenly I can log into the remote server. It can take I.T. six weeks to replace a printer cable but one gruff e-mail message from FD Brison (gratifyingly typed in my presence and including the phrase 'fingers out') and a chap with a beard and glasses is round within five minutes sorting it out. Amrat's enthusiasm borders on the disloyal as he pumps him for details of what it's like in I.T. and have they really got a 32 Megbyte Compaq server with four gigabytes of disk up there. I have a pointed chat with Amrat about his progress towards full Planning Executive status, and make my first entries in the performance reporting system.

Mon 7th
It's official - we've been nominated for the Peer-to-Peer Pilot Project (or "four pees into the wind" as Andy Miller in Contracts calls it). I fight a last-ditch action based on the disruption already caused by the Word for Windows decision, but to no avail. The rumour is that Credit Control produced a cashflow forecast so dire that Brison struck them off the list on the spot, leaving us to carry the can. I decide not to tell the others about it just yet. Back in the office I find June's 286 displaying a blank screen and June using language even her husband, who works with problem adolescents, would be shocked by. Danny suggests finishing it off by pouring coffee into it. I wonder if Brison would write another email for me, but forget it and ring I.T. myself.

Wed 9th
48 hours later and June, her 286 still broken, is going spare watching the backlog on the Rochester documentation grow longer by the hour. Amrat says the fault is a crack in the motherboard signal tracks, common on this model. Finally an engineer arrives, fits a new display card and leaves. June reboots her machine and finds that Windows doesn't work, at which point she goes spare again. Amrat diagnoses incompatibilty between the new card and old display drivers. I'm about to tell him to shut up and ring I.T. when he produces a disk, runs Windows Setup and gets it working. He spends the rest of the day in a visible glow of satisfaction, and I spend a fairly satisfying ten minutes entering the details of the whole fiasco into the performance reporting system.

Thurs 17th
Today is Peer-to-Peer day. No less than four people from I.T. arrive to install Windows for Workgroups on our PCs, although it turns out that three of them are there to learn about it from the one who's been on the course. I send Amrat over to Contracts with a day's worth of charging dockets to sort out, which is cruel but the only way I'll get any work out of him. The I.T. people load the WFW files onto our Novell server then upgrade each workstation from there, which is ironic as the whole idea is to declare the local servers redundant and save lots of money. Amrat arrives back, all dockets sorted, at 2pm, just as the I.T. people are leaving. He consoles himself by reading the WFW manual from cover to cover twice.

Fri 25th
Having Windows for Workgroups isn't half as bad as we feared, mainly because the magic of Ethernet allows us to ignore it and carry on using our NetWare server in the normal way. Reports of the ease with which we've adapted to it filter round the building, and I'm something of a celebrity at the management meeting. Unfortunately the status quo is disturbed by a memo from I.T. requesting us to report back on our resource sharing strategy within three days. I ring for support but get diverted to the I.T. Manager himself, who tells me that one of the objectives is to see if peer-to-peer networks can be self-administered without the need for support staff, although he'd rather I didn't tell his support staff that. I lock the memo in my drawer and take early retirement for the weekend.