Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 52 (1998)

Amrat's outmanoeuvred, Llewellyn's born again, our hero's reputation is confirmed and the All Stars are in an FX.

Monday 5th
The nightmare continues. The juveniles from Broadleys Management Services are still clambering all over the department, asking questions like "Why is that filed there?" and "Who actually owns this information?" Shrewdly, the team are keeping a level temper, channelling their ire at me instead for failing to tell them there'd be no temp cover for Rose's holiday. George, who resolutely refers to Broadleys' cost/performance evaluation as a 'time and motion study', says there's only ever one outcome, a reduced order for payslip stationery. I'm less worried by that, however, than by the appalling news brought by an Amrat, namely that I'm to give a presentation on eSuite to the Broadleys Senior Management Team in two weeks time. If that's a disaster,. the stationery order could start going down even before the juveniles have finished clambering.

Tuesday 13th
The ever-buoyant Amrat tells the All Stars table that Notes will go live this week, and that he'll probably be the principal management contact since Llewellyn's 'not really on board' about Lotus stuff. Thanking him for his input, we head for the management meeting, where David Chapman confirms the Notes announcement and hands over to our beleaguered I.T. Supremo for a briefing. To our surprise Llewellyn's on top form, eulogising over Notes' 'superb collaborative functionality', and promising that we'll be 'leveraging the enormous advantages of Lotus's integrated application strategy '. He then says that for such a vital project he will, of course, be the principal management contact. Afterwards our sympathy for the outmanoeuvred Amrat is tempered by a general feeling that it's good to see the Old Devil back in action. It's a funny old world, no doubt about it.

Thursday 15th
Notes is here, but the really great news is that it's brought 1-2-3 with it. Costello bans the ceremonial Excel Manuals Bonfire on fire insurance grounds, so we have a ceremonial Locking Away In A Very Remote Cupboard ceremony instead, quickly followed by an Unlocking Them Again ceremony when it turns out we've got to make some formula mods before transferring our worksheets. Apparently we have something called Notes FX to thank for 1-2-3 's early reappearance, which none of us understand but all drink to anyway in our lunchtime celebration. Such is the euphoria that we even allow born-again Lotus believer Llewellyn to lecture us on 'FX's superb client-groupware inter-functionality', without a single catcall or demand to know what the hell he's on about. Perhaps there's hope for us all yet.

Monday 19th
Today I face my High Noon (well, High 11.15), in the shape of my eSuite presentation at Broadleys HQ. In a Llewellynesque gesture of complicity I've done my slides in Lotus Freelance rather than Microsoft PowerPoint, with the result that I haven't a clue how to make the bullet points fly on screen and my backgrounds are an odd shade of puce. Somehow I manage to busk it though, even getting a laugh with my joke about the eSuite desktop running old Amiga apps as well as Java. Thanking me, Chapman says my reputation is well-founded, which in the circumstances I take as a compliment. I'm off the hook, but as I leave the building I can't help noticing the hushed atmosphere and the way the staff hurry along the corridors. If this is our future, I'm not sure it's one we'll like.

Wednesday 28th
We have the dubious distinction be being the first department to receive an official warning for misuse of Notes, thanks to Danny's (who else?) discussion thread about Pam in Accounts's derriere. Reprimand issued, I load 1-2-3 and find an annotation from Broadleys Group Admin Services attached to my cost summaries sheet. I'm trying to work out how on Earth it got there when George rings to say that he's found out that Notes FX stands for Field Exchange, and that it allows our new Broadleys-supplied 1-2-3 templates to send our figures to HQ on a daily basis, instead of giving us the traditional week to get them right. A crisis meeting is scheduled for lunchtime, but I remember those quiet offices and scurrying feet, and reckon that resistance, the All Stars' traditional lethal weapon, may now be useless.