“Thank God it is Friday”, thought Sidney as he was having such an unlucky day. It had started badly when his radio alarm failed to go off due to it being unplugged. Sidney’s Dad, Samuel, was staying with Sidney for a few days and was very safety conscious. Which is why during last night’s big thunder storm he had insisted on unplugging every electrical appliance in Sidney’s house. Sidney’s start to the day was not helped when he had to paddle through the kitchen as a result of the freezer defrosting. Sidney was very fond of his Dad, but was still counting down the days until he went home. Last night Sidney was struck by how much his Dad was starting to turn into Norman Clegg off ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ and how often he had asked if he had locked his front door.
As Sidney reached his car his heart sank to see his driver-side wing mirror hanging off having obviously been bashed by a passing car. His car was only in the drive because his Dad’s Volvo Estate was half sticking out of his garage. His Dad had told him that he had to put it in the garage even though it didn’t fit because it made his insurance premium twenty pounds cheaper. Sidney’s frustrations increased when he found a hand-written note stuck under his wiper.
The note read, “YOUR MIRROR HIT MY LAND ROVER THIS MORNING AND HAS PUT A LARGE SCRATCH DOWN THE SIDE OF IT. I WILL SEE YOU LATER TO COLLECT PAYMENT FOR DAMAGES. FROM HENRY HARDNUT”
At work things didn’t improve with Gwen Gardner waiting for Sidney at his desk ready to accuse him of stealing all her Board Meeting minutes from SharePoint. Sidney was flustered and just couldn’t see why the Web Part displaying all the Board Meeting Minutes that was there on Wednesday was now missing from the ‘Administration’ page. Sidney was left to promise he would find them or restore them from last night’s backup just to get rid of the MD’s Secretary, sorry PA. Although, he knew very well that the backup had failed the last two night’s because Colin Cousins had somehow managed to jam the DLT tape in the tape drive after inserting it the wrong way.
Sidney made himself a coffee in his ‘Action SharePoint’ mug and sat trying to think where the Board Meeting Minutes could be hiding. He started by checking the recycle bin on the SharePoint site but this just included some pretty odd old photographs of Gwen Gardner which Sidney thought best to ignore. Certainly there were no Board Meeting Minutes to be seen. Sidney was just about to ring Action SharePoint on 0121 3680055 when he suddenly had a thought. Then after he thought, “Had Dad unplugged the heater for the tropical fish tank?” he then thought about Site content in SharePoint. Yes, he thought, if it was still really there it would be listed under ‘View All Site Content’. Sidney checked, as he had Site Admin rights, and saw it listed as ‘Board Meeting Minutes’. Better still it said it contained 16 items and when he clicked on it he could see them all. So all he would have to do was recreate it as a web Part on the ‘Administration’ site. Sidney was about to start this when his mind went back to the ‘SharePoint Super User’ training session he did with Action SharePoint. The training course when he got to sit behind the delightful Hannah Harper and saw for the first time that cute little mole on the back of her neck. He recalled that the Action SharePoint Trainer had mentioned a few trouble-shooting tricks and that he had pointed out how to use SharePoint Designer to see missing Web Parts. Sidney was quite excited so quickly opened up his ‘free’ SharePoint Designer. Then he copied the URL address of the ‘Administration’ site and copied it into ‘Open Site’ box. Within seconds Sidney was punching the air with delight at the sight of the missing Web Part. Just a pity that poor Colin Cousins was walking by as Sidney punched the air. Sidney’s fist struck Colin right on the jaw. Luckily there was no real damage but Colin insisted on an entry being added to the ‘First Aid Book’ on SharePoint. He was quite proud of being the first entry in there.
Sidney quickly found the issue with the Board Meeting Minutes Web Part and fixed it. Somebody had clicked on the option to ‘Close’ the Web Part so he re-opened it. Sidney also disabled the ‘Close’ option so whoever did it could not do it again.
Just as Sidney was thinking about inviting Hannah Harper to join him and his Dad for dinner that evening; Percy Pottersgate walked in with somebody that Sidney did not recognise. The tall gentleman was slightly tanned and very well groomed. A James Bond type of character and Sidney noticed that he was considerably more handsome than the average Pottersgate Paint employee.
“Morning Sidney, just been telling our new European Sales Manager all about our brilliant SharePoint”, Percy Pottersgate shouted out. “Have you met Louis Le Gover? He speaks over ten different languages you know including Bulgarian”.
Sidney soon found his hand being firmly gripped as he was greeted by the French sounding chap. Louis Le Gover was all teeth and designer suits. Sidney was not warming to the new European Sales Manager and was glad when the two left to continue Louis’ tour of Pottersgate Paints.
There was just time to drop Hannah Harper an email to invite her for dinner before Sidney had to go and fix Daniel Daker’s dodgy disk drive. But before he could click on ‘New Message’ an email from his favourite lady arrived. The email from Hannah Harper was quite chatty and said that she was having her nails painted tomorrow afternoon and then going to the Church Harvest Festival on Sunday. It was the last part of the email though that disappointed Sidney most. It read, “I am taking the new European Sales Manager, Louis Le Gover out tonight to show him around Birmingham as he is over here from Paris. He seems really nice and charming”. Worse of all Hannah hadn’t put any kisses before her auto-signature.
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