Secret Diary of Sidney Sharepoint (Part 5)

Sidney had spent three hours now trying to get his IT Training Requirements Form to look right in Word. It was nearly there but the formatting kept doing its own thing and the boxes just didn’t quite line up. It had been the opinion of the new Training Co-ordinator, Terence Turpin, that employees were lacking in vital computer training and that IT should send out a survey to find out what people needed training on. Sidney had thought at the time that maybe this should be the job of the newly appointed Training Co-ordinator, but Percy Pottersgate had quickly volunteered Sidney. As Sidney was thinking how he was supposed to find time to run any courses an email arrived from the lovely Hannah Harper. She was in a very chatty mood and had apparently had a very good weekend even though she had unfortunately had to take her hamster ‘Hanley’ to the vets as he had a nasty lump on his bottom. Hannah was saying that she really wanted to meet Sidney and mentioned that on a Monday she often went in the canteen on her own at about ten to one. This was good news to Sidney, even though he had picked up a rather nice cheese and chutney triple sandwich pack at the garage on his way to work that Monday morning. He decided that today he would go in the Canteen for his lunch and offered Colin his triple pack. Colin then told him how at his wife’s company they have a choice of over twenty different sandwiches whenever they were having working lunch meetings. Oh, and that all the minutes of the meeting were published and available on SharePoint the same day.

Over the weekend Sidney had gained ten new Facebook friends and sent out a few twitters. He had now discovered that SharePoint, WSS and MOSS were actually all just different forms of SharePoint. One expert had tried to explain the difference to him but Sidney didn’t quite get it. The main one seemed to hinge around the fact that one was free and the other had a very complex licensing structure. But everyone seemed to say good things about this SharePoint. One of his new virtual friends had though sent him a nine page long message on why Open Source was far superior to anything that Microsoft ever did.

When Sidney returned to the IT Office he was horrified to find Colin and Peter Pottersgate almost coming to blows. The reason appeared to be mainly because Peter had changed Colin’s automated 3D screen saver to display ‘Colin is the most boring man in Britain’ then set it to start every minute and then disabled Colin’s access to change it. Colin was generally a patient chap but Peter Pottersgate was certainly winding him up. Sidney considered disciplining Peter but realised his uncle would be against this. Percy Pottersgate’s nephew seemed very precious to him and especially for some reason his left foot. Sidney decided instead to leave them to it and make his way to the Canteen ready to meet Hannah Harper from Accounts.

Sidney only usually made one annual visit to the Pottersgate Paints’ Canteen because the quality of food was not of the highest standard since they contracted it out in 2004 to ‘Cathy’s Cheap Caterers’ . Yet every year in the third week of December, Sidney always attended the Staff Christmas Lunch. It wasn’t that the food was any better; it just reminded Sidney of why he didn’t go any other time of the year. The highlight of the Staff Christmas Lunch was always that members of the Administration Department acted as waiters and waitresses. Even scary Gwen Gardner dressed up and often ended up with her white gloves covered in tomato soup. Better though than the shaky serving abilities of old Alice Appleby who had a habit of getting the soup everywhere but in the bowl. Being a punctual chap, Sidney was at the Canteen waiting for Miss Harper with plenty of time to spare. He had to pretend to tie his shoelace as people kept inviting him to join the queue. Then just as the second hand on the clock behind the counter reached the ten; a familiar short dark haired lady arrived and then walked straight past poor Sidney. He followed her smiling inanely like an extra from Mr Bean. Eventually Hannah Harper realised who he was and greeted him with a semi hug.

Back in the Server Room Sidney reflected on a rather enjoyable seventeen minutes and forty-three seconds spent nearly alone with Hannah Harper. It was a pity that Ronald Roughwood, Safety Manager, had come and sat on their table then moaned non-stop about how rubbish people are at completing Near Miss Forms. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t had his HSE tie resting in his gravy. At least Hannah smiled sweetly at Sidney. She also had an interesting comment about how at the last company she worked for all their Safety Reports were completed via the Intranet and that they used something called SharePoint. This had prompted Sidney to investigate more about this SharePoint. He could start a SharePoint Project Team and get Hannah Harper onboard. He could use it as an excuse to meet her lots more times to discuss SharePoint. Maybe they could meet in the Canteen again or here in the Server Room or maybe even at Sidney’s house. At that moment an email arrived from Hannah and it was one of the best emails Sidney had ever received; it was entitled “Thank You” and simply read “Thank you for keeping me company at lunch time, Hannah xx, P.S. Next time we will hide from ‘The Gravy Man’.”

Secret Diary of Sidney Sharepoint (Part 2)

Sidney was in early on the Monday morning as he had to create twenty-three accounts for new starters in the newly purchased Oxford branch of Pottersgate Paints. Even though the takeover of Tonks Tints had taken place three weeks ago it was only on Friday as he was leaving that Sidney had been informed of the names of the employees who would be joining Pottersgate Paints. Oh, and told they would all need logons and email accounts for 9am Monday. So each one would need a Share creating on the already full shared drive and added to the appropriate group. Why did none of them have easy names to spell? The shortest surname seemed to have nine letters in that could have easily been a conundrum on ‘Countdown’ . Another issue was that Sidney had been given the list of users on a hand written piece of paper from Gwen Gardner. Sidney was convinced she must have been doctor in a previous life as he struggled to make sense of many of the names. Then of course there appeared to be two Malcolm MacDonalds. This posed two questions for Sidney. Firstly, was it the former Newcastle and Arsenal player who once scored five goals for England and was then dropped? Then secondly, how did his naming convention work with duplicate names. This was the last thing he needed on a Monday Morning especially when there was no milk left.

It was just one minute to nine when a stressed Sidney had finished creating the accounts. The morning did not improve though when he finally found time to check his email. Firstly to find an email from Sally Staff, in Personnel, saying that he should not use the list of new starters that Gwen Gardner had supplied him with as this was the wrong list and attached was the correct list of nineteen completely different names. He scrolled through a list of several hundred emails that had arrived in his Inbox and one message jumped out at him. It was from the lovely Hannah Harper. After Sidney had unfortunately not made the Edgar Edmonds party on Thursday night he was not surprised by the tone of the message, although, he was surprised that the ‘Adult Content’ filter had not intercepted the message. She was not happy and appeared to be blaming Sidney for everything that was wrong in her life. The final line in the message stated clearly that she never wanted to see him again. This was emphasised by being in bold, underlined, a bright red font and size twenty four. Sidney was even more taken aback by the lack of kisses at the foot of the message. Just as Sidney was trying to decide whether it was worth a reply Percy Pottersgate stormed in the room followed by a very young looking but muscular lad.

“You lazying around again?”, shouted Pottersgate at a rather startled Sidney. Sidney tied to defend himself at the same time as minimising the email from Hannah. “Anyway, no time for small talk. Here is Peter. Hope you are going to treat him well. I have told him to be my eyes and ears down here”, Percy Pottersgate didn’t seem to see the need to stop to breathe. “Oh, and whatever you do make sure you look after that left leg of his”. In a flash the MD had left the room and it was just Sidney and young Peter Pottersgate.

“Why is your left leg so special then?” Sidney enquired.

“ That’s none of your business. Anyway, where shall I sit?” Peter gave a very hostile response.

Sidney hadn’t really planned the seating arrangements and there wasn’t much room anyway. His IT Assistant Colin Cousins was off this week on holiday so Peter could have his desk. Well, that was the idea but when Sidney offered this to Peter the response was not good.

“No way! That’s in totally the wrong place and too small. I will have that one instead”, the rather annoying boy snarled at Sidney. Despite his protests about it being his desk Sidney was fighting a losing battle. “I think my Uncle would want me to have that desk. Or do you want me to call him and ask him?”

Sidney gave in and let the youngster have his desk but undocked his laptop and moved it to Colin’s desk. He could tell it was going to be a very long three months.

“Have you got any macs?” Peter yelled out.

Luckily Sidney realised he meant Macintosh computers before he went off on one about how take away food was not permitted in the IT Office. Sidney had taken the decision to ban take away food after Colin had somehow got an onion ring jammed in his DVD drive.

The morning did not go well with Peter Pottersgate driving Sidney even madder than he usually was. The continual reference to the fact that ‘my uncle wouldn’t like that’ was really getting to Sidney. At least the nephew’s two and a half hour lunch break gave Sidney some peace and the chance to start to look at the important issue of how best to manage the information of Pottersgate Paints. When he had mentioned this challenge to young Pottersgate earlier in the morning he had been rather unsure what the response was. It sounded like ‘Moss’ but this made no sense at all to Sidney.

Sidney decided to start by listing how many different Shares there were on the different network servers. By the time Peter returned from lunch (with a one foot long subway sandwich) Sidney had listed 183 network shares. These included several similar ones with slightly different spellings, like ‘Commercial’ and ‘Comercial’. Sidney just didn’t know what to do next.