Secret Diary of Sidney Sharepoint (Part 4)

It was a cold Thursday morning in the Server Room. Sidney was having an even more confusing day than usual, but then he never had got the hang of Thursdays. It had started badly when his assistant, Colin Cousins, had come back off holiday and requested his desk back. Then Sidney had to hear all about Colin’s wife Carol’s hysterectomy and as always how wonderful Carol’s company was. Colin always mentioned that ‘Carol’s Company’ gave all their Sales staff Blackberries as well as a free chocolate vending machine at their Head Office. Sidney had told Colin that morning that they needed to seriously think about ways of managing information better at Pottersgate Paints, but all Colin talked about was something called ‘Sharepoint’ that they used at Carol’s office. Apparently Carol used it to book medical leave for the operation that now meant Colin would have to be doing the hovering for the next month. Oh and the private hospital that Carol’s company paid for also used this ‘Sharepoint’. At least there would be no more little Colins as Sidney was still not sure if there were four or five at the last count.

The lack of room in the IT Office together with the need to get away from the cocky Peter Pottersgate was the reason that Sidney was now shivering in the noisy Server Room. He had switched the air conditioning off for ten minutes last Wednesday, but that resulted in the temperature alarm going off on three of the Dell servers giving off a piercing noise that had led a passing Betty Broadhouse to thump the break-glass and set off the Site Fire Alarm. At least the Fire Brigade arrived in under ten minutes so it was a good practice. So Sidney sat there in his coat reading his emails from one of the old PCs that was out of warranty. Despite this depressing scene Sidney was smiling as he had received an email from Hannah Harper who was actually being friendly and there were even several kisses at the bottom. Sidney decided it was time for action and sent an email back to Hannah Harper with the Subject ‘I Want To Meet You’. This was Sidney being assertive and trying to come over all masterful. He said how much he liked their flirty emails but thought it was time to meet up and put the flirting into action. He told Hannah in no uncertain terms that he would be at the Albert Anchor pub tomorrow, Friday lunch-time, at half past twelve and wanted Hannah to meet him there. He read it through and felt it was a touch too forceful so added a few softer words. The title became ‘I Don’t Know If You Want To But I Would Really Like To Meet You If You Fancy And You Are Not Too Busy’. He ended the message with four kisses then after checking three times that he was sending it to the right address he pressed SEND. Within seconds a reply zapped back. The subject read ‘Out of Office’ and the text ‘I am currently out of the office until Monday but your email has been forwarded to my Manager Harry Hawkins and his Manager Harriet Holmes’.

Just then there was a very loud bang on the Server Room door. To Sidney’s horror it was the MD Percy Pottersgate. Sidney quickly opened the door pretending to be pleased to see Percy Pottersgate.

“So this is where you are hiding whilst Peter runs the show. He’s a bright boy, but make sure he rests that left foot”, Percy Pottersgate was shouting like a sergeant major to be heard above the humming servers. “Anyway haven’t got time for idle chat. Just here to tell you that I want you at the next Pottersgate Paint Senior Management Team meeting. About time we got you IT lot onboard ”. Sidney was delighted at the chance to finally join the SMT. “Oh, next one is at 11am today. Oh and as Gwen is off on holiday you can take the minutes” with that Percy Pottersgate left the Server Room. Sidney was still pleased that finally he would be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ken Klondike, William Wilson, Roberto Raul and Harriet Holmes. Oh no, Harriet Holmes, Hannah’s boss, the email!

Sidney was first to arrive in the Board Room and although he had in the past spent hours trying to fix the Video Conferencing he had never before felt he belonged there until now. Sidney had noticed before that people always tend to arrive two minutes after the time of the meeting was due to start and all pretended to have rushed away from the very important work they were doing to be there. At two minutes past eleven they all started to pile in followed by Percy Pottersgate and his big white moustache.

“Have you all met Sidney whathisname? He is joining us from IT”, Pottersgate informed the room who all seemed to fail to recognise Sid even though he knew them all. “Pour the coffee then Sidney and then pass around these agendas”, the MD barked out.

Sidney hated these large coffee jugs with their strange opening mechanisms and was mighty relieved when Ken Klondike came to his rescue.
“Thanks for fixing that email problem for me, but what happened to the message I was sent last Tuesday from Morgan Meldrew?” Ken Klondike asked Sidney as he showed him that he had been pressing the wrong button on the coffee jug.

Eventually Sidney sat on the only seat that was left around the large oak table. When he sat down he realised that he was a good six inches lower than anybody else and worse still when he looked up was sitting right opposite Harriet Holmes. To make matters worse his chair was not only the lowest but had a very unfortunate squeak ever time he moved. Sidney read through the agenda and found a rather worrying pattern. Item 2 – Failings of IT, item 3 – Any IT Problems, item 4 – IT Overspend, item 5 – Poor IT Training and item 6 –Inappropriate use of internal email. Sidney was now feeling very uncomfortable and not only because he was sitting on his pager.

The meeting started and at least the first item was not about IT. It was about a possible company name change supposedly to give Pottersgate Paints a more global feel. Names were suggested including one from Percy Pottersgate himself. He suggested ‘Percy Pottersgate Paints’ which many said was an excellent choice. In the end it was agreed on ‘Pottersgate Paints International’ to show that they now had a customer in Ireland. So a new logo, corporate branding and signage was needed. Sidney realised that this was going to mean work for him. Lucy Longford then commented the need to thoroughly check the proofs for the signs to prevent another problem like the missing ‘i’ in ‘Pottersgate Paints’ last time.
For the next hour Sidney found why he was really there as everybody at the table aired their IT frustrations. There were many ranging from lack of toner in printer to the fact there were two Jack Jones listed in Outlook. Sidney defended his department all the way. The end result was that a completely new system was required for not a lot of money. Sidney was feeling overloaded and wasn’t really concentrating when Eric Emerson started talking about how they used something free called WSS to store all their marketing information at Tonks Tints. Percy Pottersgate liked the word ‘free’ and told Sidney to check out this WSS. In middle of item three the MD suddenly announced it was time for lunch and that they should all go down the Albert Anchor for a Ploughman’s. He didn’t make it clear who was paying and as Sidney only had two pound coins on him he decided it was best he should decline.

“No problems I am sure you have lots of IT work to be doing. Send young Peter along instead and tell him it’s on his Uncle”, Percy Pottersgate responded to Sidney’s polite refusal.

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.