It had been a busy week for Sidney preparing for today’s Go Live of Pottersgate Point. After three months work the new SharePoint at Pottersgate Paints was going to be launched. The Pilot had gone very well and with the help of the super Action SharePoint guys everything in the Scope for phase one had been completed. Even Gwen Gardner’s idea for a form to be submitted when requesting additional loo rolls when down to the last one. Sidney had worked a lot of late nights getting things finished and was actually feeling quite proud of what he had achieved with SharePoint Foundation 2010. The sites looked smashing and Sidney was pleased how easy it had been to match the exact colour of the brand new Pottersgate Paint’s corporate colours. Percy Pottersgate had decided last week that he wanted the Pottersgate Paint logo to become purple.
During the many hours Sidney had worked late he not only made a few phone calls to Action SharePoint on 0121 3680055 but he also took every opportunity to call Hannah Harper to ask her advice. The highlight was, though, on Tuesday night when Hannah turned up with a pizza to share with Sidney. They sat on the floor of the IT Office eating pizza, garlic bread and laughing. Sidney was very tempted to kiss Hannah Harper but decided with the CCTV camera near it was probably best not to. The strawberry cheesecake flavoured Haagan Dazs ice cream also went down well even if it had turned into a milkshake after Hannah had driven to work.
Sidney sat at his desk feeling nervous as he prepared to switch all the Pottersgate Paint users on to Pottersgate Point. He had already changed the group policy settings so that everyone’s default home page on the Internet was http://pottersgatepoint.org , which they could also access externally and now he was about to turn off write access to the old file server. From now on any documents that needed to be edited or created could only be done on SharePoint. With the help of Colin Cousins, Sidney had placed on every desk in the company a triple folded page entitled ‘How to use Pottersgate Point’ on each desk. Unfortunately folding had never been Sidney’s strong point and some were better than others. All End Users should have attended the ninety minutes SharePoint End User training course with the Action SharePoint chap last week, but it was still felt that a ‘How to...” would be useful for the common small tasks. Sidney had wanted to get these laminated but was too scared to ask Gwen Gardner especially as she had interrogated him about his excessive staple usage last Thursday.
The first day of Pottersgate Point went very smoothly. Sidney and Colin were kept busy, but most of the calls were because people hadn’t got permissions to access documents they had previously been able to see. The Department Super Users did well and even Gwen Gardner appeared for a moment to have actually tried to help somebody. Louis Le Gover, European Sales Manager, did seem to be directing quite a few questions to Hannah Harper. Sidney told him that Simon Sedgley was the Sales Super User and all Sales SharePoint questions should be directed to Simon or to IT.
Comments on the launch of SharePoint were all very favourable. Even Quinton Quigley, the Quality Manager, congratulated Sidney on an excellent system that he said ticked all the Quality boxes and legal requirements. Sidney was really chuffed and noticed that people even started to use his name. He was no longer just that bloke from IT. He was even more pleased when Pottersgate Paint’s MD Percy Pottersgate came down to personally congratulate Sidney. It was a pity that Percy Pottersgate slipped on a patch of melted Haagen Dazs ice cream and went skidding off towards the Server Room, but only after announcing he was holding a party tonight to celebrate the launch of Pottersgate Point.
Sidney had been unsure about if he had been invited to the party that night and was delighted to receive email confirmation later that afternoon. The party was for Senior Managers and all the SharePoint Project Team. It was actually being held at the home of Percy Pottersgate at the address The Pavilion, Portway Parade, Perry Barr. Sidney was relieved to see the dress code was smart casual as he still hadn’t got that tea stain out of his best suit.
First thing Sidney had to do was ring Hannah Harper and see if they could go together. His mood soon changed when Hannah Harper told Sidney she had already agreed to go with Louis Le Gover. She did seem quite sad about this and then suggested that the three of them could all go together. Sidney agreed, offered to drive and to pick up Hannah first. He could tell that Hannah liked this idea. So four hours later after a visit to the hair-dressers, buying a new ‘non iron’ shirt from Asda and having a long shower Sidney was ready to pickup Hannah Harper.
As Sidney escorted Hannah Harper to the car he told her how lovely she looked in her black silky top. Hannah blushed slightly and then pealed Sidney’s ‘Reduced to £6’ label off the back of his shirt. The two shared many smiles as Sidney drove to pick up Louis Le Gover. Hannah asked if she should get in the back. But Sidney said that Louis could go in the back. All too quickly they were continuing their journey with Louis Le Gover cramped in the back and Sidney with the music deliberately turned up to drown out the Frenchman.
Both Monsieur Le Gover and Hannah were surprised to see Sidney going an unusual way to Perry Barr. Sidney then pulled outside a red coloured house with stone-cladding on somewhere in Gornall. Sidney had offered a lift to the party to somebody else and the two passengers were thinking who it could be as Sidney went to the front door. The look of horror on Louis Le Gover’s face said it all as a minute later Sidney was pushing Gwen Gardner towards him through the small driver’s side door of his two door car. Sidney had arranged a date for Louis Le Gover and told Gwen Gardner how much Louis was looking forward to it.
At the party Sidney and Hannah stayed close together and Sidney started to feel like they were finally a couple. Louis Le Gover was being dragged around by Gwen Gardner who was already on her seventh glass of wine and second cigar. The buffet was superb and Percy Pottersgate even introduced Sidney and Hannah to his wife Patricia. Then it came for Percy Pottersgate to make a speech and thank everyone who had been involved in the successful launch of Pottersgate Point. Sidney felt slightly sad that the guys from Action SharePoint weren’t there as they had been such a great help and really gone beyond the ‘call of duty’. They had charged less than £15,000 for all their work, training sessions and manuals. They had pointed Sidney towards lots of valuable SharePoint add-ons like his favourite scanning one Dark Blue Duck and the Holiday Planner from Pentalogic.
Percy Pottersgate then announced to his delight that the man behind the Pottersgate Point was here tonight. Sidney prepared to be called forward.
“I give you my nephew, Peter Pottersgate”, Percy Pottersgate announced and Sidney saw the familiar spotty face of young Peter Pottersgate. Sidney wasn’t too disappointed he had Hannah Harper holding on to his arm.
“I’m bored”, came a voice from behind Sidney and he turned round to see, Percy Pottersgate’s granddaughter, Penelope Pottersgate sticking cocktail sticks into the bottom of a very surprised looking Louis Le Gover.
Percy Pottersgate continued his speech and then made an announcement that shocked the whole room including Sidney.
“The use of SharePoint at Pottersgate Paints is going to save us tens of thousands of pounds and probably save Pottersgate Paints. I want to say a big thank you to Sidney, our IT Manager, for all his tremendous hard work. I didn’t get where I am today without noticing hard work. I have decided to reward Sidney by making him IT Director and giving him a place on the board of Pottersgate Paints. Well done Sidney. Hip hip...”, Percy Pottersgate started the cheers for Sidney.
Sidney was beaming and thinking things couldn’t get any better when Hannah Harper took his hand and led him out into the garden. The two kissed under a blanket of stars on this clear night.
Hannah Harper, from Accounts, suddenly stopped kissing Sidney, looked into his eyes and said, “I love you Sidney Sharepoint”.
