IT Schedules and Life+Work

As most administrators or IT pros well know, it is difficult to sometimes work a good schedule out with your managers, especially if they are not in IT themselves. For example in smaller shops, usually the one managing IT staff is someone like the "office manager" or some other general position. What most folks will not understand is IT schedules are pretty dynamic--that is, constantly changing. It isn't like we can come into work and do the same thing every single day usually. The nail isn't always the same, and our hammers aren't always ready to work.

This is even more true if you are the only person in the department. For the most part the guys here have been pretty flexible with my schedule as their network administrator which I greatly appreciate. However I do not believe it is due to them understanding the broad IT schedule, but instead just plainly not understanding my department at all.

Recently though one of the execs made a new policy effective immediately that basically required everyone to work the same hours and come in earlier. I right away knew this would cause conflict in my schedule. So I did my best to explain to him that being confined to 6-3 or something similar would make it difficult for me to finish my work.

Here are some of the reasons:

• A lot of maintenance work is done off-peak hours, for me later in the night from home
• Because of the above, I stay up later, one reason I come in at 9 instead of 6
• Regardless of the above two factors, I still get calls early in the morning or late in the evening for either staff still in the office or remote users
• I've worked holidays often
• I've worked during my vacation (really expected to)

Now because of these few non-exhaustive reasons, if I was required to work the standard shift of 6-3 or 8-4,; I'd have to wake up earlier for one, spend the whole day at work to satisfy execs of my 'visibility' in the office, then stay late at work or go home and continue working remotely, on top of my other work days. Now it may not seem like a big deal, but the difference to my current schedule (9-4~) is that I can decide when to leave early, when to stay late, when to pull a long night etc. This gives me much more control over my schedule which brings the benefit of feeling more satisfied with my work being done, and balancing work with life.

That 1-2 hours of extra sleep is a big help, considering I am a night person anyway. After I reasoned with the exec and also appealed to my quality of work and also a little help of Jake Messersmith PhD: http://www.shrm.org/Education/hreducation/Documents/46-3%20Messersmith.pdf

I was able to convince him to let me keep control over my own schedule (within reason). So as it is, my schedule is the same still, basically 9 to 4:30, but it isn't a rigid shift either. I can decide to come in late, leave early or the opposite depending on work requirements for the day.

Perhaps you find yourself struggling with your schedule with work and life, check out the above pdf, might help you to reason with your employer.

DROID X Won't Ring, Vibrate Only? Tried Everything?

I rarely post because I am busy. But this might help someone.
Anyway, one of our new DROID X users could not get his phone to ring anymore after using "SMART PROFILE: FACE DOWN" option. It worked as it was supposed to, but the phone remained in "vibrate" mode ever since. We tried everything.

The Motorola forums are filled with the problem, and one in particular had a thread with a Motorola Rep named "Matt" presenting a fix "without a hard reset." It is obvious why people would not want to hard reset their phones. It's not about the applications (they can easily be redownloaded from the Market), and it is not about email or anything hosted in Google. It is not wanting to reconfigure the damn thing!

I have 20 DROID X users, each I had to configure to communicate with Exchange, and personalize to secure them, and make them the most effecient. I don't want to have to do that all over again.

Anyway, here is the solution, it was brought out by a user on the Motorola forums as an afterthought, which turned out to be the solution. Thanks for the tip "Salsero."

SOLUTION:

Calibrate your compass in the Settings > Location & Security. Do it slowly and patiently, not too fast. Continue doing the motions until it turns green. It is frustrating within itself I know, because it can be difficult to calibrate the compass.

Once it became Green for a successful calibration, I called the phone and it rang. I then went to the settings for Sounds and disabled (unchecked) Smart Profile: Face Down.

Hope it works out for anyone still having that same issue. This specific DROID X was on Froyo 2.1.

Monitor User Email with Exchange 2007

Since I'm on, let me briefly explain how to monitor your user's email, both incoming and outgoing. I used to do this in a similar way in Small Business Server 2000.

In Exchange 2000, I simply created a Distribution group with me being the member. Then I placed the group into the Exchange server's properties for "Archiving." Then simply create a rule in Outlook to organize all this email your inbox is going to get flooded with.

Of course there was another way, by using a journal type feature which I believe was more demanding on the server, but that is just my opinion.

In Exchange 2007 you can still "archive" the same way using the Journaling feature but unless I find a reason not to, I will be doing it by using Transport Rules instead. Some references mentioned performance degradation using Journaling. At the same time I've also read that the transport rules take a dump after a handful of them. In any case, that's what I've read and not what I've experienced, at least not yet.

Here are the simple steps:

Using Exchange 2007 Transport Rules to 'Monitor' Users Emails Inound/Outbound

1. Organization Configuration > Hub Transport > Transport Rules
2. Create a New Transport Rule
3. Step 1 Select Condition(s): [x] Sent to a member of distribution list
4. Specify the distribution list that all your users belong to
5. Select Action(s): [x] Blind carbon copy (bbc) the message to addresses
6. Select the email address, for example your own
7. Select Exception(s): [x] Except when any of the recipients in the To field is people
8. Select yourself again. This should prevent redundancy if you belong to the distribution list too.
9. Finish

Then create a rule in Outlook that filters this email to a subfolder in your "Inbox." You can use "Where my name is not in the TO box" rule to accomplish this.

Hope this helps better manage email monitoring. Remember to keep in mind the legalities and invasion of privacy when it comes to email interception. In most cases a detailed email policy can inform all employees of such monitoring which would release you of liability, however check with your own state laws to be sure.

Using Exchange 2007 to Add Email Disclaimers & Prevent Redundancy

While I have not been too talkative as of late (mainly due to being tired and stressed and busy,) I wanted to make this brief post in case anyone was looking for a simple solution.

If you want to add a disclaimer to outbound emails there are plenty of tutorials out there that show you how to do it already. Google Search: Exchange 2007 Email Disclaimers

However just for giggles, here is the quick run down:

Adding Disclaimers at the Organizational Level

1. Organization Configuration > Hub Transport
2. Transport Rules Tab
3. New Transport Rule
4. Step 1 Condition: [x] From a member of distribution list (Select a distribution list with members you wish this rule to apply to) HIT NEXT
5. Step 1 Select Action(s): [x] Append disclaimer text using font, size, color (etc)
6. Here of course enter the text you wish your disclaimer to say, or simply use a common/generic one and edit it. At emaildisclaimers.com you can find useful information regarding these legal notices. HIT NEXT
7. Step 1 Select Exception(s) if necessary:
8. [x] Except when the message is SENT to users inside or outside the organization
9. Choose "Inside." (Steps 7 and 8 are optional, depending how you want it to work. I personally didn't want a disclaimer attached to incoming messages but only to those going outside.)
10. [x] Except when the TEXT PATTERN appears in the subject or body message
11. Here simply copy and paste some of your disclaimer, a sentence or less, preferrably less, but choose a portion that seems unique enough to the Disclaimer. So don't choose something like "and the" as this will appear in most emails and the disclaimer will fail to apply. This rule is what will prevent your system from applying the disclaimer to emails that already contain disclaimers. This is useful especially in conversation-type emails where there are a lot of replies. It will prevent clutter.

That's it! Of course test it a few times with an external email and reply back and forth; there should only be one disclaimer from your domain. Hope this helps.

AdminAlive finally went to sleep: this why you thoroughly test migrations, I just pulled a 64hr shift. :-/ and 98% complete. There still needs to be a lot of configurations and tuning done. Goodnight, you know it's been a long day when you start dreaming with your eyes open...

Days Before the Migration

Here I am sitting with anxiety just a day away before I actually begin the real migration of the server. Up to this point I have mainly been focusing on fine tuning all client machines for performance, security, updates and just plain fine tuning.

Today I had to make sure I brought the network cameras back online. They had been offline for a couple of days (2 of them) because of there being no slack in the CAT5 cables. While there is slack I wasn't able to pull it. The reason being was when the holes in the attic floor and drywall were being plugged with expanding foam, the slack was left behind the foam thus locking it at its shortened state. So I had to climb up there and do some dungeon crawling. Here are a few pictures of the adventure in First-Person-View action: