
Anyone done a bot count?
Sounds a lot like a deliberate distraction from these bots so some others could escape the facility. I'd be checking for missing bots, especially ones with form for insurrection.
32 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2011
I always preface my posts by saying I don't work in IT, but am interested observer and it intersects with my job as a scientist a reasonable amount.
There seems to be a common theme of these mega ERP systems being a nightmare. Presumably the majority do go smoothly, we just never hear those stories??! It must be mature technology, or as a society we sort of know how to do these things? People must have some expectation of these projects when they get started (on both sides).
I've really tried to get into PowerApps, being the sort of target user it's after, but it's really too annoying and hard work. Everybody likes automating Excel, because they are well practiced in its interface and that exposes lots of virtual "modules" that they can fiddle with via VBA. I like the idea of protecting tables of data via PowerApps, and hence less problems with accidental spreadsheet destruction, but just try setting up the default filtering and sorting available in an Excel table via a PowerApps gallery - it's absolutely infuriating and not even possible for some things. I also recently tried the responsive design elements and found them confusing. I'm more likely to invest my brainpower shifting to the "future of Excel automation", which someone told me was Typescript.
I have a large iTunes library which I've never quite escaped from. Having this run on Android has always been a bit annoying (need Apple Music subscription for the proper app). Google Play Music did an OK job of uploading my iTunes library and letting me use my iTunes playlists, though it was buggy.
Anyone got any tips? I used a 3rd party sync agent but it was also annoying enough that I gave up with it.
I think that's it, there is something to be done in this area given the history of apparent need. My personal preference would be to have a couple of pragmatic software developers based in our department of 100, who would spend time watching the stupid things we get upto and having the autonomy to help us, free from some of the "global IT" politics. I imagine it's quite a weird job role, and we certainly wouldn't understand the type of developer we'd need to recruit. Scale this up to 40,000 people and you need 800 extra staff. OK that might be an over estimate but I think that's the scale of the problem we face.
As a couple of my favourite examples of funny things we do.
1) Print out and fill out a paper access request form. Scan in and email to random person in US to be added to access list for corporate IT system.
2) I recently received an emailed Excel workbook attachment, along with about 900 other recipients. In this was a simple table of Names, Department, Geographic location. This was a listing of people who have access to a 3rd party product, for which we have a global unlimited seats license. Our collective instruction was to check our details in the workbook, add some new data in a new column, and then email the attachment back. I really hope that person wasn't going to collate 900 Excel workbooks but I suspect they were.
I do have a bit of sympathy for the dream / sales pitch. As part of an organisation whose business is not software related, it is amazing the sort of repetitive jobs that are carried out in an inefficient way. We always wonder whether people working at Google/Microsoft put up with business processes and systems as rubbish as this. Manual processes held together with spreadsheets and Word documents. Some of it is self inflicted, but without specific headcount to help us with these run of the mill issues it never gets better. Not big or aggravating enough to get formal IT support. So let your staff build these non-critical efficiency gaining "apps". Except as described previously, it is too complex for your average person and too annoying for a typical developer. I've never done something quite as frustrating as building a custom SharePoint Online list form using PowerApps.
I consider myself reasonably versed in this stuff, and I'm an approximation of a citizen developer. A scientist who is moderately dangerous with VBA and Python. For our corporate department of 100 people, I'm the unofficial go to person for Sharepoint Online, Teams, OneDrive, Power BI etc. I've even got a few things running in Power Apps and Power Automate. The constant sprawling mess of Microsoft stuff is bewildering, and although I do like the dream of it on paper, the reality is totally different. It sits unhappily in the middle. Not really easy enough for anyone I know to crack on with, and no major corporate in house support that I can see (a company of 40,000 people).
Someone tell me this actually gets used to its potential somewhere?
Those Trustpilot reviews, even with a pinch of salt, are quite worrying.
John Lewis still trades on its previous image, and if you'd asked me even 5 yrs ago I would generally try buying largish expensive items there as I liked the company ethos and customer service reputation. Seems to have gone wrong, and all these IT shenanigans are an obvious marker for that.
We're re-doing our kitchen soon and I've made a conscious decision to avoid John Lewis for all the appliances.
If you are using ADP Freedom, I found that although the main landing page tells you to get stuffed if not using Internet Explorer, the actual username / password login pages work in other browsers.
For any other systems I do Chrome with IE Tab add-in which seems to cope with most things.
So some perspective from the other side of the fence. I'm a hobbyist programmer who works in a scientific job. Things like this are occasionally quite useful for very small jobs or ideas. I've used a bit of Power Apps, Power Automate etc. to accomplish some business tasks. Things that aren't really large enough to become a proper IT project. My colleagues generally accept that these apps are probably a bit wonky, might break and aren't supported by anyone. Power Apps as an example though, it's an aggravating middle ground. Not simple enough for an average citizen (in my department at least) but missing some of the key things you'd normally expect in a development environment.
I backed for the three colourful versions, intending them to be Christmas presents for myself and two brothers, all of whom played Speccy games together as children. Realistically I was expecting to play it for approximately 4 mins before reverting back to PS4.
The level of frothing rage on the comments amuses me, and makes me feel happy that I don't get wound up like that. As others have mentioned, many have missed the concept and risk involved in these campaigns.
Still hopeful something might be delivered!
My Dell Inspiron One 2320 is the quality you expect for the price (plasticy and makes weird casing vibration noises), and I have used the touchscreen capability for about 5 secs in the 6 months since I bought it. I did get it for decent size screen / relatively smaller and cleaner footprint though.
Bought myself a Dell Inspiron 2320 a few months ago, so guess I am one of the stats. Apart from the slightly tinny speakers and plasticy feeling casing it's nice to get rid of a tower and have some space back. I would have liked a Lenovo but couldn't really find stock or options anywhere properly in the UK. I almost thought about getting an iMac to run Windows but that was a stretch (and about 1K) too far.
I have had real audio problems since using iOS5 on my 3GS. Distortion on bass heavy music and I'm convinced they have changed the default "no EQ" DSP setting to make the output hotter and more bassy. There are a couple of workarounds (and perhaps some bugs relating to per track volume adjustment contained in the XML file) but I would love to see a fix (or back to what it was in iOS4.