Difficulty to say 'No, It is impossible'...

This morning a user wanted to recover à file saved with problems on the networkyesterday at 7:30 PM. She thought having saved it... but the file was nowhere ! We both scanned file server, local drive, temp folders and trash bin... without result.

I had then to say : "No it is impossible to recover your file , you have to do it again"
She Answered : "I was almost sure it was a problem, thanks for helping"

This means I saved a lot of time by saying "NO , I can not"...and of course explaining this answer !

Not only on support, but also regarding projects, I'm only starting on this : being able to say "No".When it is impossible whatever the reason is : technical, out of time, unknow process for me, and then I save time.

What is your experience on this ? Are you able to say "No" ?

Of Google Dashboard

I discovered today that Google has a good dasboard :Apps Status Dashboard

This allows anybody to have a clear view on Google Applications health... But some Google tools are missing , very important for me : Blogger !

Ok : there is for a status on Blogger service, but a way less clear !

Please, Mr Google, can you please add Blogger to the above dashboard ?

Of justification versus outsourcing support...

Recently, I have been surprised during an interview :

"please describe in few words why your physical presence is needed for the affiliate, if the headquarter can do the support remotely ?"

My answer was based obviously first on the fact that this French affiliate needs a french speaking support available on daytime in France. Moreover, I thought about response time for support, quality of feed back to end users, local management toward French providers of internet and wan, localisation of trainings , localisation of micro project; I'm also the best ears that IT Team in Headquarter could have to get feed back on application they're deploying over affiliate.. At the end , in conterpart, I suggested that I am also the best link to convince end users in this affiliate to apply group policies (at least in terms of IT)

This question was in fact to test my english level both in technical and professional speaking...
The answers were more than ok on both level : english level (ok, my spoken english may be better than my written English) and quality of answers in term of company needs point of view.

But this question is reflecting the most common question about ROI, outsourcing and all these kind of questions that a IT Manager (or even IT Director or CEO !) have daily in mind these years, I'm sure.

So what do you think ? How would you defend your local presence versus outsourcing ? In order to convince the managment that you (or even your complete team !) need to be physically here ?

Or may be , would you help headquarter to hire you (or your team !) to do remote support on this affiliate you so well anderstand and know ?

Of the good usage of support contract... from the Provider !

Today has started as a black Tuesday. As I entered the office 'Hey we have no more mails and can't connect ! Can you have a look ?' - says my boss.

The main Exchange server is down : powered off ! After restarting , I check all loags and (thanks to Nagios tracelog) I can see the outage time : 22:04 (10 PM) so it is not a human intervention in Paris. I so check with HQ in another European country : no they did noting even as test... So I check MSWindows event viewer : not any clear info. Pressed by management , I decide to leave it running.. for three hours !

@ 12:30 - lunch time !! key time in France ;-) - another crash ! I decide then to call HP with our support contract ! And then bingo : less than 1 minute to have ticket open, less than 10 minute for a call back of a technician !! He decided to ask me only two things , without going back to the begining and then decide to ship us new power parts !!! The contract was a four hours supports, but only 1:45 hours parts are in our office. Only 15 minutes to change them. And powered back the server is now live !!

Conclusion : it is a good think to have a support contract ! It is better to have a good provider linked to it. Thanks HP France!