THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2008/11/20/put-the-training-wheels-back-on-office-2007.aspx

I wanted to bring something up in this post that if my tone wasn't clear, let me make it in this post.

It's my job to sandpaper off the rough spots of upgrades in technology.  Over time we have found that upgrading, while not without peril, does indeed give us protection of support, protection of the body of knowledge, and more importantly do show an improvement in productiity.  Make no mistake about it, it's not easy to upgrade.  The "young folks" in the office may embrace new software because they don't have the years of productivity with the old version.  So they will embrace something like Office 2007 with the ribbon bar with less resistance than someone who's been in the office for a bit.  That is UNDERSTANDABLE and it's my job to ensure that through training and through tweaking that users get back to productivity as fast as they can.   Change causes an understandable disruption in the work flow but it's soon gotten back.  But that shock if you don't plan for it can be intimidating.  We buy computers and never build in training time for most of our users. 

So tricks like that Ribbon Customizer help to lesson the shock of change.  It's my job as the IT solutions provider and guider in the firm to ensure that shock of change is minimal.  That's why in Vista I also go into the Users\username\Links folder and build shortcuts to the mapped drive letters so that they have shortcuts to each location they need.

There's only one thing that I have no patience for.  When a user hasn't told me the error they are getting or they expand on the timeframe that the issue has been occuring.  I can't read minds.  So if an issue has been happening on a system and you don't tell me, don't then say "It's been doing it for weeks!" if you only told be about it yesterday.  Secondly if the issue has only been occuring for days, don't say "It's been like this for months". 

It's my job to deal with change, plan for change, ensure that change shock is minimal.

The buck stops with me.