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Messaging unwilling Users

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by twasnt_me

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Hi Folks,

I want to pick your brains - I work in a government office and look after around 700 PC users. Now Users being Users, the majority are ok but the minority (which sometimes is quite large) are either technophobes or just plain ignorant of other team members. Anyway - whenever we have a system problem myself and my colleague will netsend a message explaining the problem, along with an email.

Unfortunately we have a lot of users out there who will not read their emails until set times of day (they are quite "old school"), others will no matter what the message, just click ok.

But some of the others, being touch typists do not sometimes look at the screen. Therefore when the Netsend "pops" up, a press of a key will make itvanish - unread. We've both tried to educate them all....to no avail.

It is causing us problems though, particulary when we have to have everyone logged off due to a problem.

What I'm after is an application which is able to be installed on myworkstation as a standalone app. and not on all stations across the network. It also needs to be cosmetically unique in that it does not look like a windows prompt (Has graphics, different colour etc). Preferably freeware too as our dept is being a bit tight at the moment.

Another reason some Users click without reading is because of our use of inoculan av. This brings up a warning and ok prompts a couple of times a day - therefore the users get used to these and don't read 'em. These look like the Netsend command message.

Any ideas on an application you lot?

Thanks

Mark

7 replies

by oldefar

We had success approaching the problem from a different angle. We had interphone and announce functions on our PBX, so we used it for such situations. The announce system covered the wide spaces and those on the phone, while the interphone coveredeveryone at their cubes.

We also used a strobe which was on for the final 30 seconds before we brought the network down.

Initialy there was some push back. However, we only shut down production as a last resort and we had the backing of management.

by lordinfidel

When ever I send out an official e-mail, it get's sent out as NetOps, with the important flag set and the read reciept initiated.

So, when they get the e-mail, it is their responsibility to read it. If they don't read it or they delete it, shameon them.

They have no one to blame but themselves.

I would not lose sleep over it. The only other thing I can suggest is when you send out the e-mail, put in there at what time the change will happen. And give them some advance notice, if possible.

The whole net send thing and IM; if people are not listening to you now, they are not going to no matter what you throw at them.

Once they are inconvienced once or twice and they confront you and you tell them that, hey you deleted the e-mail or you failed to read it until 2 days later. Then they may start to take you seriously.

by twasnt_me

I tend to agree with you LordInfidel, it's just frustrating that they don't "care" about something which I do.

We already follow the steps you recommended as to regards to email. The read reciepts make interesting reading sometimes - the delay in them actually reading the things can be weeks later!

Maybe we should just walk around with a mike and a portable PA system!

Thanks anyway guys, unless anyone else has any ideas - go on have a ponder.

Ta

by madroxxx

Does your phone system allow you to make broadcasts? I just have our receptionist page the entire building with a "the network will be going down.." message.

by jschein

I work for a corporation with over 2000 pc's... What it sounds like you're looking for is basically a program that will allow you to remotely shut down machines for certain upgrades or add-ons to the servers because of open files.

With hyena, youcan remotely go into any pc on your network and do numerous things you've always wanted to with just a point and click.

You can download their "trial" version and if it works for you show your bosses the uses of this software as it is highly managable from 1 pc, easy to use, creates reports if need be, and spans your entire network.

Also, if on your servers, if you haven't implemented as of yet, you also might want to look into microsoft's ISA server as it is basically a winproxy router/ firewall on crack that has numerous new features such as... you'll like this... "Log off computer's of this group at XXXX time"...

Hyena - http://www.systemtools.com/
ISA Server - http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/

by twasnt_me

Thanks for that, both of those could be very useful. I intend to have a good look at these over the Christmas period and approach the bosses after the break.

Thanks for the tips and Merry Christmas

TwasntMe

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