Meet The LAN Form

2008-07-18

java.lang.Chris;:
I love the way it's got options for IBM compatible and MacIntosh, but the former is already selected. I'd be straight outta luck anyway - my machine's a Sun workstation.

Don't worry - they'll scan the form in, add a Sun option using Photoshop, and email you a jpeg.

tgape · 2008-07-19

The real WTF is that I once upon a time worked as a contractor at a place that had a 5-page LAN Form.

It had 'required' fields marked on all five pages. No field was actually required, unless the service you needed had pertinent fields in that section - and then all the required fields in that section were actually required. Of course, this wasn't documented.

It had duplicate fields - IIRC, there were no less than three places for one to fill out "requestor's name". One never actually had to enter it more than once, due to the above rule. However, since that rule was not documented, many people filled in all three "requestor's name" fields, all three "requestor's employee id", and so forth.

It was required in full. If all of your pertinent data was in the second section on page 3, you still needed to fax in the four blank sheets, or it was round filed. The pages needed to be faxed in order, or it was round filed.

Some of the fields required sensitive information. If one was needing the type of service requested by that particular section, one would generally have access to that information. However, since the 'required' fields limit was not documented, this was frequently an obstacle. (I knew many people who had simply faxed forms with those fields blank, or filled with 'N/A' or "I don't know", and hoped for the best, and never discovered that they officially had no need to fill out any parts of that section.)

The LAN Form at my former workplace was faxed to an office where two secretaries worked. They received the forms, typed them in to a fresh LAN Form, printed that out, and snail-mailed that to the helpdesk. The helpdesk did the real processing.

My run-in with the group was because my manager had the nerve to have me put up a self-service web page. This only handled one section on the LAN Form, but it allowed a great many users to bypass said form, as it was the most frequently used section (conveniently located on the third page, for those who are curious.) They discovered our audacity when one of the two secretaries noticed that their pile of faxes to be processed was getting smaller rather than larger.

They tried to get us to restrict our service forms to the helpdesk. When the CIOs (not sure how they had more than one, but apparently they did) found out about this, they tried to get us to expand our service forms to cover the whole LAN Form.

Somehow, my boss managed to fight off both changes. (One might think the added responsibility would be a good thing, but we had no tie-in to all of the other groups, and did not want to work with them any more than we needed to.)

Instead, the CIOs kicked off an 'optimize the LAN Form' effort, which included such revolutionary things as:

email the typed-up LAN Forms to the helpdesk, rather than using US mail.
re-organize the sections so that some more frequently used sections were on the first page.
Eliminated those sections which could be handled by web page self-service pages; replacing them with a little blurb indicating which web page one needed to go to.
Allowed people to email LAN Forms to the two secretaries (the initial attempt was to allow them to go straight to the helpdesk, but both the secretaries and the helpdesk wouldn't have that), instead of only being able to fax them.
It was suggested (but never approved) to give the secretaries the necessary access to convert the LAN Forms to helpdesk tickets directly. This was rejected because "they couldn't give that kind of access to a customer" (the helpdesk being outsourced, and all.)

Eventually, the average turn-around time on the LAN Forms was reduced from over a month to less than a day. I left before that happened, but I heard that the secretaries never did get the slow-down they'd feared when they objected to our web pages. Instead, they got some additional responsibilities, and a pay raise.

Meet The LAN Form

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