Telecommuting

[Smylers]

David Cantrell writes:

> On 12/12/2011 13:59, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> 
> > They were instead mainly using instant messaging tools and social
> > networks like Facebook - and for most of them, when they joined Atos
> > it was first time they had ever worked with internal email tools
> > like [Microsoft] Outlook."
> 
> I do not, however, believe for one moment that recent graduates are
> unfamiliar with email.  Even if only stuff like Hotmail or Gmail.

I think that's the point. Mass-market webmail clients are sufficiently
inefficient to use that they could easily seem to some as not having any
advantages over instant messaging and the like. Exposure to Hotmail
doesn't really hint at the features of say, Mutt.

> And anyway, if they don't know how to use your tools, you train them.

A fair point.

> * not entirely true. I used it for a year, it was ghastly and I used
>   it as little as possible.

Exchange calendar is used for booking appointments at one of the places
I work. I interact with it minimally -- receiving appointment requests
by e-mail in Mutt, and following a link in those e-mails to a web
interface for accepting or declining. Recently it was upgraded to a
newer version, with 'enhanced' capabilities in the web interface.

One of these is that the web interface now takes it upon itself to alert
me to imminent appointments. And indeed to ones that I've missed. Where
it interprets 'missed' as me not having bothered to acknowledge its
reminder.

The particularly fun part is that during the years of its web interface
(or at least the one served to Firefox) not having 'acknowledge this
appointment' functionality, it'd still been quietly building up a list
of all my appointments and noticing that I hadn't acknowledged them.

So the first think I see on logging into the new system is a message
nagging me that I'm 1773 days late for an appointment. With my last-
boss-but-one, who left the company several years ago. In a building
which no longer exists.

Thanks, Exchange -- that's just what I wanted to know!

Smylers