In which reading the fine manual would not actually have helped
Last night and this morning, I helped two coworkers work through problems with an internal tool that I happen to have written the internal documentation and training for. It looked to me, from what I was able to see in the logs, like the problem was user error - both of them were, completely separately and independently, doing Operation X instead of Operation Y.
Which really made me think, "Gee, how crappy must my training and documentation have been, if it left them so confused? What the hell did I do wrong?"
Until I asked the second colleague, "Hey, why did you do X instead of Y?"
And she replied, "Oh, Y isn't visible in my user-interface."
It's looking like the tool administrator borked up a bunch of people's permissions. Fortunately, my documentation covers what to do in that case.
Which really made me think, "Gee, how crappy must my training and documentation have been, if it left them so confused? What the hell did I do wrong?"
Until I asked the second colleague, "Hey, why did you do X instead of Y?"
And she replied, "Oh, Y isn't visible in my user-interface."
It's looking like the tool administrator borked up a bunch of people's permissions. Fortunately, my documentation covers what to do in that case.