Cheeky contractors? Get cheeky back.
We are in the process of migrating our current email service (Hosted on Solaris and bullet-proof) to MS Exchange (Full of holes and operates in its own little world).
Most users here are already using Outlook, so migrating their mail will be a doddle. Slightly more complicated is anyone using something else for their email. The consultants recommend using a bit of software that we have to shell out £800 for. What they failed to realise, despite warnings from me, was that our webmail stores its mail in a really weird format. Outlook holds all it email in one big file. Most other clients have one big file per folder that you see in the client (sent-items, inbox etc). The software we use has a load of numbered directories, one for each folder, and a load of individual files within. One file per message.
The expensive software has no idea how to process this email so I decided to write a script to do the job for us. An hour or so later it was working a treat with only cosmetic stuff to be done.
The consultants were not aware I was doing this, so I had an email from their project manager suggesting that they send their consultant round (at massive cost) to sort it for us.
I replied that in about 60 lines of code I have solved the problem. They replied that it was good that we had sorted it and wondered if they could see the code!!
I think not, why should I make them money for nothing.
Knowing that any programs written on the companies time is property of the company, I asked my head of dept if he had any objection to me doing consultancy work using that code. He said it was fine so I will be replying to the project manager, politely telling him that hell will freeze over before he gets to see my code. I would, of course, be happy to do consultancy work for him if the need arises :)
I very much doubt that they will ask me to do some work for them, but I may as well ask.
Most users here are already using Outlook, so migrating their mail will be a doddle. Slightly more complicated is anyone using something else for their email. The consultants recommend using a bit of software that we have to shell out £800 for. What they failed to realise, despite warnings from me, was that our webmail stores its mail in a really weird format. Outlook holds all it email in one big file. Most other clients have one big file per folder that you see in the client (sent-items, inbox etc). The software we use has a load of numbered directories, one for each folder, and a load of individual files within. One file per message.
The expensive software has no idea how to process this email so I decided to write a script to do the job for us. An hour or so later it was working a treat with only cosmetic stuff to be done.
The consultants were not aware I was doing this, so I had an email from their project manager suggesting that they send their consultant round (at massive cost) to sort it for us.
I replied that in about 60 lines of code I have solved the problem. They replied that it was good that we had sorted it and wondered if they could see the code!!
I think not, why should I make them money for nothing.
Knowing that any programs written on the companies time is property of the company, I asked my head of dept if he had any objection to me doing consultancy work using that code. He said it was fine so I will be replying to the project manager, politely telling him that hell will freeze over before he gets to see my code. I would, of course, be happy to do consultancy work for him if the need arises :)
I very much doubt that they will ask me to do some work for them, but I may as well ask.