Sounds like the inaugural MangoLassi Conference could be held in France. I'll nominate Lyon as I've never been there and the food is supposed to be out of this world.

About 18 months ago I took out a fairly standard 3rd line support and holiday cover contract with a local MSP to cover for my one-man-band operation when I'm not here. This is a pretty big MSP, employing dozens of people and turning over millions. As part of the contract, an engineer spent a day documenting our systems, and as part of that audit I gave him pretty much all the information someone would need to come in and manage our environment.

The results of this audit were written up in a Word document and included domain admin passwords, wi-fi/AP passwords, server names and configurations - pretty much everything. The company then e-mailed this document to me, in a completely unsecured e-mail. I e-mailed them back saying I couldn't believe they'd send the domain admin password in an unsecured e-mail and they just replied that they do this for all their clients and I am the first one to ever say anything.

I had to spend the day changing all of our environment passwords.

A few years ago, I employed another MSP. This was small, five man operation. Whilst I was away, one of their engineers was providing telephone to support to one of our users and gave the user the domain admin password in order for him to do something. When I returned and found out about it (the user told me), I asked the engineer if he thought that was good practice and was told that it was ok because the user wouldn't remember it.

I no longer trust external parties with my data. There are too many engineers out there who just don't give a shit about client security, either through laziness or ignorance. Which is a real ball-ache because it makes life harder when I am on holiday. I've created separate domain admin accounts for external support parties, and I keep these accounts disabled until they are needed. But since they are normally only needed when I am not here, enabling them is a problem. They also have their own logmein account running on one of our servers. I understand that cached credentials were vulnerable to Heartbleed, but I don't know if they cached credentials. I suspect they have and haven't bothered to tell me to change passwords (as per Logmein's recent advice).

I despair. If a Microsoft Gold partner, HP Gold specialist and VMWare Enterprise partner thinks it's normal practice to e-mail Domain Admin and wireless access passwords to clients in an unsecured e-mail, what hope do I have?

ARRRGGG

Now I know that most of you are great MSPs, so I'm interested in your best practices. How do you keep client details secure, and how to do you satisfy your clients that you know what you're doing. I still have the problem of how to give external support companies remote administrator access to our servers whilst I'm on holiday. At the moment, I have set-up a domain admin account for a colleague and trained her how to enable and then disable the admin accounts for our external support engineers via AD. I also have the domain admin password printed out and stored in the safe, which about five people here have the key to. I'm working on the premise now to "trust no-one", but still be able to take a holiday.

We've been looking into buying one of these last week. It looks horrible. I have two users who want standing desks but have struggled to source one. Our usual furniture supplier only offers one model, which is electric, and just shy of $1500! Other suppliers advertise them, but the specs all state they are only 85cm tall, which is far too short. Based on the need for a 6ft tall person to have their lower arms at right angles, we need desks that are around 110cm tall.

The only realistic one I have found is this, but at $900 it's still a bit expensive:
http://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=0001578442

We don't really need them to move up and down. A simple tall table would suffice - I can't believe how hard I've found searching for one.

I don't know if they're more popular in the US, but in the UK it appears that they're practically unheard of. Apparently they're popular in Sweden as variable height desks are a legal requirement for companies over there.

@Minion-Queen / @art_of_shred - I suspect I couldn't afford the postage for one of yours, sadly.

Not sure if this has been discussed already, but what's the ML verdict? Are corporates starting to choose 8.1 over 7 for new desktops now MS has ironed out a few niggles?

I completely avoided Vista, as HP machines came with XP downgrade rights until 7 came out. So we went from XP to 7. We could miss out on 8.1 as well I guess, and go from 7 to 9, since HP machines come with 7 downgrade rights. But would I be missing out? My users would appreciate the fast boot time of 8.1, especially the road warriors with laptops, but I'm not sure if there are any other advantages? Is 8.1 faster and more stable?

What are you all doing? Is there now any good reason to stick with 7 on new machines?

Also, any good group policy tips specific for 8.1?

How many big companies have you worked for, Scott? I've worked for a handful and found that big companies are often effectively just a collection of small companies, and don't have any have real unified IT support and management function. I consulted for Rolls Royce for a while, and they were very amateurish (although this was a long time ago).

I also worked for Getz Bros who are the largest non-commodity marketing and distribution services company in the US. I got a job as IT Manager for their Hong Kong office. I had no previous experience of IT management (I was previously an analyst programmer), there was no external or internal support in place (I just had a mate who knew a bit that I could ask questions down the pub) and most of the desktops were running Chinese Windows and I only could only support them via an interpreter telling me what all the messages meant (I got real good at recognising Microsoft icons).

From day one I was Domain Admin for an NT network, despite never actually having worked anywhere running an NT network. Miraculously, I somehow survived without killing the network.

What's his job? I'm currently preparing for a new IT employee and that list you posted is basically his or her task list for their first week.

So many free viewers. We used to use Solidworks eDrawings, which was great, but they don't currently support the lastest Autodesk Inventor file formats. So now we use Autodesk Inventor View. However, this software is a bit too limited for many of our users. We're trying to do away with printed drawings on the factory floor, but this means the factor floor workers need to be able to do some basic manipulation on the model in order to get a view of what they need. Inventor View is more of a simple printing tool.

Hopefully, Adobe might come to the rescue.

I so want this:
https://www.recordstore.co.uk/recordstore/recordstore/Lazaretto-Ultra-Vinyl-LP/3B410000000

@Nic said:

In a good way? You should probably give it another shot now, since we went through the big revamp 3 years ago. Webroot got rid of a lot of the dead wood at that time, so CS and support are better now.

I'm tempted. But once bitten, twice shy and all that. It was January 2012 that I got messed around, according to my blog: http://carnivalboy.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/webroot-and-the-case-against-the-cloud/

I get the impression that I was using a cool product from a UK company called EMS, which Webroot bought in 2007 for it's SaaS capabilities and then promptly killed, and I got caught in the crossfire.

@Gabi said:

Back to topic. I found Web Root customer service shocking, but might be different now.

+1

Anyone considered becoming old-skool cool and reverting back to a single 15" CRT monitor.

"You can't beat CRT, man. This new stuff just doesn't look right......"

Finally, ML starts to heat up! I'm always connected on holiday, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. Just because I love my life, doesn't mean it's not healthy to have a 2 week break from it. Time to reboot. Time to refresh. Time to realise what is important in your life.

Or in the words of Tom Waits:

*I never saw the morning till I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine till you turned out the light
I never saw my home town until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody until I needed the song

I never saw the white line till I was leavin' you behind
I never knew I needed you until I was caught up in a bind
And I never spoke I love you till I cursed you in vain
I never felt my heart strings until I nearly went insane

I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west
I never saw the moonlight till it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart until someone tried to steal, tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears till they rolled down your face

I never saw the morning till I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine till you turned out your love light, baby
I never saw my home town until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody till I needed the song*

IT staff should always have one more monitor than other users. It helps show we're special. So once everyone else in the company has two, it's time to get yourself a third.

@JaredBusch said:

I would suggest moving your office to the bedroom

Convenient for mid-afternoon naps as well.

Seriously, I spend 8 hours a night in my bedroom, I couldn't spend another 8 hours a day in there. It would be like being in prison.

I don't get to work from home, sadly. But if I did, I think I'd try and work in as many different locations as I could - the library, Starbucks, the garden shed, the beach....

It's À la carte versus Happy Meal.

@Minion-Queen said:

Part of an open plan office is that everyone must get along.

Indeed. The biggest problem I have is temperature. I like a cold office, preferably with the window open to let in fresh air. Most people, I've found, like a hot office, so in the winter, with the windows closed, and the heating on full, it is like working in a sauna. Certain women like to come to work in the winter in just a skimpy blouse then complain that they're cold. If you're cold then put on a jumper, don't turn the heating up! In these conditions, I find it difficult to stay awake and alert. It's also a breeding ground for cold and flu germs, not to mention being terrible for the environment.

I also have an issue with people who work in a mess and have those furry animals stuck to their monitors and post-it notes stuck everywhere. This may be more of an issue with my own mild OCD tendencies than a weakness of others though.

/rant

@scottalanmiller said:

Yammer is hosted. It is part of Office 365. You cannot run it on premise. We use it as part of our Office 365 package, it is really nice.

I think Microsoft is integrating Yammer and Sharepoint more and more. I'll be trialling it when I roll out Sharepoint this year. The basic version is free and is supposed to integrate nicely with on-premise Sharepoint, or $3 a month for the Enterprise version. You don't need to buy any other Office 365 packages to use it.

@Dashrender said:

I'd say invest in a good pair of noise canceling headphones,

If people wear headphones it kind of defeats the whole purpose of having open plan offices.

What do you think of them? I've never worked in one, but don't think I'd like them. However, after spending the last 15 years in my own office, last week I got a builder to knock down the wall between my office and a colleague's, so I now have some company in our new, extra large office (we're planning on adding a third person very soon). I think three is a perfect number to share an office with - it's quiet, but not too quiet. I got too lonely in my own office, but sharing an office with 30 people would just be too noisy for me.

This thread is inspired by this ultimate $300,000 open plan office desk:
http://laughingsquid.com/the-barbarian-groups-endless-superdesk-seats-all-125-employees-at-their-new-manhattan-office/

What a monstrosity!

My boss is dead keen on the whole company going open plan. He thinks it will aid collaboration. The evidence suggests it won't. See here: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/03/this-column-change-your-life-open-plan-offices

I'm hoping my building work will satisfy him, and when the rest of the company goes open-plan, the three of us will be be left alone in our mini-open-plan office. That's my plan anyway.

Any views on open plan versus private offices.

Certainly here in the UK, it is very difficult to get into the IT industry without a degree. Which really annoys me, as I don' think a degree is beneficial to IT at all (or at least, my degree wasn't). There's an article on Universities by this blogger that I used to read a lot: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-college/ which sums up my feeling about university these days.

It was different when universities in the UK were free (as they were when I got my degree), but now they look terrible value to money to me. I'd be happy if my kids didn't go, but I'm unhappy that it is still difficult to start your career off well without one.

As you get older, and more experienced in the industry, then a degree becomes less and less important. I graduated in Economics in 1994, and that's hardly going to help me get Sharepoint rolled out round here, but I probably wouldn't have got to this point in my career without that degree.