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Sharky

Shark Tank

Hiding in plain sight

This company is doing the annual bill-of-materials update to its ERP system, and it turns out the easiest way to get the update tool working for dozens of users is virtualization, reports a pilot fish who gets the job of making it happen.

But before it goes to all those users, it has to be exercised by three testers. Fish makes the security changes that let the testers see the app. Then he notifies them, and adds a note that he hopes will help avoid problems:

The Citrix-published application "Lawson Processor" has been created and assigned to the three of you for testing. If you are currently logged onto the Citrix Web site, you may or may not see the application's icon. You may need to log out of the Citrix Web site and back in again before you will see it.

An hour later, fish gets a message from one of the testers:

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I've never had to log in before and I'm not seeing "Lawson Processor." Anyway, all I see is the attached screenshot."

Fish looks at the screenshot. There are nine icons, arranged in alphabetical order. And "Lawson Processor" is right where it's supposed to be.

"So I drew a big red arrow pointing to the icon, showing him where it was, and sent it back," says fish.

"He replied a bit later, apologizing for missing it.

"Sometimes people can't see something even when they include a screenshot that includes what they can't see."

Sharky wants to see your true tale of IT life. Send it to me at sharky@computerworld.com, and you'll get a stylish Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

Now you can post your own stories of IT ridiculousness at Shark Bait. Join today and vent your IT frustrations to people who've been there, done that.

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