Green Paper

Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, therefore I'm dedicating this entry to those who support our systems with a story about my favorite Sys Admin, Ryan.

Within just 5 weeks of being hired into the print department of a large insurance company, I found myself responsible for conducting a "Proof of Concept" or "POC" with a vendor's system, including dozens of users who were unfamiliar, as was I, with the product. The POC focused on a new web application viewer for documents in a legacy system. Enter Ryan, the Sys Admin. I was overwhelmed with responsibilities, since our Project Manager decided to take a vacation during the POC and she left me in charge on top of my normal tasks. This system was entirely new to me, but Ryan stepped in and ensured that the servers were ready and configured, working with the vendor to set things specifically for our types of documents. He was a godsend. So, while I managed users/testers, and conducted the training sessions, Ryan expertly covered my role as technical lead. These are the kinds of teams I enjoy working on. Teams that know when someone is unable to do their job, that someone automatically jumps in and runs with the ball.

Thanks to Ryan, our POC sessions were successful and we save the company millions of dollars annually, by reducing the print and paper consumption, and delivering documents electronically to all sorts of customers. At last count, we delivered over 44,000 documents daily. Someday, I'll have to figure out how many trees that saves.

Do you have a story about a great System Administrator? Please share your story with us.

Download, Save, Copy, and Upload... Rinse and Repeat

While this blog is dedicated to reducing paper consumption, that frequently requires that we first master our file management processes for digital files.

I once had a "Help Desk" call where the user was having difficulty moving files from one place to another. I arranged to meet her at her desk and watch the process she used. She downloaded the document from our Mobius system, saved it to her hard drive, copied it to a network share, then uploaded it to the Filenet system. That is effectively making four copies of the document when I could see immediately, that we could "link" the original file into the Filenet system quite easily.

What experiences have you seen where a document exists in multiple locations? I'm as guilty as anyone else... one look at my computer's desktop screen and you'll see that I'm historically keeping multiple copies of documents.

The Void

I once had a dream where there were stacks and stacks of paper on racks upon racks in this huge warehouse. It was full of paper, yet it was an expanse of void. Where was all that paper destined to go? Would that paper become important contracts representing a security policy, designed to provide financial assistance to some family if their house burned down, or maybe replace their car in an accident? Would that paper end up on the floor of the legislature to land on the desk of the Governor who would sign it and then become the "letter of the law?" Or would it fill the front of the refrigerator as children's art?

The blankness of the paper saddened me. Then I realized, I was at work.