My tech support nightmare.

[mac_mogul]

Are you in software tech support?
Have you ever gotten a call from a customer and while delving into their issue via remote access you accidentally discover a defect in your program that allows you to unintentionally and irreversibly modify the customer's data?

I have!

The software I support is used by companies who need to track statuses. I can't really give away much more than that. ANYWHO, each status comes from a global set of entries. Change one entry and every instance of that entry is changed within the program. The safety parameter is in the form of a confirmation message, "Are you sure you want to save these changes?" Pretty typical stuff.

So the defect I came across while troubleshooting on a customer's machine was a checkbox that allows the entry to be used in particular modules of the program. The checkbox was accidentally unchecked during the remote session as we were both trying to control the mouse and click. Not knowing there was a defect, the user rechecked the box and we continued working. There was no confirmation message so I assumed that no data had been modified.

Lo-and-behold, every instance of that status was now missing from the program!

Unfortunately the person I spoke to was just a peeon and the administrators were out of the office. I get to dwell on this all weekend until we can correct it manually on Monday. Thankfully since this is considered a "defect," it's not really "my fault" (it is, I was the rep on the call and I personally take full responsibility) so I get to keep my job and live another day but I've been sweating bullets all afternoon.

Please tell me at least one of you has a similar support nightmare so I don't have to feel so stupid.

 

[Oreo]

Are you in software tech support?
Have you ever gotten a call from a customer and while delving into their issue via remote access you accidentally discover a defect in your program that allows you to unintentionally and irreversibly modify the customer's data?

I have!

The software I support is used by companies who need to track statuses. I can't really give away much more than that. ANYWHO, each status comes from a global set of entries. Change one entry and every instance of that entry is changed within the program. The safety parameter is in the form of a confirmation message, "Are you sure you want to save these changes?" Pretty typical stuff.

So the defect I came across while troubleshooting on a customer's machine was a checkbox that allows the entry to be used in particular modules of the program. The checkbox was accidentally unchecked during the remote session as we were both trying to control the mouse and click. Not knowing there was a defect, the user rechecked the box and we continued working. There was no confirmation message so I assumed that no data had been modified.

Lo-and-behold, every instance of that status was now missing from the program!

Unfortunately the person I spoke to was just a peeon and the administrators were out of the office. I get to dwell on this all weekend until we can correct it manually on Monday. Thankfully since this is considered a "defect," it's not really "my fault" (it is, I was the rep on the call and I personally take full responsibility) so I get to keep my job and live another day but I've been sweating bullets all afternoon.

Please tell me at least one of you has a similar support nightmare so I don't have to feel so stupid.

I've done similar things but due to the nature of how our systems have been set up, there is always the ability to restore literally any file, programs, folder in the entire business in 1 hour increments. I've broken the securities.fdb file for one of our main databases once, though to be fair it wasn't really my fault as I was following someone elses instructions which were incorrect. It meant a couple thousand people had no access to the company wide database that 99% of employees are working on all day. But it was restored and back up and running within about 90 minutes. No one really blamed me or the guy that made the instructions, I followed the instructions correctly - they were just wrong. And he did know what he was doing, it was just a very simple typo that was unfortunately also very important with regards to what I was changing.