Service Desk Tech Saved Consultancy Capita From VPN Meltdown, Got A Smack For It

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Maybe I shouldn't have created a page with a juicy name where users could find a solution?

On-Call Welcome, dear reader, to another edition of On-Call, the Register's weekly column featuring readers' stories of calls to step in and save the day...

Something a little different this week.

Readers often ask us not to mention the location of their adventures, but a story set at scandal-ridden consultancy firm Capita recently made it to the emergency post. As usual, the taxpayer asked not to be named, but agreed to give us the name of his employer.

With that background, meet a guy we'll call Terry who took a supporting role at Capita ten years ago.

The gig included the standard support fare: account unlocks, password resets, and software bug fixes.

But a few years later, Terry went to work and "suddenly our switch lit up like a Christmas tree on steroids!" Reg isn't sure if it's okay to give steroids to a Christmas tree, but he doesn't recommend trying it at home.

Whatever the case, the steroid scandal was a VPN upgrade that refused to connect with some sales and management teams who were quick to vent their anger.

Terry did an assessment and found that those who could not log in were running Windows XP; Windows 7 Capita users were fine.

"As you can imagine, things quickly escalated into a 'major incident team' where service managers bravely targeted angry customers to save their lives."

Meanwhile, Terry began resetting the VPN while his colleagues tried to figure out what was wrong with Windows XP.

Then came the order to stop the tools: more than half of the users were able to log in, so the rollback was disabled.

"At this point, our support team is largely devoid of troubleshooting skills that are left to senior server engineers and others," Terry told On-Call.

So the help desk updated their interactive voice menus with a message that basically said, "If you're calling about a VPN problem: go away, we're not authorized to help you."

As incoming calls returned to normal, Terry began to wonder why the VPN change only affected XP.

He took the work home and eventually learned that the first successful Cisco VPN connection to a machine stores a configuration file in the Windows C:\Users\\AppData directory. Armed with standard Win 7 and XP Capita virtual machines, Terry found the file on the Windows 7 image and copied it to the XP image.

Downloaded XP image, connected to VPN... and that fixed the problem.

Terry decided that his next task would be to save the day and make sure everyone knew how smart he was.

So he bought a domain with a name that suggested he was the savior of the Capita VPN mess and hosted the site. On this page, he posted a self-extracting .rar file that placed the configuration file in the appropriate folder in Windows XP.

The next morning, Terry found Capita in a state of nervous tension as the search for a solution continued.

"I calmly approached one of the young men and whispered in his ear: "I fixed it, friend".

Said Jr. went to Terry's website, downloaded the .rar file and "almost fell off his expensive chair when his XP VPN connected after a few seconds."

"After a few hours, my patch was officially approved by the company and we, the service managers, proceeded to distribute the 50KB patch file to XP users."

Management formally thanked Terry for his efforts and rewarded him with several hundred pounds in gift certificates. He was nicknamed "Capita Salvador" by his peers after the website he created.

But a few weeks later, Terry was "summoned to a disciplinary meeting" and given two black points.

One was released because his arrangement violated the company's security policy. Another is that the domain he bought "allegedly discredited the company's name." We told Terry to remove it as soon as possible.

Perhaps for this reason, many years later, he wrote to the place of service!

Are you criticized for saving the day? If so, click here to send an On-Call email and we can share your story here next Friday. ®

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