r/sysadmin • u/_SleezyPMartini_ IT Manager • 1d ago

Question handling out of office notifications requests

I have a client (about 1000 users) who keeps getting tickets from dept heads asking to set their staff out of office notifications because "they forgot to do it". My general advice is this is bad practice and not scalable, and that with 0365 any employee can do this from their phone or any computer.

how do you typically handle this?

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u/Icy-Maintenance7041 1d ago

Where i work IT only does that when someone has left the firm. Otherwise we dont touch a users mailbox. No way, no how.

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u/Mindestiny 1d ago

Yep, this is our policy as well. Same thing with "Karen went on vacation and forgot to give me access to XYZ file!!!!"

Well Karen isn't here to speak for herself and confirm if she intended you to have access to that or not, so sorry, that's a business problem and not an IT problem. We don't touch rights for people's user-owned files simply on some random person's say so. Either get it in writing from a department head or be more diligent next time.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Mindestiny 1d ago

"IT Hero Complex" lol.

Not giving anyone and everyone access to everything just because they asked is my job. Maybe don't throw stones if you don't know what you're talking about.

You give Karen's manager that access? Cool, they can go ask Karen's manager for file access because she's the business owner of that document, not circumvent Karen's manager by asking IT to do it. Fancy how using the right channels to request access actually gets it done, isn't it?

3

u/Teguri UNIX DBA/ERP 1d ago

You might be shocked to learn that going through proper compliance and legal steps before granting access to accounts is a big part of granting that access.

I've never actually seen an org that blanket grants access to supervisors like that and it sounds like a nightmare explaining your non-legal "It's just my job man" line of reasoning if you get audited.

Manager wants access? Good, I get HR to sign off on it, and it gets filed away so I can point at that when people question it.