Thursday, September 18, 2008

For those Who Need Help . . .

In addition to the mind-numbingly short-sighted policy regarding the Administrative Assistants, the employees of the CJC also got a warning today not to utilize county e-mails as a way of soliciting help for any person or cause that might need it in the wake of Hurricane Ike. Apparently, somewhere in a government code or something similar, that's prohibited, regardless of how stupid the policy is.

So, that being said, I would like to cordially welcome anyone who wants to post something asking for help (or just pointing us in the direction of someone who might need help) to post it here in the comments.

I'm not looking for a blasting of the policy to not allow the e-mails (I think that policy pretty much speaks for itself).

Let's just use the comments here as a message board for anyone who needs help.

Fire away --

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

or you can use the county message board where you log in using your very trackable ID....lol

Unknown said...

Regardless of whether you agree with the policy, you left out an important and potentially helpful part of the email: that the office bulletin board can be used to ask for or offer assistance. If you've never gone to the bulletin board you should check it out.

Murray Newman said...

No offense, J, but I think the office bulletin board is kind of useless. Most people (including myself) don't know how to use it, and those who do know how to use it, don't check it often enough for it to be an effective tool.

Not to mention the fact that people outside the Office can't access. The whole point of the "help" e-mails was that we could send them to each other and then people from within the office could send them to friends of theirs OUTSIDE the Office.

The Office Bulletin Board just isn't all that effective.

Anonymous said...

a harris county lawyer, using the office bulletin board is so easy. And you don't have to sign in to check to see what on's on it, if you sign up for it, it will automatically send you an email letting you the know what's for sale, help, etc... I think it works good. You are missing out if you are not signed up for it. And if you want to send the info on, you can copy and paste into your own personal email to send out. It's that easy!

Anonymous said...

AHCL, I very much enjoy reading your blog because you give us computer guys a perspective of the office we don’t normally know about. Thank you.

Like you, we want to help communicate people’s needs after the hurricane, while maintaining the office’s email policies; however, I think there may be a misconception about the bulletin board system that I would like to clarify.

The bulletin board system was meant for internal use only because many people complained about receiving emails about various personal topics being sent around the office. They were very vocal about their objection.

As a result, we tried to setup a bulletin board system to allow a way for people to communicate personal needs without blasting emails to everyone. But like many things that happen around the office, what seemed like an emergency one day, is not very important the next. Consequently, I think the bulletin board has gone underutilized because of a lack of interest, not because it is hard to use.

In fact, I think the system is very easy to use. It allows you to self-register with any email address you wish, you can subscribe to whatever topic you want, and receive emails for any postings in that topic. But it’s up to the users to subscribe. And, it takes minimal effort to subscribe.

So, up until this week, the only interest in the bulletin board was the occasional “Free Astros’ Tickets Available” posting.

AHCL, please try it out again, and re-register, as we want it to be an effective tool to help people.

If you still feel as it is ineffective, please let me know how we can improve and revive interest as it should be much more utilized than it currently is.

Thanks...GZ

cjclawyer said...

Perhaps the bulletin board should be publicized more... I've been at the office for almost 2 years and this is the first I've ever heard of it. Further, although I could access my email from home, I couldn't access the bulletin board... should I be checking it out while at work?!?

Unknown said...

CJC lawyer, you can access the bulletin board remotely by accessing your office computer remotely. Once you're in, open internet explorer and click on the bulletin board on the left side of the page.

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