Mastering: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Chapter 5. End-User Recovery

Oops...

—Any computer user

Life as an IT professional has its interesting moments. That's "interesting" in the same sense as one would use in a curse such as, "May you live in interesting times."

In our experience, few mishaps seem to generate the same feeling of panic that occurs when a user deletes an important file. Administrators may be tempted to sit back and quietly laugh when this happens because the distraught user's emotional reaction usually seems to be out of proportion with the actual value of the deleted file. However, panic is easy to understand when you take a moment to think of things from the user's point of view:

• If the user is computer savvy, then they've just done something that is considered to be the sole province of the rank tyro or the completely clueless. Nobody likes to be thought of as stupid, especially when the mistake forces you to ask for help from people who are likely to be amused by or contemptuous of your mistake. These people are often correct; too many administrators take great visible delight in the misfortunes of their users.

• If, on the other hand, the user is a novice or unsophisticated user, they may be frustrated by the graphic proof of their inability to master a tool that their peers are all using without this level of difficulty.

• For most users, their computers are not their job; they are merely tools to help them get their real work done. IT professionals tend to lose sight of the fact that our work consists of ...