IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
Turned out the issue was RTP being set to RFC 2833 instead of inband on the phone switch.. So that not only fixed the users dialing 911, it also eliminated a long standing hard to replicate complaint of DTMF issues when dialing into Exchange UM and entering voicemail PIN's.

Asked my basement phone troll about the Avaya-X lite client for IOS, and he claims that it doesn't do anything EC500 doesn't do, and would lock up the helpdesk with support requests as the phone config is extensive. Is he bullshitting me?
The mobile softphone clients are obnoxious to set up, but once setup have less points of failure in the talk path for the phones. Probably not worth it if you got the other issues working.

What did you have for an SBC again?
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,803
The mobile softphone clients are obnoxious to set up, but once setup have less points of failure in the talk path for the phones. Probably not worth it if you got the other issues working.

What did you have for an SBC again?

Our carrier Centurylink provides a Genband Managed SBC I believe. I do know that RTP change wasn't performed by the carrier though, my phone guy did it somewhere on our side.

May have to look at getting our own though depending on the provider management flexibility. Starting to look at Teams inbound routing with on prem PBX and looks like it requires an SBC.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,803
I hate how true this is and that I used to be one.

IMHO, you need to be a special type of masochist and weirdo to be into telephony. I've spent twenty years in IT, and know my Windows and Cisco products inside and out, but have always intentionally been resistant to learning anything but the basics regarding telephony. It's an abomination of ancient technologies and new ones all mashed together, creating a Frankenstein like environment in anything but the newest setup. Then, when you need to troubleshoot shit, it can be your phone, your network, the switch, the carrier, the opposing switch, or the opposing phone. Fuck that.

My phone guy is some closet gay dude from Louisiana that has to be the most awkward, bipolar, worst dressed, gay man on the planet. He is literally instructed not to talk to any human but me or HR, because he instantly pisses people off with his bitchy attitude.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
Our carrier Centurylink provides a Genband Managed SBC I believe. I do know that RTP change wasn't performed by the carrier though, my phone guy did it somewhere on our side.

May have to look at getting our own though depending on the provider management flexibility. Starting to look at Teams inbound routing with on prem PBX and looks like it requires an SBC.
Many of our remote sales team (account reps/sales engineers/design engineers) use the Teams app to make outbound calls from their cells. Our internal IT people mostly use the Equinox app when on the road. Most of the project managers, project engineers and higher tier support engineers that aren't in the actual call queues use EC500. People who spend more time as actual contact center agents use VPN hardphones or have softphone apps on their laptops and gaming headsets.

Teams is actually really good for conferencing and a standard PBX, it's just fucking terrible for IVR menus and anything related to Contact Center. Internally we use a very hybrid Avaya + Teams setup and it works well for ~1300 employees scattered in field offices and on the road across the country. I built out an Avaya+Teams integration in our lab and a lot of our customers use similar setups as well.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
It's an abomination of ancient technologies and new ones all mashed together, creating a Frankenstein like environment in anything but the newest setup. Then, when you need to troubleshoot shit, it can be your phone, your network, the switch, the carrier, the opposing switch, or the opposing phone.
That's what makes it fun!

Also completely maddening.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,803
Many of our remote sales team (account reps/sales engineers/design engineers) use the Teams app to make outbound calls from their cells. Our internal IT people mostly use the Equinox app when on the road. Most of the project managers, project engineers and higher tier support engineers that aren't in the actual call queues use EC500. People who spend more time as actual contact center agents use VPN hardphones or have softphone apps on their laptops and gaming headsets.

Teams is actually really good for conferencing and a standard PBX, it's just fucking terrible for IVR menus and anything related to Contact Center. Internally we use a very hybrid Avaya + Teams setup and it works well for ~1300 employees scattered in field offices and on the road across the country. I built out an Avaya+Teams integration in our lab and a lot of our customers use similar setups as well.

We probably need to keep an on prem pbx because we have a sales team that runs calls reports, does shadowing, and other advanced stuff, but definitely looking at doing the teams integration, just need to get my phone guy to stop dragging his feet on the assessment. I’m guessing a carrier managed SBC won’t cut it?
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,763
We probably need to keep an on prem pbx because we have a sales team that runs calls reports, does shadowing, and other advanced stuff, but definitely looking at doing the teams integration, just need to get my phone guy to stop dragging his feet on the assessment. I’m guessing a carrier managed SBC won’t cut it?
Why wouldn’t you just have a Cisco VGR and then do Call Manager internally? We don’t do soft phones or remote apps so maybe I am not aware that this isn’t the way.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,803
Why wouldn’t you just have a Cisco VGR and then do Call Manager internally? We don’t do soft phones or remote apps so maybe I am not aware that this isn’t the way.

No idea. I do know I once suggested switching from Avaya to Cisco and my phone guy had a meltdown. As much as I dislike Avaya, my guy has 15 years under his belt with them.
 

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
We probably need to keep an on prem pbx because we have a sales team that runs calls reports, does shadowing, and other advanced stuff, but definitely looking at doing the teams integration, just need to get my phone guy to stop dragging his feet on the assessment. I’m guessing a carrier managed SBC won’t cut it?
No, buy a Sonus (Ribbon) if you're doing anything Teams related with Avaya.

SIP links from the Sonus to your Avaya Session manager and a SIP trunk to Teams. SIP links from Avaya directly to Teams as well. Do as much of the digit manipulation on the session manager adaptations.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
No, buy a Sonus (Ribbon) if you're doing anything Teams related with Avaya.

SIP links from the Sonus to your Avaya Session manager and a SIP trunk to Teams. SIP links from Avaya directly to Teams as well. Do as much of the digit manipulation on the session manager adaptations.
Having the SBC lets you add additional SIP trunks to Teams if you need more conference call capacity, something you can't do with the cloud version of Webex.
 

moonarchia

The Scientific Shitlord
23,671
43,147
IMHO, you need to be a special type of masochist and weirdo to be into telephony. I've spent twenty years in IT, and know my Windows and Cisco products inside and out, but have always intentionally been resistant to learning anything but the basics regarding telephony. It's an abomination of ancient technologies and new ones all mashed together, creating a Frankenstein like environment in anything but the newest setup. Then, when you need to troubleshoot shit, it can be your phone, your network, the switch, the carrier, the opposing switch, or the opposing phone. Fuck that.
I just sort of fell into it because my career path inside Comcast had me learning the SIP shit to support our phone services. The layers of oddities and points of failure can be frustrating, but it does lead to a fairly resilient level of job security if you can master them. Or if you are dogged enough to be willing to chase at loose ends to root out what the actual cause is for things you might enjoy it. The company I work for now is a pastiche of multiple telecoms that got merged together a few years ago. Add to that a new TAS type for enterprise clients, and it makes for an ever changing environment. If you can read a call diagram/ladder and know SIP, you can pretty much walk into any telecom and get a decent paying job.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,803
I just sort of fell into it because my career path inside Comcast had me learning the SIP shit to support our phone services. The layers of oddities and points of failure can be frustrating, but it does lead to a fairly resilient level of job security if you can master them. Or if you are dogged enough to be willing to chase at loose ends to root out what the actual cause is for things you might enjoy it. The company I work for now is a pastiche of multiple telecoms that got merged together a few years ago. Add to that a new TAS type for enterprise clients, and it makes for an ever changing environment. If you can read a call diagram/ladder and know SIP, you can pretty much walk into any telecom and get a decent paying job.

Yeah everyone's got their niche or story-- there really isn't any field in IT that isn't in demand right now that I can think of. Hell, if you're some old crusty AS/400 operator you can still make bank. I just prefer tech like Exchange, AD, Sharepoint, switches/routers/FW, etc-- where you're able to troubleshoot the whole stack without having to depend on anyone else, and in complete control of the environment. You can have the best designed phone system on the planet, but because of all the external factors outside of your control, users can still have a very poor perception of the system because of counterparty or carrier issues, and therefore a poor perception of you-- users can't distinguish between the two. If the call drops or there is static on the line, that's always your fault.

IMHO, I have the highest respect for technical basement troll geniuses, and God knows as I get older my enthusiasm for learning yet another version of Exchange is waning-- after you've been doing it for twenty years the "shine" on every new tech/release starts to dim, or at least for me it has. Thankfully and ironically, the real money isn't really in the "technical genius" area anymore, even if that's where it deserves to be. The real money is in collaborative platforms, workflow automation, and other shit that gets you executive exposure and creates clear direct/indirect income.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,240
23,480
7% of my company got let go today, and 0% of them were support techs or engineers.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
42,806
109,279
We got rid of 15 entry level sales on Friday. Sales is such a weird field to me. Entry level sales churns an unbelievable amount and every single guy we have in the higher level sales has been fired from several sales jobs in their career. If you miss your stride in one quarter you're out. So it becomes like either you do well in your first 90 days or you're out.

Last year we fired our top sales guy. We're talking 30% ahead in sales bucks from the next sales guy behind him. Yet leadership fired him because he was an asshole. Which he totally was. Just imagine the douchiest car salesman ever and that was him. But he made the company lots of money and cleaned out all the sales performance rewards for like 3 years straight.

IDK where I'm going with this but gettin rid of low performing sales people is totally normal for us. But so is feeding the machine and hiring more. Which we aren't doing as we're in a hiring freeze right now. I am happy that our product is something that not a single one of our clients can just drop to save costs. Overwhelming majority of our customers are either massive MSP companies or major corporations that do most of their business through websites.
 

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
46,468
98,889
They've furloughed 30 or so people at my company. Not sure if it's because of cost cutting, production or inability to work from home.
 

goishen

Macho Ma'am
3,627
14,740
Probably those people don't have computers or (shockingly) internet at home. I know that we have this idea that the internet has spread to every household. You'd be amazed the households I'd walk into in my previous job, where the people were either not interested in it or too old to grasp the tech. It's either that or there would just be a cable modem sitting there, plugged in and not a smart phone, laptop, computer, or tablet in the house. That shit amazed me.

I truthfully sometimes wish that it'd go back to the 1994-1998-ish days. When nobody was on the net, and the people who were on the net, knew their shit. Right now, we have people believing that the earth is flat connecting to the web.

I know it'll never happen. But I'm thinking that as millennials get older, some of them are gonna buck the trend, so to speak. If you think about how many kids were cyber-bullied (I can't believe I'm even saying this word), you'd think that a normal reaction to that would be a backlash, of some sort.

Anyway.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

ToeMissile

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
3,189
2,071
Looking for a little help.

I'm working on a little python script to automate some Excel workbook edits I have to do when processing physical inventory of my company's service techs.

I'm getting an error in the last for loop. Line 27: (for x in row:),

"Exception has occurred: TypeError
'Cell' object is not iterable"


Code:
from openpyxl.reader.excel import load_workbook

#add Windows UI file picker functionality

#add conversion of file: html wrapped .xls to .xlsx

wb = load_workbook('countsheet.xlsx')
ws = wb.active
ws1 = wb.copy_worksheet(ws)
ws1.title = "count sheet"

rowCount = len(ws1['A']) - 1
ws1['F2'].value = "Count"

y = rowCount

#create column to show on hand vs counted discrepancy or compare OnHand vs Counted 
#clear rows where discrepancy = 0

for y in range(3, y):
    if ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value == None:
        ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value = 0
   # ws1.cell(row = y, column = 8).value = 
   #    ws1.cell(row = y, column = 9).value - ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value
    if ws1.cell(row = y, column = 9).value - ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value == 0:
        for row in ws1[y]:
            for x in row:
                cell.value = None

#Delete unneeded columns
ws1.delete_cols(7,8)
ws1.delete_cols(3,1)

#Sort data
ws1.auto_filter.ref = "A3:E" & rowCount + 3
ws1.auto_filter.add_filter_column(0,)
ws1.auto_filter.add_sort_condition("A3:A" & rowCount + 3)

#test filter
print(ws1.cell["B3"])

#Other functionality to add:
    #Delete rows where OnHand != Counted
    #Adjust formatting
    #Save file

File start:
1586247670662.png



File updated:
1586247751976.png
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
42,806
109,279
Looking for a little help.

I'm working on a little python script to automate some Excel workbook edits I have to do when processing physical inventory of my company's service techs.

I'm getting an error in the last for loop. Line 27: (for x in row:),

"Exception has occurred: TypeError
'Cell' object is not iterable"


Code:
from openpyxl.reader.excel import load_workbook

#add Windows UI file picker functionality

#add conversion of file: html wrapped .xls to .xlsx

wb = load_workbook('countsheet.xlsx')
ws = wb.active
ws1 = wb.copy_worksheet(ws)
ws1.title = "count sheet"

rowCount = len(ws1['A']) - 1
ws1['F2'].value = "Count"

y = rowCount

#create column to show on hand vs counted discrepancy or compare OnHand vs Counted
#clear rows where discrepancy = 0

for y in range(3, y):
    if ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value == None:
        ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value = 0
   # ws1.cell(row = y, column = 8).value =
   #    ws1.cell(row = y, column = 9).value - ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value
    if ws1.cell(row = y, column = 9).value - ws1.cell(row = y, column = 10).value == 0:
        for row in ws1[y]:
            for x in row:
                cell.value = None

#Delete unneeded columns
ws1.delete_cols(7,8)
ws1.delete_cols(3,1)

#Sort data
ws1.auto_filter.ref = "A3:E" & rowCount + 3
ws1.auto_filter.add_filter_column(0,)
ws1.auto_filter.add_sort_condition("A3:A" & rowCount + 3)

#test filter
print(ws1.cell["B3"])

#Other functionality to add:
    #Delete rows where OnHand != Counted
    #Adjust formatting
    #Save file

File start:
View attachment 260114


File updated:
View attachment 260115

The problem here is your double loop.


for row in ws1[y]: <--- This is iterable
for x in row: <--- This is not.
cell.value = None

Keep in mind I am not really familiar with openpyxl but you'll want to do something like this. From what I am understanding here you are looking to update a cell value for your criteria or something? You're going to want this script to write a whole new workbook rather than copy it and try and update cells in it individually.

cell_value = 'None'

for row in ws1[y]:
sheet.write(row_index, col_index, cell_value)
 

Fucker

Log Wizard
12,736
28,975
I truthfully sometimes wish that it'd go back to the 1994-1998-ish days. When nobody was on the net, and the people who were on the net, knew their shit.

Serious rose colored glasses there. AOL discs, 'memba them? Every idiot had an AOL account back then. It wasn't just the users, either. My company got hired to fix an entire ISP soup to nuts, and this was at a large national company. Even their internal network and servers were trash. We fixed that, too. A lot of people got fired over their fuckups.