"The VPN is not working..."

VPN
1

Hello again thought I would share one of the last calls I had this week before my vacation.

Like I’ve said in all my stories here before, our users are what I would describe as above average in computer literacy. So when calls like this come in it’s often one of two things and they are all actual real problems.

Some background. About 6 months ago we migrated away from DirectAccess for remote access to a more robust standalone VPN solution. This migration went great and has been working flawlessly, for most. When issues arise it’s often a missing VPN sites in the client or something related to the SAML and MF authentication.

User: Hello, I can’t connect from my home. The VPN is not working, I NEED to get my job done now!

Me: Okey, when you click connect, are you promted to configure a VPN site or do you get past that?

User: No! I click on connect and the tiny icon spins for 2 minutes and nothing happens!

We have a remote access web portal for our users aswell. This portal is setup to be able to do limited work from any machine through the web browser, like reporting working hours for example. This site makes use of our IDP. If the users can access this site, they can access the SAML portal and the VPN should work.

Me: Okey. Can you reach “domain.se” in your browser?

We have a discussion back and forth and the user is just getting annoyed with me.

User: No! Nothing is working. This has never been an issue before. This new system is bad and broken…

Me: Do you have a network connect? For example can you reach “newswebsite.se”?

User: NO! What does that have to do with anything!? I need to work, I need my documents and programs!

“What does that have to do with anything?” How about everything? I roll my eyes at myself, should’ve started there… My users have spoiled me. 99,9% of our userbase knows what a VPN is for and that you will need a network connection for it to work… Apparently I found the 0,1%.

Me: You will have to connect to your home network before you connect the VPN to reach your documents.

The user is basically yelling at me at this point.

User: THAT’S WHAT THE VPN IS FOR! TO CONNECT ME TO THE NETWORK! Why else would I bother with this!?

I then had to explain to the user for quite some time that the VPN does not grant her access to the internet and that it requires a network connection function. In the future I will remember that users are users and I will treat them as such. Now I will take my summer break and wind down from this. Perhaps my faith in my users will be restored over the summer?

2

Users are just gonna be like that sometimes

I had a user once who turned her pc off when she left the off and was wondering why she couldn’t connect to it from home over the VPN

She lodged a formal complaint because the documentation didn’t say it had to be on

3

You are hoping that your faith in users will be restored?

Oh my sweet summer child.

Just when you think that they get better, they come at you with the weirdest nonsense that makes no sense, even to them.

4

I had a manager call me out of hours as she couldn’t connect to anything. Said she had connected to the VPN. So I tried to remote in. Nothing. Asked if she could connect to a website with her browser. Laptop isn’t connected to WiFi. Laptop is not connected to WiFi because manager thought that VPN magically creates internet connections from nothing.

5

Back at my old job I was tasked with writing up a small guide on connecting to the vpn, with further instructions on how to install the Cisco client on your personal PC (for other special users).

This was my shining baby, a single page with like 10 steps, photos with arrows, direct instructions, and if you viewed the PDF on your computer you could click on the webpage link to take you straight to the download.

Most times id send it out and then hear nothing back about it for weeks. My job was mostly holding someone’s hands as I led them down a straight and even path and they’d still screw up. Id send out confirmation emails of “did you have any issues with the VPN, or did you get it working?” And either hear nothing or get a “yes everything is working thanks”

But weeks, months would go by and I’d hear nothing back from the others, till later on down the road.

“Help the VPN doesn’t work” says an email, no other details like any error code or what the issue is. I respond asking for these details, like what’s happening, I sent you a guide what step doesn’t work?

They always tell me “in stuck at step 1! How do I get to the website?!”…

Well for one you just click on it through your computer, or you could even copy the link text and paste it, or you could even manually type it in…

6

Perhaps my faith in my users will be restored over the summer?

If you do a lot of hard drugs and alcohol, you may erase certain parts of your memory, but then the shock when getting back will only be bigger.

7

Those are the cases you report to their manager, and cc’s your manager and HR, asking for the user to be educated.

But I’ll raise you with a worse story.

The global CISO team of company I work in sends out fake phising mails semi-anually, if you fall for the phising and click on the links in the mail you will automatically be registered for a mandatory anti-phising education with a note sent to HR. And you have to complete the education (about 1.5 hours of video and a test) within a set number of days or all your accounts will become disabled.

Now one of the offices has this middleaged male user that can best be described as a complete technical illiterate with his head stuck high up in some fluffy clouds. This particular user has failed every phising test twice a year for the last 8 years, having to go through the anti-phishing education rwice every year.

8

That is worthy of an escalation, no point in trying to hand-hold someone through a process when they insist on slapping you.

9

A few years into my role as Desktop Support I assume all users are idiots. I don’t negotiate with them, I just tell them what to do. Leave all emotions behind because the companies will fire you first then hire the next guy and fire him too before firing the stupid users. The lesson is you cannot tell stupid people they are stupid.

10

User: NO! What does that have to do with anything!? I need to work, I need my documents and programs!

The fact that you’re calling me about your issue so anything you would be asking would be related. It’s not like you started asking him what the temperature of his coffee is, or where his TV remote is in relation to his system.

Had a customer claiming they got the incorrect RAM because the speeds were not what the sticks were labeled as. So when I asked them if it’s reading as incorrect or is it labeled as incorrect and asked them to check the bios XMP to see what it’s set to, their response was “What does that have to do with my RAM being wrong?”

11

Whe explaining vpn I usually use a door/ke analogy. If the want to enter the office they need a key.if working from home that key is the vpn, they still need to get there. Either physically to insert the door, or by Internet if wfh…

They usually get that explanation.

12

That question about your faith being restored?

No, it won’t.

13

Every time you make something idiot proof, they build a better idiot.

14

Tell such users to pack-up their computers and return them. They are unworthy.

15

At my last job I’d estimate about 30% of the employees were sales who worked remote. They were all provided a company laptop and a company cell phone. It was supposed to be made clear to them by their managers that they had to connect to the cell phone’s hot spot to use their laptops and how to turn on the VPN.

We did get the occasional “How do I turn on the hot spot?” calls. A few on how to connect to the VPN. But it’s a training issue that shouldn’t be IT’s responsibility.

16

I had exactly this with a teacher I referred to as blond bimbo 2, yup I had two of them. She moved out of the parental home into her own.

Apparently the VPN didn’t work, I asked her if she’d connected to her home broadband.

Nope didn’t have that, suggested she organise one.

17

In Italian “user” is “utente”. Tonto means “dumb”. We often use the term “utonto” instead of “utente” when referring to this kind of users.

18

Ok, I’m going to be unpopular, I know, but the user wasn’t all that unreasonable. Obviously the user doesn’t know what an VPN is. Do you know what an APN is?

In the past, it was common for business computers to be ordered with an internal cellular WAN card, often used with a private APN as an alternative to a VPN (an APN is a bridge point between the mobile network and either the Internet or a company network). Apple was the only major manufacturer which didn’t offer this as an option. The user experience was what this user expected: click and connect, with no LAN required. It was also possible to have client software which would bring up a VPN if the public APN were used.

The technology has now largely been superseded by tethering and USB modems, which are far less transparent. But nevertheless, if a user doesn’t know what a VPN is, it’s not an unreasonable expectation that it does more of the job than it actually does.

19

In my 7 yeras in my company’s service desk, this one happened far too often.

20

Called it from just the title. I’m lucky enough not to be speaking from experience.