Sometimes being the place where all bucks end up stopping can be a little wearisome. I’ve been tail up working on a major release for one of my products for a few weeks now and this morning I was keen to get a large chunk of a new feature polished off. However, as I am responsible for both technical support and new product development (and everything else in my mISV) I try to get support issues resolved before I start development for the day. Usually this takes an hour or two and leaves me the majority of the day to work on development but this morning I just couldn’t seem to get (what I thought) was a fairly basic point across to a user of one of my products. The email chain went something like this:

To: Support
From: User

My employee can’t clock in.

From: Support
To: User

What product are you using? What version? What browser (and browser version) are you using. Are you getting any error messages when your employee tries to clock in?

To: Support
From: User

It tells them they are not authorized to log in from that computer and I have to manually enter their times.

From: Support
To: User

Oh, you’re using ProductNameRemoved. You’ve set up IP login restrictions to stop people from logging in from un-authorized devices (such as their cell phone). Just log into ProductNameRemoved as the administrator and go to this screen (URL REMOVED) and you’ll be able to adjust the allowed computer IP addresses for your account.

To: Support
From: User

We never set that up.

From: Support
To: User

I’ve just logged into your account and taken a look and you’ve restricted logging into your account to the following IP addresses (ADDRESSES REMOVED)

To: Support
From: User

Oh. Yes I did set that up. My employee can’t clock in.

From: Support
To: User

Why don’t you check what the IP address is on the computer the employee is trying to clock in from. Perhaps it has changed. Once you work that out you can adjust your restriction rules.

To: Support
From: User

Why did you change the computer IP address?

From: Support
To: User

We didn’t. Perhaps your internet service provider has changed your IP address? Unless you have a contract that specifies a fixed IP they can certainly change.

To: Support
From: User

I will check into that. I will give them a call. Thank you for your help!

By this time I’d wasted nearly an hour with this back and forth and (in the words of Homer Simpson) my urge to kill was rising. Thankfully my partner told me to take a deep breath and step away from the computer and go and do something else. So I ducked out, got some sushi, calmed down and have returned for an afternoon that is being entirely more productive.