Tired of doing I.T.'s job

Our studio uses a number of common software packages: Maya, Photoshop and Alienbrain to name a few. It seems like I’m the only one here who actually knows anything about how these programs work, though, and I.T. is continually calling me to ask how to set up or install this or that. Does anyone know of resources that are focused on training I.T. to support these kinds of software or do I just need to suck it up and continue to fix everyone’s software crashes?

[QUOTE=Byterunner;10519]Our studio uses a number of common software packages: Maya, Photoshop and Alienbrain to name a few. It seems like I’m the only one here who actually knows anything about how these programs work, though, and I.T. is continually calling me to ask how to set up or install this or that. Does anyone know of resources that are focused on training I.T. to support these kinds of software or do I just need to suck it up and continue to fix everyone’s software crashes?[/QUOTE]

We work with IT to develop the installation deployments for the commercial DCC apps. For the Autodesk products that mostly involves using their deployment tools and then creating Python scripts that call the appropriate (32|64, network|standalone) installer for the person requesting the install.

I have found that I worked with IT just as much as I did with the rest of the team, I ended up just taking over or being part unofficial IT for licensing and install of art tools.

In doing so, many great things happen so I would not complain to much…embrace it and help train them as well, both groups can learn a thing or two from each other.

Then figure out how to automate the process and help your IT department improve. Your IT department needs to do better, it seems like you need to help them do better. Automate your process, help them improve their processes to wrap in that automation. Many times the frustration I’ve seen people feel with IT has been because IT has never been told better, then TA’s will fix things without being clear about exactly what the problem was or hwo they fixed it, and then they don’t tell anyone, or they just complain without really addressing IT deficiencies.

Alright, you guys make total sense. I guess I’m just feeling the pain of being the only TA here and having way too much to do with no time to do it.
Any resource recommendations for automated installs? I haven’t had any experience with doing that.

[QUOTE=Byterunner;10541] I guess I’m just feeling the pain of being the only TA here and having way too much to do with no time to do it.
[/QUOTE]

I feel exactly the same. But after a year of pestering my boss to contract more people he started interviewing some applicants.

Don’t know if you guys have the same restrictions TI imposed me (no admin privileges at all, even locally), and wished to know if that’s default.

If you don’t have a lot of time document it. When we make clear instructions and give it to our IT guys, there really good at following them to the T.

I will echo the views that you need to work with IT in the same way we work with other teams. Determine consistent processes for deployments, and have scripts to automate the deployment of your tech etc, so that the person setting up a new machine doesn’t have to have any in depth knowledge of your code base etc.

If there are crashes which you think are related to hardware etc it’s a fine line as to where the problem may be so it’s important to keep the relationship between the IT and the TA department health because the only way to solve issues like that is teamwork.

As to the question of admin rights, I would say it’s a pretty big requirement. Though I have never worked at a company where that was much of an issue.

[QUOTE=Gavazzi;10543]Don’t know if you guys have the same restrictions TI imposed me (no admin privileges at all, even locally), and wished to know if that’s default.[/QUOTE]

That’s not default but not uncommon. Try and change it, if you can’t, plan to get out- no company that operates in that way is healthy. Seriously. Leave.

Here we have poweruser accounts on our own workstations, which some restrictions (e.g. no registry and restricted usb connectivity) which is not too bad.

Artist machines are totally locked down - no privileges at all (maybe because we’re in China where © means nothing, maybe because we have so many different clients, or both). Artists often cannot install software, there is no registry access, no internet access, no usb except mouse, wacom and kbd.

This is the most annoying for us when writing and deploying scripts. We just cannot do what most other TA’s take for granted. Even some of our clients often assume everyone has full admin rights when they give us their tool suites. Some are surprised by that, others demand this sort of security with an outsourcer. On top of that we have OSes from XP to Win7 and Maya versions from 2008 - 2011 and Max from 2009 - 2011 all in x86 and x64 flavours because some of the client’s tools only run in certain configs.

We got a good relationship with IT though, so they can remotely disable some restrictions while we deploy tools. But once everything is installed the security is in place again.

But yeah, tool deployment is quite challenging for us :wink: