Hi :) I think probably the best way to handle it is to arrange a meeting with your boss. Make sure it's a proper meeting rather than just trying to catch him/her "on the fly" while he/she is busy dealing with other stuff.
Apologise profusely for having tried to save the company x amount of money! That you did so by trying to avoid the needed upgrade to MS Office 2013/365. Explain that you have put tons of your own time into saving the company money in this way. Let him/her know that the office workers are now demanding that the company buy in MS Office 2013/365 at a cost of x. Let him/her know that MS products typically run into many problems when they are first released but that most of those have probably been fixed by now. Let him/her know that by delaying the cost you have ensured that the company should run into far fewer problems with their purchase than they would have done if they had just spent the money back when MS Office 2013/365 was initially released. Maybe point out that there still will be problems because each version of MS Office has problems reading some files from any previous versions and that will continue to be a problem as each new version of MS Office needs to be bought. Maybe follow-up by saying that converting documents to LibreOffice only suffers that problem the one time and that future versions of LibreOffice are built to ensure that old files can be read Maybe say that the whole exercise to save the company x amount seems to have created tensions with colleagues and been disheartening and taken up a lot of your own time and that for those reasons you would rather not be involved with installing MS Office 2013/365. Basically wash your hands of it and point out that your motives were good but that it was tooo much of an uphill fight that you are not happy to continue with. It would help to know the licensing cost, x. For 2013 i've heard around $500/machine for the version with Access in it or for 365 it's probably a monthly figure. Companies can often get a discount and get a "volume" license. DON'T offer to share your research on this! Just make it sound like you have heard a rumour that it costs roughly x. Picking the right version of MS Office is notoriously difficult and likely to run into problems. Whichever version you (or anyone else) choose is likely to be the wrong one and incurr extra, hidden costs = if it's you that did the choosing or recommending then they might think it was you deliberately sabotaging the project so make sure it's someone else that is highly visibly to blame. Similarly with installing it. it's likely to be a lot more of a struggle than they probably realise and is likely to over-run both in time taken and costs. So, again make sure you are visibly distanced from it. Try not to help in any way to avoid getting the blame when they make mistakes! If they need information then deliver it to your boss for your boss to hand on to whoever is doing the installs. Hopefully they'll need to get some external consultants in to do it, and as is typical in the Window world those consultants will be tooo arrogant to ask for any information or help. Maybe at the end of the exercise arrange another meeting with your boss to talk about talking back routine administration of the MS Office systems and just express amazement at just how high the costs were, that you had been trying to save the company from! It might be worth asking a lawyer's advice about refusing to do certain parts of what might be in your employment contract = there might be justifiable excuses. Perhaps time to take a holiday? Sorry this is not particularly useful! I know you have worked hard at this and now find yourself in an untenable situation so i hope you are able to work out a way of freeeing yourself and maybe gain a lot of respect from your boss and maybe from the other workers too. Regards from Tom :) On 1 October 2014 13:04, Tanstaafl <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Werner, > > This regression has already been discussed here, with essentially the > same result (fix it yourself, pay someone else to fix it, or shut up > about it)... > > On 10/1/2014 7:13 AM, Werner <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Tanstaalf, > > > > In the thread "LibreOffice Still" you made a very important point, > > however it has absolutely nothing to do with the main point of the > > discussion on how to name versions and I just by chance noted it. > > > > You then might have a chance of having it dealt with. > > > > Werner > > > > P.S. > > Just a LO user who sometimes reads this list but just about every time > > get frustrated with it due to the misuse of threads! > > > > > > > > On 10/1/2014 12:27, Tanstaafl wrote: > >> <rant> > >> Charles, fyi, in our office, we are stuck on 4.1.6 because of a major > >> regression introduced in 4.2 that is still there today. > >> > >> When our first user reported this after I started updating everyone (at > >> about 4.2.4), so I had to revert them all (I'd gotten maybe 20 > >> workstations updated that weekend). > >> > >> I kept promising my boss that 'they will have to fix this, it is a > >> regression and they treat these seriously' - but here we are, 8 months > >> later, and we still cannot upgrade. Because everyone found about about > >> this, a few very vocal users in our office took this opportunity to > >> start lobbying (again) for replacing Libreoffice with Microsoft Office, > >> and it looks like they are going to win this time. I know it is only 70 > >> seats, and you probably don't really care, but I do. The fact is, I > >> cannot even recommend Libreoffice on new clients in good conscience, if > >> the response to a very serious regression bug report is along the lines > >> of 'well, you can just fix it yourself, it is free open source after > >> all'. > >> > >> *Anytime* a long standing feature is totally ripped out and replaced > >> with something else that causes a major regression, it should be an > >> absolute top priority to fix it in the very next release. In fact, I > >> would say that it should be a part of the agreement that any contributor > >> signs, that if they are the one responsible for a regression like this, > >> they are *required* to fix it asap. > >> > >> So, for us, 4.2 and 4.3 are *both* unstable - meaning, we *cannot use > >> them*, because they lack a very basic capability that we have relied on > >> since, oh, I don't know... version 1? > >> > >> In case you were wondering, it is the new 'Inline Fields' functionality, > >> that when introduced, broke the ability to paste into them, and the bug > >> is still there today, in 4.3.2. > >> </rant> > > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
