this post is officially a decade old now

For anyone who wasnt around when this happened, this was real. Littlefuckinmonster was actually stealing bones from cemeteries. She is the bone stealing witch. She was specifically stealing bones from poor people. She was arrested for it.

One tiny part of this that adds a bunch of time:

The password manager we used at the old place allowed us to have personal vaults that were accessible to admins and to us; the new place does not allow this so the vault is shared. That means that the already bad browser extension for our password manager is rendered completely useless (you can't search, you have to scroll, our company vault is over 300 passwords, and it doesn't autofill you have to paste, and pasting means the extension closes and you have to open and scroll to get the username, the password, and the TOTP, so you don't do any of that you just open the password manager in another window; the password manager has a mandatory timeout of 15 minutes in the browser). "Log into vendor website" is one step, except that it's one step that also includes two levels of passwords and authentication. Because our shitty password manager doesn't have a useable browser extension. Because it's not actually meant to be a password manager it's supposed to be a documentation platform.

Also let’s go step by step:

In my PSA I have a ticket, I click on the ticket and that opens a window (1). I have to pop the time entry into a new window (2) in order to create an opportunity (3), which lets me input some data before I say that I want to create a quote from the opportunity, which opens a new window (4) and a new tab. I add the product information, but to know who I have to send it to I have to go back to my PSA and click on the client, which opens a new window (5) and then click on the contact (6), then copy that data before I hit send, which opens a new window (7) to send the email; I need to make sure to CC our support team and paste the client info into the “to” field before I go back to my ticket and copy my ticket number into the subject line of the browser email window so that I can send the email and it will go to the client, send me an email, and get added as a note to the PSA.

Then I can go back and close those seven windows so that I can click on another ticket.

PSA at old place: chrome-based but standalone app that just opened everything in a new tab in the app instead of opening endless new windows and creating new tabs in whatever non-PSA-window I was last in in Firefox.

^^^ direct link for artists!!!

Hmm. Perhaps the haters are right. Perhaps I do have too many tabs open to be effective.

The tab control extension I use is “Simple Tab Groups” and it is much worse than that screenshot. Those are just my work windows. This is about two thirds of the ones I’ve got going right now.

The blue bars on the left side indicate windows that are currently open, the numbers on the right indicate how many tabs there are in each group and how many of the tabs in each group are active (I also use Auto Tab Discard to sleep unused tabs that aren’t playing media).

If I could force the work PSA/CRM to open new windows as tabs in one window I would *LOVE* that, but I’ve not been able to force it to do that yet.

Simple tab groups is great. You open a window, you create a group in the extension and label it, and then if you close the window everything in that window is saved. I like that I can drag things between windows so that when I forget and inevitably open a work tab in the youtube window where I’m playing a dan olsen video for the 5000th time I can drag it back to the work window where it belongs.

It has also been a great way to save tabs/research for ongoing projects. If you thought I was done yelling about feral cats and updating my website page on feral cats with more information about why you should have indoor only cats (ESPECIALLY NOW, ESPECIALLY WITH BIRD FLU) you were incorrect I just haven’t had time to write.

Hmm. Perhaps the haters are right. Perhaps I do have too many tabs open to be effective.

Oh! Oh, I am angry about documentation. I'm angry about hardware documentation and I'm reacting to it in unhelpful ways.

A lot of the stuff that's lingering in my queue is stuff that I gave up on because I couldn't get answers after repeated requests and some of the other stuff is stuff that I don't want to close because if I close it it will disappear.

Both of these are tied into hardware documentation. At the last job, hardware documentation was done through configurations that the techs and I maintained and that I largely built from scratch; if I needed to know when a server was installed, what kind of drive it needed, what its serial number was, when it expired, and what the warranty renewal part number was, I went into the configuration where I had entered all that data *and* had attached hardware manuals so that if I ever needed a replacement part I could just refer to the manual.

Our current company does configurations that are updated automatically from our RMM but if you save changes in there (for instance, add hardware part numbers or an installation date) the changes will be overwritten when it autosyncs from the RMM. This is helpful for the techs, who need to know what the latest status of the server is, but not helpful for me (who needs to know what model of RAM we installed in the device).

Not only does the new company not have documentation, I also *lost* all of my documentation from the old company because we didn't keep a license for our old CRM.

The reason tabs are a concern is because I'll often go "Oh, this is important, I don't want to close this, let me put it in its own window" but then the service gets logged out and I lose the window anyway and tragically I can't put these windows that get popped up into one tab that I can keep track of in my tab management extension so I just end up with like twenty windows that say "you have been logged out."

So I’m frustrated. Our software is frustrating me. I don’t have a good documentation solution for hardware because the solution that worked for me before doesn’t work with our software. In the past I would have opened active projects into new tabs in the CRM, but this tool doesn’t do that, it opens a bunch of windows that get lost.

I also used to rely on looking through past history to find part numbers and orders and such; I don’t have that available to me now because we started using our quote management system in July, and also a lot of the systems the new company has are configure to order so we don’t have the component part numbers listed anyway.

So what I need for a lot of the stuff that takes up a ton of my time is good hardware documentation for procurement purposes, which includes documenting hardware part numbers and component part numbers. That’s one thing.

I also need a way to keep track of what stuff is open/important/needs to be returned to in a timely manner because keeping tabs open isn’t going to work since our software works in my browser. I have considered installing a totally separate browser just to run the PSA in, but I think that will be a disaster considering how many windows it opens.

However also the client who is moving their 200-person business into a new building on May 16th and who told us that TODAY can eat shit what the fuck.

hey what's up my job is making me feel crazy again.

HEY WHATS UP MY JOB IS MAKING ME FEEL CRAZY AGAIN 2

We have these firewalls. Firewalls have licenses that expire.

We have an RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management), a documentation platform, and a PSA (professional services automation tool). All of these are owned by the same umbrella corporation and should (in theory) communicate with each other.

Your RMM should install an agent on the devices that gathers information and helps you to manage the device; the RMM sends data to the configurations in the PSA, and in our case the documentation platform syncs with either the PSA or the RMM to update the info in the configurations in the documentation platform.

In my experience, managing firewalls as an MSP works best when you’ve got a multi-tenant management platform that lets you access basic features and enable licenses and do updates on all your devices from one platform. For many nice firewalls, that’s a free feature of the device. You can enroll them in the management platform for free.

Not with fucking fortigates. If you want to manage fortigates you need to have a forticloud account that you authenticate to with a fortitoken - their very own special authenticator app and they won’t let you use another authenticator - so that you can get your forticare subscriptions taken care of. They have a multitenant option called fortimanage but it’s fuck off expensive; there are two options for multi tenant management that are less-than-fuck-off expensive but are still not free (the one we’ve considered has an annual cost that’s about what I take home every two weeks). Fortigates can fortifuckthemselves.

So. To manage the fortigate without having to log into an individual forticloud account and use the business owner’s specific fortitoken authentication, we remote into the server and manage the firewall from there.

This is, in industry terms, fucking stupid. (it’s not completely fucking stupid but when you’re managing three hundred fucking firewalls it sure isn’t smart).

Anyway. You can avoid some of that pain in the ass by using your RMM to track network devices so that you can get real time data on how your network devices are doing without having to individually log in to each one. And as a bonus, you can have the RMM send data to the PSA so you don’t even have to log in to the RMM to get basic specs, and information like the expiration date of a firewall license.

Because, let me be crystal fucking clear: I, as the procurement lead, should not be logging in to a client server to access their fucking firewall so that I can see when the license expires. This is WHOLLY ASIDE from the fact that our RMM and my PERSONAL COMPUTER THAT I WORK FROM BECAUSE I DO NOT HAVE A WORK MACHINE do not get along, and whenever I have to log in to a server my dyslexic ass to manually type our gibberish 32 character passwords and then connect MY PERSONAL MACHINE WITH NO ANTIVIRUS OR TRACKING SOFTWARE THAT I DO HACKER SHIT WITH to the client’s server. I don’t like doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this, and when I have to do this it takes forever because I can’t send paste as keystrokes I *KNOW* there is an option to send paste as keystrokes I have replicated this issue with three of my techs and in two support tickets with the vendor my computer hates the system, the system hates me, I have to type the fucking passwords and sure you could say “well just install the latest version of chrome and maybe that’ll fix it” and I say again THIS IS MY PERSONAL MACHINE YOU ARE GETTING OPERA AT BEST AND THE ISSUE OCCURS IN OPERA CHROME EDGE BRAVE AND FIREFOX ON MY MACHINE.

So. It’s a very good thing that there is an RMM Agent that gets installed on network equipment and updates information in our configurations on two separate platforms, right?

Well.

For one thing, I don’t know why some clients have fortigates showing up in their network devices on the RMM and some don’t.

In our documentation platform, I don’t know why some fortigate configs are called “Fortigate FG60 Firewall Client” and some are called “FG60F-FW-CN.” I don’t know why our documentation platform has a search bar that isn’t for search terms, it’s for filters, so when you enter a term in the bar you aren’t searching the whole config for that phrase you are filtering the tenant by five main fields so if “Fortigate” appears in the body text but not in the description, name, product number, or device type it won’t show up when you “search” because you’re not searching you’re filtering.

And I don’t know why our PSA, RMM, and documentation platform, which are all made by the same goddamned company, don’t play nice with each other and will erase information that one populated to the other.

So. I have a client who, to my knowledge, has one fortigate that is expiring in June. I believe this is the case because I searched her tenant for “Fortigate” and found a device that was in service and had an expiration listed as June. To double check that this was correct-ish, I went to our RMM and looked up their site, and their site didn’t list any firewalls in network devices, just a single switch. So I sent a quote for a one year renewal that the client approved yesterday.

APPARENTLY the client ALSO has a DIFFERENT firewall that is expiring today, so after work my coworker asks if I’ve got the order number for the firewall renewal and after much back and forth it turns out my boss ordered the renewal and the order is processing, and I’m like “Hey okay cool that we’re renewing but it looks like you actually renewed two firewalls.” And my boss is like “Yeah they have an FG60” and I’m like fuck, okay, fine, so I search the documentation platform and sure enough, there it is, an FG60 that expires today FUCK. I look at the config and hey that’s not so bad, it’s their backup, and I check with the vendor, even if the license expires they get firewall functionality and VPN functionality. Okay. And it’s their backup, just in case of literal power outages. So I say “okay, I’ve got a quote out to them for the one that renews in June, I didn’t even realize there was another one there, we need a naming convention that will ensure that these show up for any searches of fortigates” and my boss says “The date in the configuration is wrong, the other one expires today too.”

So I sit there and I look at the configuration, and I look at the other configuration, and I look at our RMM, and I ask my boss “Did the date get entered manually and it was incorrect? Is it pulling this info from the RMM?”

And my boss says “The RMM and the documentation platform and the PSA sometimes overwrite each other and change the dates, but also sometimes people enter the number manually.”

So I say “Okay, so just to clarify, the expiration dates listed in our documentation platform are inaccurate and the only way to check the expiration for fortigates is to log on to the server and connect to the firewall and view the expiration date on the firewall itself?”

And my boss says “Yep”

and I didn’t say anything else because I came here because I don’t know what else to say because *I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX THIS, I CAN’T MANAGE EXPIRATION DATES IF I CAN’T TRUST THEM TO BE DOCUMENTED IN OUR DOCUMENTATION SYSTEM THAT CONNECTS TO THE FUCKING DEVICE OR APPARENTLY SOMETIMES DOESN’T WHY AREN’T THESE THINGS IN THE FUCKING RMM*

One tiny part of this that adds a bunch of time:

The password manager we used at the old place allowed us to have personal vaults that were accessible to admins and to us; the new place does not allow this so the vault is shared. That means that the already bad browser extension for our password manager is rendered completely useless (you can't search, you have to scroll, our company vault is over 300 passwords, and it doesn't autofill you have to paste, and pasting means the extension closes and you have to open and scroll to get the username, the password, and the TOTP, so you don't do any of that you just open the password manager in another window; the password manager has a mandatory timeout of 15 minutes in the browser). "Log into vendor website" is one step, except that it's one step that also includes two levels of passwords and authentication. Because our shitty password manager doesn't have a useable browser extension. Because it's not actually meant to be a password manager it's supposed to be a documentation platform.

Also let's go step by step:

In my PSA I have a ticket, I click on the ticket and that opens a window (1). I have to pop the time entry into a new window (2) in order to create an opportunity (3), which lets me input some data before I say that I want to create a quote from the opportunity, which opens a new window (4) and a new tab. I add the product information, but to know who I have to send it to I have to go back to my PSA and click on the client, which opens a new window (5) and then click on the contact (6), then copy that data before I hit send, which opens a new window (7) to send the email; I need to make sure to CC our support team and paste the client info into the "to" field before I go back to my ticket and copy my ticket number into the subject line of the browser email window so that I can send the email and it will go to the client, send me an email, and get added as a note to the PSA.

Then I can go back and close those seven windows so that I can click on another ticket.

PSA at old place: chrome-based but standalone app that just opened everything in a new tab in the app instead of opening endless new windows and creating new tabs in whatever non-PSA-window I was last in in Firefox.

Large Bastard just pointed out that I created process documents for this so that I could train another person to do this job and he’s correct and actually when I’m breaking this down into granular steps for a newbie and *excluding several parts of the process* the “create an opportunity from a ticket” document is 6 pages and 14 steps and the “close opportunity and won opportunity wizard” document is 7 pages and 15 steps.

So what I should do here is just link my process documents to the supervisor.

One tiny part of this that adds a bunch of time:

The password manager we used at the old place allowed us to have personal vaults that were accessible to admins and to us; the new place does not allow this so the vault is shared. That means that the already bad browser extension for our password manager is rendered completely useless (you can't search, you have to scroll, our company vault is over 300 passwords, and it doesn't autofill you have to paste, and pasting means the extension closes and you have to open and scroll to get the username, the password, and the TOTP, so you don't do any of that you just open the password manager in another window; the password manager has a mandatory timeout of 15 minutes in the browser). "Log into vendor website" is one step, except that it's one step that also includes two levels of passwords and authentication. Because our shitty password manager doesn't have a useable browser extension. Because it's not actually meant to be a password manager it's supposed to be a documentation platform.

Also let's go step by step:

In my PSA I have a ticket, I click on the ticket and that opens a window (1). I have to pop the time entry into a new window (2) in order to create an opportunity (3), which lets me input some data before I say that I want to create a quote from the opportunity, which opens a new window (4) and a new tab. I add the product information, but to know who I have to send it to I have to go back to my PSA and click on the client, which opens a new window (5) and then click on the contact (6), then copy that data before I hit send, which opens a new window (7) to send the email; I need to make sure to CC our support team and paste the client info into the "to" field before I go back to my ticket and copy my ticket number into the subject line of the browser email window so that I can send the email and it will go to the client, send me an email, and get added as a note to the PSA.

Then I can go back and close those seven windows so that I can click on another ticket.

PSA at old place: chrome-based but standalone app that just opened everything in a new tab in the app instead of opening endless new windows and creating new tabs in whatever non-PSA-window I was last in in Firefox.

Large Bastard just pointed out that I created process documents for this so that I could train another person to do this job and he's correct and actually when I'm breaking this down into granular steps for a newbie and *excluding several parts of the process* the "create an opportunity from a ticket" document is 6 pages and 14 steps and the "close opportunity and won opportunity wizard" document is 7 pages and 15 steps.

So what I should do here is just link my process documents to the supervisor.

Streamlined to assume as simple a process as possible, from start to finish from request to close:

1. Client requests a quote on a replacement computer.
2. I email our support team to create a procurement ticket because I'm not allowed to create a procurement ticket on my own.
3. I open the ticket and start a timer.
4. I use ticket tools to open an opportunity (add title, set expiry date, set to "sent")
5. From the opportunity I click the button to create a quote, then in the window that pops out I select which of two quote managers to use (there is one correct answer)
6. In the quote manager, I select a template (procurement only ever uses one template) and delete three superfluous sections.
7. I add a title and expiry (they didn't copy from the opportunity), add a contact directly from the quote if I know who the approval contact is - if I have to send the quote to multiple people, there are no options to select multiple people so while I am selecting the approval contact I copy the email addresses of other necessary contacts and paste them in the private note so that I won't have to navigate to another window when I want to send. If there is an error with the tax code set by the system (our CRM will allow multiple locations, the Quote Manager does not because it calculates tax based on address) I correct the address. This cannot be saved and has to be done every time.
8. Now the quote is ready for me to add a part. If the part is not from one specific VAR, we do not have the quote system set up to pull pricing and we do not have pre-built parts, so I create a custom part (linking the product in the private note because there is nowhere in the product for me to put a link; this is NOT GREAT when twelve of your parts come from an alternate vendor). If the product IS from a specific VAR, I drop the part number in and adjust the automatic description (I have created a spreadsheet of our standard parts and part descriptions that don't include the part number because we don't want clients searching the part number on amazon and getting a "renewed" laptop).
9. I save, copy any email addresses that I need to send the quote to, hit "send" to open the prewritten email that will send through the quote tool, paste the emails into the to field, copy our support address and check the box to send the email to myself, rewrite the prewritten email to explain to the client why they're getting this quote, the grab the ticket number and put it in the subject line; if I do not put the ticket number in the subject line and copy support, my ticket will not include documentation of the quote being sent. Then I send the email.
10. I go back into my ticket, make notes about this process, mark my labor as non-billable, set the status to "waiting approval", and stop the timer.
11. Once the client approves the quote, I go back into the ticket and start a timer. I place the order at whatever vendor I need to and document the order in our PO Documentation spreadsheet; I use a PO in the format we've determined (YYMMDD-VENDOR-[number of order from that vendor that day]-[Client ID Number]) - the PO format means that we can't order for multiple clients on the same order; if I've got three approvals for the same computer from three different clients, I've got to make and document three different orders, including paying shipping on the three different orders (our main vendor has free shipping on orders over $1000, but desktops cost about $800 so not consolidating three orders into one costs the clients about twenty dollars per order).
    In the PO documentation spreadsheet I save the PO number, the client name, the product ordered, quantity, order date, ETA, shipping cost, and I have blank fields for tracking number, serial number, ticket number, computer setup info, and post-sales ticket number. I go back into the ticket, make notes, mark my labor as non-billable, set the status to "waiting materials" and stop the timer.
    If this is a computer we're setting up for a client I put the following information in the "computer setup info" field: Product Type - Serial number XXXXX - Client Company - User; so "Lenovo T14 Laptop - Serial Number XXXXX - Teapot Madness - Bob Smith" - we collect that info as soon as possible because when we have the serial number we have to send a ticket to support with that as the subject line and "Set up a Lenovo T14 Laptop for delivery to Bob Smith at Teapot Madness" as the body.
    I have to check back in with the vendor and see when the product has shipped in order to collect and document the tracking and serial numbers; once I have the serial number of the computer I can add it to the computer setup info and create the setup ticket.
    **Important note - once the client has approved the quote, it can't be modified so if they want to add a monitor or get two computers, you need to either send a separate quote on a separate ticket or create a new quote from the opportunity to overwrite the old one (because each opportunity will only recognize one quote) and re-send it for approval before deleting the old one - there is no way to mark the old one as declined and deleting it is permanent, there is no way to recover a deleted quote.
12. As soon as the hardware arrives at one of our sites and we have confirmed delivery, we can close the opportunity. I first go into my ticket and start the timer. Then I go into the "Opportunities" page and hover over a menu to open up the "won" wizard. If there are any charges that were not on the quote (recycling fee for the screen, shipping), we select the option to create a post-sales ticket (those charges don't go on a pre-sales ticket and I don't know why). I have to give a reason for creating that ticket ("won opportunity" works) and add what contract the labor will be on for the post-sales ticket that will not have any labor. If you add the wrong kind of labor it will stop you from saving the ticket later but will not stop you from completing the wizard now. Another page will ask you for the POs for your orders, which you paste in from the PO documentation sheet - this is also where you mark if the product is hardware, software, or non-taxable, because that information doesn't populate from the quote which has calculated tax already. Then you can complete the won wizard.
13. After completing the won wizard, go to the client page in the PSA, select the client; select the "detail" view on the client to see tickets, in tickets identify the post-sales ticket, which will be set to a "new" status. On that ticket, select "charges and expenses" and select "vendor shipping" and add the charge for shipping that was saved in the PO Documentation - each shipping charge needs to be a separate item. If the product has a screen, select "screen recycling fee" and add the appropriate fee for the screen size.
14. Once the charges are added, select the issue type and subtype for the original ticket and add select your resource role. If the labor type selected in the won wizard or your resource role do not match the client contract, you will not be able to save. There will be no labor added to this ticket. There is no simple reference for what the client contract accepts, you just have to guess until it's correct or go check with someone who has access to the contract system. Then you can hit "save" and mark the ticket as complete.
15. Go back to your original ticket, make notes about what you have done, mark your labor as non-billable, mark the ticket as complete, and stop the timer.

Congrats! You have now completed your procurement ticket!

This is, obviously, fucking insane.

There is also the problem of figuring out what is under the procurement umbrella and what is under the technician umbrella. Two examples:

1. Technician requests an additional hard drive for a NAS that is running out of space. They provide a specific part number, which is available in stock for $400.
   but.
   But I know that model line of hard drives has been discontinued for quite a while because I used to order it eight years ago; I check our network device reporting for the client, get the serial number of the NAS and check the warranty. It is long out of warranty but I don't know how long. I end up digging through the NAS manufacturer's documentation and a reddit thread and a forum for half an hour to determine that this generation of NAS from this manufacturer includes the manufacture date in the serial number; the first four digits of the number mean that it was assembled in the sixteenth week of 2015.
   UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should we be adding a $400 hard drive to a 10-year-old NAS.
2. Technician requests a replacement hard drive for the server. They pulled the server drive part number from our reporting tools and have given me the exact part number to order.
   but.
   But that part number doesn't match the structure of part numbers for that manufacturer, which I know because I order hardware for that manufacturer all the time; the technician has given me the part number of the drive manufactured by Samsung that is in the Dell caddy; it will work to replace a drive, but it is not hot swap and will require pulling the previous drive, removing the caddy, placing the new drive in the caddy, and replacing it in the server all while the server is running. So I grab the server serial number, go to the manufacturer site, pull info about the original configuration to get accurate information about what drives it shipped with, and source a drive based on that part number.

*In Theory*, procurement should just be ordering what the technicians request and quoting appropriate hardware to the clients.

In practice, that's what gets you doing upgrades to a 10-year-old NAS that, between parts and labor, cost as much as replacing the device with a newer device that has more storage.

………….wait a minute.

So Gary did this thing where he didn’t want to pay to hire people who knew that they were high-level techs, he hired people who were low-level techs and forced them to learn to be high-level techs on the job and kept paying them low-level tech wages.

At the other MSPs that have been acquired by mine, the owners didn’t want to pay high-level techs, so they did the high-level tech stuff themselves (and “time wasting” stuff like parts lookup) and paid medium-level techs to go out in the field.

*Should* the techs actually know what part numbers they’re looking for?

One tiny part of this that adds a bunch of time:

The password manager we used at the old place allowed us to have personal vaults that were accessible to admins and to us; the new place does not allow this so the vault is shared. That means that the already bad browser extension for our password manager is rendered completely useless (you can't search, you have to scroll, our company vault is over 300 passwords, and it doesn't autofill you have to paste, and pasting means the extension closes and you have to open and scroll to get the username, the password, and the TOTP, so you don't do any of that you just open the password manager in another window; the password manager has a mandatory timeout of 15 minutes in the browser). "Log into vendor website" is one step, except that it's one step that also includes two levels of passwords and authentication. Because our shitty password manager doesn't have a useable browser extension. Because it's not actually meant to be a password manager it's supposed to be a documentation platform.

Also let's go step by step:

In my PSA I have a ticket, I click on the ticket and that opens a window (1). I have to pop the time entry into a new window (2) in order to create an opportunity (3), which lets me input some data before I say that I want to create a quote from the opportunity, which opens a new window (4) and a new tab. I add the product information, but to know who I have to send it to I have to go back to my PSA and click on the client, which opens a new window (5) and then click on the contact (6), then copy that data before I hit send, which opens a new window (7) to send the email; I need to make sure to CC our support team and paste the client info into the "to" field before I go back to my ticket and copy my ticket number into the subject line of the browser email window so that I can send the email and it will go to the client, send me an email, and get added as a note to the PSA.

Then I can go back and close those seven windows so that I can click on another ticket.

PSA at old place: chrome-based but standalone app that just opened everything in a new tab in the app instead of opening endless new windows and creating new tabs in whatever non-PSA-window I was last in in Firefox.

Large Bastard just pointed out that I created process documents for this so that I could train another person to do this job and he's correct and actually when I'm breaking this down into granular steps for a newbie and *excluding several parts of the process* the "create an opportunity from a ticket" document is 6 pages and 14 steps and the "close opportunity and won opportunity wizard" document is 7 pages and 15 steps.

So what I should do here is just link my process documents to the supervisor.

Streamlined to assume as simple a process as possible, from start to finish from request to close:

1. Client requests a quote on a replacement computer.
2. I email our support team to create a procurement ticket because I'm not allowed to create a procurement ticket on my own.
3. I open the ticket and start a timer.
4. I use ticket tools to open an opportunity (add title, set expiry date, set to "sent")
5. From the opportunity I click the button to create a quote, then in the window that pops out I select which of two quote managers to use (there is one correct answer)
6. In the quote manager, I select a template (procurement only ever uses one template) and delete three superfluous sections.
7. I add a title and expiry (they didn't copy from the opportunity), add a contact directly from the quote if I know who the approval contact is - if I have to send the quote to multiple people, there are no options to select multiple people so while I am selecting the approval contact I copy the email addresses of other necessary contacts and paste them in the private note so that I won't have to navigate to another window when I want to send. If there is an error with the tax code set by the system (our CRM will allow multiple locations, the Quote Manager does not because it calculates tax based on address) I correct the address. This cannot be saved and has to be done every time.
8. Now the quote is ready for me to add a part. If the part is not from one specific VAR, we do not have the quote system set up to pull pricing and we do not have pre-built parts, so I create a custom part (linking the product in the private note because there is nowhere in the product for me to put a link; this is NOT GREAT when twelve of your parts come from an alternate vendor). If the product IS from a specific VAR, I drop the part number in and adjust the automatic description (I have created a spreadsheet of our standard parts and part descriptions that don't include the part number because we don't want clients searching the part number on amazon and getting a "renewed" laptop).
9. I save, copy any email addresses that I need to send the quote to, hit "send" to open the prewritten email that will send through the quote tool, paste the emails into the to field, copy our support address and check the box to send the email to myself, rewrite the prewritten email to explain to the client why they're getting this quote, the grab the ticket number and put it in the subject line; if I do not put the ticket number in the subject line and copy support, my ticket will not include documentation of the quote being sent. Then I send the email.
10. I go back into my ticket, make notes about this process, mark my labor as non-billable, set the status to "waiting approval", and stop the timer.
11. Once the client approves the quote, I go back into the ticket and start a timer. I place the order at whatever vendor I need to and document the order in our PO Documentation spreadsheet; I use a PO in the format we've determined (YYMMDD-VENDOR-[number of order from that vendor that day]-[Client ID Number]) - the PO format means that we can't order for multiple clients on the same order; if I've got three approvals for the same computer from three different clients, I've got to make and document three different orders, including paying shipping on the three different orders (our main vendor has free shipping on orders over $1000, but desktops cost about $800 so not consolidating three orders into one costs the clients about twenty dollars per order).
    In the PO documentation spreadsheet I save the PO number, the client name, the product ordered, quantity, order date, ETA, shipping cost, and I have blank fields for tracking number, serial number, ticket number, computer setup info, and post-sales ticket number. I go back into the ticket, make notes, mark my labor as non-billable, set the status to "waiting materials" and stop the timer.
    If this is a computer we're setting up for a client I put the following information in the "computer setup info" field: Product Type - Serial number XXXXX - Client Company - User; so "Lenovo T14 Laptop - Serial Number XXXXX - Teapot Madness - Bob Smith" - we collect that info as soon as possible because when we have the serial number we have to send a ticket to support with that as the subject line and "Set up a Lenovo T14 Laptop for delivery to Bob Smith at Teapot Madness" as the body.
    I have to check back in with the vendor and see when the product has shipped in order to collect and document the tracking and serial numbers; once I have the serial number of the computer I can add it to the computer setup info and create the setup ticket.
    **Important note - once the client has approved the quote, it can't be modified so if they want to add a monitor or get two computers, you need to either send a separate quote on a separate ticket or create a new quote from the opportunity to overwrite the old one (because each opportunity will only recognize one quote) and re-send it for approval before deleting the old one - there is no way to mark the old one as declined and deleting it is permanent, there is no way to recover a deleted quote.
12. As soon as the hardware arrives at one of our sites and we have confirmed delivery, we can close the opportunity. I first go into my ticket and start the timer. Then I go into the "Opportunities" page and hover over a menu to open up the "won" wizard. If there are any charges that were not on the quote (recycling fee for the screen, shipping), we select the option to create a post-sales ticket (those charges don't go on a pre-sales ticket and I don't know why). I have to give a reason for creating that ticket ("won opportunity" works) and add what contract the labor will be on for the post-sales ticket that will not have any labor. If you add the wrong kind of labor it will stop you from saving the ticket later but will not stop you from completing the wizard now. Another page will ask you for the POs for your orders, which you paste in from the PO documentation sheet - this is also where you mark if the product is hardware, software, or non-taxable, because that information doesn't populate from the quote which has calculated tax already. Then you can complete the won wizard.
13. After completing the won wizard, go to the client page in the PSA, select the client; select the "detail" view on the client to see tickets, in tickets identify the post-sales ticket, which will be set to a "new" status. On that ticket, select "charges and expenses" and select "vendor shipping" and add the charge for shipping that was saved in the PO Documentation - each shipping charge needs to be a separate item. If the product has a screen, select "screen recycling fee" and add the appropriate fee for the screen size.
14. Once the charges are added, select the issue type and subtype for the original ticket and add select your resource role. If the labor type selected in the won wizard or your resource role do not match the client contract, you will not be able to save. There will be no labor added to this ticket. There is no simple reference for what the client contract accepts, you just have to guess until it's correct or go check with someone who has access to the contract system. Then you can hit "save" and mark the ticket as complete.
15. Go back to your original ticket, make notes about what you have done, mark your labor as non-billable, mark the ticket as complete, and stop the timer.

Congrats! You have now completed your procurement ticket!

This is, obviously, fucking insane.

There is also the problem of figuring out what is under the procurement umbrella and what is under the technician umbrella. Two examples:

1. Technician requests an additional hard drive for a NAS that is running out of space. They provide a specific part number, which is available in stock for $400.
   but.
   But I know that model line of hard drives has been discontinued for quite a while because I used to order it eight years ago; I check our network device reporting for the client, get the serial number of the NAS and check the warranty. It is long out of warranty but I don’t know how long. I end up digging through the NAS manufacturer’s documentation and a reddit thread and a forum for half an hour to determine that this generation of NAS from this manufacturer includes the manufacture date in the serial number; the first four digits of the number mean that it was assembled in the sixteenth week of 2015.
   UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should we be adding a $400 hard drive to a 10-year-old NAS.
2. Technician requests a replacement hard drive for the server. They pulled the server drive part number from our reporting tools and have given me the exact part number to order.
   but.
   But that part number doesn’t match the structure of part numbers for that manufacturer, which I know because I order hardware for that manufacturer all the time; the technician has given me the part number of the drive manufactured by Samsung that is in the Dell caddy; it will work to replace a drive, but it is not hot swap and will require pulling the previous drive, removing the caddy, placing the new drive in the caddy, and replacing it in the server all while the server is running. So I grab the server serial number, go to the manufacturer site, pull info about the original configuration to get accurate information about what drives it shipped with, and source a drive based on that part number.

*In Theory*, procurement should just be ordering what the technicians request and quoting appropriate hardware to the clients.

In practice, that’s what gets you doing upgrades to a 10-year-old NAS that, between parts and labor, cost as much as replacing the device with a newer device that has more storage.