On stupid management.

To have work email on a phone, you must download and use a smartphone app called, for the purposes of this conversation, PITA. To set up the app, you require a PIN, generated by me (usually) via the PITA management application. So far so good.

Previously that was all that was required; just the one-time set up, which was in itself a mission (you can imagine not all managers should be given smartphones and told to download apps from the Android market place or iTunes store, right?)

However, this morning, they activated a new policy, with NO warning to users, and NO warning to support staff. This policy means that all users must set up a password for the PITA app on their phones. Minimum four characters, no other requirements.

This password is not linked in any fashion to any other system we use (eg, not synced to AD) and does not, at present, expire.

After 1 hour of inactivity on the phone, you must re-enter this password, if you want to see your email.

You want to know the really awesome thing?

Me, G, and Teamlead have access to the PITA console. Plus the responsible server admin. We cannot reset these passwords. In theory, if they enter the wrong password 10 times, it’ll lock them out and we can then reset.

In practice, this has not actually worked, yet, and in fact the one user we’ve tried it with, completely disabled his PITA account. I’ve had to re-set him up entirely, which requires removing the app from the iPhone, re-downloading from the App Store (requires knowing his iTunes account password), and re-setting up from scratch. With the relevant phone data use charges.

Can you imagine the shitstorm this has generated for us this morning?