Help. mounting networked drive fails to connect

Hi,
I am trying to set up an employee's new iMac to be able to work from home. Please bear with me - I have never used a MAC. I set up a VPN and was able to connect to our main server. This main server has several shared drives that she needs. I opened Finder and it lists the name of the server. I click on the name and it says Connection Fails. I tried highlighting the name again and click on Connect As.. and still it fails. It does not ask me to enter a log in name or password. So I went to the go menu and clicked on Connect to server and used the smb://servername/shared drive name - clicked connect. No luck. The VPN is still connected. I also changed the sharing option to ADP.
I disconnected from the vpn and tried the Go menu-> connect to server. It still did not ask me for user name and password. I tried the IP address also instead of the server name.
What am I doing wrong?
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Thank you.

What OS/version is the Server running?

Does your user have the same username and password for both the Mac and on the Server?

There seems to be issues with Windows 7 and snow leopard - my home network has both and I have no problem mounting drives between - but I have the same username/password across all my systems.
MacWindows: Snow Leopard and File Sharing Tips and Reports