TSP Technology

Don’t Let This Happen To Your Data

Rich — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:34:38 +0000

Sometimes an unexpected gust of wind hits you and sends you flying over the handlebars.

The same thing can be said about data backups. Make sure your company data is secure when the unexpected happens. Theft, fire, and systems crashes usually hit without warning. Take the time to verify your backup system is functioning correctly and test data retrieval on a regular basis, and make sure you’re keeping a copy off-site for the major disasters that completely wipe out the on-premise systems. Otherwise, enjoy my semi-spectacular flight through the air and big splash in the waters by the Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery, Columbia River Gorge.

Options For Upgrading to Office 2010

Rich — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:00:30 +0000

If you’re still on Office 2003 or earlier, and you want to upgrade, you’ll likely be going straight to Office 2010. There are still plenty of retail copies of Office 2007, but officially, Microsoft has started shipping 2010. If you’re a business customer with an open or volume license, you can select from two versions:

Office Standard 2010
Office Professional Plus 2010

Retail Versions include:

Office Professional
Office Home and Business
Office Home and Student

For more information, click here to go to the Microsoft Office Site.

Outlook 2010 Conversation View

Rich — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:46:59 +0000

I just installed Microsoft Office 2010 and have started using it in place of Microsoft Office 2007. Outlook 2010 seems to have the most significant changes, including Conversation View & Quick Steps. Conversion view allows a user to group and view emails by conversation. This will not only save space in your inbox, but will save time if you haven’t been good at organizing your email. You can use the Clean Up Conversation feature to remove redundant email from a conversation, once again saving space and time. You can also delete a complete conversation by right clicking on the conversation and selecting delete. I used this immediately to remove old email buried deep in my email folders. The other feature I like is Quick Steps. Quick Steps allow you to preconfigure often used features such as a “meeting request” and “new email to” so you can be more efficient and have more time for for productive activities. So far, I like the improvements. I’ll update this blog as I find new features that I are useful to me in my daily work. Here’s a short video from Microsoft explaining some of the other feature changes to Outlook 2010.

MS Office 2010 Released

Rich — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:04:39 +0000

If you thought about upgrading to Office 2007 from your trusty older version, forget it. Microsoft has released Office 2010. From what I understand, it’s not much different than Office 2007 in terms of the user interface, but at the guts level, Office 2010 is built for collaboration. I’ll be doing some testing and will report back my findings.

Server Hangs After Reboot

Rich — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:02:59 +0000

Even a simple reboot of a Windows Server can result in a server down emergency-especially when done remotely. A clients Small Business Server 2008 was utilizing more memory than it should (probably due to a memory leak). We made the decision to reboot it since it hadn’t been done in 73 days. We informed the client we would be doing this after-hours from a remote location. Well, as you can infer from the title, the SBS machine did not come back online. This is a good argument for configuring technology that allows remote management of a computer without having to have access to the Windows Operating System. HP’s Integrated Lights Out or the Intel vPro Technology would have been very useful in this case. More to follow…

Discussion Board is Email Enabled

Rich — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:30:09 +0000

Microsoft SharePoint Discussion Boards are email enabled. Company teams can use discussion boards to manage customer service responses. When a team member responds to a customer and cc’s the discussion board, everyone can comment, post, and follow-up with the customer. This is a function that could be accomplished via Public Folders, but SharePoint is much more elegant and effective when considering how much more you can do from a company portal.

Server for Insurance Company

Rich — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:00:10 +0000

Microsoft Server 2008 Foundation literally becomes the foundation for Columbia City Benefits Group. The server allows remote and local users to access business critical contact data while securing the network and protecting data from loss. Foundation Server is extremely affordable and provides much of the same functionality as the full version for up to 15 users. It’s an easy way for small business to benefit from the same technology that larger companies use to gain an edge on the competition and add dollars to the bottom line.

Dreamers Benefit from IT in a Box

Rich — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:07:06 +0000

Small Business Server 2008 Improves Company Productivity

Sock Dreams, a Portland, OR based retailer of socks and accessories has been enjoying the productivity benefits of Small Business Server 2003 for the past five or so years. With increased growth and demand on their infrastructure, it was clear that an upgrade in server hardware and operating system was in order. Because SBS 2003 had provided the advertized increases in productivity and security, there was little hesitation to upgrade to Small Business Server 2008.

Careful and extensive planning went into the migration to SBS 2008 so as to not disturb the sock merchants 7 day per week work schedule. Since most orders arrive from the online store, email is a critical componenet in providing timely and effective response to customer inquiries. Sock Dreams could not afford to lose this capability, even for a short while. In addition, their fullfillment workflow had to be maintained with zero downtime.

The migration proceeded with little disturbance to the users. Shared file data, mail stores, user and computer accounts, and shipping application and data were moved to the new server. Sock Dreams is now in a settling period with the new system. Next week we’ll proceed with an upgrade of all workstations to Windows 7 Professional.

With SBS 2008 and Windows 7, Sock Dreams will enjoy the benefits of better performance and security, with easier management. The users have already seen productivity improvements and will improve further with Windows 7.

The next golden nugget for the dreamers will be the discovery and implementation of Windows SharePoint Services…more to come later.

Hosted Exchange Makes Sense

Rich — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:11:41 +0000

Indeed it does make sense for Small Business

Small business owners can have the same capability large companies spend millions on, for just a few dollars per month. Hosted Exchange provides effective and consistent electronic communication which translates to increased productivity and customer satisfaction. Employees can now collaborate and work more effectively with shared calendars and contacts, and always have a consistent updated email store from any computer. When you send and receive email or make calendar changes in Outlook at work, the same changes will reflect on any computer with access to the Exchange server. No more lost important emails you downloaded with your POP account…the bottom line, in this case, is the bottom line.

BPOS Shines in Chiropractic Clinic

Rich — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:26:48 +0000

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) provides productivity boost to Gresham, OR busy clinic. In addition to the advantages of hosted Exchange, Office Communicator increases productivity by allowing effective communication between office staff. Instead of getting up and walking to ask important pertinent questions, a simple instant message allows fast and customer service oriented responses to patient questions.