The Technology Survey

Our technology survey closed last Friday. We received 94 responses. Excellent work, Pivoteers! We'll be analyzing and publishing the results in the near future. As we mentioned, we plan to send this out twice a year. Getting your feedback and suggestions is a great way for us to improve.

ClickShare - Coming to a Conference Room Near You!

In our last newsletter, we let you know that ClickShare was coming. All conference rooms with SmartBoards will have ClickShare installed. All rooms should be complete by the end of next week. One click to share your screen! See our last newsletter for more details.

New in the Help Desk

You may remember that we have been talking about outsourcing our Help Desk. We will begin a 3 month trial with a company called Triware Networld Systems (TNS) in September. We'll send details out soon. The IT team has been on a search for several weeks now to find a good fit for providing support to all of you. TNS came to us highly recommended by a vendor who has used them for over 20 years. We really like the founder, Benson Yeung, and we think you will, too, as well as the rest of his team.

Using someone else for help desk support will be a significant change -- and something new to all of us, too. We believe that if we find the right partner, it will be a great benefit. Some benefits we hope you'll find are:

• Quicker response time - There will be a larger team available to answer your emails and phone calls more quickly.
• More consistent availability - Similar to the above, since there will be a larger team, more people will be available. Beyond that, if one or all of us are tied up in projects or meetings, out of the office, or unavailable for whatever reason, the TNS team will be there.
• Shorter lead time for new or replacement computers - TNS will, as we build up the partnership with them, become our provider of new and refurbished laptops. They have a system that enables them to provide new computers within just a couple of hours -- instead of the days it currently takes.
• More onsite support - We plan to work out a way that the TNS team members can be onsite at all our offices (in No. CA only, at least to begin with) either on some kind of schedule, or an as-needed basis.

We're counting on your cooperation and patience as we explore this new model of technical support. It will be a learning experience. We'll keep you in the loop as we move forward!

Expensify - Expense Reports That Don't Suck

Expensify is our expense report system, as you know by now. Paul, Anne and Ted provided training on Expensify at each location. If you missed the training, Ted is doing one more via Lync (phone & web) on Wednesday, Sept. 4th. Email him if you haven't signed up yet!

Soon we will be automating the input of all the expenses into Khameleon - saving a bunch of time for those who have to enter it all in manually right now. In order to do that, there will be some changes on the process. The main one will be that each expense will need the appropriate department code (such "Corporate IT" or "East Bay Customer Service." Each of you will need to complete a short process to set the default of your own department. Watch for an email with details and instructions soon. That small process by each of you will add up to big efficiencies over all!

For "Getting Started" instructions go to this page, which includes a link to a video. More videos here.

Department File Libraries - DataAll

Department File Libraries - DataAll

We implemented a new structure of folders under P:\PivotData\DataAll. Think of the DataAll folder as a File Library. The idea is to have a central space for reference material from and/or for each department.

We plan to create a new intranet (or home page, or portal) once our new system(s) has been decided on. In the meantime, we found that reference material often had no good home and was hard to find. The DataAll folder now is that home.

Each folder is owned by its respective department. In most cases, the folders and their contents will be read-only except for department managers or designated administrators of the folders.

To prevent disruption, especially since this library will be replaced by our new intranet at some point, some of the folders contain shortcuts to already existing homes/folders of material.

The idea is to provide, as much as possible, one place for employees to go in order to get to needed reference materials. Take a look at the new folders and see what you think. Talk with your manager about items you think should be included in your department’s folder.

IT News - July 2013 - Downtime, P drive issues, Smarboards, Videoconferencing

News and good stuff to know from your IT Department.

Downtime – NOT!

Have you noticed? No recent emails from me that the network and internet will be down! FINALLY our phone quality issues in San Jose have been fixed. THANK YOU all for your patience as we went through the agonizing process of elimination it took to finally find the solution. {For those of you interested in techie details, it had to do with the version of firmware on our switch.)

Can’t get to the P drive? Fix it in 3 easy steps. Read this!

We’ve noticed quite a few tickets with VPN issues where the network drives are not showing up, or show up with only part of the directory structure. Sometimes this even happens without VPN in the office. We’ve discovered that this is caused by using “Offline Files” or “Briefcase”.  Incidentally, this also causes excessive traffic when it tries to replicate with the server, which also slows down your computer.

     If you are in doubt whether you have it on, or if somehow it accidentally turned it on, you can check and disable by following the 3 easy steps below (Details and screenshots at this link: http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/07/turn-on-off-offline-files-in-windows-7/)

1. Go to Start –> and search for Sync Center and select to open it
2. Next, click Manage offline files
3. Finally, choose to disable it and restart.

Update on SmartBoards, LifeSize videoconferencing, etc.

By the end of August:

ClickShare will be installed at all locations.

What does that mean to you and our customers?

·        You’ll be able to walk into the conference room, plug a ClickShare device into your computer, run a small program, and share your screen! No more figuring out which adapater you need, where that adapter is, what cable to use – just plug and play!

All Smartboard computers will be replaced.

What does that mean to you and our customers?

·        You’ll be able to walk into the conference room and use the SmartBoard pretty much the way you use your own computer.

·        It will be hooked to the network so you can save files to the Scratch drive, or email them if you’d rather, as well as retrieve files from the Scratch drive.

·        Most commonly used programs will be installed on the SmartBoard computers.

By the end of September

LifeSize phone will have the ability to place external calls. 

What does that mean to you and our customers?

·        Only one phone in the room (no need for Polycoms any more)

·        You can include customers, vendors, non-Pivot people in your videoconference calls

Crestron will be complete in San Jose

What does that mean to you and our customers?

·        In San Jose, you’ll be able to control screens, calls, and lighting with click & drag on a small control panel on the table or wall

·        Speakers, microphones and the phones themselves will be in the ceiling. Just talk & they’ll hear you!

As always, let us know if you have questions, suggestions or concerns.

Mavis Moon   Director Information Systems   Pivot Interiors, Inc.
T 408 432 5658   C 408 318 2037   E mmoon@pivotinteriors.com

Ted Lo   IT Manager   Pivot Interiors, Inc.
T 323 801 2002   C 310 876 2880   E tlo@pivotinteriors.com

Anne Pham   Technical Support Administrator   Pivot Interiors, Inc.
T 949 988 5402   C 714 588 8892   E apham@pivotinteriors.com

Look, Ma, No Scrolling! Inbox Control.

Pretty much ever since I started using email, it's been my goal to keep my inbox so short that I can see everything in it without scrolling. I've finally succeeded in doing this -- and maintaining it! -- for a little over 3 months. I decided to share what's worked for me. If you are trying to control your inbox, maybe this will be helpful -- and, please, share what works for you!

Boiling it down, here is my method:

• I have two lists:
• Help Desk tickets - basically a to do list, items that typically take less than a day to complete.
• Projects - for projects that may have several phases or steps, often taking several days, weeks or even months.
• With nearly every email, I decide:
• Is this a help desk (to do list) request? If yes, forward it to the help desk and manage from there.
• Is this a project? If yes, put it in my projects list, prioritize and track from there.
• If it doesn't fit either of these categories:
• Can I delete it? If so, yeah! (I periodically go through and unsubscribe myself from scheduled messages I don't need.)
• Do I need to save the file someone sent, for future reference? If so, save the file under my Documents "library" or the P drive in the appropriate folder.
• Do I need to save the email contents for future reference? If so, save in an appropriate mail folder. 
• I have several "Quick steps" -- see screenshot below -- I set up to put items into my most-used folders with one click. It's safe to put messages into folders while you're waiting for someone else to respond - when they do, it'll come back into your mailbox.
• And I have the folders for my most active, or current, projects up near the top so I can quickly slide emails into those -- see screenshot below. (It's easy to rearrange folders in Outlook, just click and drag.)
• Some things I send to OneNote -- again, see screenshot. OneNote is a cool program that lets you create "notebooks" with pages and sections. In IT, we have a shared notebook for our "cheat sheets" and other documentation such as agreements and contracts. They're categorized into sections, but it's super easy to do a full text search for whatever you need to find. So cool that you can send stuff straight from your Inbox right into OneNote.
• Am I unsure? Not sure if I'll want it later, or maybe just plain reluctant to delete it? If so, put it in the "Miscellaneous" folder.
• Is it something I really, truly plan to complete today? If so, I might leave it in my inbox and take care of it by the end of the day, at which time I can delete or "folderize" it. But if it's still there the next day, I put it in one of the lists.

And that's what has been working for me. To keep my mailbox cleaner and smaller (and therefore quicker performing), I have also set up auto-archiving. If you want more details on how to set that up, or any other ways to use the features of your mailbox, let me know. (I'll add it to one of my lists! ;-))

When you're dealing with the madness of email, what methods work for you???