or maybe?
12 Concerns of your IT Support Company
August 27, 2007
Even Monks who provide IT support for their brothers in the Abbey face similar issues to those providing computer support outside the brotherhood!
Looking for IT Support Services
Couple of months ago I came across a fantastic blog called The IT Manager Journal aimed at IT managers, support staff, users etc by Jason Slater. One of the things that makes Jason’s blog different from similar sites is his cartoon sketches of Monks facing typical IT issues. So I thought I’d have a bit of fun and use some of Jason’s cartoons to explain some common concerns that a computer support company or person may face when looking after business IT systems. More cartoons can be found at Monk and his IT junk.
Old Server
You know the one, on its last legs, you can’t remember how you fixed it last time and what’s more the budget is run dry.
Software updates
You know you need to do them, but sometimes they become more hassle than they are worth.
Site Visits
9 out of 10 problems can be fixed remotely, just that remaining problem needs a site visit.
Leave the computer alone!
You inform the user that you will be taking control of the desktop, they agree, you connect and they still insist on using the PC! Best still you ask them to leave the computer switched on after they leave at night so you don’t inconvenience them and they turn it off.
Always on call
You can document your IT systems to make Wikipedia look small and train your co-workers to the hills, but sometimes only you can fix the problem
It just stopped working
Okay users if you break something, switched it off by mistake just admit. They can fix the problem alot quicker!
IT Consultants
You can’t do everything yourself, you just hope the third party IT consultants know what they are doing.
IT Staff
Following on from that, your internal staff capabilities. It only takes one bad apple to let the whole system coming crashing down.
The Server Room
The heart and soul of your IT department is the server room. Which is either running out of space, too hot, air conditioning is leaking, swipe card door is broken, wire jungle or more than likely all of these things.
Passwords
You know the story, Top 10 Most Common Passwords In The UK
Kept out of the loop
Maybe your company is opening a new office or relocation your IT department, higher level management don’t think it would be wise to seek your advice on what makes a good location for your server room!
Keeping up-to-date
Keeping up-to-date with latest hardware and getting rid off the old stuff.
How to make your Wiki easier to use
August 23, 2007
Although Wiki’s can be a invaluable resource for a business, many are put off by the wiki code needed to contribute to the knowledge base system. Yeah its pretty easy to learn, but a hassle to use on daily basis. More expensive commercial products come with in built toolbars with live preview mode. But before you open your wallet why not try out FCKeditor for MediaWiki?
How much more inviting does the picture below look compared with the code above? Imagine telling your MD they need to contribute to the Wiki but you need to learn an other language.
Follow these relative simple steps below and if you run into any problems I’ll do my best to answer them.
Step One
Download the extension from:
http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/nightly/svn/mediawiki_fckeditor_ext_N.tar.gz
This needs to be extracted into the wiki’s folder and should create a directory called ‘FCKeditor’ in the ‘extensions’ folder.
Step Two
The local config file ‘LocalSettings.php’ needs to have the line below added somewhere in the file to initialise the plugin:
require_once $IP . “/extensions/FCKeditor/FCKeditor.php”;
Step Three
The only file that needs to be changed is the ‘includes/EditPage.php’ file. For this one you can manually alter the file s/suing/using/ the instructions on the page:
http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/index.php/FCKeditor_integration_guide
Or they can just overwrite the file (if you are running the latest version of mediawiki) with a copy downloaded from here: http://svn.fckeditor.net/MediaWiki/trunk/includes/EditPage.php
Additional Resources
Mark
Some of my favourite blogs are
August 22, 2007
As I mentioned on Monday I’m away this week, so last week I had double the amount of work to do for the blog.
Although the good news from last week was getting the Managing Director to write a blog post, only taken me over a year! Maybe it was the post “Getting your lazy co-workers to help with the business blog” I did back at the begin of the month that helped?
Anyway here are a couple of my favourite blogs in no particular order!
The IT Managers Journal - Jason Slater
Edinburgh Graphic Designer - David Airey
Digital Agency - Mike Coulter
Fraser Affiliate Marketing Blog
And
28 Tips that will improve your business blog
August 21, 2007
Here are 28 quick tips for anyone who is thinking about starting a blog for their business.
- Never direct sell your products
- Feature your customers
- Give useful advice away for free, demonstrate your knowledge
- Keep it business like, but not boring
- Give credit where it is due
- Tell a story
- Plan your posts, make a note of topics covered
- Add value to material you quote or link to
- Blog news articles about your staff, area and clients
- Host it on a dedicated hosting, i.e. yourcompany.co.uk/blog
- Thinking about your audience you wish to attract, the game plan
- Break it up with images
- Keep it professional, don’t ruin it with adverts
- Keep it a two way affair, read other blogs and leave comments
- Match your blog with the company website style and formatting if possible
- Feature business events you attend
- Talk about problems your business has solved for your clients
- Grammar, yes I’m guilt of this one!
- Use attractive blog titles
- Space out your blog posts, blog regularly
- Stop emailing clients newsletters, blog it
- Measure and review your blog popularity
- Cross reference your posts with pervious posts
- Include key search phrases if SEO is a goal
- Get everyone in the company involved
- Think about other mediums such as Facebook and Flickr
- Socialise with bloggers offline, like I do at Edinburgh Coffee Morning
- Give it time!
20 Pointers for planning your backup strategy
August 16, 2007
Following on from last weeks 12 Ways to backup your data, here are 15 tips to bear in mind when planning your backup strategy .
UPDATE : A big big big thank you to Jason of The IT Managers Journal for suggesting the last five!
- Have one - Even if you’re backing up to floppy disks! At least make sure you have some type of backup.
- Keep it simple - Human is always the weakest link, they forget to change the tape, cancel backup jobs or turn off the computer getting backed up.
- Offsite - Store your backup’s off site whenever possible in case of fire or theft. Maybe ask a neighbouring business to store the backup media?
- Secure - Make sure the data is encrypted and physically safe. Is the solution protected from fire, water and natural disasters?
- Archiving - When you’ve just finished a large or important project, consider taking a snapshot/backup of your documents and files on to removable media.
- Unnecessary backups - Is the backup solution taking longer and longer to perform? Have you checked exactly what’s in the backup? Large media files such MP3’s, duplicated content from people emailing files rather than sharing them or old content that no-one every uses.
- Test the backup solution - Just as important as backing up, try recovering your data in a test run. Test this at least twice a year
- Local copy - Backup data online, make sure you perform local backup every so often, that way you don’t have wait to download all your company data.
- Think about the future - If you have the budget to buy more storage than you currently need. Trust me your more than likely to double your backup requirements within two years.
- Replacement Media - If using tape backup solution, you should clean the drive once a month with a cleaning tape and also replace tapes as advised by the manufacture guidelines.
- Regularity of backups - Depending on the importance of the data don’t just presume an over night backup solution is enough. Write a list of things that need backing up and order them in importance for the business.
- Hybrid Backup Solution - Okay I said keep it simply, but consider different backup solutions that would give you an extra layer of protection and giving you the biggest strengths from each.
- Application Backup - I touched on these last week but many applications and operating systems have additional backup/roll back solutions such as Offline Mode, System State, Version Control, Virtualisation and Shadow Copying.
- Not Just Data - Its very easy to over look operating systems, software, drivers, hardware and applications, just concentrating on company data.
- Again keep it simple! - They say, the less moving parts, the less likely it will go wrong. Same applies to backup solutions.
- Keep a Log! - If you’ve got lots of backups in lots of different places - a log can quickly help you find the right backup for the job. Let’s face it when you need to recover from a backup chances are you need to do it quickly!
- Copy me, Copy you - Can’t afford an online service? Agree to store your friends backup on your computer and their’s on yours.
- Get a memory stick - They cost peanuts these days and can store huge amounts of information, plus they are very quick too and often don’t need special software to make them work. Which goes back to keeping it simple.
- Get everyone involved - Backups shouldn’t be the domain of a single person (unfortunately though often they are!). Get as many people involved so they understand the importance of backing up data. Especially important at home with all those pictures, and music.
- Do It Now! Don’t leave it till tomorrow - if you have data that you just can’t live without - copy it somewhere safe - don’t leave it until tomorrow.
Technorati tags: backup, backup solutions, business data, small businesses, advice
Terinea provides IT Support, Managed IT Services and some specialised IT solutions for businesses of all sizes.
