Snow or other Emergency working – our use of Citrix and ShoreTel

The following are the thoughts of one of my co-directors at ramsac, Paul Mew. I thought I’d share with you his comments on working in the recent snow and how our application of Citrix and a ShoreTel Unified Communications Phone System made life so very easy!


Me!

For me as an individual it was quite straightforward to deal with being unable to leave the house, as I just worked from home in the same way I would any other time.

In my case I have a Windows based laptop that I use when I’m out and about, wherever I can get Internet access either via a wireless ‘hotspot’ or via my mobile phone. But when I’m working from home I’ll usually use my Apple Mac desktop machine.

We use Citrix, which allows me to run the same full Windows desktop that I have in the office, with all the same applications and files, from a web browser on any machine. So I can just click on a web shortcut, enter my username and password, and have access to everything in minutes.

Getting access to my e-mail, databases and files is great, but being available on the phone and making calls is also critical to me.

So, after logging into Citrix I used the Call Manager software for our ShoreTel telephone system to reassign my telephone extension to my home phone line. Call Manager is just a piece of software that runs on everyone’s desktops and laptops, and also in Citrix, which allows you to make calls, see who’s available, change your settings, all directly from your PC.

I could re-assign my extension to my mobile, which is what I often do when I’m out and about, but I get poor mobile signal at home so tend to use my home phone line.

By re-assigning my extension to my home phone any calls to my extension, either from colleagues or outside contacts, are passed straight through to my home phone. When a call comes in I get a pop-up in Citrix to tell me who’s calling, and when I answer my home phone the telephone system announces that I should press ‘1’ to accept the call. I’ve set it up that way to save my family having to worry about whether a call is business or personal when they pick up the phone. I could even have the system ask the caller to state their name, which is then re-played to me, so I can choose whether to take the call.

If I want to make an outbound call, I just use Call Manager – either clicking a contact, clicking a number on a website, or cutting and pasting in a number. My home phone then rings and again announces that I should press 1, at which point the ShoreTel system in the office dials the number and connects me.

The beauty of the ‘Office Anywhere’ system is that I’m never using my home phone line for outgoing calls, as the system in the office is calling me. I also don’t need to give out my home number if I want someone to call me when I’m working at home.

Someone who’s called into the office for me can be put through to my extension and then diverted to home without them ever knowing that I’m not in the office! During the snow I even set-up a three way conference call with one of our consultants and a client via the ShoreTel system, even though none of us had made it into our respective offices.

The Office

Obviously we have our Business Continuity plan and our Emergency Operating Procedures which cover various disruptive situations, but in the case of the recent snow they weren’t really required!

In years gone by when we’ve had disruptions due to bad weather, we’ve had to call our telephone company to ask them to divert the main phone numbers to a mobile. Two issues there, one is that the telephone company will be swamped with requests so it may take hours to get the number diverted, secondly the number is diverted to a single mobile so there are issues with it being busy and trying to free it up as quickly as possible when a call comes in.

Obviously we have plans to deal with a power failure, but when it’s just a case of the office being inaccessible things are quite straightforward.

For staff who can’t make it into the office, they just need to log onto Citrix, and as described above they use ShoreTel Call Manager to assign their extension to their home phone or mobile.

We had a few members of staff who don’t normally work from home, or who were working on different machines which weren’t set-up for remote working, but with Citrix it was simple for them to get access quickly without having to install software on their machines beforehand.

Once that’s been done, which takes seconds, they can work as if they are in the office. If they are part of a telephone workgroup (also known as a ‘hunt group’, where a single external number will dial several internal extensions either in groups or in order), as our support and operations teams are, their home phone/mobile will ring as part of that workgroup.

So, even if no-one makes it into the office, as long as everyone has diverted their numbers (which is easy to see from Call Manager) then all of the phones in the company will work as normal. If one or two people make it in, as was the case for us, they don’t need to deal with every incoming call, as all of the staff working at home are still members of the workgroup.

As things return to normal, which will be at different points for different members of staff, users just re-assign their extension back to their desk phone when they return to the office. We also have the flexibility to send staff to work from home early if conditions worsen, as it only takes seconds to log on, re-assign their extension, and start working.

What we’ve also found is that when staff are provided with an easy to use way to work at home, they are likely to use it. Most of our staff will log on, deal with a their e-mails and get a few things done when they get home, because it’s so quick and easy.

If you want advice on any of the technology described here please talk to me or my colleagues at ramsac (http://www.ramsac.com/).

Windows 7 Feature/Version Comparison

There seems to be much confusion about the features available to users in the 6 versions of Windows 7, the following table is a really useful resource which explains the options in each. (Click on the table for a larger version)

http://www.ramsac.com

Making The Most Of Your Data Storage

The safe and secure storage of valuable business data is an essential requirement for all organisations. Failure to do so correctly can result in lost, stolen or leaked data, leading to potentially embarrassing and damaging repercussions to the overall reputation of the business.

Yet the ongoing and incremental cost of storing more and more information can spiral ever upwards. Having a data storage policy in place will help you to understand, manage and budget for what information is being stored and where, what needs to be stored and what doesn’t, as well as who need access to it.


The first step is to think about where your data is being stored. In any organisation data can exist in a wide variety of formats whether it is on a memory stick, CD or DVD, the hard drive of a laptop, desktop PC, a server, or even a dedicated off-site data centre.


Following this, think carefully about what information needs to be stored and for how long. This will of course be different for every business. Continually purchasing additional storage as demand seemingly dictates can get expensive quickly, so it is prudent to only keep data that is valuable and likely to be needed in the future.


For example, you may be obliged to keep records for a specified period to meet the regulatory compliance demands of your governing body, but what happens after this time has elapsed? Many organisations simple leave it to unnecessarily clog up their IT systems.


Once you understand what you have, what you need and where it is, you can begin to declutter.


The wealth of different files (and often duplicate versions of files) being stored from different sources means there will typically be a mass of what could be considered unstructured data – the data equivalent of a cluttered desk.


By purging this unstructured data regularly it is possible to free up space a considerable amount of space, giving greater capacity for important business files without the need for additional expenditure.


Think about how you store data. As well as the convenience, regularly archiving files also gives greater assurance that data will be backed up safely in case of software, hardware, or user errors that can result in data loss.


For example Quality Assurance is very important for many service-based companies, so being able to keep an audit trail of e-mails and other documents is imperative. However, this does not necessarily mean that all files are needed immediately all the time. An archiving system that is used on an ongoing basis will move older files from everyday systems, where they can make the use and searching of current files more difficult.


Finally, don’t forget to backup. Figures from a recent Google survey suggest that hard disks have a failure rate of around 7% each year, which means that information stored on one server, or even physically on one computer, can be at significant risk of irretrievable loss unless backup copies are produced on a regular basis.


Data storage is much like physical storage – it needs to be well managed to make sure that it is secure, that the space is used efficiently and that nothing is being kept that needn’t be there. It’s very easy to retain old files that nobody takes ownership of, but it’s important to make sure files are accounted for, sensibly stored and ultimately archived then destroyed when they are no longer needed.


It may not yet be Spring, but it’s an ideal time for a data Spring Clean!

http://www.ramsac.com

Do you budget for annual tape replacement?

Technically you should be replacing your backup tapes annually but I find that many clients don’t plan for this. There are a number of reasons why you should be doing this which include the following:

Reliability. As tapes wear the likelihood of the data itself becoming corrupted increases, which will cause backup errors and could result in problem when attempting to restore. Ultimately for an extremely worn tape there is a risk that it may snap during a backup, or worse still a restore process. You need to remember that tape ultimately stretches, in fact if you think back to the days of music cassettes it is easy to reconcile this, if you remember you could record onto a cassette many times over and unless the tape actually broke it didn’t stop you actually recording, however as the tape got older you would often find that the playback sounded warbled the same problem occurs with backup.

Damage. As the tape itself becomes worn, more and more debris will be deposited on the read/write heads of the tape drive, which means more frequent cleaning will be necessary, which in turn reduces the life of the tape drive itself. In addition, as the tape wears the surface becomes rough, again causing premature wear on the heads.

Although tapes are not cheap, they are considerably less expensive than a replacement drive!

Month-end Backup. I suggest that as you buy new tapes you use the older tapes (assuming they’re not too old!) for your month end archive which I recommend you keep offsite for a period of 5-7 years. This advice is based on industry best practice which emanated from the Enron enquiry (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1780075.stm) which replaced the previously long standing concept of grandfather, father, son rotation which is wholly inadequate. The specific resulting advice was based on the fact that the enquiry needed to see the accounts data at a specific period in time, clearly if tapes are forever rotated that is impossible, it also highlighted a major flaw in most peoples backup plan in that if you are backing up your entire system on to a single tape (or tape library) and replacing the content on said tapes, then if someone deletes an important client file from your system and nobody realises for several months the data is lost, the concept of month end archive gives much better protection against this. (This same concept is the reason why most industry experts still recommend the use of tape as part of the backup plan and advise against reliance on web based backup solutions).

If you take one call to action as a result from reading this please make sure you’re buying new tapes every year without fail.

If you need help or advice with backup policy or procurement of media and drives please contact the technical advisory team at ramsac http://www.ramsac.com/

GMC - God Mode Console

Well that's a slight exaggeration – it's more an all-in-one-place, flat-view of all Control Panel pages, but useful nonetheless...

Here's how to do it:

Create a folder (anywhere, though probably not at root of C:) and call it...

anything.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

...where anything can be...well, anything, but you need the full stop separator. That’s it – double-click it and away you go.

For example: GMC.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Note that this only works in Vista and later (although not 64-bit Vista).


http://www.ramsac.com/