All posts by SystemsNet Administrator

How to Build a VOIP Kit for High-Quality Remote Calls

VOIP, , , , , ,
Close up of a business woman using a VOIP kit to connect to her team

Having a phone system with the right tools and features is key to a mobile workforce

When you work remotely, occasionally or every day, nothing matters more than communication. Staying in touch with your distant colleagues is the key to completing projects, attending meetings, and successfully collaborating. Fortunately, connecting is easier than it has ever been before. Between mobile devices and VOIP, you can connect to your team from almost anywhere in the world. But it’s a lot easier to do if you’re prepared.

Making your home office or favorite shared working space is a part of the course, but the true challenge is achieving easy calls when outside your comfort zone. How do you ensure good sound quality in a hotel room, on-site with your client, or on the road? The key is a well-packed VOIP kit that has everything you need to connect, hear, and be heard from almost anywhere in the world.

Here’s how to build one:

High-Speed Mobile Hotspot

The first thing you need is a mobile hotspot you can rely on. These transform cellphone network signal into a wifi network your devices can connect to. Not only does it ensure that you can connect from nearly anywhere, it also keeps you safe from honey-pot traps hackers set with free wifi networks. You won’t have to rely on hotel wifi, and you can connect anywhere your cellphone gets signal. With varying degrees of connection speed.

Soft Can Headphones or High-Quality Earbuds?

If you’re not in a sound-studio quality office prepared to filter audio, you’ll need some headphones so you can hear the conference without your mic sending feedback or echo. But the choice of headphones is highly personal. Some swear that large pillowy can-style headphones are the only way to hear the call clearly while many of us live with a pair of earbuds seemingly permanently attached.

For your kit, the difference matters only to you. Get a spare pair of your favorite type of headphones and pack them as part of your VOIP call travel kit.

Integral Microphone Headset

With a headset, you can transform any modern mobile device into a VOIP phone. All you need is earphones to hear and a microphone to be heard. That said, the microphone quality is important. Many can make do with a webcam or laptop that has an integral microphone, but the quality of how you sound is significantly improved with a real microphone on a headset positioned near your mouth. Be sure your headphones have a built-in mic that transmits in decent quality.

Camera-Bearing Laptop

VOIP platforms often include an option to make video calls, which can become popular depending on the team. If there’s a chance you’ll be called on to appear on video, you’ll want a laptop that has video capability. This is your first or last line solution to the video calls, giving you a place to start or a fall-back position if you choose to use additional cameras instead.

Separate Web Camera

You will probably also want to pack an external web camera, and don’t be shy about investing in some quality here. Your webcam will enable video call options that a laptop camera cannot. You can point it at items, paperwork, and other people without pointing your laptop. You can also upgrade your image or sound quality by choosing a camera with better capabilities than your laptop.

The separate web camera also gives you an alternative to the laptop camera should one or the other fail at an inopportune moment.

Mobile Charging Battery

Next, think about power SNAFUs you’ve experienced in the past. Sometimes, your best friend when telecommuting on the road is a portable charging battery. Something you can charge up at home or in a hotel room, then bring life back to a phone or laptop that has died right when you need it most. Or it can be used to keep your laptop alive longer off-grid when you have to hold a meeting from a place with no outlets. Just one portable battery in your go-bag can make a big difference when it’s needed.

For the truly rugged remote professionals, consider a solar-recharging portable battery. No outlets required.

Charging & Data Cables

Finally, don’t forget all the accouterments for all this mobile tech. You’ll need at least one charging cable for each one of your devices. At least these days, they can all share a few USB power ports instead of each having an individual power adapter. So remember your USB power strip just in case. Take your laptop power adapter, and whatever you need to charge the portable battery. We all know what it feels like to have everything you need but a power cord.

If you enjoy working remotely using the tools of today’s mobile workforce, you might as well the best tools for the job. By packing an effective VOIP call kit, you can optimize sound and signal quality no matter where you’re working from. For more on how to get the best VOIP performance possible, contact us today!

4 Situations Where You Want a Robust Backup Recovery Plan

Data Backup, , , ,
Backup Recovery Plan on a laptop screen in office

Disaster recovery plans cover you for disaster situations and also simple file recovery

Businesses often underestimate just how important a backup recovery plan really is. Backup recovery plans are put together as an afterthought, a ‘just in case’ like wearing your helmet to bicycle up and down your home street. But believe it or not, there are actually tons of different situations where a great backup plan is important, useful, or even necessary to keep your business on it’s feet. In fact, you’ll probably wind up using our backups more frequently than your top-of-the-line virus detection software.

Because like that bicycle helmet, a good recovery plan can be the difference between business life and death when a disaster finally does come along. And you’ll be glad you were prepared. Let’s take a quick look at four different business circumstances where a backup recovery plan is vital. Circumstances that are surprisingly common in the wide business world.

1) A Software Update Fails and Corrupts All Your Data

Most of our software today updates automatically. We have it set up (or it sets itself up) to periodically check for updates, download them, and sell-install them in the dead of night when no one is using your computer work resources. This happens all the time and is something we’ve come to rely on. But not all updates work correctly. A single piece of misaligned data that was damaged in the download can wreck the entire update.

And worse, updating currently active business software means that one corrupted auto-update can put your entire business worth of stored internal data at risk. An automatic update can fail and corrupt some or every scrap of data stored inside the original un-updated version. With a comprehensive backup recovery plan, however, you can easily restore all your data and software from the version before the update, then manually handle the update a second time to make sure nothing goes wrong.

2) An Employee Mistake Accidentally Deletes an Entire Database

Employee mistakes happen. And sometimes, they are enormous business-ruining mistakes no matter how genuinely sorry the employee is or how understandable the mistake might be. It is possible in some businesses for a mis-click or accidental keypress can delete reams of priceless business or customer data. Usually by clearing a database table or column without realizing that they have done so.

In this situation, you don’t want to have to lay the entire disaster at one employee’s feet. Instead, with a backup and recovery plan, it should be simple to rescue your company by restoring the lost data. From there, you can manage employee discipline with a calm and even approach that is appropriate to the mistake, not the potential averted consequences.

3) Your Entire Company Network is Ransomware’d

Then, of course, there’s the ransomware and other network-wide malware attacks that freeze you out of your own system. Because you can’t trust hackers to respond honorably to a pay-off, it’s important to assume that any computer compromised by ransomware or similar is probably ‘dead’. In other words, it needs to be wiped to factory settings to eradicate the malware and then restored to a functional business state through backup recovery.

If you have backups of your workstation setup and/or your entire network, this is the time to bust them out. Wipe everything that could be infected and rebuild our on-site computer system back from the ground up. The better your backups and implementation are, the more completely and quickly you can recover from a widespread malware attack.

4) A Flash-Flood Drowns Your Office, Including Local Archives

Natural disasters are another unexpected way that your data could be threatened. Even with all the cloud services, most businesses have at least a few locally stored physical archives on local servers, disks, or drives. Some businesses have their computer systems still almost entirely on-site. But this puts ‘all your eggs in one basket’ in terms of physical risk to your office building.

As the last few years have proven, you can’t do much to predict when extreme weather is about to ravage your part of the country. And if your office is hit with flash floods, earthquakes or something as simple as a neighborhood fire, all your local files and computers could be destroyed. But with a robust set of cloud-stored backups, you can not only recover those local archives. You may be able to rebuild from scratch using your backups of the previous network and work stations.

Having a well-built and comprehensive backup structure and recovery plan is vital to business continuity and disaster recovery.  For more information about building the best backup recovery plan for your business, contact us today!

Why Have an Employee-Facing IT Help Desk?

Manage Service, , , ,
Smiling customer support operator agent with hands-free device workingan employee-facing IT help desk

Staffing a internal Help Desk is difficult, why not outsource?

Traditionally, help desks are considered to be customer-facing services. Customer service help desks, exchange and return help desks, concierge service desks. But when it comes to IT, there’s a long tradition of internal employee-facing services instead. Even companies that don’t offer tech products to customers use plenty of technology on the inside. An internal IT help desk is the key to ensuring that each and every team member can handle their own workstations, devices, and work software on the fly — without interrupting the normal workflow of your business.

Employee-facing IT helpdesks have been a hallmark of the business world since the days of separate college internetworks and internal company email. IT help desks are older than the world wide web and have been necessary for as long as employees have been using computer workstations. And today, we’re here to highlight how an IT help desk can streamline any business, even those that don’t spend all day every day on the computer.

No Need for a Computer Whiz On-Site

Many businesses that do not focus primarily on technology (but still use it daily) rely on one or two IT talented staff on site. Your computer whiz is the person with enough IT background or DIY skills that they can solve most problems just by poking around the controls for a while. But not every team has one, and those that do often demand too much IT from someone who’s job is not defined as IT support.

Working with an IT help desk designed for employee-facing service is the key to no longer needing someone on your work team to have the incidental skills. Outsourcing your IT help desk can even mean saving money, as internal IT staff are highly priced in the current job market.

Supervisors Not Expected to Provide IT Fixes

When an employee’s computer, network connection, or work software stops working, the first person they usually call is their supervisor. Unfortunately, supervisors in non-tech industries are seldom equipped to solve more than simple and common technical hiccups. Not to mention, calling one’s boss for every email malfunction or connection problem is bad for business efficiency.

With an internal IT desk, your team members can call IT instead of their boss. The IT technician on the other end can quickly walk any employee through their technical problems or even take control of the computer remotely. They will fix things up quick and get the work back on track without any further interruptions to the workflow.

Staff Can Seek Solutions to Job-Unique Problems

Then there are problems that supervisors or the on-site computer whiz can’t solve because they are not common or easy. Issues that only come up in certain positions using unique devices, software, or tasks that no other role does. In these cases, technical problems can stop work all day as an employee tries to troubleshoot their unique problems or find someone who can.

However, your unique role employees are not alone with the help of an internal IT service. Technicians who specialize in business software are also great at figuring out solutions to not-so-common problems. This can get your team back on-task without losing hours to unusual technical challenges.

Network & Infrastructure Issues Solved Quickly

Finally, an internal IT help desk is key to keeping your entire office or non-office business online. Network and tech infrastructure are what all other computer-based processes are built on. Without your internal network and the workstations it connects, nothing would get done. Which is why infrastructure errors or network interruptions are so important to fix quickly.

An IT help desk can make sure your network is online from working with the local router to contacting your ISP (internet service provider) if necessary. They can also ensure that your infrastructure is up-to-date, defended, and repaired quickly should anything go wrong. This way, your computers stay online and your doors remain open no matter what happens.

Having an internal IT service for your company isn’t just something big corporations do. With MSP (managed service provider) outsourcing, you can have all the benefits of an internal IT help desk without the extensive cost of building a team of full-time technicians on staff. For more information about how an MSP can help you build the IT help desk services your company deserves, contact us today!

How VoIP Helps You Manage Remote Employees

VOIP, , ,
Business people using VOIP to manage remote employees

Having a phone service that works whether you’re in the office or on the road is key in today’s work anywhere workforce

Remote work is not just a fad or a way to draw in new talent, it’s a new way of doing business. Many businesses who already had remote workers are now celebrating the mobile technology that is making remote work so much easier and more efficient. Many more businesses are taking advantage of mobile technology to offer new remote positions or offer once office-bound jobs to remote candidates. But managing remote employees can still be a challenge for the supervisors and team leaders set to the task. Fortunately, there are tools for that, too.

VoIP is one of the best tools any remote-team manager can have, uniting the entire team through a shared communication system that works no matter where or how your team members are connecting. Let’s take a look at how VoIP solves classic remote management challenges and makes remote work management easier than ever.

Find Me, Follow Me

Nearly every modern VoIP system comes with a feature known as “Find me, follow me”. This sounds like something a pet dog might do, but it’s really a highly useful way to keep in touch in the multi-device world we live in. Once, a manager trying to get in touch with a remote employee would have to call three or four different numbers, send an email, and leave voicemails if the employee isn’t at their desk. Not anymore.

With VoIP, you call one number and the find/follow feature does all that extra checking. The VoIP number then rings the employee’s desk phone. If they don’t pick up, it rings their home office phone, then their cell phone, then their home phone. It can then call the VOIP app on their laptop, then their tablet, then leave a message in email about a missed all. VoIP does all the tedious phone-tag of chasing down someone on the device or phone closest to the remote employee in question.

Scheduled Availability

VOIP can also know where your remote employees should be during the day and which device they are most likely to answer. Let’s say a remote employee works at home but also takes lunch, meets clients, or occasionally takes their children to after-school activities. By filling out their calendar and schedule properly, they can ensure the closest device to them is always the one that rings first.

As the manager, you simply call their VoIP number and the system does the rest. If the schedule says your employee is scheduled to be at lunch, it rings their cell. If they’re working, it rings their desk phone. If they’re traveling, it rings their laptop app phone instead. The schedule can save hours of time each year by calling the right device first.

Call Forwarding To/From Anywhere

VoIP’s device flexibility also makes it easier for managers and remote employees to connect from anywhere on either end. It doesn’t matter if you’re calling from your cell, computer, or desk phone. It doesn’t matter if your remote employee is on their laptop, cell, in a hotel, or at their home office. The VoIP number can connect to any device or computer running the app and to any phone number that has been connected. This enables the ultimate in mobile workforce so that managers and employees can both be remote, office-bound, traveling, or any combination at all.

Pings, Alarms, and Messages

VoIP an also enable managers to send small pings, alerts, alarms, and messages to their remote employees without a complicated hassle. Many VoIP systems connect to SMS messaging, allowing managers and employees to trade texts and live chat messages as well as audio phone calls. The VoIP app installed on any computer or mobile device can also be used as a cloud management platform, allowing managers to build schedules for their employees including alarms, alerts, and messages. You can even call your employee’s voicemail directly to use the voicemail-to-email feature as a way to dictate memos to team members.

Emergency Device Flexibility

Finally, VoIP is not bound specifically to the devices and numbers that the team sets up on purpose. Let’s say a remote employee’s laptop dies, their toddler drops their cell in the toilet, and their dog chews their home internet lines. They can still be reached via their VoIP number on a borrowed, public, or emergency device simply by installing and logging into the platform app. At home, on the road, or on business trips your team will can always get back in contact no matter how many of their own devices are out of commission because VoIP is cloud, not network.

As the manager, even you can take advantage of this flexibility. If the office power goes out, if you’re away on a business trip, or if you suddenly need to connect while on a no-phones vacation: any computer or borrowed device can become an extension of your VoIP number by installing the app.

VoIP is one of the best things that has ever happened to remote work and managing remote employees. If you need to be a communication hub between team members who do not always share an office, VoIP is the best possible way to keep track of your team and provide a universal way to stay in touch. For more information about how VoIP can improve your business’ communication efficiency, contact us today!