Reopening Your Business Comes with Real Challenges

 Business reopening is proving to be relatively difficult as COVID-19 isn’t going away. To ensure the health of your staff, while still reopening your business to create revenue, you will need to carefully weigh all your operational decisions. Today, we have outlined some best practices in which to do so. 

1. Temperature Checks and Face Masks

Many states have mandated that people wear protective face masks when they are in public, while many people in states that haven’t taken that step are using common sense and following along. When reopening your office, you will want to ensure that your people remain safe. That means wearing face masks while you are in the office. This is more necessary if your business has an open office setting. 

It is also likely that temperature checks could become a prerequisite to enter your workspace. Anyone that has a temperature above 100.5ºF would not be allowed to come in. Doing this will help to minimize the risk of someone potentially carrying the virus into your workplace.

2. Distancing and Altering Shifts

Social distancing is one of the most important health mandates, which can be difficult if you have a defined space for all of your employees to work. Some businesses that are eager to get their teams back in the office have started changing some of their scheduling practices. Rather than everyone working from an office each weekday, they are now stretching the workweek out to seven days and changing the schedule. 

The open office will likely need to be put on hold. Cubicles and barriers to keep people six feet apart will be crucial for the health of your team.

3. Adjusted Meetings and Canceled Events

If you are one of the companies that have been conducting your meetings remotely, you probably won’t see much of a shift. You will likely continue using your video conferencing solution to conduct meetings. For all other interactions at the workplace, you will see a crackdown on typically social spots in your office.

It goes without saying that it is irresponsible to hold most of your company’s family-oriented events. In fact, any event that forces people to be in close proximity should be tabled for the foreseeable future. 

If you need help with your reopening plans, Net It On can help you make any technology adjustments that you may require. For more information about the way that we can help you sustain your operations, reach out to us at (732) 360-2999.

A Good Backup Should Allow Business Owners to Rest Easy

 Your business’ data is extremely important to the livelihood of your business and as a result, you need to have plans in place to protect it. Sure, you can invest in all the top notch cybersecurity tools and services, and they may keep you from getting your data stolen or corrupted, but what happens if something terrible happens to the servers that it is stored on? No level of threat detection is going to save a server if it is charred, under water, or its components are completely fried. 

Fortunately, there is Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR). It doesn’t matter if you are in or out of the office. In Alabama, Alaska, or Azerbaijan. With a functioning, tested, and reliable BDR in place, your data will be safe from flood, fire, lightning, wind, component failure, power surge or user error.

Think about it this way. You wouldn’t go on an overnight trip without a change of clothes, right? This is because a big glob of mustard could fall off your ballpark frank onto your shirt. Who wants to spend half the day walking around with a giant mustard stain on their shirt? Nobody. For the growing business, the equivalent to a mustard stain is data loss. If you think you look stupid with a mustard stain on your shirt, think about how stupid you will look if you were to lose large chunks of essential data because you weren’t prepared. That’s why you need backup, the change of clothes of business’ IT. 

The BDR provides businesses with a viable solution to protect data, keep it protected regardless of the problems you face, and be able to use that data even if your building explodes. You get the network-attached BDR, which backs up your data as frequently as every 15 minutes, and stores it on reliable hard drives that you can restore from at a moment’s notice. It also uploads a copy of the changes to an offsite storage facility. Should anything happen to your business’ hardware, and presumably the BDR device, the redundancy of your data is maintained. 

Now compare that to saving files manually to a cloud server, or backing up data daily using portable hard drives, or god-forbid utilizing a tape backup that has a lot of terrible moving parts. It’s easy to see why BDR is that emergency change of clothing when you need it most.

Don’t let a lack of foresight ruin your vacation. Call the IT professionals at Net It On today at (732) 360-2999 to talk about how you can protect your data, and your business with the BDR.

Tip of the Week: Get Control Over All Your Notifications

 For Android users, notifications are a big part of the user experience. Unfortunately, every single app you use creates them and they can be a major distraction. To help limit these notification-based distractions, you need to understand how to manage them. Today, we give you a few suggestions on how to keep your notifications from being a detriment to your productivity.

To begin, check the version of Android that you  have installed. A few of these tips will require that you’re using Android 10, and some may not work on all devices.

User Notification Tips

The first thing you need to know is how to clear notifications once you’ve received them. This is pretty straightforward in Android 10, and other more recent versions of the software. Simply swipe down on your Android device to see the standing notification. To remove the lion’s share of them, all you need to do is swipe right or left. If you have a lot of them, you can just go to the bottom of the notifications and select Clear All.

Unfortunately, this may not work for all of your notifications as some won’t go away if the app you are getting notifications for is active. This will also be the case with voicemail notifications.

Snoozing Notifications

If you need to, you can pause your notifications by selecting to snooze them. To do this you first need to activate snoozing in your Settings. To do this you can click Settings > Apps & Notifications, then click on Advanced. You will then find the option to Allow notification snoozing.

Reviewing Your Options

Some notifications have several options. To expand these, just press the Down Arrow on the notification and the options will pop up.

What Notifications Do You Want to See?

Changing Notifications

In your Settings, go ahead and select your Apps & notifications and in there, Notifications. You can then select your default notification options from the following options:

• On lock screen
• Allow notification dots
• Default notification sound
• Swipe fingerprint for notifications
• Do not disturb

There are multiple options available to you in terms of setting your notifications. Open your Settings application and select Apps & notifications > Notifications. Under the Recently sent option, you can see all the notifications you have gotten recently. From here you can toggle notifications on or off for these apps.

You can also do this from the notification itself. Just tap and hold the notification, tap the gear icon and then you can select the notification settings.

Give Certain Notifications the Ability to Interrupt You

Some Android devices will give you the options to choose notifications that an app will provide. There are options for Alerting and Silent.

Android has become a staple in modern computing and has a lot of options that users can take advantage of. For more great Android tips, return to our blog weekly. 

3 Solutions that Can Fuel Business Growth

 The small business owner has to commit to changing the way that you look at his/her business. It’s not always easy. When demand makes you think bigger, your technology spend becomes a major priority. Let’s take a look at some of the changes a growing business has to make. 

You’ll find that a lot of businesses succeed because the people running them are able to adapt to the challenges tossed their way. Whether that is learning from particular case studies or an intuition that makes you know you will succeed at this, you know that problems come from every angle. Technology smooths those angles out. Here are a few tools worth talking about:

Internet-Based Telephone System

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an Internet-based telephone system, but really it is a money saver. Why should your business continue to waste money that could be better spent elsewhere? A VoIP system is a telephone system that uses your company’s bandwidth to deliver enterprise level call, text, and conferencing services. 

A cloud-based, professionally maintained VoIP system can solve a lot of communications problems many could see with traditional phone systems. They include:

• Price - VoIP customers have the obvious cost reduction of eliminating their reliance on the telephone company. 
• Scalability - A VoIP system makes adding and removing lines easy. A new phone can be up and running within minutes. 
• Mobility - VoIP systems typically come with soft phone options that can turn any smartphone into a VoIP phone. 
• Options - Any option a traditional telephone system can have, a VoIP platform offers. With VoIP you can get comprehensive communications tools that can be integrated with your business’ other operational systems. 
• Hardware - Hosted VoIP systems typically use top-of-the-line hardware systems to ensure reliability. 

A new Hosted VoIP system covers a lot of your business’ communications and can be a great tool for the growing business. 

Web Presence

Brand awareness is extremely important for modern businesses. In fact, it is right up there with convenience as the most important variable that consumers say plays into their decision to choose a product or service. With this in mind, having a web presence is more important than ever. Getting a website made isn’t enough anymore. Today’s businesses not only need to focus their marketing efforts locally using traditional methods, they also need to invest time and effort into their web marketing.

Many businesses have started using social media to start the conversation as it gives a business access to a customer base that they may not have access to in normal situations. The conversation that starts on social media by sharing knowledge via blogs and other pieces of content, responding to user problems with direct interaction, and promoting the good work that you do through case studies and other testimonials, can quickly become a great way to engage an audience that is looking for answers to their own problems. By linking your webpage to your social media accounts, you will increase traffic, which increases sales opportunities. 

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is operational management software that can function as a liaison between a business and their customers or potential customers. The CRM comes in many forms but their purpose is always to streamline and facilitate action on the operational end and offer support on the consumer end. Some of the features found in the CRM include a laundry-list of features that include:

• Contact management 
• Lead management 
• Relationship tracking
• Account management
• Quote and purchase management
• Procurement/Vendor management
• Workflow automation
• Sales process automation
• Service automation
• Campaign management 
• Business analytics

...and more.

Why do you need these options? Because as your business grows, you won’t have time to do all the things that need to be done. If your reliance on automation has increased, the CRM is a great tool that enhances departmental interoperability, providing the efficient and collaborative workflow that supports business growth. 

The CRM’s tools can be combined with payroll software, supply chain management software, service delivery software, and more to provide businesses the resources needed to support a business’ end-to-end operations.

Getting the most out of your business requires looking for solutions to your problems. Net It On presents solutions for business problems. Call our IT experts today to get started using technology to fuel your organization’s growth.

Don’t Let Online Banking Leave Your Data Vulnerable

 In today’s financially motivated world, financial technology - AKA “fintech” - has allowed people to manage their finances without stepping into a bank. In fact, a Bank of America study found that 62 percent of people now use digital banking. Therefore, it seems prudent to share a few ways to keep yourself safe while using these kinds of mobile apps.

Unfortunately, data theft is far from uncommon, but there are ways that you can manage your online banking without sacrificing your security. Let’s review some of these practices now.

Use Official Applications

I want to offer you your choice of options: on one hand, you have an official banking application that has been tested and secured for your protection, and on the other, you have assorted applications that make things easier (assuming that you find fraud, data theft, and financial damages “easier”). Sticking to the official application that your bank distributes is a much safer option, as the banks will have a much greater respect for your security and will have invested in the encryption and other protections to keep your finances safe.

Use Strong Authentication Measures

While we’ve been known to say this a lot, it doesn’t make the fact that you need a strong password any less true. Considering what your bank account contains, keeping your account as secure as possible with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols is essential. It is also worth checking if your bank has the option to protect your accounts with multi-factor authentication and embracing the opportunity if it does.

Avoid Automatic Logins

Let’s consider a scenario. You use your phone to access your banking details on a regular basis, so you’ve set it up to automatically log you in once you access the application. Assuming this to be the case, consider what could happen if your phone were stolen. Disabling autofill and autologin can help keep your accounts secure if your device is ever absconded with.

Stick to Trusted Wi-Fi Connections

Unfortunately, Wi-Fi networks can vary wildly in their security, which makes them a hotbed for potential data theft. There are plenty of ways to set up a fraudulent network and steal account information. To be sure you aren’t doing that, make sure you are only using a trusted and secured Wi-Fi connection to access this data, and if you can’t do that, use your mobile data plan.

Know to Spot Attempted Phishing

Cybercrime has evolved past the idea of someone furiously tying lines of code into a keyboard to access someone’s bank account. Now that most networks are secure behind encryption protocols capable of keeping an attack out for at least a few decades, hackers and scammers target a more vulnerable part of the network and go after the user with deceit and trickery. This is what is known as a phishing attack, and so it is important to know how to spot and avoid them.

Tip of the Week: How to Switch Microsoft Word to Dark Mode

 Anyone who spends a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen knows how much of a problem eye strain can be. With symptoms ranging from irritation to headaches and exhaustion, it is no wonder that many applications are trying to address this issue with varying success with “dark” or “night” modes. Let’s consider Microsoft Word’s approach to this and see if we can’t find a simpler way to adjust your settings and save your eyes no small amount of hassle.

Darkened screens have been more and more available as of late, particularly in mobile applications. Everything from Amazon Kindle to Twitter now offers a means to inverse the display, showing lighter text on a dark background.

This configuration makes it much easier to view a screen in the dark without causing eye strain—which, considering the amount of time many spend with a screen in their face, is quite a difference.

Let’s jump back to Microsoft Word, which many of us have a lot of experience with, thanks to long hours spent in documents on our PCs. Chances are, you’re familiar with the headache that comes after spending these hours. Let’s go through adjusting the settings to change Microsoft Word’s theme to the dark mode.

For our purposes today, we’ll focus on Microsoft Word’s PC version, rather than the mobile version.

Getting Halfway There with the Office Theme

Once you have opened Word, click on File, and navigate to Options. Under the tab labelled General, find Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office. There, you’ll find the option to switch Office Theme to Black.

While in Word, click File and go to Options. On the General tab, under Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office, you can change the Office Theme to Black.

It is easy to understand why one would assume that this would make the background of the page appear dark and the text appear light, but this is unfortunately not the case.

Instead, you’ll wind up with something like this:

As it turns out, changing the office theme effectively inverses the color scheme of the Microsoft Word software itself, not that of the document you are working on. While this may help make the tool ribbon easier to look at, the glaring white of the document is only more pronounced.

This makes sense when you think about it. After all, if the office theme were to change the background and font colors of the document itself, users could get confused about what the actual color of the document is.

Fortunately, there is a simple way that you can make your documents appear in a more complete version of a dark mode… WITHOUT printing out that way.

How to Really Use Microsoft Word’s Dark Mode

In the tool ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word, find the Design tab and locate Page Color. If you can’t find it, try clicking on the Magnifying Glass at the top-right of Word, and search for Page Color there.

Once there, you should select one of the darker colors. Your document will preview the colors as you hover over your options. Lower number values will generally make the text lighter. We recommend the second option up from the bottom in the second column, as seen in the above screenshot.

Switching it back is as simple as returning to your Page Color option and selecting the white box in the color grid.

This will only impact the document you are currently working on, without touching any other documents. Sharing your document will present the dark background to whoever it is who opens it.

Preview Before You Print

Let’s assume that you want to print your document, but not in this dark mode so that it doesn’t waste so much ink. While you shouldn’t have any problems after changing these settings, some older Microsoft Word versions might not cooperate so well.

You should just have to print the document as you always would. If you’d rather play it safe, you can go back to Page Color and revert your changes. Of course, you should always preview your document before printing it to be sure.

If the preview does show you white text on a black background, you either need to return to Page Color and switch the background to white, or simply instruct Word to ignore your background colors. This can be done by navigating to File and Options, finding the Display tab, and locating Printing Options. Once there, make sure that Print Background Colors and Images is unchecked before clicking Ok. That way, wasting ink is no longer a concern.

Hopefully, this tip has helped you. Subscribe to our blog for more!

What’s the Best Antivirus for Businesses?

 Quick Marty! Hop into the DeLorean! Let’s time travel back to a simpler time, back in the late 90’s!

Back then, you could walk into any store that sold software and you’d see two types of antivirus protection - orange boxes that said Norton, and red boxes that said McAfee.

Today, like most things, life isn’t as simple. There are a lot of choices, and… well, you shouldn’t be going to a store to buy your antivirus these days. Let’s discuss!

How Does Antivirus Work?

Almost everyone knows they need some sort of antivirus protection on their PC. Depending on the vendor, most new PCs usually come with a free trial preinstalled. There are also plenty of freemium antivirus applications out there. So, what’s the deal, and how do you make a decision for your business?

Antivirus works by scanning files, and checking to see if any code within the file matches with a known virus signature. They tend to do this in the background, but you can also manually run a scan to detect anything that the ever-present background scan missed.

New strains of viruses and malware are constantly being developed by hackers and cybercriminals. It’s estimated that as many as 100,000 new malware programs are created on a daily basis. If your antivirus software isn’t regularly kept up-to-date, it won’t know how to detect and deal with new viruses. It’s incredibly important to regularly update your antivirus.

What If You Have Multiple Computers?

For a home user, any trusted antivirus software is better than nothing. You don’t necessarily need to pay for antivirus to protect your home computer, especially if you are otherwise vigilant about protecting yourself online and backing up your data. A commercial antivirus solution isn’t going to protect you from everything that could possibly go wrong anyway, it’s only designed to protect you from viruses. A freemium or low-cost antivirus is usually enough to protect that home PC.

For your business, it’s a whole different story. If you have a 5-person network, or a 10-person network, or a 500-person network, you need to centralize your antivirus.

This means dishing out the antivirus client from a centralized server, pushing updates out automatically, and scheduling regular scans during off-hours.

You should NEVER rely on your end-users to maintain or update their antivirus.

With a centralized antivirus solution, everything is handled for them, and these types of solutions offer far more protection for a business than the typical consumer-grade protection. Remember, you aren’t just protecting the PCs, you need to worry about your sensitive customer and employee data as well.

It wouldn’t be fair to simply pick a particular antivirus solution and say it would absolutely be a perfect fit for any particular business. You need to take into consideration the industry, compliance requirements, the type of infrastructure already on the network, and a whole slew of other factors before simply purchasing and implementing a network-wide solution.

It’s best to start with a thorough network audit, which is something we are happy to perform for you. If you’d like to get started for your business, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Promethean Nickel Panel Installation

 

New Promethean Nickel ActivPanels installed in NJ

 Unboxing Nickel Panel and Installation

New Promethean Titanium ActivPanels Installed at NJ School

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