30
Oct, 2020
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Clearing the Ethical Hurdles of Employee Monitoring

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Employee monitoring—the practice of keeping an eye on your employees and their computer activity during work hours—isn’t exactly a new practice. However, with remote work suddenly seeing a huge boost in popularity, many businesses have sought to confirm that their workers are spending their work time as productively as possible. If you do choose to go this route, however, it is important to be aware of the lines that you cannot cross.

Monitoring Employees Without Their Knowledge

We figured it would be most appropriate to discuss the no-go option first, which would be to start monitoring your employees without their knowledge or consent. As you would imagine, this is the shadier side of the monitoring spectrum, and is actually illegal in most cases. Unless you have reason to believe an employee is actively acting out and are investigating them, you are not allowed to use monitoring software to keep an eye on your team without telling them.

So, as much as I hate to have to say it, don’t do that. Instead, inform your team of your intention to monitor their systems, what you will be monitoring, and—most crucially—why. This is the real key. Transparency is the most important thing to have with your employees. Studies have even shown that this kind of transparency makes your team more comfortable with these kinds of arrangements.

Monitoring Employees While They Aren’t Working

Again, with so many employees working remotely, it may be tempting for many employers to just continue monitoring these devices even after work hours have ended. It’s one less thing to worry about that way, right?

Wrong. 

What if the employee ends their day or takes a break, and decides to log into their bank account to check in on their finances? You could easily capture sensitive information without meaning to, putting you on the hook in the legal sense. To avoid this, you have a few options you can exercise. Your first option is to simply ban employees from using work technology for personal matters. Your second option is to enable your team members to turn off the monitoring software when they are not actively working.

Not Making Use of Your Monitoring Data

A big part of ethically monitoring your employees comes down to your intent, your motivation for doing so. Are you looking to improve productivity by identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks? Great. Are you ensuring that there are no data leaks that need to be mitigated? Fantastic. Are you simply using it to make sure that your employees are at their desks working? There are better ways to account for that.

Employee monitoring should always be a means, not the end. Whenever you implement it, it needs to be in service of a specific goal. When used in this way, and not just because you want to keep a closer eye on your team, it can bring some significant benefits.

NuTech Services can help bring these benefits and more to your operations. To find out how our team can help you implement and manage the technology your business needs supporting it, give us a call at 810.230.9455 today.

28
Oct, 2020
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How to Establish Fast, Secure Wi-Fi for Guests to Your Healthcare Organization

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Patients and hospital visitors have come to expect Wi-Fi internet access. It’s no longer seen as an extra convenience, but a requirement for the comfort and confidence of your patients. That said, it’s your responsibility to provide reliable Wi-Fi access that is reasonably fast, secure, and easy to sign into.

Your Main Hospital Wireless Network Needs to be Locked Down

First of all, your main office Wi-Fi cannot be used for guest access. The same network that your computers, tablets, laptops, and other equipment run on needs to be completely segregated from the rest of the traffic and secure. This might be pretty obvious for most healthcare professionals, especially those who have an understanding of HIPAA compliance, but it’s worth mentioning because it poses such a huge security risk (and breaks compliance).

Your guest network allows anyone to log in, which means a malicious person could log into it, or an honest person who has a compromised device. Both scenarios can result in serious problems if sensitive health data is accessible.

You need to ensure that your internal network is properly locked down, and that the password is never given out publicly, and is regularly updated. We can audit your existing network to look for vulnerabilities and shortcomings, and help you meet compliance standards—just reach out.

Guest Networks Don’t Necessarily Mean New Hardware

As long as the routers and access points you already have are capable, you usually don’t need to purchase additional hardware in order to establish a separate Wi-Fi network for guests. This is a huge perk—not only are you obviously not having to purchase new equipment, but you don’t need to worry about the installation of additional hardware. Of course, if your network is older, your requirements might be a little different.

One thing to think about, is how much bandwidth your existing wireless network allows. Most modern access points can be split so bandwidth usage is segregated between staff and visitors. You’ll want to make sure that the network can handle guest traffic without interfering with internal operations. You don’t want a visitor in your waiting room streaming Netflix to prevent your front desk from being able to print or access records.

It’s important to establish restrictions—not just deciding what a guest can see or do on the network, but how much bandwidth they are allocated.

Even Guests Require Policies

You don’t want to simply deploy a free-for-all network for your patients to access without setting some ground rules. You should require users to agree to terms of service, and you should definitely be able to monitor logs to detect any fraudulent activity. Depending on your practice, you may consider setting time restrictions so unauthorized users can’t access the network when your facilities are closed. We can also restrict access to certain locations to prevent access from outside your facilities.

Deploying a guest network doesn’t have to be extremely expensive, but it does require a lot more than simply enabling a feature on your wireless router. If you’d like help, we can start with a network audit and review your existing network, and help you establish the security and best practices you need to keep your visitors and patients safe and happy.

Give us a call at 810.230.9455 to get the process started.

26
Oct, 2020
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Collaborate Better with Microsoft SharePoint

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As businesses continue to adapt to the ever-evolving workforce, many are now supporting a variety of environments. Ranging from hybrid, remote, and in-office, the one constant is the need for your team and clients to communicate with each other. Learn how Microsoft SharePoint can help.

Communication is Key to Success

As many business owners are aware, their ability to communicate is critical to their business’ success. They are also mindful that the current business environment has made it more challenging to communicate effectively as they did pre-coronavirus. As face-to-face and word of mouth communication have been significantly reduced, business communication has been transferred to the cloud, particularly when it comes to sharing information.

How the Cloud Helps Small Businesses

A primary benefit of cloud computing is that it allows smaller business access to the same type of technology that was once the larger businesses’ domain. This is accomplished through NuTech Services using cloud technology to provide a range of services while offering significant cost reduction.

By removing the need to maintain your server on your premises physically, you reduce the cost in staff hours and capital to keep your infrastructure up and running. In addition to our Hosted IT solutions, we also offer other cloud solutions such as:

  • Hosted Microsoft Exchange Email
  • Email Filtering/Spam Protection
  • Hosted VoIP
  • Hosted Security and Backup

These solutions are designed to provide your small to medium-sized business access to the tools you need to compete at a price point you can afford. While these tools allow your business to operate at a higher level, it can all be for naught if your team and clients can’t communicate with each other.

Microsoft Services Can Answer the Collaboration Concerns

While most businesses only think of Microsoft cloud services in terms of Word and Excel, and yes, while Microsoft 365 is a reliable option for businesses, the reality is Office 365 offers more than you think, with a wealth of services benefiting a business of any size. Most importantly, the very fact that the services are cloud-based adds to the value Microsoft products can bring to your business. If you’re interested in improving your team’s collaboration, Microsoft SharePoint can help.

Better Collaboration with Microsoft SharePoint

As remote work continues to dominate the business arena, Microsoft SharePoint can empower your staff regardless of their status, remote or in-house, and provide them with the tools to collaborate wherever they are. With SharePoint, your team can create a customized collaboration environment best suited for their needs. Microsoft SharePoint makes sharing, managing, and finding documents more manageable. Its integration into your IT infrastructure can provide your organization with the means to immediately see the benefits of an integrated document management system, including:

  • A central shared platform for storing documents and files that improves efficiency and organization.
  • Clear and concise indexing to allow users to find things faster.
  • An integrated continuity protection system to ensure there is communication between users, so works are not overwritten.
  • A complete revision history that provides roll-back capabilities.

If your team is working in a mixed environment, SharePoint will allow your workflow to be more organized. Additionally, cooperation between users, departments, and clients will be frequent and more comfortable to depend on. Communication is critical for completing the projects that will drive your business forward during these uncertain times.

We are the Michigan SharePoint Experts

Every business is different and needs a unique solution to their communication concerns. Moreover, we realize that the typical small to medium-sized business may not have the resources to implement a fully actualized SharePoint solution. 

Fortunately, NuTech Services offers various virtualized computing environments, virtualization services, and fully hosted SharePoint solutions to give your organization the flexibility it needs to communicate and collaborate with your team. We can assess your organization’s IT and develop a SharePoint interface to suit your needs, whether you want to manage the platform yourself or have NuTech Services manage it for you. To learn more about your options, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

23
Oct, 2020
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Should You Use Wired or Wireless Connections?

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It hasn’t been too long since connectivity required an actual physical connection between the connecting endpoints, making a wired connection the de facto option for businesses. However, now that wireless connectivity is so widely available, businesses now have a choice… but which is the better option? Let’s compare some of the pros of each to make the answer a little clearer.

Why a Hardwired Connection?

Security

The fact is that a direct connection is inherently more secure than one that is broadcast over the airwaves, as these have the potential to be snagged in transit much more easily. Therefore, if security is paramount, a wired connection is the better option by default. That said, there are ways to secure your wireless connection, utilizing a VPN.

Speed

Wired connections are also much faster than a wireless one, whether data is being communicated within your business network or to and from the Internet. In terms of efficiency, the wired connection comes out on top.

Stability

Save for a case of infrastructure failure, the only way you could lose a wired connection would be if the wire were to be unplugged. This stability not only makes them more reliable; it contributes to the consistency of the aforementioned higher speeds.

Why a Wireless Connection?

Convenience

The lack of cables that a wireless connection requires just makes Internet access so much simpler for a business to implement. Without the need to adapt any existing infrastructure to run wires and such things, it is far easier to add, subtract, and move users around as need be.

Mobility

Wi-Fi’s inherent mobility works so well for businesses because a user can pick up what they’re doing and bring it with them if they have the right device. This makes it much more practical to implement in the workplace, especially if collaboration requires meetings to happen in various places in the office.

Scope

Speaking of the right device, a wireless connection enables work to be done on a much wider, and yes, more mobile assortment of solutions. On a related note, businesses that interact with the public regularly can configure their Wi-Fi to offer guest functionality. This enables these businesses to offer their patrons a convenient perk.

Why Hybrid May Be Best

This is the real important takeaway: you don’t have to choose between wired and wireless connectivity.

Embracing both options can effectively negate the shortcomings of either, ultimately improving your business’ capability to get work done—large tasks performed over the wired connections, with communication and collaboration sticking to Wi-Fi. It all comes down to your business’ individual needs and situation.

Whichever option works best for you, you can count on NuTech Services being the best resource you can turn to. Find out what we have to offer in terms of assistance and support by calling 810.230.9455.

21
Oct, 2020
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Is Your Business Taking Advantage of Enhanced Mobility?

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Mobility has to be one of the most talked about technology trends in business, and for good reason. Consumers use mobile. They use it for shopping, banking, checking the weather, for driving directions; and today, they use it for productivity. Let’s take a look at the rise in mobility and how small businesses can use it to their benefit.

Employee Expectations

Mobility is becoming a critical component for small and medium-sized businesses largely due to the demand brought by employees. Today, where most tasks can be completed with the use of a smartphone, it creates the kind of scenario that gets employees asking, “Why not?” 

For the business, that has more responsibilities, that sentiment can be shared, but only after all elements are considered thoroughly. This mostly has to do with data security. Once data security can be maintained, mobility can certainly become a major asset. 

What You Need to Consider

There are several considerations that a business owner should make before trusting in an enhancement of mobility. Here are three:

Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself

To get the most out of your business’ mobility, you need to set goals; and it will do you good to be as realistic as possible. If you try to implement a whole mobile policy and give people carte blanche with their mobile devices, you could run into problems. The best practice is to look for issues that mobility could help alleviate, and tailor your strategies to them. Most businesses that extend their mobility focus on customer service and collaboration, but with more business tools creating mobile apps than ever before, more is possible today. Start simple so you can ensure that you can maintain control over mobile data flows. 

Maintain Security

When your employees access your network via mobile devices, you need to secure it, preferably with multiple layers. You need to require password authentication, while also placing solutions in place to encrypt the files. More than that, you should find encrypted solutions to protect data from being intercepted as not all mobile networks are as reliable as a business may need.

You will also want to maintain data backup platforms and mobile management systems to ensure that you not only have control over your business’ data, but also to mitigate any negative situations surrounding data mobility you may encounter. 

Make Sure Your Business is Mobile-Ready

It is important that you understand how mobility is being used. Can your staff access locally-hosted data? Do you use cloud systems that need to be set up for multi-factor authentication? Does your IT administrator have the tools in place to address any mobility-related issues? To be able to take advantage of mobility, you need to have a setup that will allow you to. 

The IT professionals at NuTech Services can help outfit your business with the tools and expertise you need to allow for expanded mobility. Call our experts today at 810.230.9455 to learn more.

19
Oct, 2020
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Drones Use Up in Several Industries

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Drones are a technology that comes with some controversy, but also some real utility. Known best as an unmanned deterrent measure used by governments, today drones are used for a multitude of different tasks. Today we’ll discuss how drone technology has expanded over the past several years. 

Agriculture

Farms often cover miles and miles of real estate. Traditionally, this makes it more difficult to keep track of everything that is going on around the property. Drones can make monitoring the status of the farm much simpler. With specialized sensors that collect important data, farmers are able to successfully manage irrigation levels, fertilization, and crop spacing, leading to higher agriculture output. Using drones, farmers can also manage livestock much simpler.

Conservation and Environmental Protection

Drones have also been a big benefit to conservationists by expanding the ability to collect crucial data in situations that they weren’t previously able to track. They can help track animal and environmental patterns and report information that is crucial in modern conservation efforts. Drone technology can also help Department of Environmental Conservation officers and park rangers find compliance infractions. 

Construction and Site Surveying

Engineers and construction workers now use drones to not only get a lay of the land, but also inspecting hard to reach places. Using drones in this capacity cuts down on the dangerous situations that human workers are exposed to, mitigating risk. 

Fire Fighting, Policing, and Search and Rescue

One of the most important uses of drone technology today is in emergency situations. It can assist all types of first responders by being able to get an aerial view of the situation. Firefighters are beginning to use drones to fight fires, while still using them in support capacity as well.  

Police have started to use drones for crash investigations as well as to keep officers out of potentially risky situations. 

Law enforcement has also used drones to simplify many of their activities, including crash investigations and search and rescue efforts.

Search and rescue teams have used drones to deliver equipment quickly into situations where people could be at serious risk of bodily harm. 

Insurance

Drones can be of use to insurance companies when they do assessments of claims. Instead of putting people into potentially serious situations, flying a drone keeps risk down and allows people to get the resources they need to rebuild quickly. 

Have you used a drone? How do you think the drone will affect life going forward? Leave your thoughts below in the comments and be sure to return to our blog again next week.

16
Oct, 2020
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Today’s VoIP Platform is Completely Customizable

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A business has to have a telephone system. It is the simplest and most utilized method of communication. Many businesses, however, have to consider many variables before choosing theirs and it adds up to a lot of confusion. They need to take into account the cost, yes, but also the feature set, and the phone system’s ability to support much-needed mobility. Today, we will tell you about an option that checks all the boxes: a hosted VoIP system.

What Exactly is Hosted VoiP?

Hosted VoIP is easily described as a communications platform that utilizes an Internet connection to function. Unlike traditional telephone systems that are purchased through the telephone company and have their own dedicated lines, hosted VoIP is hosted in the cloud and allows a business to build a strong, customized telephone system that meets a lot of a company’s communications needs. 

While there are VoIP options for consumers, businesses need more. They need more control, more features, and more flexibility. A hosted VoIP platform allows businesses to add and remove lines from their system in minutes and provides them the options to customize the whole system to include more dynamic features designed to maximize a business’ ability to communicate and collaborate efficiently. 

The Difference Maker

Most business owners would probably admit to thinking that all telephone systems are the same, but that isn’t the truth. Hosted VoIP can help you control costs, build a more comprehensive communications strategy, and significantly offer solutions to the question of mobility that many businesses have absolutely no answers for.  Let’s look at some of the main benefits of hosted VoIP:

Cost

Obviously, for most businesses the cost of a solution has to be a prime consideration. Hosted VoIP can save even the smallest businesses money in multiple ways. First, since you are using your business’ Internet connection to fuel your phone platform, you can cut the telephone company right out of the equation. Secondly, you can customize your hosted VoIP platform to get the solutions that work for your business, presenting you with very little waste. Lastly, your VoIP platform alternatively serves as your business’ mobile platform, as you can use the solution’s mobile app to make and receive phone calls—from your assigned VoIP phone number—anywhere your mobile device has Internet access. 

Extremely Simple

A Hosted VoIP platform is extremely simple to set up. Working with a vendor, you can have a telephone system configured the way you like it in about a day. Compare that to the weeks of running cables and moving your business’ around to facilitate the installation of a traditional telephone system. For the end user it is even simpler. All you need to do is hook a VoIP-enabled phone into a workstation and you are ready to go. Additionally, you can add and remove lines extremely quickly, so you aren’t stuck paying for more that you need. 

Functionality

One major benefit of VoIP is the customization of the platform. You can literally get dozens of tools if your business needs them. Some of the tools you can get with your VoIP platform include:

  • Audio and video conferencing
  • Call forwarding
  • Personalized extensions
  • Call routing
  • Call recording
  • Automated receptionist
  • Call queues
  • Instant messaging
  • Text messaging
  • Integrated voicemail

…and there are many more.

Hosted VoIP can change the way your business looks at its communications platform. With reliable and crisp-sounding calls, the Hosted VoIP platform can be right for just about any business. To learn more about hosted VoIP, give us a shout at 810.230.9455 today.

14
Oct, 2020
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Tip of the Week: Keeping Track of Changes Made in Excel

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With today’s software solutions, the fact that collaboration is possible has helped many business processes move more efficiently. Despite this, there is also the potential for these solutions to contribute to confusion within your business. Take, for instance, changes people make in Microsoft Excel. Fortunately, Excel offers a means for you to track changes made.

Let’s go over how to set up this capability. As a disclaimer, it will require you to edit some of your menu options, so reach out to your IT resource to confirm that it is okay to do so and to assist you if need be.

You should also know that Track Changes won’t work if a spreadsheet contains a table that hasn’t been converted into a range. To make this conversion, select the table, navigate to the Design tab, and click the Convert to Range option. If you want others to be able to collaborate on your workbook, it needs to be saved in a shared location.

Adding the Track Changes Buttons

To access these options, you’ll need to add them to your Ribbon menu (unless your version of Excel includes them by default). Doing so is simple:

  • Right-click on the Ribbon menu. From the options available, select the Customize the Ribbon option.
  • On the resulting dialog screen, find the drop-down menu labelled Choose commands from: and select All Commands. In the other menu, select Main Tabs, and find Review in the list that appears. Click on the + next to Review, and then click the New Group button.
  • Right click on New Group, renaming it to “Track Changes.”
  • With “Track Changes” selected, find Highlight Changes and Accept/Reject Changes in the left-hand list. Click the Add button to add them to your “Track Changes” group.

Once your Highlight Changes button has been added to the Review category of the Ribbon menu, click on the Highlight Changes button. A box will appear, where you should select both Track changes while editing… and Highlight changes on screen. Click Okay once you’ve done so.

Once you’ve done this, any changes made to the spreadsheet will be marked with a small triangle in the corner of the cell to display the most recent change.

Reviewing all Changes

After everyone has contributed their input, you can choose to accept or reject the changes that have been made with the Accept/Reject Changes button. You’ll be asked to Save the Workbook, and once you have, the changes will be highlighted one by one with the option to Select Changes to Accept or Reject.

All changes will be listed so that you can Accept them or Reject them accordingly. The cursor will automatically proceed to the next change for you to repeat the process. If there are multiple instances of a similar change (like all ampersands or percentages written out instead of the symbols used), you can use the Accept All button to mass update them.

With any luck, we’ve helped make collaboration that much easier for you and your team members. For more tips like this, as well as best practices and other IT assistance, make sure you subscribe to our blog. Remember, our team is always available at 810.230.9455 for your IT needs.

12
Oct, 2020
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CAPTCHA and Its Many Challenges

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We’re all familiar to some degree with the security measure known as CAPTCHA. You know the one—you usually see it when filling out forms or logging into sites online, where you have to prove that you’re a human being by identifying which of a variety of images fit a certain description. You may have noticed that these tests have gotten far more difficult over time. This is because, predictably, computers are getting better at beating them.

Let’s discuss what this signifies, and how this may shape how users authenticate themselves in the future.

Defining CAPTCHA

Short for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, CAPTCHA has long been the standard tool used by Google to prevent automated spam from polluting the Internet by requiring (in theory) a human being to interact with content in some way before allowing access or a task to successfully be completed.

Back in the early 2000s, CAPTCHA was effective against spambots, being able to bamboozle them by simply requiring images of text to be identified.

The Growing Issues with CAPTCHA

However, once Google gained ownership of CAPTCHA and used it to help digitize Google Books, the text needed to be increasingly distorted to continue to fool optical character recognition. Adding to this was the fact that human beings solving these CAPTCHAs gave optical character recognition the information needed to improve its skills.

This is the downside to CAPTCHA that its creators foresaw from the beginning: at some point, machines would ultimately overtake human capabilities when it came to identifying these images. Furthermore, these tests also need to be universally applicable, working wherever someone is located despite any cultural biases and differences that a user might have.

Since then, CAPTCHA has been replaced by NoCAPTCHA ReCAPTCHA (the one where your user behavior is used to judge your humanity) in 94 percent of websites that use CAPTCHA. Further research and development is in progress to reinforce the security of these tools.

However, automated bots can already bypass CAPTCHA more effectively than most humans can. In fact, in 2014, a machine learning algorithm was made to compete with users to solve distorted text CAPTCHAs and managed to bypass the security measure 99.8 percent of the time, as compared to the humans’ 33 percent. There are also various CAPTCHA-solving programs and services available for use that can effectively access vast amounts of pages for little cost.

What is Being Done to Resecure CAPTCHA

There are many different approaches under consideration to improve the practical efficacy of CAPTCHA—making it simpler for human beings and more difficult for machines as originally intended. To accomplish this, a few different tactics have been explored, some more plausible than others:

  • Rather than identifying text or images, users would be asked to classify images of faces, based on expression, gender, and ethnicity (probably not the best option, in today’s contentious environment).
  • CAPTCHAs based on trivia and regionalized nursery rhymes, with these culturally based questions designed to overcome bots and overseas hackers alike.
  • Image identification that uses cartoons, hidden-image illusions, and other relatively subjective content to outfox automated CAPTCHA-cracking tools.
  • CAPTCHA tools that test users by having them perform basic game-like tasks, with instructions given in symbols or contextual hints.
  • Device cameras and augmented reality being used as a form of physical authentication.

Finally, a lot of consideration is being put to authentication measures that examine a user’s online behaviors and actions to determine whether there’s a real human being at the controls, or if a clever piece of software is trying to gain access—whether the mouse moves, for instance, or how precise it is as it does. Google itself is starting to examine traffic patterns to test “users” on a case-by-case basis.

There’s even a chance that these kinds of Turing tests will only be passable in the future by selecting an incorrect answer.

Regardless of how, it is only going to become more important to secure your accounts and the information they contain as time passes. NuTech Services is here to help you secure your business and its data. Learn more about how we can protect your business with the right IT solutions by calling 810.230.9455 today.

9
Oct, 2020
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Become an Email Champion by Spending Less Time Dealing with Email

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Email is important, but it seems to steal so much of your valuable time, doesn’t it?

Conquering your never-ending inbox can seem like a feat all in itself—let alone having it done before lunchtime. There’s an easier way, and when done properly, you’ll be able to spend less time sifting through your email and more time on the more important stuff.

Make Your Inbox Do the Work for You

You’ve got better things to do than organizing and prioritizing your emails manually. Granted, you’ll still need to respond to important emails, but most email clients have everything you need to set up a system that automatically parses and sorts emails based on a whole slew of different factors. It will take a little time, and likely a few rounds of adjustments to get your inbox to work the way you want it to, but we’re going to show you the tools that will help get you there.

Most businesses either use Microsoft Outlook, or Google’s Gmail, so we’re going to cover these two email platforms.

Gmail’s Labels and Filters

If you use Gmail, there are two tools that you’ll want to get familiar with: Labels and Filters.

A label is exactly what it sounds like. Applying a label to an email will essentially categorize it. If you used to use Outlook in the past, think of these as Folders (we’ll get to Outlook next).

You can organize labels based on a wide variety of topics—maybe you have a label for each project you are working on, or a label for different types of correspondence (invoices, reports, employee evals, etc.). Organizing your email into labels makes it easier to pull up specific emails later without having to rely on searching for them. More than one label can be applied to any particular email.

To create a label, just select Create new label in the sidebar (hidden under the More link) in Gmail or select the Tag Icon Box that appears when an email is selected. You’ll be able to select any labels you already have or create a new one. You’ll also be able to color-code each label.

But remember, we want to save time, so instead of having to manually move emails to a label, you can create filters to automatically apply labels to certain types of messages. Once you have some labels created, go to Settings, and click the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. Once there, select Create a new filter.

You can also start this process by doing a Search from the top of your Gmail. Click the little dropdown arrow in the search box at the top of your email, and you can fill out the form to search for specific emails. You can create filters based on who the email is from, what email address the email is sent to, the subject line, words within the email, and more. 

If I wanted to send all correspondence from Bob to a certain label, I’d just put his email in the To: line and click Create Filter. Then Gmail will allow me to choose what to do to all emails from Bob. I could star it to make it stand out, apply a label, or a variety of other options.

Microsoft Outlook’s Rules and Folders

Microsoft Outlook’s process is pretty similar. Instead of filters and labels, Microsoft calls them rules and folders. Here are the steps to set up new rules:

  • Right-click the message and select Rules, then, select Create Rule.
  • Then you need to select the conditions that activate the rule, and what that means. 
  • Make sure you select Run this new rule now on messages already in the current folder (if you wish) and click OK to finalize your rule.

This means that you will need to have a folder to file these messages in. While the option will be presented to you as you create a rule, you can also set up your folders separately in advance.

  • In the Mail pane, right-click where you want to add your folder and select New Folder… from the menu that appears.
  • Name your folder, and press Enter.

It takes time to build all of the rules (or filters) you need to streamline your inbox, but it will ultimately save you hours of time that would otherwise be wasted sifting through your inbox by hand. It’s all about becoming more efficient!

For more tips and tricks, bookmark our blog, and if you need help with your technology, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

7
Oct, 2020
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Tip of the Week: What Google Lens Can Do

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Not many Android users are aware of the Google Lens application, and the supplemented utility that it can bring to your device’s camera. Let’s fix that by going over what Google Lens is, and how you can use it to your advantage.

Explaining Google Lens

Downloadable from the Google Play Store, Google Lens is a utility app that incorporates artificial intelligence to make your smartphone’s capability to take and store images even more useful. With Google Lens, your phone can identify the elements in an image and give the user in-depth and contextual options based on it. Let’s say you wanted to find out what the flowers were that someone had planted outside their house. Using Google Lens, you could point your camera at the flowers and identify them that way.

Now, just consider how this could be applied to the modern, mobile workplace:

Copy and Paste Real-World Text

The ability to copy and then paste content is one of the most often-used functionalities in the office, so why not bring it to the physical world (sort of)? Using Google Lens, you can capture text with your camera from any media just as though it was content on a website. Simply press on the desired text to select it, press the Copy button at the bottom of the screen, and there you are. This text can then be shared directly to the clipboard of any computer with the same Google account actively logged in.

Extract Contact Information from a Business Card

While business cards are a great way to build business relationships at networking events, they don’t exactly fit in with most of today’s business environment. Lens can fix that by capturing the details printed on the card and giving the user various options. Whether you want to call the contact shared on the card, visit a website printed on it, or send a quick text or email message, Lens makes it simple to do so.

Create a Calendar Event

While calendar events are a great way to keep one’s schedule organized, helping one fulfill their obligations, they can become arduous to input into a mobile device. Google Lens can automate that process, pulling the necessary information from a flyer, an appointment card, or any other media and giving the user the option to Create calendar event.

Of course, this has been but a brief sampling of Google Lens’ capabilities. We encourage you to download it and see how much it helps you. If you’ve used Google Lens before, let us know how it worked out for you in the comments!

5
Oct, 2020
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Why Business Technology Won’t Change Back

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There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some major operational shifts in how most businesses conduct themselves and their processes, with many of these shifts relying on technology solutions. While there’s still no telling for certain how much longer these conditions will persist, we predict that many businesses won’t abandon these solutions once the present danger has passed. Let’s discuss why we have this expectation.

What Does “Normal” Mean?

Let’s just come out and say it: as terrible as the pandemic has been for so many, it has also given businesses some very strong motivations to adapt and innovate. Really, most had no choice if they wanted to remain open in the long-term.

This led to many businesses finally adopting the modern solutions that enabled productive and secure remote work and collaboration.

So, the question remains: what exactly do we expect to happen before we consider ourselves at a “normal” point once more? Does that mean the way things were pre-COVID-19, or some new standard that reflects what we’ve learned? At NuTech Services, we’re firmly in the latter camp, that the most successful businesses will be the ones to carry on with the strategies that have allowed operations to continue safely and securely. Let’s consider some of the larger impacts of these shifts, and why we think these shifts are going to prove permanent.

Improved Productivity

Regardless of what kind of disaster strikes a business, it will become important that the business is able to use what resources they do have to the fullest. With modern IT solutions in place, this benchmark can be attainably pushed higher.

This is due not only to the improvement in technology’s efficiency, it also has to do with its portability. In addition to your team being able to spend more time in the office that isn’t taken up by their repetitive tasks, they are also no longer confined to doing their work while in the office. Thanks to today’s increasingly mobile solutions, productive work can be accomplished from anywhere a secure Internet connection can be established.

As a result, time that once offered no opportunity to be productive to a business can now be used more effectively to help reach the organization’s goals.

Seamless Collaboration

Without the metaphorical water cooler to gather around and chat during the workday, many companies have rolled out the means for their employees to virtually socialize with one another as well as work productively on shared goals and ideas. These efforts have been very successful and have actually shown some improvements in internal company cultures. Because certain people would tend to socialize exclusively with certain coworkers throughout the day, the workplace could become clique-y, biased, and exclusionary.

However, once collaboration and such communications were rendered digital, many of these divides could be bridged, allowing for a more inclusive work process.

Equalized Opportunity through Tech

With more and more jobs opening in the digital space, companies will need to have fingers on the keyboards. As a result, former job requirements like education and proximity to the business will be considerably less important to hiring managers. Really, it’ll be more of a matter of who can deliver upon their responsibilities, regardless of age, race, or any other “unofficial disqualifier.”

So no, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll ever really go back to the way things were in many industries. After all, the business world is all about progress… it would be a shame to sacrifice all the progress that the pandemic has forced upon us once it is over.

Regardless of how your business is operating, now or in the future, NuTech Services can help ensure it is doing so with reliable and efficient technology. To learn more about the services and solutions we offer, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

2
Oct, 2020
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What You Need to Know to Stay Ahead of Hackers in 2020

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Let’s face it, it is nearly impossible for the modern business to stay ahead of every cyberthreat. It is just too much to proactively ward against. Today’s best practices will try to keep your network from being breached and your data from being stolen, but they may just allow you to understand how your network was breached and how your data was stolen. Unfortunately, cybersecurity is not foolproof, but let’s look at a few strategies you can use to improve your chances of holding onto your data and keeping unwanted actors out of your network. 

Strategy #1 – Know the Value of Your Assets

By knowing the value of the data you hold, you will be able to properly prioritize how to protect it. Since IT experts have to create cybersecurity strategies based on how much harm can be done to your operational integrity and reputation, it’s good practice to know what assets hackers would be after if they were to breach your network defenses. 

Strategy #2 – Stay Proactive

One of the best ways to protect your network and infrastructure from security threats is to be proactive in your efforts to protect them. You’ll want to develop a response plan that is created with the worst-case scenario in mind. That way as soon as there is a cyberattack, you will know how to react and what strategies to take to mitigate the problem. 

Strategy #3 – Train Your People

One thing is certain, a well-trained staff will do more to protect your network and data than any other solution. The “all-hands-on-deck” strategy to cybersecurity will minimize the frequency and severity of cyberthreats by nearly 50 percent, so ensuring that all of your people know how to spot abnormalities (especially phishing attacks) can save your business a lot of time and money. 

Strategy #4 – Keep Innovating

One thing is certain, cybersecurity is as much about staying out in front in terms of tools and strategies as it is about being hyper-aware of potential problems. Sure, knowing how to react to a data breach or successful phishing attack is important, but the more that you understand how these hackers are coming at your business, and putting tools and strategies in place to thwart those attacks, the more secure your data and resources are going to be going forward.

Cybersecurity is a long game and if you want the best team in Michigan helping you come up with strategies and outfitting your business with the tools it needs to keep hackers at bay, give NuTech Services a call today at 810.230.9455.