IT PRO: Blogs: Jason Slater: 2008 March

We used to employ a system of automatically rejecting blacklisted incoming email senders. To do this we relied on services such as xBL. The problem we found was that from time to time genuine companies would, for one reason or another, find themselves on these blacklist sites and, even worse, they were not always aware of it. We found this out the hard way because we didn’t process (or deliver) several orders that were contained upon these incoming emails (Managing Incoming Email)- a hard lesson by any standard.

Of course in the ‘old days’ customer orders used to come in physically on paper but these days many are coming in solely via e-mail. I used to advise against this delivery mechanism for something as important as orders using the point that e-mail is not a guaranteed (or reliable) delivery mechanism. As time progressed though, customer requirements demanded that we accept these communications and it’s hard to argue against it when customer orders are at stake. One thing I have found more of recently is that genuine customer orders on incoming e-mail are starting to show up as potential spam. Again, we typically used to reject spam senders but it now looks as if we have to manually trawl through these - and as we get hit with thousands of these e-mails per day the task is rapidly becoming quite time consuming (Guess What

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Which remote support solution to choose?

By Jason Slater in Reader

Posted in Internet on March 18, 2008 at 5:35 pm

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The time is rapidly looming for us to decide which remote control support software (or service) to use for the year ahead. Since remote control software came of age, supporting remote users has become much easier in our organisation. What used to be a two hour conversation on how to get an IP address has since become a two minute remote control session - the users are happy and the support team are happy. Our key requirement has always been a simple, fast remote desktop control service so we can quickly connect to an end user and take control when needed to sort out a particular problem.

In the early days when remote support initially became a real time consuming problem we started out with Logmein RemotelyAnywhere which required a small install on the users computers and provided quick and easy access for remote control support. This move is still pretty much one of the biggest improvements we have made in our support operation. We later moved to Logmein Rescue (see my post Remote Access Support) as we needed to support users that may not have the client software installed. This typically required a visit to a special web site for the end user to type in a pin code - it generally worked well and gave us a more flexible solution. Last year we moved to NTR Support which allowed us to place a support button directly onto our web site (which included a chat session) - I previously wrote about this in Remote User Support with NTRsupport

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Technology times they are a changing…

By Jason Slater in Reader

Posted in Management on March 11, 2008 at 4:59 pm

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2008 is becoming an interesting time in the field of technology and I

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Hey, you are a bad employee because YOU don’t like change!

By Jason Slater in Reader

Posted in General on at 4:00 pm

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I believe it is a common misconception that people don’t like change. I think that what people generally object to is change being blindly foisted upon them. If I get to work and I’m told “Hey this has changed and you now do this” I’m less likely to embrace the change as I would if I got to work and someone said “Hey, you know that change we’ve been working on - let’s kick it in today”. I don’t mean involving people in a purely superficial way either but really engaging people (and I’m not talking about team building weekends either!). If you give a new user a computer, what is the first thing they are likely to do? You got it, change something. Be it the wallpaper, the icons, the screen saver time out and hopefully their password. We all like to do this because it makes us feel more comfortable and in control. There may be technical reasons for not doing this (allowing users to set screen savers on thin clients) but on the whole giving a sense of control adopts a positive attitude to change.

We are changing all the time, everything around us is experiencing constant change. However, if you decide to blindly change something without involving people (even those on the periphery of the perceived change) you can bet that trouble will ensue shortly after. Of course communication is the answer but it needs to be handled sensitively. Talk to people, keep people in the loop even if they are not directly involved and if something is confidential then keep it that way. When we are at work we want to be part of something, to feel that our voice counts for something and that we are making a difference, even if we’re not seemingly directly involved. I’m not talking about going over the top either and blasting people with memo’s - just talk to people like their opinion matters.

What do you think?

A similar discussion can be found on my other Blog at Creative design by committee is OK - but who wants OK?

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Are IT the new moral guardians?

By Jason Slater in Reader

Posted in General on March 10, 2008 at 6:53 pm

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