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So you’ve noticed that the work rate in the office has been slowing down lately. Perhaps it’s because the job is too stressful. Or maybe most of your employees live far away from the new office. Whatever the reason, it’s probably best to try something new. But what can you do to get your employees […]

2016May9_VoIP_BSo you’ve noticed that the work rate in the office has been slowing down lately. Perhaps it’s because the job is too stressful. Or maybe most of your employees live far away from the new office. Whatever the reason, it’s probably best to try something new. But what can you do to get your employees to be more productive? As VoIP systems gear companies towards a more mobile workforce, work at home strategies can be just the solution you need. Here, we explain how small businesses and their employees can benefit from work at home strategies paired with VoIP.

It’s good for business

Many businesses have misconceptions about their employees choosing to work from home. They assume that their employees will be less productive if they are not within the office environment. However, this is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, according to a Harvard Business Review study, work at home policies for your small business tends to be more beneficial for your company. This is thanks to the combination of cloud computing and VoIP technologies, which can easily migrate the office environment virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. Along with this, VoIP services can empower your small business and work at home employees in a number of ways:
  • VoIP technologies allow you to keep your employees on track with an array of management tools like barge, monitor and whisper which allows you to coach and micro manage your employees.
  • The cost of business resources, furniture, space and sick days are reduced when there is an effective way for your employees to work at any location.
  • VoIP services promote continued collaboration between employees even if some of them are not in the office, allowing workflow to be more efficient.
  • As a business owner, VoIP gives your company more opportunity for growth. You can communicate and hire people from different countries with minimal cost.

Perks for employees

Work from home policies with VoIP systems isn’t just good for business either. It’s also good for your employees. As more of their workload is digitized, working from home or anywhere else has never been easier. In fact, studies have shown that employees who took days to work from home were actually more productive. Part of this is because it gives them a break from the stressful office environment and, with a VoIP service readily available to them, they feel as if they haven’t missed a day’s worth of work. With the right VoIP systems installed, employees can easily collaborate with co-workers.

Using VoIP at home also saves your employees from long and costly commutes in the morning. They can simply pick up their VoIP device and join the conference meeting without physically being in the boardroom. Furthermore, employees who want to recall important events during conferences or seminars can use the VoIP call recording feature. This way, employees can make sure they are correctly approaching their work in their own time.

VoIP requirements for remote workers

If you’re convinced that working from home is a good solution for your company, it is essential that the VoIP service provider that you choose offers the features listed below:
  • Voicemail: a must for any VoIP device. This feature will record a missed call and send you an email of the audio file.
  • Call forwarding: allows your employees to simply take and transfer calls between VoIP devices and their smartphones.
  • Whisper, monitor and barge: allows you to check on your employees. If they’re in a business call you can still contact them without disrupting the call. This is also a good tool for call coaching.
  • VoIP integrated to shared documents: products like Office 365 let your employees access Skype while collaborating on a Word document. This means your employees can give instant feedback and correct each other without the need to send emails.
Many companies are now benefiting from a mobile and remote work environment. Although work at home strategies may seem like a risky venture, making the most out of your VoIP technologies will keep your employees happy and productive. If you want to learn more about the VoIP services that we offer and where it will fit in your company, give us a call.
Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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To get ahead as a small business, it’s important for your company to stay on top of IT trends. The problem is, these trendy and new solutions are quite confusing to understand, especially for companies with limited IT experience. One of the more complicated IT trends would have to be app virtualization. To clear up […]

2016May6_Virtualization_BTo get ahead as a small business, it’s important for your company to stay on top of IT trends. The problem is, these trendy and new solutions are quite confusing to understand, especially for companies with limited IT experience. One of the more complicated IT trends would have to be app virtualization. To clear up the confusion, here is a quick overview of what app virtualization is all about.

Non-virtualized apps

To understand app virtualization, we need to know how desktop applications are traditionally installed first. When you install an application like Skype or Slack onto a computer, the installer program puts most of the files required for the app to run in the Program Files folder on your hard drive. This process is usually fine for personal use, but things can become problematic if you install similar apps on your device.

For instance, if two similar applications are installed on the same file destination, there is a chance that these programs might conflict with each other and inevitably crash. Similarly, if you choose to uninstall a program without knowing that it shares important files with another application, you run the risk of breaking the other application. Additionally, installing applications the traditional way means you’ll have to manually install the same programs for all your users. Not only is this expensive but installing new applications for every desktop in your company is going to take an absurdly long time.

App virtualization

The solution to this is app virtualization. This refers to the type of virtualization where you run a program on a thin client, which runs in an environment separate from the physical server allowing you to run programs that are normally not compatible with a certain operating system (OS). In other words, virtualized apps trick your computer into working as if the application is running on a local machine, but in fact you’re actually accessing the app from somewhere else. This is better than traditionally installed programs because virtual apps run and feel just like any regularly installed app would.

Advantages of app virtualization:

Apart from the basics however, app virtualization offers more advantages for small businesses including:
  • Quick installation times and less money spent on local installation for each user.
  • Allowing incompatible applications to run on any local machine. For instance, if your laptop is dated and can’t run the latest apps on its own, you can lighten the load on your CPU by accessing virtualized apps instead.
  • Mac users can simply run any Windows apps if your company’s local server runs Windows OS.
  • Applications will not conflict with each other on your computer, since virtual apps are installed in a different location.
  • Upgrading is easy since your IT department won’t have to upgrade applications in individual desktops, they just have to upgrade the virtual application within the company’s local server.
  • Applications can be accessed from any machine, allowing your employees to work from home or on the go if they choose to.

Things to consider:

Before you start deploying app virtualization solutions at the workplace, you need to have a stable network connection first so that you can smoothly stream apps to your users. This is definitely more important for graphic intensive applications. You should also note that some applications like antivirus programs are difficult to virtualize since they need to be closely integrated with your local OS.

App virtualization is popular for many SMBs and it definitely pays off to know why it’s good for your company before taking the plunge. Virtualizing a workplace is no easy task and that’s where we come in. So if you’re convinced that your company can benefit from app virtualization, get in touch with our IT experts today.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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El Capitan has been a popular update for those using Mac computers. But that’s not to say Apple’s latest OS is not without its problems. If you’ve been using El Capitan for awhile now, you may have bumped into a few pesky issues. Here are some of the most common ones and the solutions you […]

2016May5_AppleMacOS_BEl Capitan has been a popular update for those using Mac computers. But that’s not to say Apple’s latest OS is not without its problems. If you’ve been using El Capitan for awhile now, you may have bumped into a few pesky issues. Here are some of the most common ones and the solutions you need to fix them.

Application freeze

Worse than a brain freeze from a slushy, application freezes on your OS oftentimes last much longer and leave you frustrated watching the pinwheel of death spin on and on. For those once-PC users who’ve made the transition to Mac, your tried and true solution of pressing Control-Alt-Delete unfortunately doesn’t apply here. Instead, you can try these two options when an app freezes.
  1. Press and hold command > option, then hover over the problem-application on the dock, and hold down the left button on your mouse. Now navigate to Force Quit in the box that appears, and release your finger from the mouse.
  2. If you can’t access the dock, then press and hold command > option, then tap the escape key. A menu with the option to Force Quit any app that’s running will appear. Simply select the app you’d like to quit and click Force Quit.

Mac is running slow

Almost every Mac user’s system starts to run slow at some point in time. While sometimes you can just be patient and the problem will correct itself on its own, other times the slowness becomes a consistent nuisance at which point it’s time to look closer at the issue. Usually the culprit has to do with the memory, which means you should check which applications or processes are using most of it. This is where the Activity Monitor comes in handy.

To find the Activity Monitor click on Finder > Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. Alternatively you can simply search for it with the Spotlight tool.

Once you’ve opened Activity Monitor, click on Memory. To see which applications are eating most of it, make sure the arrow next to Memory is pointed downward. Doing this will display apps in order from highest memory consumers at the top to lowest at the bottom. Now that you can easily see the biggest memory hogs, consider closing these apps.

Printing problems

No one likes waiting on an unresponsive printer. So if your printer is slow to respond or completely unresponsive, go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and select Print. Then press and hold ctrl, click on the problem printer and then Reset printing system. After you’ve done this, restart your Mac and Printer.

Slow Spotlight functionality

As handy as Spotlight is, some users have experienced a slowdown in the application after updating to El Capitan. One way to resolve this issue is to simply be patient, as usual the app just needs some time to do its job. However, if you’re in a rush or the slowdown is a persistent problem, you can take matters into your own hands. Click System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, and then narrow down the areas Spotlight searches by unchecking them. For example, if there’s no need for Spotlight to check the thousands of images stored on your hard drive, simply uncheck Images.

These four tips should help you resolve some common El Capitan issues that are known to give users headaches. If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your Mac OS or any of your other Apple products, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Apps. We need them for entertainment, organization and for work. In the 21st century, more businesses need more apps to stay ahead of the competition. And as iOS and Android phones continue to dominate the market with popular apps, the lack of services available for Windows phones put Microsoft in a tough spot. Here is […]

2016May4_MicrosoftWindowsNewsAndTips_BApps. We need them for entertainment, organization and for work. In the 21st century, more businesses need more apps to stay ahead of the competition. And as iOS and Android phones continue to dominate the market with popular apps, the lack of services available for Windows phones put Microsoft in a tough spot. Here is a quick rundown of the problem facing Windows smartphones today and what they’re planning to do to fix it.

The problem

Since its release, Windows 10 Mobile has not been getting as much traction as Microsoft had hoped. One of the biggest factors to this is due to Windows 10 Mobile struggling to get popular apps like Instagram or Snapchat onto their platform. This would mean that customers would have to settle for third-party services that were usually quite obscure, and had a higher chance of shutting down since developers cannot maintain the app running for long without proper funding.

Furthermore, because of such a small market for Windows 10 phones, fewer apps were being developed. No app creator was going to spend time making an app for a platform that is constantly overshadowed by iOS or Android devices. The only thing the Windows 10 Mobile had going for it was its lower price point, but with barely any apps to make the entire device worthwhile, customers were going elsewhere for more popular alternatives.

The solutions

So, clearly, Microsoft needed to reevaluate their strategy to get people’s heads turning back to their devices. In pursuit of a larger user base for Windows phones, here are some of the features that Microsoft are planning to deploy:
  • Cross compatibility apps: In order to get on the same playing field, Microsoft has been trying to make apps that were only available on iOS and Android compatible with Windows devices.
  • Universal Windows Platform: Microsoft’s best solution for a lack of apps on the Windows 10 Mobile is to allow apps to run in several platforms. This means apps that were initially developed for PC, Xbox and Internet of Things (IoT) powered devices can also run on your phone. Instead of getting limited services from one device, you have access to all the apps available for any Windows 10 product.

Will this work?

We’re still uncertain if these strategies will make you want to run out to the nearest store and pick up the newest Windows Phone model, but it seems promising. Companies like Apple and Google have not been successful in unifying their apps for different devices. However, Microsoft’s large PC customer base and available apps can hopefully change that. It also gives Windows phones a unique selling point, other than their competitive pricing, which is sure to attract some customers.

These days, users are working with more than one device at any given time and as we begin to lose track of all the apps installed on our devices, a unified app platform can be just what we need for the future. So do you think you’ll be picking up a Windows phone anytime soon?

Want to stay up to date with the latest developments from Microsoft? Contact us today.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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