CONTENTS *** NewsBytes *** Risky business Salesforce review: CRM Software as a Service SteadyState makes multi-user PCs easy to manage How badly do you need a web site? Roaming profile - Barry Antwi Q&A: What does a PC cost to run per day in electricity? Clicks of the Trade - Tune out, switch off, take a break

Overview of InfoBulletin Viewing IB (online versions only) View IB Digital Book editions Subscriptions Implementation Privacy policy Contact Details Archives & index of issues coopsys.net Services Approach InfoBulletin About us Contact Us

*** NewsBytes ***
Big search is Cuil In every sense of the word Cuil is pronounced "cool", a Silicon Valley start-up that has quietly racked up over 120 billion indexed web pages to become what it claims is the world's largest search engine, trouncing Google by a factor of over three. Cuil scalability, engineered by former IBM and Google architects, allows it to run on a few servers as opposed to a few thousand and ranks pages on content rather than popularity, though industry analysts comment that the entrenched habits of searchers might be the major obstacle to change. Ironically, a search for the word "cuil" (Gaelic for "knowledge") from its own engine return results for bars and restaurants from the Scottish isles, while Google pushes up technical entries about its potential competitor. The reason could be the recent product name change from "Cuill". www.cuil.com Cutting the cost of accounting Two moves to defray the cost of accounting were rung up on UK charities' till last month. First out of the stables is Microsoft who plans to develop an improved version of its Office Accounting Pro program (donated licence plus handling fee) that will offer charities more functionality and will be to downloadable for free, perhaps by the end of the calendar year. Meanwhile, riding the burgeoning wave of 'software as a service' (SaaS), CODA 2go is to be made available gratis to registered UK charities up to a 4-license limit. CODA Group has teamed up with world leader in on-demand CRM applications Salesforce.com to deliver CODA’s award-winning 'multi-everything' finance functionality to the On-Demand environment. GRANTfinder Organisations without the resources to access GRANTfinder can now benefit from a discounted edition aimed at smaller charities called cttGRANTfinder, providing simplified search, alert and management capabilities while delivering the same details on the relevant funding opportunities, newsflashes and bulletins as the full GRANTfinder service. cttGRANTfinder is being made available through Charity Technology Exchange (CTX), the technology donation management service run by CTT and is available to UK Registered Charities and non-umbrella groups on less than £1 million per annum that are not primarily publicly funded. Microsoft Financing In the tough economic climate that is emerging, the temptation is to cut back and postpone long-term IT investments, but in fact this is just the time when better use of IT could make an organisation more cost-effective and new financing from Dell and Microsoft can help those wanting to make monthly payments rather than, say putting off that urgent upgrade. Microsoft Financing provides a total solution financing option for all customer IT needs. Unlike traditional schemes, Microsoft Financing will finance 100% of eligible Microsoft and third-party software, as well as partner services and hardware, with no hidden costs. To understand more about a financing solution, contact us.	No more Win CDs CDs and DVDs are dead. At least for the purposes of distributing Microsoft software. The "Discontinuation of Media Fulfilment from 11th July" announcement means that customers will need to download and purchase their media online. Licence confirmations will provide a link to one of the download websites. Particularly in regard to Open license management, the move will help to reduce deployment lead-times and falls in line with Microsoft’s corporate strategy of in reducing waste (packaging). The only exceptions are a few product families not available to download where the product has retail ID keys placed on the media, namely Windows Small Business Server (SBS) Standard & Premium, Windows Server for Small Business, Microsoft Math and CRM Professional Server 3.0 (though the latest version Dynamics CRM Professional Server is available for download). For products where the open media kit is not available to purchase on-line, customers can contact customer support centres to purchase these products manually at no cost. 802.11 T-shirt Say 'bye-bye' to bulky detector units or keyring wi-fi detectors that you actually to remove from a pocket or bag to look at. Thanks to the glowing bars on the front of this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt, you can radiate a continuous, dynamic display of 802.11b/g wi-fi signal strength around you. Ultimate present for the geek in your life? The supreme wearable gadget to upstage your colleagues and friends? We can barely wait to get ours. XP SP3 locks out updates Frustrated Windows XP owners who applied the recent Service Pack 3 (SP3) and subsequently receive a message stating that updates were not installed successfully will be relieved to know others suffered the same plight and that Microsoft have published another update to fix the problem. All the answers in Knowledge Base article 943144 Collecting and using data on volunteers A new Research Bulletin, Monitoring volunteers: a guide to collecting and using data, has been published by the Institute for Volunteering Research. It aims to provide guidance to both volunteer-involving organisations (VIOs) and volunteer development agencies (VDAs), based on findings from a four-month research project. Membership Management Exhibition The twelfth annual instalment of MEMBERS 2008 - the Membership Management Technology Exhibition - gets going on Tuesday 16th September, again at the Business Design Centre, London N1, sponsored by IRIS NFP Solutions. Designed to appeal to Membership Administrators, IT Managers, Financial Directors, CEOs and those responsible for managing and communicating with members, subscribers, supporters, donors, it is a key diary date for anyone looking to install or upgrade a CRM system, website or new media tool. A programme of free tech-based educational seminars and registration for this free event can be found at www.members.it HMRC scam emails Fake emails in the name of HM Revenue & Customs are stalking the Internet. The emails ask customers to provide banking details so that a repayment can be issued. Needless to say, HMRC never contacts organisations by email for this type of information, but some charities and amateur sports clubs may have been confused if they recently submitted a repayment claim. Another example of ‘phishing' emails that should always be ignored and deleted.
*** More NewsBytes ***

	^ Back to contents ^
	1. Risky business 'Business continuity management' has been the latest buzzword of the last couple of years, but in essence it just means taking stock of the risks that could bring your organisation to a grinding halt - a suitable description in fact, for how far most organisations have reached with their own assessment process.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	The plight formerly-known-as recovering from disaster "Recovering from a disaster", whether that's a full scale fire or flooding, or just "I've lost my emails", has had 'positive spin' applied to it in recent times and is now conventionally known as Business Continuity. However, the appliance of a little jargon has spawned a whole industry, not to say more than its fair share of acronyms (Business Impact Analysis, Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption, Recovery Time Objective), turning into a science and even an art according to some claims. The result is that, at one end of the staff spectrum, there are people who think that knowing where to stand for the fire drill and having heard vague mention of the term 'backup' means that all eventualities are taken care of and everything in their world of insurable disasters is rosy. At the other end, those tasked with actually putting practical plans together are swamped in paperwork and feel intimidated by the monumental size of the job they have taken on. Planning to plan The arrival of summer is a good time to look at risk when in-house activity has slowed a bit and calls on IT support time have calmed a little, before the surge in the Autumn when activities start hotting up. What's needed is a general feel for how much exposure the entire enterprise has to the big day-to-day risks and a plan to take appropriate evasive action. For instance, if your electricity is really unreliable and subject to failures, some negotiations with the building supplier are in short order and the odd Uninterruptible Power Supply box may help alleviate things short term. Such units have dropped in price and for many have averted the loss of their only router following a lightning storm. However, if it's district-wide, then you can try tackling the electricity supplier, but the ultimate solution may simply be a move. Likewise with anything where evacuation becomes a distinct possibility, such as flood-risk areas. With the 'pure IT' side, a lot can be implemented relatively inexpensively with doubly-redundant backups, off-site measures, email re-routing in case of ISP failures and ditto for that all important Internet connection. Even entrenching the idea of regular document saving as a staff policy is a simple step forward. Rest easy, not die hard Secondary effects to consider further down the line revolve around whether a risk will exacerbate itself. Is your building of a nature such that power failures will plunge you into darkness, cut all the phones off and irrevocably lock the doors? It's not exactly a Die Hard scenario, but it could easily become Suffer Uncomfortably And Unnecessarily For Longer Than We Expected, a film which unaccountably recorded fewer successes at the box office. Risk Assessment in a nutshell Any process like this inevitably asks more questions than it answers, since each situation requires tailored solutions, but our Risk Assessment in a nutshell document is provided as a quick-read template to cover most of the bases, even if it's just to weigh up whether the process will be a fast jog or a long slog for your size of organisation. Whatever the outcome, you'll at least feel better with a little knowledge under your belt and, most importantly, having made a start. Contacts Risk Assessment in a Nutshell - a template for download in Word .doc format from our Documents & policy section What if you lose it all InfoBulletin January 2001 Does a second ISP guarantee your Internet connection? InfoBulletin December 2006 How Prepared Are You? - Business Continuity Management Toolkit PDF, from the Government site preparingforemergencies.gov.uk Learn more about disaster recovery. -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team

	^ Back to contents ^
	2. Salesforce review: CRM Software as a Service Would a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database and your charity make for odd bedfellows? We asked Nicole Aebi-Moyo from BOND to share her experiences about online CRM software.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	How many organisations can claim to have a database their staff use without complaint? A database that is free to use and easy to implement? A database that can grow and develop as your organisation grows and develops? We reckon we can. BOND, a second tier organisation working with international development agencies (www.bond.org.uk), has recently started work on implementing Salesforce as its organisational database. With donated licenses making it free for the organisation to use, and coming out of the box in a form that needs little in the way of customisation, Salesforce seems to be the logical database for all organisations. Do I sound like I'm on commission? I'm not, but I am in love. Salesforce allows us to do all the usual activities that you'd expect from a database and much more. Once our new website has been developed, the two will integrate to collect information on potential contacts; allow members to update their details; take bookings for training courses and events; and allow us to publish information to our website from our database. Salesforce have an interesting take on Corporate Social Responsibility. They donate 1% of their profits, 1% of their time and 1% of their product (in the form of free licenses) to charities. Most charities will get free licenses on application and if you're lucky, you'll get some development time as well. BOND chose to hire a developer to undertake some serious development work but that's not totally necessary to get a fully working system. So excited am I by Salesforce, I've also implemented it for the community orchestra I run. And with very little experience or knowledge, I've managed to integrate it with the orchestra's website so that potential players and audience can register their interest with us. Salesforce offer free 5-day administration training for charities although demand for this is high. They have just launched a training course specifically for not-for-profits but charge a fee of £300 for this to cover their costs. But for 5 days, that's very good value for money. Downsides? If I was being picky, I'd say their responses to emails can be somewhat slow and not everyone in the Salesforce 'team' is as engaged with the not-for-profit sector as they might be, but that's about as bad as the criticism gets. I've yet to find something we want to do that Salesforce can't cope with. The system is also web-based so you can access your data from anywhere in the world. And with a newly launched accountancy package that integrates fully with Salesforce that's also free, soon your whole organisation could be using the system, no matter where they are. A user-group for the not-for-profit sector has just been set up. Why not join and see what your organisation could do with Salesforce? BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development) is the United Kingdom's broadest network of voluntary organisations working in international development and aims to improve the UK's contribution by promoting the exchange of experience, ideas and information. To support this work, BOND manages training, advocacy and information services. -IB-

	^ Back to contents ^
	3. SteadyState makes multi-user PCs easy to manage Microsoft offers a free tool to those tasked with reining in significant numbers of abused PCs that stray from the neat installation platform they started out with.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Round up any given sample collection of computers within an organisation, collar the person in charge of IT for 30 seconds (that's probably all the spare time they have) and quiz him/her on their most common workstation bugbears. You will probably find ALL of them on this list: Hard discs overflowing with user-downloaded files Strange options configured Programs installed that you don't want System infected with viruses and spyware Computer bogged down for unknown reasons Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafe, a library, or even in your home, a free download called Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them. Windows SteadyState, successor to the Shared Computer Toolkit, is designed to make life easier for people who set up and maintain shared computers. Lock-down A stable platform for shared computing can only be achieved by maintaining a degree of uniformity of PC workstations. For example, not every computer user should have access to every software capability, so PC systems can be more stable and consistent when you limit user access to control panel functions, network resources, and other sensitive areas. Manage multiple users easily Whole groups of users can be managed as single user accounts. The Windows SteadyState console makes it easier than before to create and modify user profiles. Set and forget Once everything is set up the way you specify it, you can share the computer and sit back without worrying. Any changes a user might make to the configuration or hard disc are simply undone by restarting the machine. Best of all, it's free as long as you have a genuine Windows licence! Supported Operating Systems: most versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP Contacts SteadyState web site Windows SteadyState 2.5 Handbook Download and install Windows SteadyState -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team

	^ Back to contents ^
	4. How badly do you need a web site? Everyone takes it for granted these days that their organisation needs a web site, but are we website-obsessed?
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Web sites are such a part of an organisation's PR armoury, it would seem be a questions that doesn't need asking. Otherwise how would people find you, look up background info or maintain contact with your key staff? Surely it's a given these days. That expenditure of say £500 or £5000 to get a designer to craft a relatively simple site may actually be put to better use, say with campaign leaflets or perhaps a research study - at least in terms of core work. Of course there are the wider considerations of publicity, PR and generally informing the public about an organisation's raison d'être, but many have become so focussed on the idea that everyone should have a web site, that they have to forgotten to take account of what the site is for and it becomes a kind of heresy to suggest doing with less - or even without. Unfortunately, the analytical side of "Why do we want a web site?" often gets inadvertently dumped, in the rush to achieve "How do get a web site?". The "Why ...?" strays uncomfortably close to inferences of marketing and market research, an area with which many third sector enterprises are still less than comfortable. What is your web site for? For small groups it is especially important to decide exactly what is wanted from a web site, or even if it's worth having one, because going down this route can swallow up enormous amounts of people-time - choosing or designing a logo, graphics, layout, what the text should say, even where exists the cost advantage of a web-savvy volunteer to do the actual execution. Let's take a quick detour round the wicked web's Art of False Reasoning ... "It's a shop front" Borrowing this phrase is doing an injustice to the countless start-ups and small businesses who have done the market research and know exactly which potential customers will want to find precisely what in their shop window, and in which precise geographical location. A bit more precision and less fuzzy thinking needed to justify expending what could be a lot of effort. "People will find us through web searches" Suppose you are a small organisation that campaigns environmentally to rid the planet of plastic bags. And suppose the three words that best describe your activities are “plastic”, “bag”, and “environment”; it takes under 30 seconds to determine that Google believes the most important people in this business are news agencies or government agencies bent on promoting ‘green’ stories or pushing green agendas respectively. Stated bluntly, those 3 key words have been hijacked by better-known organisations than yours is ever likely to be, and since Google's rankings aim to mirror human word-of-mouth recommendations (and do so quite successfully), the best bet is to get yourself known by other important humans first. No web site needed, not just yet anyway. "Visitors can find out more background about what we do" A valid argument this one. When large numbers of people are already up to speed on the name of your organisation, they will start seeking you out (take a pat on the back for your marketing prowess), but in a few milliseconds and the next thing they want is supporting information and a web site that presents that info is ripe for the making. However, if such visitors are complete strangers oblivious to what you are called, then how do they find you? (see "Web searches" paragraph above). Catch 22. By contrast, if visitors already know you, then you are either already a flourishing social enterprise or not-for-profit charity and this article is irrelevant, or your audience is already familiar with your activities. In this case they are likely to be staff, supporters, members, trustees, campaigners and groups in your sector; a web site built entirely for this sector of visitors could just be preaching to the converted. Now ask yourself: how money much is that worth spending on? This isn’t a facetious question – it really does need to be factored into the IT and publicity budgets. Low-end web site solutions A simple 4- or 5-page site can be built via Google Pages in almost as many minutes. Other free offerings such as Microsoft’s Office Live have now entered the fray and by searching around for web templates, it’s easy to take much of the slog and decision-making out of web design, while still retaining a bit of freedom to steer clear of being a ‘me-too’ web site. So at the low-end, the mechanics of website creation can be extremely low cost. However, cheap tools won't make an experienced designer out of a complete web beginner. Assuming the organisation has registered its own domain (the one really simple, cost-effective thing it should have done by now), you could then point said domain at your chosen free web space to appear more professional, (so that say www.greenplasticbags.org.uk ends up at the index.html page of your Google Pages web site). Convinced (perhaps reluctantly) that a bit of marketing or research is now required? As a first stop, you couldn't do better than at least skimming through nfpSynergy's annual 'charity use of the Internet' survey - the latest being Virtual Promise 2007. Just pick out the questions, not the answers. It's a real insight into how the sector is using web, email and IT generally, but also highlights how many other good-value promotional methods - printed material, posters, press advertising, and so on - that is still employed. In the end, it's about weighing up whether your effort (and hence cash) is being applied wisely. -IB-

	^ Back to contents ^
	5. Roaming profile - Barry Antwi An occasional dip into the hearts and minds of the people that make Co-Operative Systems tick.
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Barry Antwi - Field Engineer Which applications do you use daily? BartPE Bootdisk. Enables me to reset passwords, recover data, ghost computers, clean a PC of viruses and many more useful things. What hardware are you most impressed by? Cisco-based firewalls and routers. They are very well designed, reliable, robust and a pleasure to manage. Favourite web sites? www.ebuyer.co.uk – excellent website for getting bits of kit on the cheap. Most rewarding part of your job? Learning new technologies and applying them practically to develop client systems. Best bit of software in your current kit? Ontrack PowerControls. It is a very handy email recovery tool. What engages your interest when you're not clicking a mouse all day long? Photography. Most awkward/daft/embarrassing support moment? While doing support I asked someone to type in www.google.com to test whether they had a connection to the Internet. The person was insistent that there was a problem with the connection, but all my tests showed otherwise. I asked him to spell out what he had typed. He said: "wwwdotgoogledotcom". Sigh ... Insider tips for running IT smoothly? Documentation is everything. Having one person know the system doesn't help when they are not around. What single non-IT thing fascinates you? Nothing - I live for my job! I love it when a next door neighbour or a distant relative that I haven't seen since the mid '80s hunts me down and asks me about a little computer problem they have on my days off! Meet the staff team ... -IB-

	^ Back to contents ^
	6. Q&A: What does a PC cost to run per day in electricity? Question Mark Hi Mark, We are about to do an energy and cost audit of our equipment and we are wondering what does a PC cost to run per day in electricity? (And a server too).
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Running costs are very dependant on the type of PC or server, screen and electricity contract. Really rough estimates suggest daily average electricity consumption could be as little as 5p for a PC and monitor together (IT all adds up by Simon Handby) or in the region of 4p to 18p for a PC and 2.5p for a LCD flat screen (How much electricity do computers use? by Michael 'Mr. Electricity' Bluejay). The latter uses calculations based on a 9p-per-KWh electricity contract and 8 hours usage per day. For more accurate answers, you could go direct to the manufacturer's tech specs. Thus, using figures from Dell's site for a PowerEdge T105 server on the same electricity contract above, with its 305 Watt power supply at full load but on for 24 hours, the answer is a cost of 66p per day. That is for one of the smaller servers; the more power-hungry machines can be triple the cost! To get an actual, rather than calculated, measurement of what you are using, you could also pick up an inexpensive meter. Such devices go under the name of 'energy meter', 'eco-saver' or 'energy monitor'. Typical consumer models come in under £15 and the example here uses batteries so you can actually take the reading after it's been removed from the awkwardly-located power source, unlike mains-powered versions. Discover answers in more Q&A topics -IB-

	^ Back to contents ^
	Clicks of the Trade - Tune out, switch off, take a break --- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
Help at hand. Back issues just a click away	Close this window, turn off the computer, and get (a bit more of) a life. You really don't need this much technology 24x7. This fact is amply demonstrated at key events in our lives: those 'births, deaths and marriages' times when you are actually doing stuff. At all other times, we're mostly just 'talking about doing', which is largely what technology helps us do better and more of. So drop out of tech society for a while. Take a holiday. And that includes the mobile. ** try it now ** More Clicks of the Trade -IB-

^ Back to contents ^ Overview of InfoBulletin InfoBulletin is written and published by Co-Operative Systems and contains Information Technology tips that we come across during everyday research and support activities and which may be useful in improving your IT operations, either internally or on the Internet. Opinions expressed within InfoBulletin do not necessarily represent the views of Co-Operative Systems. E&OE Viewing IB This bulletin is presented as a Web page (in HTML) that can be read in any standard browser and most email clients. It is written in a compact format for fast viewing, short download time and ease of use for mobile computers. Printing IB If you prefer to read IB on paper (hopefully recycled!), think about pulling down the File | Print Preview menu in your browser and just printing the sheets you want. Implementation InfoBulletin topics can be implemented by Co-Operative Systems on a chargeable basis or via Facilities Management (FM) for those with rolling work programmes.

Subscriptions At any time you can change your subscriber address or stop receiving InfoBulletin altogether by changing your subscriber preferences or by visiting www.coopsys.net/bulletin. Links in the original email message body allow you to forward this issue to a friend, colleague or associate without subscribing them. ^ Back to contents ^ Contact details Sales & Enquiries: 020 7793 0395 team@coopsys.net Support: 020 7793 7877 support@coopsys.net Fax: 020 7735 6472 Fax us via email Web: http://www.coopsys.net Privacy Under no circumstances does Co-Operative Systems supply lists of customers to other organisations. Read our Privacy Policy in full.

Archives and Index Read recent and past issues of InfoBulletins on the Web at www.coopsys.net/ibindex.htm or search our archives and subject index. We hope you found InfoBulletin useful! If you would like to comment on any of the articles or request particular subjects to be covered, mail us here. CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEMS Interpreting Information Technology