InfoBulletin
October 2009
Issue 112
Case Study, Contact database dodo, Exchange 2007 SP2, Ancient AV, Export Windows mobile phone contacts
coopsys.net
InfoBulletin
October 2009
Issue 112
Case Study, Contact database dodo, Exchange 2007 SP2, Ancient AV, Export Windows mobile phone contacts
coopsys.net
Popular editionsMay 2008 Outlook Time Recording: Journal, Video to ruin your ISP? Zoho: software at your service, OCR tips, BGInfo, How to audit my PC? August 2008 Risky business, Salesforce review, SteadyState manages multi-user PCs, Do you really need a web site? June 2008 Time Recording: Outlook Times plug-in, Windows Server 2008 storage, data protection, Convert PDF documents into Word format |
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1.
An organisation with its heart in the community ...
... and its soul on the web.
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Help at hand. |
School's outWomen Like Us started as an enterprise by two women with a pioneering idea – time between school hours. Now they help other mums get back to work through a combination of career coaching (to help restore confidence, find direction and help with practical skills like CV writing), as well as providing the other half of the re-entry equation – access to employers who need experienced and talented part-time staff. The aim is to give everyone the choice to fit work around the needs of their family. Growing painsIts embryonic 5-person office in North London was soon outgrown. Even a new server and network in 2007 struggled to accommodate its rapid expansion to 20 staff, but more importantly, Women Like Us knew it had to have a base across the river to reach its key clientèle of employers and mums in south London. With 5,000 women on their books last year, this number has since exploded to 12,000 in 2009. Jo Salen, PR manager says, "The problem was we were 'hitting a wall' in South London, and not looking like we were able to reach people there. We needed a base, a place where we could meet employers and show them we were south London experts every bit as much as we were north London experts. The need to move office became compelling." Operation outreach
The first southerly steps were made with office space in a managed building in Southwark (and a welcome from Harriet Harman!), but 2008 was such a growth year that the building services were becoming something of a stranglehold, so they soon moved to Lavington Street, with a whole new office that has now become home to 25 or more peripatetic users. Jo Salen, explains: "We have 40-plus people now, this time last year there were only 25. Five are full-time and the rest part-time; it's a complete mixture. With our hot-desking system, we can access all our systems from home as well as from the office to make it easier. We've got a database called Profile which contains all our employer database, contacts, the details on women and employers, all our coaching services, workshop dates, everything - all in one piece of software. That allows us to operate in such a flexible way, but also allows us to be an example of how flexible people can really work." Technologies for flexible workingWorking together with Poornima Kirloskar-Saini, IT manager, Zorina Baksh of Co-Operative Systems has been involved in the IT project management since its inception and marks out some of the important insights: "Women Like Us were ahead of the game in understanding the idea and versatility of the web database in facilitating the flexibility of their working culture. For us, understanding the scalability they needed to grow or contract at will, yet still stay within their culture of flexibility was paramount in proposing IT upgrades for WLU." Throughout this 5-year progression, Co-Operative Systems have helped Women Like Us negotiate the path to implementing key technologies that give them such flexibility in the workplace, namely: 
Looking forward and backSo what does the transition actually feel like? "It's changed how people look at us," says Jo Salen. "We're renowned for being a business that was started up over a kitchen table by two working mums. We grew very rapidly, but people still think of us as an organisation with its heart in the community - which we are. Now, with the aid of snazzy new offices, we can bring in anybody and impress them with who we are and what we're about - it helps to take us to the next level. We have gained 4 new contracts in south London, and are able to reach another thousand women in south London." "We don't think of it as an office any more - it's become a true hub for us. We've been able to do that because the technology's been in place." 
Women Like Us brings women confidently back into the workplace after taking a break to raise a family. At all stages of their working lives, they help women find part-time or flexible work that uses their skills and talents. womenlikeus.org.uk-IB- |
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2.
The contact database dodo
The economic downturn has made us all CRM-savvy, even if we don't have any customers.
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Help at hand. |
Image copyright holder Ballista, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 The well-trod path to the training room for a course on Microsoft Access sees staff, newcomers and volunteers filing in, year after year, with each new passing version of the world's most popular database program. But is it worth maintaining lists of names, phone numbers and email addresses in a local database any more? Perhaps not. A glance at a selection of your own donors, supporters and campaigners might reveal a monthly churn of typically 5-10%. Maintaining that level of updating of user profiles costs big money in staff time, so it makes sense to minimise your commitment. Better still, don't bother. Leave it to the owner of the information instead, a feat which has now become infinitely more manageable by putting the data online. Applications such as Sharepoint for collaboration and PHPlist for newsletters already place the user's personal information under their own control. People update their email address, job title and contact numbers, logging in via their Internet connection to a partially-public area - what used to be termed an extranet – effectively an extension to the organisation's intranet. Nowadays though, the information is unlikely to be stored actually at the organisation's office but on a remotely-hosted server. Major news sites such as FT.com employ online database structures to track their readers' interests and occupations, while tempting them with numerous tick boxes to tailor received news content to suit their individual tastes. Scores of social networking sites like Facebook, Ning and LinkedIn allow their subjects to keep the overall nature of their personal contact data fresh, if only because participants' incentive to stay in touch with the site is heightened. More tangibly, participants actually experience a sense of personal control in that they can unsubscribe or expunge their data entry completely, rather than having to make requests in writing to some faceless bureaucrat; they are both giving and getting something in the exchange. 
Usurping the throne of the traditional Access-style contact database, there are now established online generalised equivalents. Going under the label of CRM - with its commercial banking roots - the main contenders in 'Customer' Relationship Management are Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the open source SugarForge, though this latter can be purchased commercially as SugarCRM too if professional support is required. These highly sophisticated tools can be configure to open up certain fields, such as email address, to ordinary non-admin users via a login. OpenID integration is becoming available to some of these CRM applications, making possible for users to connect via their OpenID login instead of having remember yet another set of login credentials. Of course, the usual Internet provisos about securing a stout hosting provider apply. No hosting hosting service means no database, whether you're an admin or not. And what of those important contacts who can't be bothered to keep their details up to scratch? Chances are you know them intimately already - a high donor, a volunteer, a funding body. For these key folk, it really worth putting in some effort, but you'll be keeping a lot more than standard contact details about them anyway. The rest are probably of marginal 'value' – as bankers would have termed them - and if CRM teaches us anything, then it's the ruthless mantra of weeding out that part of your audience that bears the least fruit for the most cost. After all, what is essential in this economically challenging climate is to maintain communication with your key supporter base and regular audiences, so implementing tools that make it a doddle to handle large numbers of everyday contacts makes economic sense too. Otherwise your home-grown database could heading down the path to extinction. Contacts
-IB- |
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3.
What's new in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2
Exchange Server 2007 SP2 arrived this summer with some key new features and an upgrade path to the next version.
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Help at hand. |
Enhanced AuditingFeature: New Exchange audit log repository. Audited events are segregated in a dedicated location. Benefits: Exchange administrators audit of activities occurring on their Exchange servers more easily. The audit log repository offers a good balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events. Simplifies the auditing process and makes it easy to review audited events. .gif)
Diagnostic LoggingFeature: new User Interface Improved UI within the Exchange Management Console Benefits: Enables Exchange administrators to configure and manage diagnostic logging easily. All-in-one backup via Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup FunctionalityFeature: Create Exchange backups through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool Benefits: A new backup plug-in for Exchange Server 2007 that didn't have this capability on Windows Server 2008, so additional applications were required to perform mail backups. Now just do it all with the same tool. Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and ValidationFeature: Deploy future schema updates across your organisation dynamically via the dynamic Active Directory (AD) schema update and validation feature. Benefits: Preventing conflicts proactively whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Management of future schema updates more easily. Prevent support issues arising when adding properties that don't exist in the AD schema. Public Folder Quota ManagementFeature: Improvement of current PowerShell cmdlets. Authoring and Versioning Administration to perform management tasks. Benefits: Perform management of folder quotas in a more consistent way. Set items such as age limits, size limits, local replica sizes and run 'what-if' scenarios before you implement them Centralized Organizational SettingsFeature: New PowerShell cmdlet parameters added in SP2. Benefits: Manage many of the Exchange organization settings centrally, eg Import/Exports, ActiveSync on VirtualDirectory, OWA Connectivity, Restore Mailbox, IMAP Settings, POP Settings. 
Upgrading to Exchange Server 2010Feature: Capability to deploy Exchange Server 2010 in you organisation Benefits: Test the Release Candidate of the next version of Exchange. All Client Access servers and any Exchange 2007 Server must have been upgraded to Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Exchange upgrade FAQExisting Exchange users don't need Service Pack 1 (SP1) as a pre-requisite for installing SP2; they can upgrade from:
Early adopters to the 2010 public beta will need Exchange 2007 SP2 in place to interoperate with Exchange Server 2010. At the other end of the spectrum, those who decide not to implement SP2 will still find Microsoft mainstream support policy for Exchange Server 2007 remains unchanged, meaning that customers running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 will receive support and Update Rollups for 12 months after SP2 ships, namely mid-2010. Pricing and AvailabilitySP2 is available at no additional cost to customers that have purchased Exchange Server 2007. SP2 was released from July 2009. Contact Co-Operative Systems for pricing.Contacts-IB- |
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4.
Ancient AV won't save you
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Help at hand. |
Occasionally we come across old computers that have been donated from business, complete with anti-virus that was bought maybe years back. As long as the corporate entity who owns the software licence keeps paying for their renewals, the donated PCs still run the anti-virus (AV) software and still fetch their updates regularly, but there are a couple of flaws in this 'no-maintenance' plan. First off it depends on the original donor company keeping up the anti-virus subs, which large enterprises often do in huge quantities if they want to remain a successful enterprise and defend their network against attack. However, if they haven't bothered to wipe their donated computers in the first place, they certainly won't be notifying recipients when they change or expire their software. However the AV engine may 'conk out' in a more fundamental and alarming manner. McAfee, AVG and F-Prot, to name but three anti-virus products, have all undergone major code rewrites in order to adapt to paradigm shifts in new virus behaviour. This constitutes more than adding new virus signatures to the existing anti-virus, but a complete restructuring of the code that implements the defence - the so-called engine. Other factors may be the rationalising of the engine code to accommodate later operating systems such Windows Vista and now Windows 7, but whatever the reason, a sea change is inevitable sooner or later. When the AV engine is released, it often requires a reinstall or upgrade or licence re-entry - it's inherently unlikely to be delivered via the 'fetch updates' route. And at that point all your donated PCs are left high and dry, instantly. So the £20 per annum it costs to own your own basic anti-virus product is a peace-of-mind bargain, and a fraction of what it can cost to remove the latest virus once its on the loose in your network. -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team |
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5.
Yours verbosely
The declamatory disclaimer that goes on and on.
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Help at hand. |
Take a good look at your signature. For the sake of the planet, and your (fleeing) audiences. We don't mean the illegible scrawl that you reserve for Ye Olde Exchange Of Monies of course, but the one that appears at the bottom of your emails. 
Signing off: short shrift beats sustained siege Many of us fill in that gap logically enough with contact information (phone, fax, direct line), ongoing campaigns ("donate to our cause at www...") or a call to action ("come and visit our latest exhibition"). It's a like a natural commercial break - as your reader pauses to consider their reply, act on your request, or file it - so for a few milliseconds you have their undivided attention as that bit of white space and its diverse web links beckon. However, it's also a gap that we fill with ubiquitous disclaimers. Who's brief?It's this latter that is causing so much distress at present. A short privacy statement or a few concise words about not forwarding the message are common and understandable (in both senses) but when it comes to legal statements, disclaimers grow like topsy. In fact you could say the legal profession takes the biscuit: recently aired email signatures (hardly radio material, but times are tough) included an example whose signature extended to 11 printed pages, even though the message was just a sentence! Brief it ai'n't. Monster missivesThe double whammy is that a lot of recipients still print their emails, so aside from the time taken to manage these monster missives and the storage that their organisation must put in place, they are also shortening the life of the planet's forests, not to mention our laser printers. P Save Paper and £££s by printing less A second effect, and one that happens in short order, is that your audience turns off, perhaps on the back of dissatisfaction with the general tone emanating from your organisation. Replies to messages containing these wordy disclaimers becomes tedious for anyone having to trawl back through heaps of renunciation, dissociation, and retraction. Emails become monster clauses of legalese punctuated with one-line snippets of conversation, instead of the other way round. Simple sign-offAnd yet a very simple solution is to paste the disclaimers on to a page on your web site and insert a short address link to that on the end of emails. It's brief, can be changed with central authorisation (instead of everyone having their own version), prevents alteration by recipients who forward emails and avoids the clutter. Check our simple text disclaimer on confidentiality and security which is a simple link like this http://coopsys.net/confidential.htm. To implement this on all outgoing staff emails is relatively quick and saves on trees and a disillusioned audience. Find out about implementing organisation-wide email signatures on your mail server via the form below. -IB- Acknowledgements: staff team |
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6.
Q&A: How to export contacts from my Windows mobile phone?
Question 
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Help at hand. |
One of the best ones we've used recently has been s piece of software called PIM Backup v2.8. It comes in versions for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and another for Windows Mobile 2003 SE. Although the backup format comes out as a .pib file (Personal Information Backup), it is actually just a .zip file, so you can open or extract it with any utility that can handle .zip files, such as WinZip, 7-Zip, WinRar, etc. Once you have extracted these files, you can edit them with Excel or even Notepad. Field delimiters such tab, comma, semi-colon and space can be set. Of course, the main purpose of PIM Backup is to do a backup and restore of all messages, including attachments, into a mail database. Likewise for Contacts, Appointments and Tasks, and even call logs. What's more, these backups can be scheduled to run on each day of the week, certain days, specific hours. If your Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device is in Suspend mode to save power, it will wake it up to do the backup and switch it off again when finished. Versioning control allows you to set the number of backups to keep too. Find PIM Backup at dotfred.net.
-IB-
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Clicks of the Trade - Create your own hotkey application launchers
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! ---
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Help at hand. |
Fed up with locating and double-clicking icons on your desktop? Hotkey fans may have missed this simple tip that launches any program on your desktop with a simple Ctrl+Alt keyboard shortcut:
You can now use your new Hotkey combination to open the program at any time - simply press Ctrl + Alt + your chosen character. Pressing the Delete key when inside the Shortcut Key box reverts back to "None". ** try it now **-IB-
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Billed as the UK’s definitive event for data storage, information and content management, Storage Expo 2009 comes to Olympia again, but isn't just about pure storage. The show now boasts a new Virtualization Showcase, a Cloud Zone and an Information Management Zone. Somewhere inside the packed web site you can even find link for the 
A release date for Firefox 4 of the 4th quarter of 2010 has been confirmed by Mozilla, but will be preceded by versions 3.6 (end 2009) and 3.7, the latter potentially ushering in a Windows Aero-style glossy interface and Office ribbon-look-alike menus. Each browsing tab will be isolated within its own process - a feature already found in IE8 and Google Chrome, on the subject of which
... Chrome 3 is 150% faster than Google's original Chrome that popped up just over a year ago. Google's engineering director, Linus Upson, claims the company will be disappointed if they don't grab 10% off the browser market by the time of Chrome's 3-year birthday.
Donations by card went up 18% in 2008, according to a report by the UK Cards Association. On debit cards, the rise was 24% in early 2009 compared to the first four months of the previous year with credit card donations up 11% in the same period. The total given by the public to charitable organisations on plastic cards reached £1.19 billion in 2008 with the gap between the two types of cards narrowing, says