We have had a really sh**** week this week, Julie has been rough all week, On Monday Michelle started feeling bad, then on Tuesday Edan was off complaining initially of a sore throat, but later testing Covid positive. On Wednesday I started feeling poorly, by Thursday we were all feeling dreadful, is it Covid? maybe, but if so it fell under anything detectable by the lateral flow tests. We are blaming the Tech Max event that we all recently went to, as several of the vendors we have subsequently spoken to are reporting they have people who attended off sick.
Meanwhile Client jobs started to build up, a tower PC which needed an upgrade, one client with two new employees starting both wanting Office setup, one a new laptop, 4 new desk phones, are their new switches wired up yet?, oh and can you recover the files someone deleted in OneDrive.
Another client where the MD didn’t know his MS password when it was demanded (as opposed to the PIN he normally uses), turned out he is still using an old RDP connection, which is supposed to be turned off. Next day (Friday evening) the Business Manager cannot remote in, turns out he is also still trying to use the old system, (which in his case has been turned off months ago), on a very dodgy old Samsung Laptop, which we have said before needs to be pensioned off into a Computer Care Home, “can’t we make it last a bit longer”, he jests, I am not feeling up to this and grumpily take his order for a new laptop, (more work) whilst promising we will get him setup (somehow) Saturday AM, Oh yes and can we setup a Vacation Notice on the Admin Managers email) (ed. Rachel you can do it yourself instruction here)
Oh yes there’s a stack of Inkjet printers building up in the shop with dried up blocked jets
Just when things are at their darkest on Saturday morning we hear a distant bugle
Joe and Harry charge in to the rescue….
By sundown the upgrade PC, has had two mixed up muddled up Microsoft accounts merged into one, (with little help from Microsoft, who seem to make things as confusing as possible – little wonder the client managed to create a second account in the first place!), had its hybrid SATA drive Cloned and upgraded to a terabyte M.2 (all our suppliers said it couldn’t be done on a 10year old Gen2 PCIe board Harry and Edan thought it could – guess who was right?), kitted out with a second 27″ monitor and taken home by its pleased owner.
Laptop for other client, is ready upgraded to Windows Pro, joined to their domain, User licensed and her Office installed and ready for her to sign into. We hadn’t found the deleted stuff they wanted, so either it was deleted more than 3 months ago, or more likely inadvertently dragged and dropped elsewhere in the OneDrive, unfortunately they have dozens of similarly named folders in their OneDrive, so they will have to check them out. We have also begun to setup a SharePoint server for them to replace a shared personal OneDrive, this will not only be more secure, easier to manage, but will also give them a shared OneDrive of around 2.5Tb
Our MD seems to be working albeit with his old RDP which we need to move him off onto our more secure Remote access server, but the Business Manager, has had a remote session which has got him up using the Apache remote access server, allowing him to remotely access any device in his Office network. A new HP Ryzen 5 laptop is due to arrive for him on Monday. We have also setup and activated a Bitwarden 2FA system on their cloud server to allow all their staff to easily setup secure logins and share logins where appropriate – this we’ll introduce them to on Monday. Oh yes Rachel’s Vacation notice has been setup using cbitsmail
Oh and a new customer was introduced to us (thanks Gary @highpeakcars), Teresa has just moved into the area has Sky broadband coming in a month but needs connection now! She has two phone contracts plus airtime with SKY, but not enough data to use for a months Real Internet use, we hired her a Tenda 4G router we have, for a month (or more), provided with 30Gb of EE data, setup the WiFi for her on her Laptop and phone and popped round to her house to check it worked correctly.
Several other bits and pieces also cleared up, a good end to a week that appeared to be going badly, and even those pesky Injun’s seem to have ridden off into the sunset (ed. – less of the Western references please, you’ll have people thinking we are cowboys)