Tech Notes – Friday Technology Services News and Information
Technology Services News – October 6th, 2017
COMPLETED PROJECTS
The last two weeks have been very busy with two very large projects for Technology Services:
- Successful move of our DTC Phone System to our Data Center!
This was a huge endeavor and was incredibly successful thanks to the efforts of everyone on the Technology Team! To give you an idea of what is involved we physically moved our phone connections and over 243 phone numbers, in coordination with our vendors, from one provider to another and from one physical location to another.
This move will provide us with the ability to consolidate our phone systems for easier management and monitoring and prevent any outages to our phone system if any of our offices lose power or connectivity.
- Association Website moves from Association Voice to Pilera
Thanks to everyone who assisted with the transition of Association websites to Pilera! Joseph worked diligently over the last few weeks to get all of our Associations moved to the Pilera platform for websites. This move provides our Clients with a single provider/location for either or both the Portal and Association website. In addition, this move gives us a substantial cost savings as we are no longer paying for both Association Voice and Pilera to run similar items.
WE WILL BE PERFORMING A PILERA REVIEW for those who wish to get additional information on Wednesday, November 1st, in the Pikes Peak Conference Room at Inverness.
- Replacement of 6 Xerox printers with new Kyocera printers
We have successfully replaced 4 of 6 Xerox printers in the Inverness office and the primary printer in both the Loveland and Northglenn offices. Huge thank you to Michelle Madsen for her coordination efforts and planning! This change will give us a huge boost in productivity as the printers are more efficient, easy to use, and have reporting capabilities that will make our monthly accounting work a much easier and quick process.
UPCOMING PROJECTS
- Regular Friday maintenance starting today, October 6th, 2017
We are beginning our regular, calendared maintenance on systems and network beginning tonight from 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM. By working on a consistent and standardized basis we will be able to get in front of any updates, issues, and preparation for new projects. This week we are working on several items:
- Microsoft Server Updates
- RUN maintenance
- Anti-Virus updates and review
- Data Center network updates and improvements
- Jenark server duplication for testing
During our maintenance window servers, data, and connections to the network will be unavailable. EMAIL AND PILERA WILL CONTINUE FUNCTIONING AS USUAL.
- New Technical Support and Business Center ticketing system
We will be moving to a new and improved ticketing and support system for both Technical Services and the Business Center. The new system will be faster, cleaner, and more efficient for submitting and resolving tickets and issues. Ben is spearheading this project over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for additional communication as we determine specific dates for this transition.
- Network upgrades and improvements
We are continuing the work on our network and office/internet connections to improve speed, performance, and stability. This includes moving all of our offices over to Comcast as our primary connection, establishing a private network connection between all of our offices, and improving our wireless network access and connectivity. Stay tuned as we progress on each of these items!
Thank you to everyone for your support and communication as we work to provide a quality environment for everyone’s Technology needs! In that regard, Jeff Hathcote has worked with us to create a focused mission statement for the Technology Services team. Moving forward, Technology Services will be approaching everything we do with this mission in mind:
Technology Services provides secure, reliable, and integrated technology solutions in alignment with Company goals, while delivering excellence in customer service.
In support of this mission, we will:
- Partner with the Hammersmith® community to understand the information technology needs of staff and clients.
- Provide leadership and planning for the effective and strategic use of emerging technologies.
- Demonstrate technical and operational excellence through a commitment to professionalism and continuous improvement.
Ryan Vieth
Senior Systems Engineer