July 2016

Get More Free Tips, Tools and Services: www.Syscon-inc.com 630.850.9039 Summer Heat vs. Computers Heat Wins Every Time Every summer we hear from a client that has turned off the air conditioning over a long weekend to keep the electricity expenses down, only to find the server room equipment is ‘frozen’ and unresponsive. High temperatures can be a death sentence for your electronics. A server that becomes overheated usually costs more in energy to run, has a shorter lifespan, and is more likely to crash. For most companies, a server crash can mean hours or days of downtime, unproductive employees, and a great deal of unnecessary stress. 8 Steps Every Business Owner Should Take To Prevent a HeatInduced Server Crash Here are a few simple things you can do to prevent your server and network equipment from overheating and crashing this summer:  Tidy up the server room; a neater room will increase airflow. Remove papers or other items that have been stacked on top of, or right next to, computer equipment.  Make sure cold air reaches all the equipment; this area has to have air conditioning 24/7/365!  Keep the doors to the server room closed and seal off the space. 4. Consider a server room thermostat that can send temperature alerts directly to your email. Get some help from our techs as you consider where to set the thermostat and what levels to set for the alerts. 5. Buy a rack enclosure so the air can flow all around the equipment rather than having the computers stacked on a table top, or even worse, stacked on top of each other. Server racks are designed to keep air flowing above and below the equipment and can include your APC units.  Keep the temperature at no more than 77 degrees Fahrenheit.  Look into Managed Services to monitor the health of your computer equipment. Proactive monitoring can identify negative events sooner, giving you more time to address any unexpected events; a great example, what if the AC fails over a long weekend?  Consider virtualization of physical servers, or cloud computing, so that you have fewer pieces of equipment producing heat in the first place! Electronics are sensitive to heat, and your computers are an integral part of running your business, as well as a sizable investment. How can we help? We love this stuff! Our passion is helping businesses use technology to run their organization successfully and profitably. Your Image Here What’s New This monthly publication provided courtesy of Catherine Wendt, President of Syscon Inc. July 2016 This is the newest version of our Client Newsletter! We wanted to increase the font size and expand our updates and this new format will let us do both. We have a couple new features, as well. There’s a trivia contest; just go to the website page listed, fill out the electronic business card and put it in the ‘fish bowl’ to be entered in a prize drawing. The best new feature is our Client Spotlight – we’d love to feature each one of our clients, highlighting the type of work they do, how many years in business, and what makes them excellent in their market. You can contact Renee Montgomery if you’re interested. She can’t wait to hear your story! -- 1 of 4 - All Things Tech July 2016 Many business owners make common mistakes with their computer network that cost thousands of dollars in lost sales, productivity, and computer repair bills. Download this free report and learn about these mistakes and how to eliminate the financial expense and frustration of these oversights. Free Report Download: What Every Small Business Owner Must Know About Protecting And Preserving Their Company’s Critical Data And Computer Systems Love what we do? Love how we do it? When you refer someone to Syscon and they become a client, we’ll reward you for your time, and thank you for your vote of confidence. Contact Brian Bruns at Syscon to share the contact details and sign up for our referral program. BBruns@syscon-inc.com Welcome, Jim Woss! Please welcome Jim Woss, our IT Manager. Jim brings a solid background in IT, as well as IT Management skills. As a seasoned tech himself, he’s already jumped in on several projects while getting to know the techs and our clients. The techs will finally have the full-time support they need! Cathy & Larry Sightings Catherine attended the Datto 2016 Conference in Nashville; lots of exciting new products, and great updates for existing products Larry participated in this summer’s bike ride in Galena with friends and clients; 30 miles out, 30 miles back. Construction Corner For our clients who use accounting software Sage 100 Contractor Sage 100 Contractor version 20 – an update We continue to caution all of our clients – do not upgrade to version 20 yet if you have any custom reports, crystal reports, third party products, third party reports, or anything that ‘talks’ to this program. Version 20 is a major structural release, a welcome upgrade to the program, but integrated software and programs will not work unless they have been re-written. Timing will be critical. There’s also a new technical specification regarding installation to servers with specific roles on the network. We’re testing how this works and how best to install the updated version when the time comes. Keep an eye out for our next Client Video which will talk more about this! Sage 100 Contractor Tip Print Screens – I was at a client site providing some training for a new bookkeeper. To print a report, she would go look up the Vendor or Job number, cost code number, etc., then go to the print screen and enter them; no wonder she was frustrated with the software! In the many print screens, you can use F5 to see the list of options, or double-click in the field to get the same list. For a few fields, the selections are in the lower left corner of the screen. This is true throughout the program. Last thought – try using ‘In List’ or ‘Greater or =,’ ‘Less or =,’ to help find your data. If you run a report for two vendors, choose ‘In List’ and double-click (turns red) to see just those two; or select dates or posting periods using ‘Greater or =’ to see all costs from one period forward. These are great features and will save you time and paper! Get More Free Tips, Tools and Services: www.Syscon-inc.com 630.850.9039 “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- 2 of 4 - Shiny New Gadget Of The Month: Video streaming from the air is about to get a whole lot more affordable. It just so happens that the brains, gyroscope, GPS and camera aboard all those new drone cameras you may have seen can also be found in your smartphone… Slip your smartphone into a PhoneDrone Ethos, and you have your own flying camera at a fraction of the cost of a fully equipped camera drone. Worried about your smartphone taking a hit in the event of a crash landing? For about $50 you can buy a cheap smartphone with all you need to fly the Ethos. Built-in mirrors enable you to shoot down, forward or to the side. You can preprogram it, or fly it manually from the ground. You can even control it with an Apple Watch. It’s scheduled to start shipping in September 2016, and “early-bird” discounts may be available at xcraft.io/phone-drone. Vegas Trip for the staff, August 2016 We are celebrating our 30th year in business – 1986-2016! We have some fun things planned for our clients – our Cubs ticket contests, new Ladybug mouse pads, July 4th celebration box, and more to come! In addition to our clients, we want to thank all of our staff for their integrity and commitment to supporting you, our clients. Of course we have great techs, amazing business consultants, and awesome programmers, but that’s only the beginning of the story. It’s their interaction with you, their extra effort in emergencies, and of course, sometimes it’s the small things – a note of thanks or encouragement, helping get the car started when the battery was dead, scraping snow and ice off the windshields, and lending an ear when life is just plan hard! Each August since 2008, we meet at Ditka’s in Oak Brook, the whole company, and we have our State of the Company event. We review the previous year for each department, then we look ahead for the next year. We have an overall theme for the year, delicious appetizers and a few drinks to celebrate. Last year, we had balloons and fun cup cakes (thanks Mich!) to kick off our new website! It’s always a fun time and a great time to catch up on all the things we do for our clients. Vegas, here we come! Since this is our 30th year, we’re having our State of the Company in Las Vegas for each person on staff and their guest! Our Vegas committee has been busy planning food, fun, a show, hotel and flight arrangements, and of course, the company meeting! A good time will be had by all, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so I’m not sure how many stories we’ll be bringing back; we’ll at least have a few pictures to share.—CMW All Things Tech July 2016 Get More Free Tips, Tools and Services: www.Syscon-inc.com 630.850.9039 Client Spotlight Coming Soon Starting next month, Client Spotlight will feature one of you, our clients. Here we will highlight your business—the industry, how many years in business, and what makes you excellent in your market. Our goal is to let all of our clients know who else is a Syscon customer so others can learn a little bit about each of our family members. If you’re interested in being our Client Spotlight, please email Renee Montgomery, Message Maestro, at RMontgomery@Syscon-inc.com or call her at 630.850.9039. She can’t wait to hear your story! What If Your Smartphone Had Wings -- 3 of 4 - All Things Tech July 2016 Other Stuff Imagine just taking a pill to acquire a whole new skill set. In The Matrix, Neo opens his eyes after being programmed and tells Morpheus, “I know kung fu.” According to futurist and worldrenowned inventor Ray Kurzweil, conversations like that will actually take place within the next 20 years. By implanting blood-cell-sized, cloud-connected nano-robots into the brain, humans will be able to literally download any skill set or body of knowledge from the cloud. Sound far-fetched? Scientists are already helping Parkinson’s patients, using a pea-sized implant connected wirelessly to an outside computer. And Kurzweil has a 30year track record of accurate predictions – including a little thing we now know as the World Wide Web. -Inc.com Hootsuite, Buffer…or both? Keeping in touch with new and current customers via social media can suck up your time. Social media apps Buffer and Hootsuite both aim to help you achieve more impact in less time. So which one is right for you? While Hootsuite offers a fullfeatured social media dashboard, Buffer focuses simply on prescheduling your content. When it comes to managing posts and tracking which ones perform best, Hootsuite is the way to go. Yet Buffer gives you more timing flexibility by allowing you to pick when your posts get published, regardless of when you add them to the queue. Choose either of these apps based on your posting and tracking needs – and consider using them both. -MarketingLand.com Which app best helps you take notes on the go – Google Keep or Evernote? Google Keep runs faster with a cleaner mobile interface than Evernote. It also wins on consistent quality of search across devices. Where Evernote shines is in its ecosystem of third-party integrations that add cool features. And its Clipper extension makes it easy to save web pages from Android or iOS directly into Evernote. So which app is best for you? If you just want to make quick notes on the go and share them easily, go with Google Keep. Plus, it’s free. If you want a deep database of notes, lists and web content with lots of features, even if you have to pay for it, go with Evernote. -CIO Facebook wants to help you blow up your business. The Facebook Ad platform can work wonders when you apply these principles: 1) Have a strategy. Don’t make the mistake of diving in without knowing how the money you put in will actually pay off. 2) Remember “T-O-M”: TARGET the right audience with a great OFFER wrapped in a compelling MESSAGE. 3) Write great copy. Start with an engaging headline, keep your text simple and straight to the point. Make it easy to grasp and end with a clear call to action. Facebook ads give you access to the world’s largest audience – over 1.5 billion at last count… And one good ad could make a world of difference for your business. -Forbes Get More Free Tips, Tools and Services: www.Syscon-inc.com 630.850.9039 Every month, Syscon’s Trivia Contest gives a $25 Amazon Gift Card to the Trivia Contest winner. Good luck! Now, here’s this month’s trivia question. Amazon was not the name Jeff Bezos originally selected for his Internet start-up company in 1995. What name was his first pick? a) Kagera b) Bookmeister c) Juggernaut d) Cadabra Trivia Contest: Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card! To enter: Go to www.Syscon-inc.com/Trivia and type in your answer. All correct answers will be put into a fishbowl and we’ll randomly draw the winner. The Winner will be contacted shortly after the deadline and will be announced in next month’s newsletter. Deadline: July 20, 2016 -- 4 of 4 -