Tech Tips

Important Updates

• Are you traveling out of the country? Let us know so we can open up access while you’re there, then lock it back down when you return.
• ‘Perpetual Microsoft’ licenses are the old ones you bought years ago. Microsoft is dropping support for these. Use your M365 licenses and upgrade your local computer if needed. We’re here to help!

Microsoft Licenses—Annual

Back in February 2023, Microsoft made some significant changes in its licensing. We held a webinar for all of our clients to talk through the changes and their impact. We also sent each of you a list of the licenses you had at that time for you to review.

You might recall that Microsoft was announcing a price increase, as well as a change in their subscription model. Licenses would have an annual renewal (paid monthly), or you could keep them monthly but with a 20% premium! Many of you opted for the annual renewal at the Basic, Standard, or Premium levels.

Well, we’re coming up on the one year mark! This February, a LOT of you have Microsoft licenses that are renewing.  This is a good time to review what you have, how many might be ‘parked’ and if any are candidates to not renew.

It’s our plan to get you the list of your licenses so you can review them. In the meantime, you can reach out to Liz and let her know if you’d like the list now, otherwise watch for our update.—CMW

Backups—A Sad Story

Backups are SO important. For some of our clients, we handle all their IT; others, we handle all their Sage 100 Contractor needs; and for others, we handle both the IT and Sage 100 Contractor.

We recently learned of a client who had a data compromise and they were hit with ransomware. Their IT team used a quality backup solution, but unfortunately, one of the data drives was not backed up as expected, and it was their S100C data. So heartbreaking!

As upsetting as this was, it is a reminder on the importance of having good backups, AND testing data recovery from time-to-time. For critical software such as estimating, accounting, project management, whether on your computers or in a cloud solution, we recommend running a test recovery, maybe on a bi-annual basis, or at least annually. This is usually an additional charge by the IT team, but in this business environment, it would be money well spent! – CMW

Scan Documents with your Cell Phone

There’s an option to use your cell phone and the OneDrive app to scan documents directly to SharePoint Libraries. The idea is to use the OneDrive App on your phone and select the camera. Scroll through the scan types at the bottom of the screen (whiteboard, document, business card, etc.) and click on the camera icon to capture the image. You may need to give OneDrive permission to access the camera. We’re intrigued so we’ll do some testing.

In the meantime, Larry found an app called Tiny Scanner (he says it’s a few dollars a year). He scans documents, music, anything he needs, then he can choose OneDrive, name it, and save to a folder. In this app, it adjusts the image to the full page, so it’s been great for music! – CMW