I'll be (working from) home for Christmas!

With the Christmas Holidays (or Winter Break for those of you so inclined) fast approaching, it might be helpful to look at your options of getting some work done while you are away from the campus.

After all the shopping, parties, and gatherings with family and friends, you might just need to sneak off to the office for a while. Here are a few ideas to help you do so without going out in the cold!

The need to access resources inside your school network is the natural result of a maturing infrastructure.  Being able to do important tasks at the office while you are at home or while traveling or on vacation can dramatically improve your administrative oversight. And the ability to remotely access your computer at work is a necessity as workloads continue to encroach upon personal time.

Getting the big picture about remote access and then understanding your options might be helpful in deciding which method or technology is best suited for you. Without a basic understanding and game plan, the implementation of remote access can be a harrowing experience and very confusing. Let’s consider a few options.

From a practical standpoint, there are three methods of interacting with computers and resources in your organization from afar. There are other methods, including VNC, a popular open source solution, but my experience with these other solutions is that they require a higher degree of technical skill, both to install and to use. Our mandate is to keep things simple.

Depending upon the task at hand you may want to use all three of the following methods, which include:

1. Website or web browser based programs
2. Virtual Private Network or VPN
3. Remote Desktop Connection or RDP

Website or browser based programs

Using browser based technologies to connect to resources in your organization is likely the simplest way to access remote resources, unless you have a firewall with remote access features. You have probably seen ads for “GoToMyPC.com” or “Logmein.com”.  This option requires you to visit a provider’s website, create a user account, and then download and install their software.

You then complete this same process on computers to be remotely controlled, by logging into your account installing the same software on each machine to be managed remotely. As you install the remote control software on each remote PC, you will see an icon that represents it in your list of controllable computers.  And if you manage all of your computers in one account, you can control any one of them, at any time by clicking on the icon that represents that specific computer.

The advantage of this type of access is that it is pretty reliable (based upon my own experience) and relatively easy to use. The most complex part of the process is understanding which role you are playing when you are installing the software and getting it set up properly. And be sure to record your passwords or access codes.

The disadvantage of this type of access is that it costs money. It is a subscription based service that will cost about $10.00 per month per machine you wish to control. There are some free versions (www.logmein.com) but they restrict the things you can do while connected using the free version in order to encourage you to buy a full-featured subscription.

It is important to understand that when you use this type of remote access you are only remotely controlling the remote PC. Read this statement slowly three times – I am remotely controlling my remote PC. When you disconnect from the remote PC, the work you have accomplished remains there, unless you specifically transfer the files to your controlling PC or laptop. And there may be challenges associated with getting that file transferred back to your current location.

This is an important concept to understand, because if you spend an hour working on a Power Point presentation at the office. It’s at the office! Saving it back to your home PC or Laptop is not always easy. Additionally, you must have the same software installed on your home PC or Laptop to use the file just created.

Bottom line; understand the inherent limitations of remotely controlling your office computer.

Virtual Private Networks

A VPN connection is an excellent choice for remote access to your network. But it is important to understand how a VPN connection works and the planning required using it. The most common VPN scenario associates your firewall device, installed to protect your network from outside intrusion, to your remote computer via software. The software facilitates the connection by opening a secure pathway across the Internet and through your firewall, to your remote computer. These client programs are normally manufacturer specific, designed to work only with your firewall, and provisioned with a security key or token to verify your identity.

A VPN connection is like virtually connecting an Ethernet cable into your network hub at the office. Just imagine a very long cable from the server room out the door, along the street, up your driveway, and into your den at home and you will get the concept. But that is all a VPN connection will do for you…, give you a remote connection. This alone may not provide you with the remote experience you desire because of the network security built into computers, printers, servers, and other devices at the school.

Think of it this way: you can take any PC or Laptop to the school and plug it into the network, but your connection may be restricted to just a few resources. Unless your PC or Laptop at home is joined to the school’s network, you may only have a connection to the Internet and access to very generously shared resources.

When correctly planned an implemented, a VPN connection can be as close to a seamless or transparent connection to your school network as possible. But it has to be correctly implemented and you need to understand the consequence of that implementation.

For example, joining your home PC or Laptop to the Domain at the school may interrupt the small peer to peer network in your home. And changing from a workgroup to a domain and back may cause you a significant amount of grief. You may even loose important files and documents. (A workgroup is the most common way to create a shared broadband connection at home with DSL or Cable Internet service. A Domain is the network security model used in most schools.)

The benefits of VPN are quite remarkable. You simply turn on your remote PC or Laptop and do your tasks. Since you are part of the network, you will have full access to your email, your shared folders, and Client/Server based applications such as QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL, etc.

Remote Desktop

No discussion of remote access would be complete without considering Remote Desktop Connection, or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a very useful tool built into all Windows XP and later Microsoft Windows based computers. It is similar to web based remote access technologies in that it allows your home PC or Laptop screen to display your office screen in a real time remote control session. In Windows 7, the Remote Desktop program is found at the Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories folder.

Properly setup, RDP works great. It is quick, reliable, not subject to constant fiddling, and allows you to control both local and remote resources, i.e. local and remote hard drives, printers, and CD’s. And once you are plugged into the network, it can find computers by name.

The challenge in setting up and using remote desktop is twofold. First you must know the name or IP address of the machine you wish to control. And second you must get through the firewall protecting your network. Remote Desktop uses Domain Name Services (DNS) to translate computer names to network addresses, so setting it up can be a little tricky.

RDP is generally a set it and forget it type of configuration. Once it finds your remote desktop, it will remember the settings and allow you to connect quickly by clicking on an icon located on your desktop.

Using RDP will require your network administrator to open a port in your firewall and then route your RDP session to the correct PC. And don’t forget that the on premises user always wins with RDP. In other words, if you are using RDP and someone at the office touches your mouse or presses a key on your keyboard, you will get disconnected. And unlike a browser based technology where users on both ends can see the screen, RDP will not display both the remote and local session at once.

Summary

Technical Support has been completely revolutionized by remote access technologies. It is a fundamental component of providing support services to the schools we manage. And we use each one of these different methods extensively.

As a school administrator, the benefits of remote access should be very obvious to you. Choosing which method to use may be a little less clear and will depend in large measure on what specific task you need to accomplish. It will be further determined by your network infrastructure, Internet bandwidth, installed software, and level of technical support to set it up.

Feel free to call if you need assistance in deciding which of these remote access methods will work best for you. And don’t wait until the holidays begin, you have to set these solutions up while at school – it is quite difficult to do this entirely from home.

One final note: Remote access is not the same thing as working collaboratively with other team members who may also be remote. That kind of anytime, anywhere, access to your important files is a function of your core technology infrastructure. Search this site for articles about Office 365 for Education for more information.

Help Desk Perspectives

A recent experience over the use of a help desk caused me to revisit the subject, with a little more insight. It went something like this:

After completing a major upgrade at a small (25-30 users) organization, we were anxious to get feedback about improved performance and user experience. So I instructed the office manager to provide a list of issues which would help us to quickly identify individual PC’s that might be having problems.

And this was not a casual effort without communication infrastructure. The manager had direct access to me via Instant Messaging, with presence, using Lync 2010, email, and my cell phone. We conversed about other matters routinely, in fact on a frequent basis I asked about any upgrade issues specifically and the response was “thumbs up”.

Unaware to both of us was a collection of little slips of paper, post it notes, and torn off pieces of yellow note pad pages accumulating on the bulletin board next to the refrigerator in the break room. Neither I nor the office manager had the slightest idea that a major problem was causing a significant slowdown for a large number of users.

That experience did not end well, but reinforced an important lesson about how not to manage your help desk. For a review about the benefits of a help desk, please see my earlier post here.

How you identify, communicate, prioritize, assign, and account for technical support issues makes all the difference in the world with respect to how well technology works in your school. And there are a large number of help desk systems available for you to choose from. Here are the features that I would look for in a help desk system:

Universal Communication Medium

Help desk issues need an agreed upon standard communication protocol organization wide. The most practical is email, but only if you have a robust email system that provides you synchronized messaging anywhere on any device.

Email is accountable, easily distributed, actionable within automated ticketing systems, and universally used in most schools. Little post it notes (or big ones) probably won’t meet this standard, and have you no (eco-green) shame.

Filtering and Consolidation Mechanism

With the capacity to easily fire off an email to help@yourschool.com, any help desk solution will quickly be overcome with redundant and sometimes ridiculously simple support requests (computer unplugged, network cable disconnected, etc.). So there needs to be a way of collecting daily support requests in some sort of queue, in order to quickly evaluate and act upon requests.

If fifteen teachers report that a crucial website is being blocked by your content filter (for example), then it is entirely counterproductive to think about creating fifteen support requests, or even creating a single trouble ticket for that matter. In the span of time required to create a trouble ticket, you could easily log-in to the firewall and resolve the issue. Then happily delete all fifteen emails reporting the issue!

The most common mistake in designing a help-desk system is the requirement to create a support request (case, incident, ticket, or whatever you choose to call it) for each and every issue. Where a simple notification and action request exists, most ongoing support requests can be resolved as a matter of course.

This is especially true when you are fortunate to have daily onsite technical support resources.

Escalation Process

Any technical problem can be solved with sufficient resources, co-ordination of effort, documentation of actions taken and proposed, and feedback. But, complex or persistent issues may require escalation to a more experienced team member, or an outside vendor. This is not something you can do effectively with a post-it note, or even a three ring binder.

The capacity to resolve complex support requests requires documentation that is available to all parties involved. This includes desktop support technicians, network engineers, software vendors, and most importantly – the end user.

At a minimum, the documentation should include date and time stamps, priority, resolution status, technician assignment, and notes for those involved documenting steps taken and subsequent actions required. An enormously helpful feature would be automation and integration with your internal communication systems, this will facilitate status updates, expected resolution timeframes, and resource requests.

Knowledge Base and Performance Metrics

The accumulation of knowledge about your infrastructure is an important by-product of a well-designed help-desk. Issues that repeat infrequently can be more easily resolved by referring to case notes of a previous support request. Knowledge bases can also be made available to your end users and encourage more self-support in their daily activities.

Performance metrics really speak to the effectiveness of your technical support staff. The most equitable way to measure the effectiveness of your technical support team is through the reporting that comes from the very system they use to resolve your technical support issues. If one of your technicians routinely resolves a significantly larger number of support cases (or queues) in a specified period of time, you might want to consider giving him a promotion!

Summary

Getting frustrated about the difficulty in using a help desk is understandable if it is too cumbersome, complex, and available to only a few individuals. But don’t give up, the benefits of a rational help desk are significant and worth the investment of your time and resources. It can pay big dividends.

Find a simple and reliable communication method (we recommend email) that can be used by anyone having a support request.  Incorporate a practical filtering and issue consolidation process that helps you assess priorities, gauge relative impact (many or few users), and provides a working list for your support staff. Then develop a time or severity based escalation process that formalizes support requests and starts the documentation to resolve and account for more serious issues. And finally, look more long-term at the reports coming from your help desk to assess the effectiveness of your support staff and technical support organization.

And if you really just can’t give up your yellow post it notes, do your support team a favor. Place them in a prominent position and don’t scold them when they miss the support request posted to the bulletin board in the break room next to the refrigerator they never use!

Let us know if you would like to explore ideas about how you can improve your help desk experience.

Ten cool things you can do with Lync 2010

We just completed our first migration from BPOS to the academic version of Office 365. Okay, so there is no academic version of Office 365, just academic pricing (as in mostly free). At any rate, we were anxious to show the new capabilities to one of our school partners.

Yawn… their lack of enthusiasm was underwhelming.

It turns out that Office Communicator, while present in the school for the past 9 months was rarely if ever used in the day to day operations of running the school. In fact this was the second Unified Communications solution that we enthusiastically rolled out, only to find that the users were universally unimpressed.

No doubt there was a need for better training on our part, but the biggest problem appears to be the lack of understanding about what Lync 2010 (formerly Office Communicator) offers. Most viewed it as a simple Instant Messaging client and never really bothered to even set their status, much less use the other features.

Maybe I just don’t understand the classroom environment, but the benefits to using Lync 2010 seem remarkably relevant to the classroom.  And I think it would improve communication, discipline, and security in the school immeasurably, here are 10 really cool things you can do in the classroom with Lync 2010.

1. Take attendance. No, not student attendance, but staff attendance! There is no simpler way for your staff to report present and accounted for than by setting their status when they are in their classroom ready for the day. With one quick glance you know the status of your entire organization.

2. Make announcements. Do you take into consideration how distracting the school PA system can be when you are trying to communicate to a small subset of your organization? Using Lync to communicate directly to small subsets can be done with ease and without interruption.

3. Make Phone Calls.  Are you having difficulty justifying the expense of telephones on every teacher’s desk? Use Lync instead, it is a robust VoIP system that takes “zero” real estate (space) on your desk.

4. Direct connect with parents.  Properly configured, Lync 2010 can communicate with virtually every messaging system in existence. Sometimes a quick one-liner is all it takes to resolve an issue about a student, with a parent.

5. Produce instant video recordings. Can’t afford thousand dollar IP cameras, expensive DVR servers, and all the connections? Place inexpensive web-cams on the top of each teacher’s screen and rotate them around when needed. Documenting discipline issues becomes rock solid and the principal can be watching… real time.

6. Hold virtual parent teacher conferences. Do you have difficulty scheduling and managing parent conferences? With Lync you can connect with parents in a video conference on the fly with no advance setup requirements. They can be across town or around the world and still experience face time with your staff.

7. Send lesson materials. Do you ever need a resource, such as a photo or document from the library or resource center right in the middle of class? Reach out to the media specialist and they can deliver that material right to your desktop, you won’t need to leave your desk.

8. Improve team teaching.  Improving teacher utilization is an important part of managing resources and team teaching is often part of the mix. But let’s make it a lot easier. Lync 2010 allows teachers to share their desktops (or portions thereof) with others. Imagine the rich dialogue of interaction if teacher “B” get’s plugged into the classroom with teacher “A” with just the click of a button.

9. Extend your presence via Mobile Phone.  Recently released iPhone, Android, Windows phone apps now let you set your presence on the go, and communicate with your team members via your mobile device. Good idea when you’re out running an errand on school time, not so good on the weekends – but the nice thing is that you can always set your presence, whatever it is you choose to display.

10. Instant Messaging.  Topping off the list, with the most common feature in Lync 2010, is instant messaging. It’s interesting that users who send thousands of texts per month on their cell phones fail to see the benefit of text messaging from their desktop. The difference with Lync is that by setting your status (Busy, Available, Do Not Disturb, Be Right Back, Away, etc.) your team knows whether or not to send a message and may think twice about interrupting you.

These are the immediate things that came to mind with respect to Lync 2010, there are probably a dozen others. From a larger view, the term “Unified Communications” is mostly techno-babble when used outside the technical support community.  But what it really boils down to is a set of software tools that connect people with one another using technology in ways that are convenient, deeply integrated on all devices, and driven by your stated availability.

Summary

Lync 2010 is a core piece of the Office 365 experience and offers significant communication improvements in charter schools. It allows users to communicate with team members in a variety of ways and from a wide variety of devices. By understanding the status of team members, communication can be tailored for the right time and place for delivery.

And for those schools we manage, Lync 2010 is part of our customer service experience… and our status is always “Available”.

Driving Efficiencies in Desktop Administration

Let’s do a quick math test to give you an idea of the time typically spent doing routine maintenance on the computers in your school and then discuss ways you can dramatically cut those time requirements. We’ ll use round numbers to make it easy, starting with the assumption that you have 100 computers to manage.

At least once each month, you should be doing software updates, security patches, and system scans – the routine maintenance that keeps computers in optimal shape. Doing this maintenance will help keep your computing experience consistent, remove unwanted virus’ and spy ware programs, and apply the latest improvements in operating system and software program functionality.

In a perfect world this process would be entirely automatic, but there are a number of reasons why automation fails and part of desktop administration is monitoring and resolving those failures, proactively.

Back to the math quiz….

How much time does it take update 100 computers each month? If you do it the old fashion way and allow yourself 20 minutes per computer (that’s optimistic) you are looking at 2,000 minutes – plus travel time (between computers). That is roughly 35 hours; which approximates the amount of time we normally spend in an entire month managing infrastructure at a typical school. Not a sustainable model because there are more tasks required to manage technology resources than just updating computers.

The way to improve desktop administration is a three point approach consisting of automation, reporting, and remote control. These actions should be taken simultaneously and there are a wide variety of solutions to help you.

Whatever system you use, and there are several, you should focus on the following three areas:

1. Automation – implementing automatic updates that work within your security model
2. Reporting – providing a centralized inventory of computers and their current status
3. Remote Control – installing remote control tools for efficient technician access

Automation

At the most basic level, you should set your computers to do automatic updates from Microsoft,  but depending upon security settings or user account privileges, this might not work. Finding the right balance between local user access and security of the environment is tricky, but as it relates to automatic updates it can cause the process to fail.

In an enterprise the size of a charter school, the single biggest problem we see (in terms of wasted resources) is having an open desktop security policy, with local install permissions. Managing this is the first order of business when struggling to gain control of computer administration costs.

With no security (access control) in place you will quickly find every single computer in a different state. There will be different backgrounds or wallpaper, butterfly or alligator pointers, and a wide variety of default program settings, browser toolbars, and freeware (accompanied by malware) installed.

The conflict between automatic updates and access control is best managed by a programs such as  System Center Essentials, Windows InTune, or other third party desktop administration tools that provide sufficient security access to accomplish the automatic updates required, with no intervention on your part. The sooner you get control of your desktops – the sooner your support costs will plummet.

In order to measure the success of your update automation, you’ll need some kind of centralized reporting tool.

Reporting

Quickly evaluating the state of your desktop computers is the essential job of a reporting tool. Rather than waiting for a user to call the help desk to address a computer issue, a good reporting tool will notify your help desk well in advance of a pending computer problem.

Applying support resources in advance is almost always more efficient than resolving a problem after the issue has caught the attention of an end user.  And sophisticated reporting tools are both inexpensive and quite robust.

Not only will a reporting tool disclose the state of your computers, with respect to software updates; it will also report impending hardware failures, disk space limitations, device driver conflicts, and other developing problems. And often these are represented in very clear color coded graphs and charts to not only give you a realistic overview of system health, but allow you to drill down to details of a given issue.

Remote Control

Simply stated, Remote Control is the ability for your technical support team to reach across the limitations of physical space and control your computer.  This allows technical support to happen as though the support engineer were sitting physically at your desktop, when in fact they are on the other side of the building, city, or country for that matter.

But there is much more to the advantage of remote control than remote access. Most remote control solutions are Internet browser based and as such, a support engineer can open multiple support sessions at once – as many as a dozen or more, depending upon bandwidth, browser limitations, and the ability to keep track of a large number of simultaneous support sessions. This is the model of efficiency.

In a recent upgrade scenario involving a major Windows Service Pack, we measured the time to do it manually vs. remotely. The time required on site was more than four times greater than doing so remotely.  One significant benefit that is often overlooked with remote support is the ability to provide support services while the class is in session, which is not practical on site.

One of my favorites remote tools is LogMeIn.com, a free browser based program that works well, is easy to install, and can be configured by having end users click on a link within an email message and follow a short installation routine. There are many others that work equally well.

Summary

An efficient desktop management model looks at your infrastructure once each day to view the state of computers. It proactively manages required updates, mostly through automation, but manually if required;  then resolves any computer errors using remote tools that do not interrupt your class.

Our experience suggests that by investing 20 – 30 minutes each day, you can proactively manage 100 computers. That of course does not include repairing intentional damage caused by students, catastrophic hardware failures, or major operating system upgrades, which require physical access.

Want to improve the score on your math quiz stated above? With automation, reporting, and remote administration your total will be a little more reasonable than what you are doing now.  Contact us if you would like a free recommendation on the automation, reporting, and remote support tools that will best suit your situation.

Desktop Security - How to avoid getting the latest bug

I was raised on a small farm in Idaho, where, believe it or not, one of my daily chores was to milk a cow – by hand. It was not a particularly difficult task, but did require a few essential pieces of equipment (aside from the cow), that being a bucket, cleaning supplies, and a wooden stool. The stool had three legs and was crucial to a successful outcome of the task.

Think about that 3 legged stool as we address the topic of desktop security; there is a lesson.

You should understand three important components to adequately address desktop security, trying to provide security with less can be a problem. They are:

1. A Firewall to block all of the ports into and out of your computer’s resources
2. Antivirus software to detect and destroy malicious code that arrives on your computer
3. Spyware/malware protection to avoid being tracked, hijacked, or otherwise taken for a ride

Although possible, it was rather hazardous to milk the cow using a one or even a two legged stool. And no stool at all was a real show stopper.Keep this corollary in mind as you consider how to protect your desktop from intrusions, virus’, and malware. Optimally you need all three, having none of them will eventually stop your computer from working – unless you have no connection to the outside world whatsoever.

What about one of the popular Security Suites?

A number of software companies provide security suites for PC’s. They attempt to combine all of the aforementioned security services into one package, and sometimes throw in some extras. Are these a good use of your resources? Generally, they are not and here is why.

The problem with most of the security suites on the market today is that they are akin to using a Lazyboy recliner to milk the cow (think of the above example).   Most of them just get in the way of getting the task at hand accomplished.

Let’s keep this real simple and cost effective to boot, by reviewing the three legs of the stool in more detail and how to construct them.

Desktop Firewall

Every Windows Operating System today has a built in firewall. It is more than adequate, especially now that most networks are protected by a gateway or perimeter firewall device. Even most consumer class DSL /Cable Modems, which connects you to the Internet now have this functionality.

So, rarely do you need to buy additional firewall software. In fact, part of the problems associated with added firewall software is the inevitable conflict with the Microsoft Windows firewall.  It either turns it off, tries overriding it, or attempts to co-exist with it.

Some of these third party firewalls are so obtrusive, they may actually block current programs or programs you are attempting to install. This in turn requires you to configure the firewall to allow access to these programs. And if you are installing one brand of security software that competes with the security software of another provider, the problem can even get worse.

As conflicts and performance issues arise, the firewall often gets turned off to accommodate running a particular program, defeating the entire purpose of the firewall in the first place.

My recommendation is to turn on the Windows Firewall and use it alone. If you have already purchased one of the Security Suites, simply uninstall or turn off the Firewall portion of that duplicate Firewall.

Antivirus Protection

Antivirus software is an essential part of securing your desktop or laptop. But having tried just about every brand out there, it is my opinion that few difference exists between them. No doubt there are minor differences in function and form, but most provide the same basic protection and nearly all Antivirus Software manufactures share Virus Signatures with each other in a cooperative manner, especially true during a new Virus outbreak.

It really boils down to price, and I mean total price.

Manually installing 100 copies of a free Antivirus solution in your school may be much more expensive that doing a centralized “push” type of installation from a server or management console, using a commercial antivirus solution. In other words, the hidden cost of labor could far outweigh the savings of “free” software.

My recommendation for organizations of 10 or less PC’s is to use one of the free antivirus programs available. My favorite is Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free (currently), reasonably light weight (meaning it is not a resource hog), and effective.

You can obtain a copy at the following URL: www.microsoft.com/security_essentials (don’t miss the underscore if you type that url) If you have a Microsoft school agreement, you can buy anti-virus, (end point ) protection for a few dollars per computer per year.

Spyware/Malware

The difference between a Virus, Spyware, or Malware infection can be very slight, indeed there is significant overlap in the two areas. And while much of the spyware or malware software is relatively harmless, it is a great idea to understand what software on your system may be running in the background without your knowledge or consent.

Common purposes of more serious Spyware/Malware programs are to harvest information from your system, utilize your system for unsavory purposes (such as sending out SPAM), track your browsing habits, and/or taking control of your computer.

There are all types of clever ways you can become infected with these programs, so you do need protection.  A common trick used to infect your system convincing you to install a free “Antivirus Program” or click on “Free Malware Scan”. This is usually accompanied by an unsolicited  pop-up telling you that your computer is infected.

I won’t even try to list the good, the bad, or the ugly when it comes to the enormous variety of programs in this category. I like to keep things real simple and cost effective.

My recommendation, again, for organizations of 10 or less PC’s is to use Microsoft Security Essentials. If you are still running Windows XP, then you'll need to look for Windows Defender, instead; it is still available for computers running earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. For a larger numbers of computers, please consider adding the software for your Microsoft School agreement.

Summary

I am quite aware these are all Microsoft solutions, but I make no apologies. In education, particularly, Microsoft provides a compelling value for software of all kinds. And who better is capable of understanding the real security issue of the Windows operating system than the company that created it.

And in spite of problems that are common to any mega Corporation, Microsoft has a wide variety of software solutions for education that perform as good or better than most other companies (especially in light of the wide variety of solutions they offer),and you can trust a genuine Microsoft product to actually work as specified.

Best of all - the programs mentioned above are free, or very close to it, and work quite happily together; or in larger quantities can be bundled with your School agreement at a fraction of the cost of buying antivirus software commercially.

One final note. You can dramatically improve desktop and laptop security by keeping your operating system up to date. Optimally, that would include a Windows 7 upgrade. As a minimum, be sure your installed operating system has all of the latest security patches. All versions on Windows have an update facility built right into the main menu.

Stay safe out there!

Why your technology sucks...

A close friend of mine has a favorite saying, which I hear far too often and goes like this… “It is what it is”. I think about those words on occasion when someone tells me the technology we manage really sucks. Happily those days are relatively few, and an occasional reality check about managing technology in a freestanding charter schools helps put things in perspective.

After all, it’s a Charter School… it is what it is!

The very essence of the Charter School movement is competition. And in the final analysis, that means producing more, with less; fewer resources across all departments, including technology. In a traditional school, with significantly more resources you will find that on some days, their technology also sucks.

Recently, our performance at a school came under criticism of this nature. My response is this post.

Two years ago we agreed to manage technology at a large K-12 Charter School. On staff was a full-time Network Engineer and regular student aids assisting with desktop management. We estimated that between 50-60 man hours were devoted each week to technology support. Our proposal, based primarily upon budgetary constraints, was a contract to provide the same level of support but doing so with only 8 hours of Network Engineer level work accompanied by 15 hours of desktop technician level work each week. If you do the math, that’s a 70% reduction in man hours.

We started our engagement by suggesting infrastructure improvements to both simplify administrative tasks and allocate some technical tasks to staff members. We made modest system improvements and implemented a help desk solution to track our progress.

Fast forward two years, and you will find that in most objective measures that technology is slightly better, but still lacking. In my opinion, that is a success story. Understandably, from the perspective of several users, the technology still “sucks”. And while this is a reasonable response and we understand occasional frustrations, “ It is what it is”.

Now, don’t mistake my message. There is no excuse for mediocre service and our intent is to always improve upon our processes.  And we continually adopt new management practices as we discover them. But if there is not a slight degree of discomfort with the level of service provided, I submit you are over budgeting for those resources. It would be nice to have sufficient resources to pay teachers what they are worth, buy whatever supplies we want, have gourmet lunches, and have an IT department – but that is not the world in which I live, nor is it the world in which most charter schools exist.

If you regularly have those “our technology sucks” days, here are a few immediate things you can do to make it better.

1.       Have regular technology meetings, or devote regular time in staff meetings to discuss technology support. Get specific details about problems your staff experience, evaluate the commonality of the problem, and decide upon an acceptable level of resolution.  An unresolved issue for a single user is very annoying, but compared to an entire system outage affecting a large portion of the staff, it can probably wait.

2.       Find an objective way of measuring and reporting on the performance of your technology support team. This is most easily measured by a case or service issue resolution report. How many service tickets are created vs. resolved is much more relevant than a list of things that did not get resolved. It is possible that your expectations are mathematically impossible, given your available resources.

3.       Conduct periodic surveys on the subject of technology. Invest sufficient time gathering a broad-based consensus about what works in your organization and what does not. Be willing to accept the fact that your processes and policies may be counterproductive and a barrier to technical innovation. Be open to change driven by well informed and reasoned consensus.

4.       Don’t be unduly swayed by a few vocal users to adopt systems or solutions that don’t align well with your mission and your methods. And be sure to consult with your technology support team about proposed changes to gain perspective about compatibility and ease of implementation. Ideas that work well in a single classroom may not scale to the entire school, but in fact may add unnecessarily to the level of complexity in your organization.

5.       Recognize the inherent challenges of an overbuilt infrastructure. This is a common challenge in charter schools who model infrastructure after traditional schools, only to find that large sized enterprise solutions are not only expensive to install, they are expensive to maintain. Technology scales up quite well (meaning expands), but scales down only with great difficulty. If you have sufficient infrastructure to run an entire district, you’ll be hard pressed to keep it running on a budget for technology that is sized correctly.

There is no “happily ever after” in this story. If you are struggling to keep the doors open, pay for teachers, and maintain or build facilities; chances are you will struggle to keep all of the computers working perfectly all of the time. But finding an acceptable level of support is possible.  

And the next time someone tells you that your technology sucks, just smile and agree with them. Then kindly quote one of my favorite sayings. It goes like this… “Nothing is so bad that it cannot be made worse by complaining about it.”

How much Technical Support do you need?

Many Charter School administrators have a background in traditional education and in the management practices found there. That can be both good and not so good. One area which doesn’t usually translate well is the size and complexity of technology, which often gets overbuilt.

Now it’s fine to overbuild the infrastructure if money is no object; and there is a certain level of infrastructure that needs to exist for current and future services. But we either see huge investment in infrastructure, followed by a wholly inadequate plan for managing it; or we see technology infrastructure as an afterthought.

If you are considering this subject in advance of build out, do your school a huge favor and enlist some professional help in the area of capacity planning. Many things affect the required capacity: student count, student demographics, campus layout, teaching methods, core curriculum, and business management practices. Doing the planning up front can not only simplify construction, but save tremendous amounts of money.

If you are an operating Charter School, the damage (so to speak) has already been done, but there are a number of things you can do to manage infrastructure more effeciently. But how much technical support do you really need? What drives the requirements for technical support services and what can you do to reduce costs?

Our well established model is to provide weekly scheduled technical support complimented by less frequent, but routine technology management. Our baseline is to provide 6 hours of support one day each week for a typical freestanding Charter School. You might find the following complexity calculator useful. This is not an exact science, just 10 years of experience and nearly all of it on the “too lean” side of support resources, but it will get you in the ballpark.

For our calculations, answer the following questions and add one points for each of the following:

•  Physical Servers  
• One point for each server in your organization
• Software Systems  
• One point for each server based Application (SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.)
• Desktop/Laptops  
• One point for each 10 desktop and laptop computers
• Network Topology  
• One point for each network type (Wired, Wireless)
• Number of VLANS  
• One point for each VLan or Virtual Network segment
• Physical Facilities  
• One point for each campus buildings connected to the network
• Social Media   
• One point if you have a formal social media campaign
• Virtualization  
• One point if you have cloud based resources or virtual computers
• VOIP On Premise   
• One point if you have an on premise VOIP phone system
• Websites   
• One Point for each actively managed websites

Now tally up your answers and apply them to the table shown below:

Management Models and accompanying Technical Support Requirements  

• FTE    
• Full Time Equivalent Technical Support Staff*    50   >50
• Complex   
• Weekly Management & Daily Onsite Support    25   50
• Median   
• Monthly Management & Weekly Support          10   25
• Simple   
• Quarterly Management & Bi-Weekly Support  >10   10

*Outsourced support technicians would likely cost more than a full time staff member at this level.

Focus less on the specific numbers and more on the concept of applying the right combination of both management level and support level technical assistance. An organization universally needs a management component to guide the acquisition, implementation, and management of projects. It  also needs periodic technical support. The amounts of both depend upon the roles and capabilities of internal staff. Accordingly, the range of support varies from a simple model, to a full time equivalent model, depending upon factors listed above.

While some Charter Schools start with a full-time technician on staff, this tends to be very short-lived for a simple reason. Prevailing wages for experienced information workers generally exceed wages for school principals and administrators. This is not sustainable and the result is constant turnover, which does not lend itself to reliable infrastructure.

Applying the right combination of management and support resources can have far reaching impact on your school, but it is a challenge to balance. And there are factors outside of your control that can completely undo a well-chosen team. Too many resources and the budget won’t sustain it, too little and everyone suffers from system outages, disruptions in the classroom, and frustrations in the front office.

Evaluate your circumstances, map out a rational IT support model, and then get your team to work. Having functional information technology without breaking the bank is possible, indeed it is the natural result of good planning and execution.

Putting a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to work in your school

A core assumption in the Charter School movement is competition. Most competitive measures are geared toward educational outcomes. But before you can compete in the area of outcomes you must compete in the arena of sound business management. Running the business side of a Charter School is enormously challenging. In addition to the key metric of recruiting students, you must manage all kinds of relationships with parents, teachers, administrative staff, board members, volunteers, the community, vendors, and regulatory agencies.
Managing a school is a relationship management intensive undertaking! And how well you manage these crucial relationships will have a far reaching impact on your organization. But how many of you are using any kind of a Customer Relationship Management program? More specifically, how many of you are using a CRM system that is deeply integrated into your existing information systems?
Increasing numbers and types of businesses are adopting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.  CRM systems cover a lot of territory: sales, marketing, case management, and documentation; so making general observation here is not really going to help. But try to imagine how different your school would look if you had a system in place that could help quantify measures of performance, more clearly define and manage processes, automate administrative tasks, centralize information, and increase the capacity of your staff to work in a more unified manner.
A CRM system is not a simple solution to implement, but managing the business of a Charter School is not a simple undertaking. And while complex systems require thoughtful planning, testing, and deployment; the complexity exists whether or not you have such programs. Traditional school districts have a huge advantage. Although they deal with the same array of relationships they also have significant resource advantages and economics of scale, often employing an entire team to accomplish what a solitary administrator is expected to do.
The best way to overcome this inherent disadvantage is a Customer Relationship Management System designed specifically for Charter Schools.
From a funding perspective, students and their families are your paying customers. But in reality you have a long list of “customers”, or groups without which you could not function.  And as simple as it may sound, keeping them happy is most likely to occur when using a Customer Relationship Management system designed just for that purpose.
Nobody likes a hard sell, and perhaps that is what comes to mind when you hear about CRM software. In fact effective CRM programs do more than just build brand awareness, deliver consistent marketing messages, and track interaction with potential customers until you “sell” them. CRM systems help you manage all of the aspects of the important relationships that define your organization and make it as easy as possible to do business with you.
Customer Relationship Management software has been successfully implemented in all kinds of businesses, and for the same reasons it makes sense for your school. Consider things you could do with a CRM system designed for a Charter School:
Contact Management

• Centralize the essential contact information for students and their families and tie it to their Student Information Records
• Consolidate all other contact lists for the school into a single source and enjoy a much more accurate source of information
• Identify relationships among the various contacts to better understand communication requirements and preferences
• Communicate effortlessly with any combination of individuals within groups and track those communications for accountability
• Streamline the records update process by distributing the task to the end points of interaction
• Provide financial and case management records for context (as allowed by security roles) within your contact information

Marketing

• Create, execute, and measure campaigns for recruiting, fundraising, and volunteering
• Communicate with potential students at the frequency and intensity of their interest level
• Track all interactions with potential students, donors, and volunteers and measure defined goals of those relationships
• Build better relationships through consistent messaging, improved responsiveness, and uniform processes
• Manage Social Media campaigns

Case Management

• Establish workflow and manage documentation for new student from application to entrance
• Manage facilities and contractors with workflows and centralized documentation 
• Manage support issues (help desk) for all kinds of issues - technical, personnel, facilities, finance
• Track grants and funding opportunities with better reminders of deadlines and tasks management
• Comply with Board Meeting minutes publications using permission based workflow and oversight
• Manage questions, complaints, or discipline with current students (outside of SIS)
• Streamline communication with key team members by centralizing information stores
• Develop a centralized policy and procedure knowledgebase
• Manage field trips, group events, and meetings

Fee Management

• Manage student fees and simplify the reconciliation process for finance
• Centralize accounting for all sales or service fee collection for all groups in or out of the  student store
• Improve the process for collecting library fees, yearbooks , DVD sales, and sporting equipment
• Integrate the accounting and development functions for fundraising and donation management
• Document and improve collection for property damage fines
• Improve inventory management for all product based items

As you can see, this is a pretty comprehensive list of features touching many departments and individuals both in and out of the school. As such the architecture of this system is vital. In order for this system to succeed it must have a common and familiar interface, utilize existing rather than new policies and procedures, and it must be a cloud based solution with unrestricted availability from anywhere on any device.
Our recommended solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM online configured specifically for use in the Charter School Community and managed with familiar tools you use every day – Microsoft Outlook, Word, and the other Microsoft Office programs. But whatever solution you choose it must be capable of delivering administrative efficiencies to support the non-academic aspects of your school.
One last point - while we did not directly address the educational side of your organization, it too will be greatly enhanced by a CRM system.

Why you need a Help Desk

A help desk is a resource which provides information and assistance to troubleshoot problems with information technology equipment or services. It provides a single-point-of-contact for users within your school to report and resolve technical problems.

Our experience demonstrates a dramatic improvement in technical support function when a Help Desk is implemented, because it allows you to prioritize and track support requests, focus your limited support resources, and apply expertise at a level matching the issue at hand.

Help desks can be configured in various ways, but as a minimum should offer these 5 features:

1. Centralized system used throughout the entire school
2. Simplified interface for adding, updating, and tracking requests
3. Prioritized to effectively allocate resources and escalate support requests
4. Separate from you key infrastructure to eliminate your Help Desk from failing
5. Accountable to you in order to report and review technician effectiveness

What does your help desk look like now? Here are some we have observed first hand:

• Sticky notes handed to your IT person as they walk down the hall
• An interruption while in the midst of another support request
• An "oh by the way" mentioned at lunch
• A complaint in a meeting related to another subject

Although very common, none of these improve the performance of your IT staff. And in some cases these informal help desk habits can be very counter-productive.

Take the case of handing a sticky note to your technician as he walks down the hall (presumably on his way to another support request). Your interruption causes a lack of focus on the issue at hand, and the issue at hand causes a lack of attention to your request. This is a double dumbing down of the process.

An orderly help desk system is much more rational. User's generate support requests and are required by the system to categorize, prioritize, and then provide sufficient detail for the technicians. Technicians are notified much more efficiently and an accounting begins for that issue. Both parties, and others, can update information about the request and track the issue to resolution. Administrators can measure the rate and number of support incidents and have a better sense of the value a support mechanism is providing.

A byproduct of a robust Help Desk is the ability to archive resolved issues into a Knowledge Base which in turn provides a growing body of support information for your school. As this body of knowledge grows, the ability of users to self-help increases.

Most schools we observe, and all that we manage (by definition) have no full-time IT staff. A Help Desk in this scenario becomes a necessity. And we have found it very helpful to identify one or two gatekeepers in the school to take the responsibility of entering in technical support requests.The advantages of this arrangement are significant; a full-time support component, a better perspective about priorities, and a single point of contact for clarification and reporting.

Whether your school is large or small, simple or complex with respect to technology, or supported by internal or outsourced technicians you will benefit from a Help Desk.

In these resource constrained times you would be foolish to operate without one.