Technology Outsourcing: In House or Out House….

That didn’t exactly come out the way it was intended, let me start over. The subject of this week’s post is the physical location of your technical support staff, particularly those doing higher level support. Providing support in house is having your technical staff on premises at all times. Providing your support remotely (or out of house) is having your technical staff work from their office.

Which is better? Let’s take a deeper look.

There is a very wide array of remote access and connectivity capabilities now available to Information Workers. This creates an opportunity for your IT staff to provide remote support in some cases more effectively than being on premises. But there can be significant perception issues in those situations and it might be problematic if not managed properly.

Before you start down this road, here are three questions you must answer:

1. Do you have a high level of confidence that your technical support staff acts with integrity?
2. Are you able to provide meaningful measures of performance and results?
3. Is your support communication infrastructure instantaneous and rock solid?

As you think about those questions, let me describe a scenario that occurred shortly after relocating our office from Texas to Utah a few years back.

 

We were providing technical support to an organization that was going through a major system upgrade. They needed someone onsite each day for a few weeks to bring all the new pieces together and train a large influx of new staff members. And they were looking to our organization for that support.

 

Only problem was, we were 1200 miles away!

 

So, we set up a remote control system on each desktop and started to provide the support needed and found we were significantly more effective than being there in person. Here’s how:

1. It is quicker to move room to room by tabbing to a new window than by physically walking there.
2. It is far less disruptive to be virtually in front of a computer than being physically present. And there is no competition for the same physical space.
3. It is more effective for technical support to actually observe new staff attempting to do a process than to ask them to describe a process or problem.
4. It is far easier to transfer support files, help documents, or simply chat when the support technician is at his workstation than at the workstation having problems.

However, there was just one small problem. Although our support of the staff was very effective, the administrator who was dealing with an entirely different set of problems was not happy about the arrangement. Her ongoing question was “Where is IT when we need them?”

 

Perception made short work of this very happy arrangement.

I’ve thought about this experience often, when discussing the manner in which we provide technical support at our partner schools and have been much more careful to ensure everyone understands the process. What appears to be very effective from the perspective of your technical support team may appear to be getting taken advantage of by an unconvinced administrator.

 Some organizations just feel the need to be able to walk down the hallway to the server room (closet in many cases) and talk face to face with technical support. Fair enough, but when we are trying to spread limited resources as far as humanly possible in a charter school environment, this may not provide the most bang for your buck.

What tools are required to do this? Good question. In short, Office 365 for education – specifically the Lync client now integrated into the latest release. Earlier versions work equally well. There are other solutions, but none as simple or as effective – especially if your staff uses Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).

Using Lync (see previous articles for more details) our partner schools have a very effective support mechanism. It starts with presence, which indicates availability of technical support; then provides an escalation of communication methods to solve the problem at the required level. For example, a simple text message exchange can solve many minor issues. If more detail is required a phone call (via Lync) may be required. And if necessary, either party can share an application or entire desktop view to the other while communicating about the matter.
And if we need to involve more folks, or just talk face to face, we do an instant video conference or video call. And all of this can be accomplished without prior arrangement, meeting invitations, or software installation.

You’ll probably want to evolve into a remote (out of house) support mechanism over time, should you decide it is practical. It is very difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your support team when they are operating remotely, if you have no baseline of experience on premises. And you will definitely need to have a proven help desk solution in place to track and report on help desk issues.

And this discussion makes a couple of very important assumptions – trust being the one and capability the other. If you don’t have complete trust that your support staff will bill you according to services provided, or if you have doubts about their capability to effectively solve problems quickly then this long distance relationship may not work.

As distance learning has proven, proximity to support resources is not always necessary. And if the teacher or technician is competent and provides the right set of tools, the experience can be very effective and enjoyable. I personally think it is grand to go to work right after my workout when it is only 20 steps away – never mind the shorts and T-shirt!

If your technical support is inhouse or in the outhouse (so to speak) and you would like to explore ideas on improving it, give us a call.

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.