Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights, New on April 22nd, 2010
Hi everyone,
I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with beta testing recently, and I’m pretty excited about some new product that will really make customer management easier. Interested? Read on…
First things first. This application lives in your Windows toolbar and works with both your Outlook and your Polycom phone. There are also plans to have it integrate with some common database systems (CRMs), so you can log call numbers and times, customer support information, and case notes from your workers.
It makes all your dialing as simple as typing part of a person’s name. It’s actually just like having all of your contacts on speed dial! When you receive a call, your computer uses the CallerID number to find and display the Outlook contact information, so you will know exactly who it is. It can also flash up a window with the contact’s details when you receive a call, which will let your customer support workers greet each caller in a well-prepared fashion. It’s also only one click to call people back!
Also, it can interact, work, and integrate with Google Maps. If you enter contact info that is not in Outlook, you can perform a search without opening your browser. Once you choose the correct hit, you can call them with only one click. When you’re done, you can create a new Outlook contact, including a clickable link to Google Maps, which will autofill to save time and effort.
The plan is to make this available upon request within the next month. Just email the Sutus sales team and they’ll contact you when it goes live!
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on April 15th, 2010
Hi everyone,
I thought I’d save some trouble for you out there in blog-land, and tell you about an easy fix we came across this weekend. I was out of the office, and our new IT guy wanted to set up a spare phone in the lunchroom. However, he wasn’t totally sure about how to do it, and didn’t want to do it wrong. So, he called me and woke me up.
I wasn’t totally sure about the process either, and he didn’t really think it was important enough to call Sutus Support about. After some deliberation, he decided to check out the help files. I know it sounds surprising, especially for a technology company, but the help files actually helped him figure out what to do!
If that wasn’t enough, while he was using the BC200′s web Administrator interface, he also clicked on a few of the “Learn More…” links to find out some more technical details. We got in to the ‘Help’ menu (in the top right corner of the Administration screen) and found the tutorials. There are quite a lot of them!
We also learned that we could rightclick on an area of the screen to get help on that topic. It turned out that the System Administrator Guides have screenshots, and some of them are available in PDF format. We printed out the Receptionist Guide, just to have it on hand.
In conclusion, RTFM. That’s “Read the Fantastic Manual!” Oh – and to set up a new phone, all you have to do is plug it in to the BC200. It will automatically connect and be functional, and then you can assign it to a person or workgroup later.
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights on April 8th, 2010
Hi everyone,
Today we’ve got a simple way to save both time and money, all while keeping your data backed up in one convenient place.
Getting some kind of standard method to back up files was always on our list of ‘to do’ items here at the office, but it never seemed to be important enough to get done. Some people would burn their data to a DVD, some would copy it to a USB stick, and some just wouldn’t back up at all. Using the BC200 as a central backup makes sense for all involved. It’s a simple 4-step process to back up your My Documents folder in Windows 7 and Windows XP, so let’s get started!
Windows XP:
1. Click on “Start,” then “Accessories,” then “System Tools,” and then “Backup.” You will come to a screen like this:
2. Click “Next.” Make sure you select “My documents and settings,” otherwise your backed up files will fill the BC200 too quickly. Click ‘Next.’
3. On this screen, you can tell your computer where to save the backup file. On ours, we already set up a mapped drive to the BC200 on the Y: drive. (The full path to the backup files is \\central\workspaces\personal\kyle perry\Backup, just in case we need to find it.)
4. Click on “Next,” and then “Finish,” and you’re done!
Windows 7:
1. Click “Start,” and open “Backup.” You will get the following screen. If you haven’t set a backup before, you’ll need to click on “Set Backup” to continue.
2. To tell the computer to save your backup to the BC200, click on “Save on a network.”
3. To tell the computer exactly where you want the files on the BC200, fill in the location. This one here is just an example – you’ll need to replace “workspaces” and “name” with the name of your workspace and person. Also, you’ll need to enter your username and password on the BC200. Click ‘OK’ to go to the next window.
4. You should select “Let Windows choose.” Click “Next” and then “Finish” on the next screen and you’re done!
Your computer will back itself up to your BC200, keeping a copy of the files in your “My Documents” folder.
That’s it for today. I hope you never need to use the backups, but if you do, you’ll be happy you took the time to set this up. (Just a quick technical note – the BC200 has two separate hard drives inside in a RAID configuration. If one of them fails, you’ll still be be able to recover your data from the other drive.) Happy computing!
-Dave.