MSPNetworks Blog

Everyone knows how to do a Google Search, right? Go to the site, type whatever it is you’re looking for into the search bar, and you’re off to the races. Fewer people are aware, however, of the ways that you can help Google narrow its search a bit. Let’s go over a few handy Google cheat codes that can make your search results more precise.

Basic Searches

There are many simple ways that you can adjust your Google search queries.

-

Adding a hyphen (representative of a subtraction mark in this case) allows you to preemptively omit any search results that include a term. For instance, if you wanted to learn about computer hardware for your business, and didn’t want to see tons of gaming hardware, you could search for computer hardware -gaming.

|

The pipe icon enables you to effectively run two searches at once. By separating your queries with the pipe, it effectively serves as a stand-in for or as Google considers your results. So, if you were to search for tortilla | jazzercise, your results page would become an entertaining mix of recipes and locations to take a class.

()

Parentheses can help you add some context to your search. By emphasizing it separately from the rest of your search query, the parentheses tell Google that their contents should impact the rest of the search. Let’s say that you needed to plan a bowling-themed birthday party. Searching for (bowling) birthday party ideas could provide you with a smorgasbord of resources and party supplies vendors, all dedicated to birthday parties with a bowling theme.

Search Operators

site:

Sometimes, you know that you’ve seen something on a specific website, but when you go back later, you can’t seem to find it. Adding this tag into your Google search allows you to tell Google the specific website you want to search. For instance, let’s say you were looking for a specific blog that we posted about data backup. On Google, you could search for data backup site: www.mspnetworks.com.

filetype:

Google even enables its users to define their searches down to the filetype. Adding filetype:pdf will only return results for the defined search that come in PDF form.

intext:

We’ve all had those moments where we can remember something that we read, word-for-word, but we just can’t remember where we read it. Google can help. By typing in the remembered phrase after intext:, Google will scan the on-page text for that phrase and kick it back to you.

Which of these do you see being the most useful to you? Let us know in the comments how they work out for you! For more IT tips, best practices, and support services, MSPNetworks is always here. Reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Microsoft Excel is, for many, the de facto spreadsheet-creation software. However, fewer know about its useful formatting capabilities and shortcuts. To help you make your own Excel sheets more comprehensible, we’re sharing some tips to help you format your documents.

Fast Table Format

When you have a data set that outlines different related data points, using a table is one of the best ways to review it, as the table allows you to reorganize and filter the data it includes. If your data is already in a spreadsheet, you can quickly create a table by selecting a cell and pressing Ctrl + T, and then pressing Enter.

Excel Formatting Shortcuts

Of course, when you’re hard at work on a spreadsheet, you don’t want to spend too much time playing with a whole lot of nitty-gritty formatting but this kind of formatting could potentially make your spreadsheet that much more easy to understand.

In addition to the familiar Ctrl + B for bold, Ctrl + I for italics, and Ctrl + U for underline, Excel offers plenty of other shortcuts to help you format your sheets. For instance, pressing Ctrl + 5 when text is selected will mark that text with a strike through, while pressing Ctrl + 1 with anything highlighted will bring up a format dialog box for that selection. Pressing F4 will repeat the last action, which is handy if you want to apply specific formatting to certain cells.

Icon Sets

Adding icons to your cells can help provide some context at a glance, and it is simple to do. With the cells you intend to accentuate highlighted, click on Conditional Formatting (which can be found under the Home tab. You will see an option for Icon Sets, where you can select the icon set that best suits your needs.

In fact, these icons are preconfigured to differentiate between certain data ranges. For instance, if you were to pick the option with three arrows, the downward arrow represents when your data is in the lower 33 percent, the sideways arrow the middle 33 percent, and the upward arrow the top 33 percent. These numbers shift with the number of icons you have available, divvying up evenly.

What Excel formatting tricks do you know? Share them with us in the comments!

If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, eye strain can be a big problem. Staring at a screen for too long can be irritating, and some even experience headaches and exhaustion from it.

Fortunately, a lot of common applications have been deploying dark or night modes. Microsoft Word’s take on this has been, well, less than desirable. We’ll show you a way around it to help save your eyeballs a lot of strain.

Dark mode and Night mode options have been showing up a lot lately, especially in mobile apps. Twitter, Amazon Kindle, Evernote, Gmail (on Android 10), and Firefox (on iOS) have all deployed a mode that makes the background of the application dark, and the text light.

For most, this makes it easier to view your screen in a dimly lit area without straining your eyes. For those of us who spend a lot of time in front of screens, it can be a huge difference.

I was using Microsoft Word the other day, and working on a long document and I was starting to feel a headache coming on. It reminded me that Word had some settings for changing the theme, and I wondered if they had finally added a dark mode.

(Note that I’m using the PC version of Microsoft Word, not the mobile version)

While in Word, click File and go to Options. On the General tab, under Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office, you can change the Office Theme to Black.

I got pretty excited because it seemed like that was exactly what I was looking for, but to my chagrin… 

Alright, so changing the office theme only makes the surrounding area (including the tool ribbon) darker. That’s a start, but the brilliant bright white of the document area was still burning away at my retinas. I wasn’t totally content with this, but I found a trick that takes this one step further.

The Trick for a Real Microsoft Word Dark Mode

I totally understand why Microsoft Word doesn’t let the office theme change the background and font color of the document. Afterall, a lot of documents get printed or sent as PDFs, and they want you to get a feel for what the document would look like if you were to print it. They don’t want the user getting confused and thinking that it will actually make them print a full sheet with a black background and white text.

This rationality wasn’t doing much for my headache, and I was determined to find a fix for it.

It’s actually really easy too!

NOTE: I want to point out that I definitely do not want to print my document with a black background and white text, I only want to view the document that way when I’m editing the document.

Go to the Design tab on the tool ribbon at the top of Word and click on Page Color.

If you don’t see Page Color, try clicking on the Magnifying Glass at the very top of Word towards the right, and type Page Color instead.

From there, choose one of the darker colors. You’ll notice your document will change as you hover over the different color options. The lower values tend to make the text light. I usually choose the second option from the bottom in the second column, as indicated above.

If you ever want to switch it back, go back to the Page Color option and just choose the white box on the top left of the color grid.

Keep in mind that this only changes on the document you are working on, and doesn’t affect your other documents. If you save the document and share it, and someone else opens it, they will also see the dark background.

Before Printing, Be Sure to Preview

I had no problem printing my document after changing these settings, but older versions of Microsoft Word might not behave the same way. Let’s say you did want to print this document, but obviously didn’t want to waste a ton of ink by printing a black background.

In my experience, you just need to print the document normally, but just to be safe, you can either go back to Page Color and set the color back to white, or before you print, review the preview Word shows you.

If the preview is white text on a black background, you’ll need to either go back to Page Color and switch to a white background, or you can tell Word to always ignore your background colors.

To do this, click on File and Options. Go to the Display tab and look for the Printing Options area. Make sure Print Background Colors and Images is unchecked, and click Ok.

Then, you never have to worry about wasting a ton of ink when you print your document.

Hope this tip helped! For more great tips, keep coming back to our blog!

While it seems that some business will best be conducted remotely for some time yet, it is still very important to start planning for a return to in-house operations now. This will help them to hit the ground running when the floodgates open back up. For this week’s tip, we’re going over how to return to the office after working remotely, while also reviewing some best practices for adjusting to remote work (just in case).

In-House to Remote

In order to effectively adopt remote operations (voluntarily or in response to some disaster), you need to be sure that your team is prepared to do so. To help ease the transition, there are a few preparations that are wise to see to beforehand.

1. Change as little as possible - In order to make the shift to remote operations minimally jarring, try to keep as much of your typical workday routine the same as it would ever be. Working for the same time as you would normally, establishing a set place for doing work in your home, and even dressing as though you’re going to the office are all excellent ways to normalize the unusual environment and preserve productivity.
2. Give them the tools they need - In order to collaborate in an effective way, your team members need the tools to do so. While email is generally thought of first when it comes to company communications, there are other options that should be implemented in tandem with it. These other options, like video conferencing and instant messaging, can serve your team’s needs better in certain situations.
3. Keep in contact - Unfortunately, collaboration will not be as easy as it was when your team members could turn to the people next to them and ask a question. Therefore, you not only need to provide them with the solutions to communicate with one another, you need to actively encourage them to do so until it is standard practice for everyone. This will benefit both your operations and company morale.

Remote to In-House

One the all-clear has been given to return to the workplace, your team will need to be ready to transition back to their workplace norms. Of course, this may be easier said than done, so you should assist them in doing so just as you did when they shifted to remote operations. We have a few suggestions to make this easier as well.

1. Continue their remote work habits - As your team was working from home, there is a good chance that they discovered the way that they work best as an individual. Don’t make them switch back just because they are in the office, and instead allow them to work the way that they found to be most effective (if it doesn’t interfere with others’ workflows).
2. Be responsibly social - One of the biggest drawbacks to working remotely is that there is effectively no social aspect to it any longer. Once your team returns to the office, cut them a little bit of slack if they’re talkative (again, if the work isn’t impacted negatively). In fact, consider starting some new, socially motivated company events for the purpose of team building. One caveat: don’t do this last part before the current health crisis is confirmed to have been resolved.
3. Encourage a comfortable work environment - The hard truth of the matter is that not everyone is going to get dressed up for work every day that they are working remotely, so it may not be best to insist upon a dress code once they return. Of course, you should draw the line somewhere before mud masks and that comfortable pair of old, ragged sweatpants that everyone has someplace, but blankets and small plants can make the workplace seem more inviting.

Unfortunately, no in-house to remote and back to in-house transition will go off without any hiccups at all, but accommodating your team to the best of your ability should make it better for everyone. As far as your technology is concerned in these shifts, you can leave that to MSPNetworks. Reach out to us today to learn how we can help with your business collaboration and remote work capabilities by calling (516) 403-9001.

Everyone knows some keyboard shortcuts. The normal ones that allow you to copy, cut, paste, lock your computer, select all, and more. Today, we thought we would tell you about some browser-based shortcuts that can definitely save you time and effort. 

The first thing you are going to want to do if you want to try these shortcuts out right now is to open up a new browser window so that you can follow along with the blog. 

Jump to Address Bar: Ctrl+L

Say you are looking at a recipe from another culture and there are ingredients that you aren’t familiar with. By pressing Ctrl+L you will highlight the text in the address bar. This will allow you to simply type in your query or web address and not have to wrestle with the url without using your mouse at all.

Add the Dot Com: Ctrl+Enter

Do you want an easy way to navigate to a website without having to type out the whole URL? As long as you know the domain name of the site, you can press Ctrl+Enter and it will fill in the “www.” and “.com” bringing you to the website you want to go to without having to enter it manually. 

Open a Search in a New Tab: Alt+Enter

Let’s return to the recipe example. If you would like to search a specific term, but you don’t want to navigate away from the page, typing a query in the address bar and pressing Alt+Enter will automatically open up the search in a new tab.

Open a Website in a New Tab: Ctrl+Alt+Enter

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Enter will combine the two functions. It will open the domain in a new tab. This is super useful to navigate to a new site quickly. Try it now using “Wikipedia”.

Open Clear Browsing Data: Ctrl+Shift+Delete

After you are done browsing, you may want to delete cookies or some other stuff you might have picked up while you were browsing. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete will open up the page where you can control these settings and clear your browsing data.

These shortcuts will definitely help you navigate your web browser a little bit more efficiently. For more great tips and tricks return to our blog next week. 

Nowadays, laptops are the weapon of choice for productivity. They function much like a desktop computer but are mobile enough to go anywhere with. Unfortunately, most laptops chew through their batteries in only a few hours of work and need to be plugged in in order to function. With so many people working from home, many people are using their laptops more like a desktop and keeping them plugged in around the clock. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss the best practices of a laptop battery. 

Is Overcharging a Laptop Battery a Problem?

Of course, like everything there is a qualified answer to this question. The first qualification is the age of your device. It wasn’t too long ago that battery innovation in these devices was truly lacking and devices that have older batteries have a much better chance of degrading when they are overcharged. On the other hand, newer batteries made of lithium-polymer or lithium-ion don’t have this problem. Hardware improvements have also played a role in keeping batteries juiced without ruining them. 

If you have a laptop on its power source for long periods of time that the device itself starts getting warm, it may be smart to remove it from the power supply as it can damage internal components and ruin the device. The temperature you are storing the device at matters too. In fact, enough research has been performed on the subject to suggest that leaving a fully charged laptop at high heat will significantly degrade the battery compared with a laptop stored at lower temperatures, to a point. 

In total, you will want to monitor your laptop’s heat levels when keeping it plugged in, but if you store it in a cool well-ventilated area, you should be fine keeping your laptop on the charger for as long as you want. 

For more great tips and tricks about how to manage your hardware and use your technology, return to our blog each week.

Productivity is a huge priority in any business. This makes it crucial that all tasks can be picked up and put down as efficiently as possible. With mobile browsing now playing a major role in most users’ lives, the version of Chrome for Android devices is a very utilized tool. With these factors in mind, we’re sharing tips to make your use of Android Chrome that much more efficient and productive.

Continuous Productivity

Everyone takes a little while to ramp up their productivity, mainly so that they can get everything arranged and organized before diving in. With so many tools now online, Google Chrome enables you to access them from essentially everywhere. However, as an added bonus, by logging into the same Google account on a computer and on your Android device, your history would contain exactly what you would need to open. Even better, if your desktop version was still active with certain pages, the Recent Tabs option in the Android version of Chrome could replicate them.

Download Pages for Offline Browsing

While mobile devices are incredibly useful, the occasional lack of connection you may encounter can put some of these uses on hold. However, if you know that your connection is going to be poor later, you can proactively save certain web pages with the Android Chrome browser. By selecting Download (the one that looks like an arrow pointing at a horizontal line) in the three-dot menu while you’re on a page, you can save that page for later in the Downloads section.

Referential Search

Context is an important thing to have, especially when you are reviewing online documents and other materials. On an Android device, this context would be a pain to get, as you’d have to open a new tab and start an entirely new search, just to go back and continue. Would be, if the Android version of Chrome didn’t have a feature to work around this need.

By highlighting a word or phrase that they need more information about with a long press, a user can generate a small tab at the bottom of their display that displays a search for whatever was highlighted. This tab can then be dismissed or opened as an additional page in the browser.

What are some of your favorite tips for using Google Chrome to browse while on a mobile device? Tell us some of them in the comments, and make sure you subscribe today!

A strong email solution can bring a great deal of continuity to a business. If it is mismanaged, however, it can quickly become a major pain point. Today, we thought we would go over a couple of ways that you can use your email platform to boost productivity, rather than waste time with it.

Useful Tip #1: Don’t Spend So Much Time on It

Email can be a major time sink. People can lose hours going through their incoming messages even though most of the messages don’t really have any relevance to the job at hand. This is exacerbated if the user checks the email every 10 minutes. The fact is that if someone is sending you an email, there is a good chance that it wasn’t meant to be an urgent message. Most people would pick up the phone for that. Here are a few ways you can regulate your email usage:

• Schedule a time to check all your emails and deal with all of the incoming messages at once. This will ensure that your focus is on your incoming messages and that you are not wasting time checking and replying to messages as they come in. 
• Create a shortcut that will take you directly to your email composer, bypassing the distraction of the inbox.
  
  • For Gmail, use: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1.
  • For Outlook Online, use: https://outlook.office365.com/mail/deeplink/compose?version=2020042702.13&popoutv2=1&leanbootstrap=1

Useful Tip #2: Organize Your Inbox

If you let your incoming messages fester, you can end up with a pretty ugly and disorganized inbox. It can also inadvertently make you miss important information. That’s why it is important to keep your email organized. Adding in rules and features to whichever client you use can be advantageous. Try these things: 

• When there are a lot of emails to go through, it can be difficult and counterproductive to leave it for a long time, but it can also be a major problem for your productivity if you are spending a big chunk of your time being interrupted by more email to go through. What do you do to keep from doing that? Use a simple shift in your settings:
  
  
  
  • In Gmail, there is a feature called Auto Advance. When this feature is activated, the act of deleting, moving, or archiving a message will no longer send you back to your inbox, it will just take you to the next message. Gmail also provides the Send & Archive button, an option that gives you the option to do both in a single click.
    
    
  • In Outlook, you can change your settings quickly by calling up your Options (under the File menu option) and selecting Mail. On that page, you’ll find a section labelled Other, and the specification to complete an action “After moving or deleting an open item.” Select open the next item from the dropdown.
    
    
• In business, your email is typically the central hub of your workflow. That means you get a lot of messages referencing different projects, and it can be difficult to keep them straight. By sorting these messages automatically, you can save quite a bit of time and be more effective at having the resources you need when you need them. Here’s how:
  
  
  
  • In Gmail, you can create Labels, which can help you effectively manage different incoming messages that reference different topics. By creating Filters via the drop-down option in the Search bar, you can also set certain emails to have these labels applied based on preset criteria. These can even be used to sort through different email addresses you receive in the Gmail client.
    
    
  • Outlook also offers a similar function with its capability to create Folders and generate Rules to direct certain messages to them automatically, once again. When an existing inbox message is right-clicked, suggested rules will display, along with the opportunity to create one or to manage the ones you have already created.

#3: Prepare Ahead of Time

We all have emails that we need to send over and over. Either thanking someone for their efforts or alerting someone of a change to their service/project/account. By setting up some canned responses, over time, you can save dozens of hours dealing with repetitive messages. Here’s how to set it up:

• In Gmail, as the composer is open, click the triple-dot menu at the bottom and navigate to Templates. From there, you have the option to either insert a template you have already created or save what you have drafted as a new template to use later. If you no longer need a template, you can also delete it from this menu.
  
  
• In Outlook, you can create a new template from a message by navigating to File and Save As, then switching the file type to Outlook Template. To use them, select New Items as you are drafting your email and from there, More Items and then Choose Form. From there, select User Templates in File System in the Look In box. Find your template and select Open.

Email will continue to be a useful business tool. For more great email tips and tricks subscribe to our blog and return regularly.

There are many different varieties of cybercrime that businesses need to be vigilant about. However, most of these varieties can largely be avoided through a few basic practices and behaviors. Here, we’re giving you a few tips to help you prevent attacks from successfully influencing your business, so make sure you share them with your entire team, as well.

1. Reconsider What You Click On

It’s almost automatic for many users to see a link on a website, in their email, and elsewhere. This is something that hackers are very aware of, and often use to their advantage.

Kind of like we just did there (if you clicked on that link).

See how easy it is to fool someone this way? To help avoid this being used to undermine your security, build up the habit of hovering your cursor over a link before clicking on it. This will display the actual destination of a link somewhere on your screen, which you should always check so you will know that it is legitimate. 

2. Use Access Controls

While this may be obvious, you need to make sure that someone who isn’t allowed access to your business’ files or location isn’t able to access them. This means that you need to have all the suggested data security measures and practices in place to protect against the unauthorized access of any of your files, including any hard copies. Keep your physical data locked up, and protect all data with multiple layers of authentication requirements.

3. Keep an Eye Out for Scammers

While we’ve already covered this in part with tip number one, there are other ways to catch attempted cybercrimes that are often used in conjunction with misleading links. Cybercriminals use various methods, referred to as “phishing”, to manipulate their targets into behaving the way the attacker wants. Sometimes it is by using a falsified link, sometimes through scare tactics, and often through a combination of the two. Some phishing attacks are researched extensively to be as effective as possible against a certain target, while others are broader and more generic and meant to catch as many people as possible with minimal work. Make sure your team is informed of these attacks and knows to double-check requests through a different communication method if there is any doubt at all. When in doubt? Pick up the phone and call the sender.

4. Two-Ply Protections

Make sure that you are layering your defenses against cyberthreats. Maintain an updated antivirus solution and utilize a virtual private network when accessing the Internet and activate all onboard protections that your devices offer and use all of the assorted solutions and practices that are available for you to leverage. To discourage cybercrime on a comprehensive scale, you need to take thorough actions and fill in all the small holes that could potentially exist in your security.

MSPNetworks can help with all of this, and more. For answers to any technology questions you may have, or direct assistance in implementing any of this, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing businesses to rethink their operational strategies, many businesses have had to make a quick digital transformation. Many businesses have accomplished this before the stay-at-home orders, but with employees working from home, we thought this was the perfect time to take a look at four tools businesses can use to improve their work-from-home strategies. 

Analysis, In Real Time

Making prudent and qualified decisions is more important now that it has ever been before. To be able to make informed decisions, many SMBs are looking to their analytics platforms. By being able to look at how aspects of your businesses are functioning in real time, you can quickly change strategies that need to be changed in order to keep your business running efficiently.

Additionally, many analytic systems can be structured near the edge of an organization’s computing network, giving them more insight into how data is flowing in and out of their network.

Other benefits include:

• Managing location data - Directs decision makers’ strategies by determining the relevant data for multiple locations.
• Anomaly detection - Helps decision makers detect outlying data sets to avoid impulsive decision making. 
• Improved marketing - Assists decision makers to make decisions based on demand when it otherwise wouldn’t be noticed.

Voice Over Internet Protocol

VoIP is one of the most useful tools for teleworkers. It provides strong communication options, highlighted by an enterprise-grade telephone system, for pennies on the proverbial dollar. Additional available options that can help remote workers such as instant messaging, text messaging, and audio and video conferencing make VoIP a powerful tool for businesses looking to sustain levels of productivity with workers out of the office. 

Automation

One of the best tools for cutting costs is process automation. A lot of businesses are trying to effectively identify processes within their workflow where they can automate mundane or repetitive tasks. By having the type of consistency automation brings to these types of tasks, businesses can utilize their human resources on more revenue-building assignments.

Tasks that can be automated include:

• Tasks that involve moving information around
• Frequent and mundane, but necessary tasks
• Tasks that frequently interrupt focus on business-critical tasks

Making the investment to automate parts of your business will assuredly save your organization money. Best yet, by automating these tasks now, once operations return to normal, you will keep seeing the cost savings you do today. 

Online Sales

There are a lot of businesses that have implemented some semblance of ecommerce prior to this event, but if you haven't, or if you have a limited ecommerce platform, you could see a major bump in revenue from investing in your ecommerce platform. In retail, companies are seeing double and even triple times the sales through their ecommerce solution than they did only a few short weeks ago. Prioritizing your online sales will go a long way toward keeping revenues up while your storefront is closed.

For the small business these can be lean times. Knowing what technologies and strategies to implement will go a long way toward getting you through this period. For more information about technology and how it can work for your business during the COVID-19 period, call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001. 

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about virus avoidance, but today we thought we would go into things you can do to keep another type of virus--specifically COVID-19--away from you and your technology.

It’s known that bacteria and viruses (including COVID-19 and many others) thrive in environments like a typical office. There are usually many people in a confined space and a lot of places that microorganisms and germs can get picked up.

To back up these claims (that only really need corroboration from workers that get sick from their contemporaries regularly), research suggests that the average office phone features more than 25,000 different types of bacteria, the average keyboard sports 3,000 per square inch, and the mouse has over half that. For reference, the average toilet has less than 300 per square inch. This tells you just how important it is to make efforts to keep your workspace clean. 

Virus Removal

You can’t just dump hand sanitizer on your keyboard and expect it to be clean. Here are some tips designed to help you keep yourself healthy:

Traditional Cleaning

It is important that you keep your office clean. Using soap and water to clean surfaces that are able to be cleaned that way and keeping the floors clean with a broom and mop will keep the office in good shape. 

Obviously, you shouldn’t clean your computing components with the same haphazard cleaning that you would do on your floors. You don’t want to ruin them with careless actions. 

Disinfecting Wipes

The disinfecting wipes can be quite useful to build a healthier office, as long as you are diligent about which wipes to buy. You’ll want to get the ones that tell you about their disinfecting power on the label.  You will want to check the labels to see if your supply says they kill viruses.

By using these disinfectant wipes, you will likely see fewer sick people. Cleaning surfaces like door handles, light switches, phones, chairs,  keyboards, and mice will go a long way toward sanitizing your whole office. Be sure to pay special attention to high-traffic areas in the office, like the staff refrigerator, vending machines, coffee machines, and the microwave, to properly disinfect them as well.

Encourage Hygiene

The thing that is going to keep your staff safe against contamination the most is their own hygiene. You’ll want to make a point to remind everyone in the office that they need to be washing their hands after they use the bathroom. You can also make sure that they have access to hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, and other useful products that promote a sterile workplace.  Also, you would be wise to tell sick people to stay home from the office or allow them to work remotely if needed. 

Ultimately, with the COVID-19 pandemic bringing these issues to the forefront, you will likely begin to see people making these steps a priority. Nobody wants to get sick, so everyone has a reason to keep their workspace as clean as possible, but since every office has at least one slob, you will want to make sure to make it a priority for them to keep their desk clean. 

What does your company do to promote staff health? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused many businesses to enact a work-from-home policy. With so many people working from home, we thought it would be a good idea to write up some simple tips to follow to give yourself the best chance of being productive. 

Establish Your Workspace

The very first thing you need to do is set aside a workspace. It's hard to focus on your job if you are on a laptop in the living room in front of your entertainment center, or if the only place you have is your bedroom. One of the most distracting elements of being home are the modern comforts you’ve outfitted the place with. Find a place where you can be productive and use it.

Don’t Burnout

There is the tendency for workers that normally work in an office, but are forced to work from home, to overdo it. The theory is that most people would love the flexibility to work from home on occasion and when they get the opportunity, they spend more time than they should working. This can have negative effects on both their ability to focus and on the business’ payroll. If you are home working, work as you would at the office and walk away when it’s time.

If You Are Going Casual, Don’t Go TOO Casual

As a part of your normal work routine, you probably need to wash yourself and get dressed. At the very least you need to put on pants. When working from home, many people neglect to do that and it actually has an effect on their work. As a part of your pre-work routine you should wash up and dress yourself as if you were going to the office. You’ll feel, and likely perform better.

2. Encourage Co-working

Make Collaboration the Standard

With collaboration fueling a lot of businesses, when people work from home it is essential that there is solid communication going on. This will ensure that people are working on the things they need to, they are on the same page, and that they have an outlet from being stuck inside their house for days (or weeks) on end.

Stay Connected and Communicate Constantly

Following the same line of thought, to avoid falling into a non-productive routine, you should reach out to people in your company to gain some perspective on what they are working on. The more knowledge you can gain about your contemporaries’ priorities, the better you can be at filling in the gaps.

3. Commit to Working Productively

Schedule to Your Advantage

Working from home brings some additional flexibility. You may be expected to work your normal business hours, but if you find yourself falling into some bad habits or being complacent in the middle of the work day, figure out the times that you work most effectively. If you aren’t on the same schedule, you’ll likely get more done when you feel like working than working when you are distracted.

Don’t Get Distracted

Speaking of distractions, your home is filled with them. Sometimes it’s hard to make the transition to working in the main place you go to relax. There are all types of distractions from family to media to simple household chores. Commit to work when you work and you will find that you will likely get more done in that time than any time you spend at your office. 

For more great tips and tricks, return to our blog each week.

Once a mobile device outlives its presumed usefulness, the default assumption is that there is nothing left to do but dispose of it. However, before you do so, reconsider. There may be other ways that your device could show its utility. For today’s tip, we’ll review a few ways that an aged-out smartphone or tablet can still be handy for you (even in the office)!

Keep in mind that these are all only suggestions, and should all be run by your IT resource for approval before you try to tweak anything.

Remote into Your Home Desktop

While we can help you where solutions that allow your team to access their workstations from home are involved, you and your users may find yourself needing the opposite connectivity at times. There are many apps that, when installed on both devices, allow you to turn your Android device into a terminal tied to your home system.

Turn it into a Video Conferencing Hub

With a few older devices, you can easily create a video communications network to collaborate with others in the office, or even others across the world. A stand, a power source, and a Wi-Fi connection are all you need, and you’ll have a reliable means of reaching out via video.

Make it a Decorative Feature for Your Desk

Real productivity isn’t possible in a completely sterile environment, so why not jazz up your workspace with a photograph. Find out if the cloud service of your choice has a slideshow function (as Google Photos does) and let your phone rotate out your photos. Alternatively, there are webcam apps that can deliver a livestream of some remote location directly to your desk, if you prefer.

If you’d like something with some more functionality, you could always set up your old smartphone to be a desk clock or calendar to give yourself a quick-access reference point for these needs.

Turn it into a Security Camera

If there’s something special you want to keep an eye on while you’re at the office (or again, vice versa), you can also set up your mobile device to act as an impromptu security camera. Various applications are available that will allow you to stream a live feed from your mobile device to a web browser, keeping you in-the-know of everything that is happening while you’re away. This isn’t really a replacement for physical security for your business, but it’s a great way to keep tabs on your dog at home.

Of course, if your mobile device is ready for retirement, you should at least dispose of it responsibly and properly. Reach out to our team to learn more about recycling your electronics securely, and for any other IT-related questions, at (516) 403-9001.

Think about how happy you are when you first get your new phone. If you are like most of us you can’t keep your hands off of it. You try all the new features out and mutter to yourself, “wow, this is so cool”. The enthusiasm that people have for their new mobile devices can be a major benefit for the company they work for, too. Today, we are going to discuss how, with all the features and powerful computing power, you can work effectively on your smartphone.

Select the Right Apps

The main benefit of a mobile device, beyond the mobility, is that the software that runs on the machine is already in one, easy-to-use, place. Every smartphone runs off of mobile apps, that you can find on the mobile app store provided by the operating system. For Android apps, there is the Google Play Store, and for iOS apps, there is the Apple App Store. Any type of productivity software you may need can be downloaded for free from those stores. 

To use your smartphone as a productivity tool you will want to eliminate most of the distractions. 

Apps, while being essential for mobile device productivity, can also present monumental distractions. The app store itself can be a distraction as you can literally spend hours scrolling through apps looking for the right one for you. You will want to eliminate a lot of the apps that could cause you distractions and prioritize apps that will assist your productivity. 

Once you have the apps downloaded, you will then want to arrange the apps on the device in a manner that makes it simple for you to navigate to the apps that you need. For example, you can group communications apps together to keep them in one place rather than have them strewn about the device. 

Disable Certain Notifications

While there are notifications that can be very useful, they can also be the most distracting. By turning off notifications to apps that may not have any value, you can really eliminate one potential distraction. Since focus on a task is essential to produce the best results, you can really do without that Facebook notification telling you four people you barely know have a birthday today.

Update Software Regularly

Apps are software. Like the software on your PC, your apps need to be updated and patched regularly as to avoid serious security and privacy concerns. Moreover, mobile app updates often come with useful new features. These updates are usually handled automatically, but it’s good practice to check to make sure that your apps are up-to-date and secure. 

For more great tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your technology, subscribe to our blog today.

Social media has completely changed the dynamics of how people communicate with one another. While some users might only keep in touch with friends through it, others--including businesses and brands--use it to promote their products. In an age where a picture can appear on thousands of devices all over the world, privacy has become a major concern for anyone using social media.

Social media was built on the foundation of users sharing parts of themselves through the Internet, and in a world dominated by mobile devices, it’s not surprising that the majority of today’s computing is done through mobile platforms. One study found that in 2018, 69 percent of all American adults over 18-years-old used social media regularly over the subsequent year; this does not include YouTube as a social media platform. This number grows ever larger, particularly in regard to seniors. Nearly 40 percent of them use some form of social media--a number that has increased by about 200 percent since 2012.

Due to this increase, there is also a much larger group of individuals out there to steal money, information, and identities. Privacy concerns are prevalent in today’s social media environment, and users must be aware of how they are putting their data in harm’s way. Most people cite social media as a place where they can share their civil and political views, personal health information, learn scientific information, engage in job, familial, and society-related activities, and where they get most of their news.

Role of Privacy

As always, privacy will depend on how much an individual prioritizes the security of his or her personal information. If someone wants to keep a semblance of themselves private, they have to avoid placing that information in a public space like social media. As social media usage increases, the issue only grows larger. Add in the functionality that a lot of developers integrate into these websites and, before you know it, control over personal data is suddenly a problem.

Obviously, these platforms require you to give over some of your personal information to them in order to use the service, but when you begin to lose control over who has your data, and what data has been shared, negative situations can arise. A 2014 survey suggested that 91 percent of Americans have lost control over their data, and that advertisers and social media companies are taking more of their data than they even know.

Half of Americans know, and largely understand, the problems they face by having their information fall into the wrong hands. This leads them to be more proactive about securing their personal information. An issue everyone runs into, however, is that in order to use social media (or e-commerce for that matter), companies demand access to more personal information than necessary. By mining all this data, they then have carte blanche to do with it as they please, which can become a problem if that data is scraped by odious sources.

Why Stay on Social Media If They Are Stealing from You?

If you are at the beach and a professional lifeguard were to tell you that you need to get out of the water because there is a good chance you will be bitten by a shark, would you wade around in waist-deep water trying to spot the sharks? No chance. That’s why we scratch our heads when we see companies openly take our client’s personal information, the information they share, and their user histories to create a consumer profiles that will be sold for profit to advertisers. We constantly warn people to protect their personal information, and they consistently don’t.

We understand… maybe you use social media for marketing. Maybe you are one of the ones that are careful what they share with these sites. Maybe, you are comfortable with it and are one of the millions of people that trade their privacy for convenience. Whatever the reason is, if social media has become an important part of your life, you most likely have made some privacy concessions, knowingly-or-not, in order to use it.

Between social media and online commerce, more personally identifiable information is shared with corporations than you would ever knowingly share with your best friends. This speaks to just how oblivious the typical user is about their own personal information. People find value in social media. In fact, there are businesses that provide their staff with regular social media breaks as to not interrupt organizational productivity with social media. When you consider 30 percent of all online time is spent on social media (which only increases when people go mobile), you begin to understand that it carries value for hundreds of millions of people.

Are you concerned about your private information being tracked and shared by Internet-based services? Do you have a good idea about who has your personal information and where it is going? Leave your thoughts about this issue in the comments.

Microsoft Word’s massive cache of options and its relative ease of use are two of its defining characteristics. This presents organizations and users alike with a large set of different ways they can set up the word processor. Today, we will take you through Word, providing tips on how to change these settings so that you can get the most out of it.

Of course, you will want to consult with your IT administrator before you go to make any major changes.

Customizing Word’s Grammar Rules to Meet Your Preferences

There is a good chance that you will enter some text at some point that you know is correct, but Word will tell you it’s not. Maybe your business’ name is spelled funny. Maybe you simply stylize some words and phrases differently. Regardless, instead of being distracted by errors, you can simply teach Word to not track these style choices as errors.

To access these rules, select File, and from there, Options. A new window should pop up with a Proofing option in the list. That page looks like this:

Adjusting AutoCorrect

You can change your proofing options in the following menu. This includes your AutoCorrect Options. Simply selecting the button will open another window.

This is the menu that will allow you to set your AutoCorrect rules, including exceptions you want to make to the autocorrect system in Word.

Establishing Grammar Rules

If you return to the Proofing List window, you can see other options that control Word’s corrections. One example is by clicking on the Settings... button under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word. It will bring up this window:

These are the controls for the grammar rules that Word works under. It’s comprehensive, but if you toggle some off, you will be flagged for less mistakes, causing fewer distractions.

Stop Worrying About Word Changing What You Write

By choosing to implement these changes, any user can prevent the hundreds of small annoyances that get in the way of your ability to write in Word. If you would like to see more great tips and tricks about how to use today’s most popular productivity suite, Office 365, return to our blog regularly.

I have a question for you: when did you last examine the bandwidth that your business Internet package provides you? This is a very important consideration to make, for the sake of your productivity. This week, we’ll offer a few tips on how the proper bandwidth can help you get much more out of your IT solutions.

What is Bandwidth?

On a very basic level, bandwidth is simply how quickly you can download content from the Internet, measured in megabits per second, or Mbps. The higher the bandwidth, the faster these downloads will run.

Think about it like this: you’re trying to move water from one bucket to another. You have two tools you can use to do so, a fire hose, or a straw. Which connection will move the water more quickly?

If you answered the hose, you understand how bandwidth works. Just like the fire hose can move more water than a straw can, a larger bandwidth can move more megabits in the same amount of time. Some high-speed connections can even be measured in Gigabits per second.

How Does Bandwidth Translate to Download Speed?

Calculating your projected download speed is fairly simple, as long as you keep in mind that there are 8 bits for every byte. This means that, if you were trying to download 8 megabytes of data on a 1 Mbps connection, it would take approximately 1 second. 512 megabytes would take just over a minute to download on the same connection.

How Do I Know What My Business Needs?

In order to accurately estimate your business’ required bandwidth, a little more math is in order. While other factors, like connection reliability, should also be considered, your approximate bandwidth needs are relatively simple to calculate.

First, you will need to have the estimated traffic that each of your processes take up, as well as the total users that are likely to be engaged in that process. You will want to assume that this is during peak operations, so you don’t inadvertently short-change your business. Naturally, the bandwidth required by different processes will vary, but the following is generally the case:

100Kbps and Under - Low-end, single-line VoIP phones and e-fax machines. Some basic-use computers and laptops may utilize under 100 Kbps, but this isn’t often the case in businesses.

100Kbps to 500Kbps - It is much more common for computers and laptops to fall within this range, as they are more often used for streaming and downloading, emailing, and more rigorous browsing.

500Kbps to 2.0Mbps - If your business utilizes cloud solutions and (standard definition) video conferencing, you’re likely taking up this much bandwidth. This is commonly the range that Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, Customer Resource Management platforms, and Point of Sale devices will bring your bandwidth to as well.

2.0Mbps and Up - This bandwidth is usually called for by a high-definition conferencing solution, a lot of remote access, heavy cloud access, and more.

Now, still keeping peak activities in mind, add up what your staff is likely to need. Let’s say you have a total of 10 users in your business, including yourself. Let’s also say that you’re always on your email, corresponding with your business contacts and using 450Kbps. Six of your employees are engaged with the CRM solution they utilize, each using 2.0Mbps, and the last three are involved in a high-def video conference, each leveraging 2.5Mbps.

Totaling these use cases up, your business can expect to use almost 20Mbps at heaviest use - although it may make the most sense to assume everyone was attending a video conference, totaling 25Mbps, just to be safe.

What other tips would you like us to share? Let us know by leaving a comment, and make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it!

A business’ IT solutions aren’t the kind of thing that you can worry about once and never touch again - this is why manufacturers and developers are always sending out upgrades. However, you also need to have a strategy ready before you go to implement these upgrades. For this week’s tip, we’ll review how to put this strategy together.

Step 1: Determining What Needs an Upgrade, and Why

Naturally, the first step to any upgrade process is identifying that an upgrade is necessary. When a component of your business network requires an upgrade, it will generally be for at least one of three reasons:

• You want your solutions to have an increased capacity or range.
• You want to improve the security of your business and its resources.
• You want an increase in your business’ productivity, with less maintenance required.

If a part of your infrastructure could facilitate any (or all) of these objectives if it was upgraded, it’s probably a good idea to do so. That means that you need to start the next step.

Step 2: Planning and Preparing for Your Upgrade

A technology upgrade isn’t something that can be done on a whim. If you want yours to be successful, you need to have done your due diligence ahead of time. You will want to make sure that your network can support this upgrade in its current state, and any other considerations that come up.

As you’re preparing for the upgrade, you also need to consider any potential negative ramifications that it could have on your users. Will this upgrade be a lengthy one, and will that cause a lengthy interruption to your business’ processes? Proactively considering this will allow you to make plans to decrease the impact of these circumstances. For instance, if an upgrade is projected to create a lengthy interruption, it may be wiser to have it implemented after hours, when your resources are less likely to be called for.

Step 3: Protecting Yourself

While your upgrade will ideally run smoothly and not cause any issues, it is better to be prepared for an unideal situation. This is why an upgrade absolutely should be preceded by a comprehensive backup. With a backup taken, any issues that your upgrade may incur can be easily mitigated - so while you won’t have gained anything, your losses will be minimized.

MSPNetworks can help you manage your technology, ensuring that your upgrade processes are done correctly. Reach out to us at (516) 403-9001 to learn more!

There are over two billion active devices currently using Android. Most of them that have been purchased in the past year or so have come with, or have been subsequently updated to, Android 9.0 Pie. With the introduction of their newest mobile OS, Google has ensured that their software powers more mobile phones than any other software in the world. Today, we’ll take a look at some handy tips you can use to get the most out of your Android Pie experience.

New Gestures
In the newest Android OS, Google has built a new gesture navigation system. It may not be automatically turned on. To turn it on, go to Settings > System > Gestures. Then tap on Swipe on Home Button and press the on-screen toggle switch. You will see an immediate change from the three-icon setup of previous builds to a singular pill-shaped icon.

Navigation isn’t much different than for previous builds. Tap the pill icon to return to the homescreen and long press it to bring up Google Assistant. You can now swipe up twice or long-swipe from the home icon to access your app drawer.

Another change was needed since Android 9.0 Pie removes the dedicated button for recent apps. Now users only need a singular short swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open a new carousel gallery that shows all recently-opened apps. To navigate you can swipe between apps, or use the home icon to swipe fast left and right to move through apps more quickly. If you want to clear the apps, simply swipe up on a specific app window; and, if you want to clear all of your apps, scroll all the way to the left and tap the Clear All button to exit all running apps on the device.

In Android 9.0 Pie, the software tries to predict what you’re likely to need next, and offer up actions. If you find it useful you can drag these suggestions, found at the top of your app drawer onto the screen. Lastly, you can find the shortcuts offered by each app by long-pressing on a specific app icon. This includes opening an app in split-screen mode, a major improvement from Android 8.0 Oreo.

Device Notes
One extremely useful feature for heavy smartphone users is one where if you touch your fingerprint scanner (on devices that don’t feature an in-display fingerprint reader), it will keep the screen from going dark.

Most people today use their phones as an alarm clock. Even if you don’t, there are definitely times when using the alarm feature is necessary. In Android 9.0 Pie, when your notification panel is open (swipe down from top) you only need to tap on the clock in the system tray to open your Clock app and manage your alarms.

Do you have an Android phone with 9.0 Pie on it? What new features are your favorites? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Businesses are driven by processes. More often than not, these processes are fairly definitive - do this, then do that, then do the other thing - and require a set order of operations. There also happen to be a lot of these processes, which makes it important that they are well-documented so you and your employees can refer to this documentation later. Here, we’ll offer a few tips on how to best document a task.