Telesys Voice and Data Blog

Black Friday: it’s the name given to the unofficial first day of the holiday shopping season, and is associated with the generally unparalleled deals on consumer products. Many consumers use this day’s incredible deals to justify spending their day buying (and often fighting over) a limited amount of goods. However, have you ever considered that Black Friday can also be a good day to both advance your B2B operations and take advantage of some deals yourself?

Its flu season in Fort Worth and you can't go anywhere around this town without someone offering to poke you with a flu shot.

In my younger years, I would avoid getting a flu shot like the plague. I was firmly entrenched in the camp of folks that feel that getting a flu shot made no sense - why would I want to be injected with a virus I was trying to avoid? After all, getting sick is part of "natural selection"! Why would I want to go against nature? I'd be WAY out-gunned!

At the end of the day, your body does a pretty good job at fighting off the nasties that we call germs and bacteria. But, it could use an assist every now and then. Below are a few helpful practices that you might try to help you keep from picking up the dreaded germ arround your office.

1. Clean Your Keyboard and Mouse with an Approved Electronics Cleaning Cloth or Solution
It is a fairly easy process to accomplish, and worth the effort for sure. Think about it – you dug into the candy dish after multiple people at the office, you and Sally swapped TPS reports, you shook hands with a visitor and you used the doorknob to vacate the restroom. Then, you came back to your keyboard and started typing. You see where I am going with this. Speak with the office manager to see if you have any approved cleaning solutions on hand, then reach out to your IT solutions provider before moving forward with the scrub down.

2. Don't Eat around your Computer
Those crumbs that fall between the keys might as well as be a smorgasbord for infection. If all of those germs described above have collected on your keys as you type away and take a bite of your McMuffin – well that is pretty gross. You are eating those germs, and then incubating them in your body. Long story short, you may not want to eat at your desk.

3. Wash Your Hands, Please
I know, we are not six years old anymore. Still, too often people neglect to wash their hands or do so properly, hence why I'm reiterating this. Just do it. A good rule of thumb is to massage the soap into your palms, between the fingers – basically every crack and crevice – while singing happy birthday (in your head). All in all, it is just the respectful thing to do for those around you as well, since it will help prevent the spreading of germs.

4. Sneeze Away from Your Computer
Take a walk over to an employee that you do not like, and sneeze on their computer instead. JUST KIDDING. However, I have witnessed co-workers sneezing in their cubicles, and not covering up their mouths. As a result, their workspace becomes a breeding ground for whatever ailment they are carrying. When you sneeze, cover your mouth like Count Dracula. Sneezing into your elbow is a good practice when there aren't any tissues readily available. Keep a roll of cleaning wipes in your desk drawer, and give your work area a good wipe down once a week – or more if needed.
I've evolved a bit in recent years. I've got kids now and I've had them bring sniffles home from school, wipe their runny noses across my shirt in the afternoon only to find myself on the floor of the bathroom the next morning after a night of sweating and shivering and other bad things that make my stomach hurt to think about.

I think I've reversed my position on flu shots in recent months. I'm proud of myself for that. Perhaps the flu actually has helped me to evolve after all. I hope these tips will help you to keep from enjoying the Fort Worth flu but if you do get it, maybe it’ll help you evolve too, and you’ll be better for it.

The new smartphone models are here. This year there are plenty for consumers to get excited about in the smartphone space. The return of the Galaxy Note, the evolution of the Galaxy s8, a premium iPhone, and the return of two of the industry's heavy hitters highlight this year’s best smartphones.

When tablets first hit the market, the general prediction was that they would eventually replace PCs as the de facto device for computing, However, based on their steadily declining sales, this prediction seems to be a little off base--but, why? A closer examination provides some insight into why tablet sales have dipped.

You’ve used a mouse for years, but do you know of all the neat little tricks that it’s capable of? We’ll show you just how much you can get done with your mouse.

How does your organization manage its mission-critical technology solutions? We know that most small businesses have some sort of trouble with this topic, either due to budget constraints or a lack of personnel. Either way, we know that there is a better way to manage your business’ technology, and it’s all thanks to an approach called managed IT services.

Without competition, there would not be businesses. However, this competition needs to be fair in order for small businesses to embrace new opportunities that arise. A U.S. bill that allows for both of these goals has passed in the House of Representatives and will be voted on in the Senate.

If you are a dedicated user of Google Calendar, you’ll have realized that it’s recently undergone a significant improvement. Google has pushed out an update that has really polished their calendar in terms of both visual appearance and functionality, which is something that you’ll really appreciate, especially if you are a G Suite user. How can you use this new version of Google Calendar for your business?

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, policies have proven to be a highly effective way for companies to save money. However, these policies need to address some of the shortcomings, potential costs and issues that comes with employees bringing and using their own devices could present to your business--not to mention security concerns.

You’re lucky to go a month without seeing news of some devastating data breach. With more businesses gearing up for the worst, what are you doing to protect your organization’s intellectual property and sensitive data? You can start by implementing a new type of authentication system that’s much more secure than your current security strategy--two-factor authentication.

Whenever you download a file from the Internet, the file will, by default, go to an aptly-titled folder in Windows called Downloads. Unless you change the default settings, your files will always be saved here. But what if you want to make it so that your downloads go somewhere else? You can accomplish this pretty easily. We’ll walk you through how to do it for some of the most popular browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.

Businesses are always looking for a way to make their projects more successful. While many organizations have found success by integrating Microsoft SharePoint project collaboration software, some have found it to be a giant headache to manage, or even completely unnecessary. No matter where your business falls on this spectrum, there are some best practices in utilizing SharePoint to get the most out of the platform. Here are three considerations your team should make when you settle on SharePoint for project collaboration.

Physical security is more or less what it sounds like: security intended to protect the physical infrastructure that houses your business and your critical data. Many of the pieces of physical security will seem very familiar, even if you didn’t know the right terms for them.

If you have spent any time using iOS you been prompted to input your iTunes password. This measure can ensure that no one but you can access to your important account data. However, iOS will ask for your password quite often, and security researchers point out this good-intentioned practice could actually have the opposite effect.

Apple’s constant insistence that users enter their passwords leaves them open to phishing. It’s not only the frequency of requests, but the way iOS asks for that password makes it very easy for malicious developers to steal passwords. You might think you’re just typing your password into yet another Apple dialog box, but it could be a fake.

Until Apple makes some changes, users can protect themselves by pressing the home button before inputting their password in dialog boxes. If the box is spawned by the app, it will disappear along with the rest of the app. If it’s actually a system dialog, it will remain on the screen.  

Most people don’t think to try and print something out from their smartphone--particularly because it’s such a new concept. With smartphones quickly becoming just as fast as desktops from just ten years ago, it shouldn’t be such a stretch to suggest printing from them. Thanks to the cloud, you can use your Android smartphone to print something directly from the device.

Today’s businesses still require a lot of hardwork and dedication, but technology assists with day-to-day tasks, and gives more opportunities than we could otherwise imagine. As such, it needs to be in optimal shape, but what business has the time to see to that? Well, with the help of remote monitoring and management, yours does.

You might be surprised by how many of your organization’s security issues originate from within. A major contributor is user error, which can lead to some pretty severe problems reaching from your data security, to your workflow, all the way to the continuation of your business itself.

Everyone has accidentally closed an important web browser tab before they were finished with it. What can you really do about it, though? You might expect that you have to search for the page again, but there’s a much easier way to do it. In your Google Chrome browser on a PC or smartphone, you can reopen closed tabs relatively easily.

Students generally love it when classes are cancelled for whatever reason, but thanks to a cybercriminal group called TheDarkOverlord Solutions, a school in Flathead Valley, Montana was disrupted for an extended period of time. This downtime resulted in a disruption of operations for over 30 schools, as well as the threat to the personal information of countless teachers, students, and administrators due to a ransomware attack.

If your organization is evaluating new business communications systems, no doubt it is looking seriously at voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP or just IP). VoIP streamlines the business network infrastructure, running telephone and data services over the same network. VoIP brings new features that the traditional digital phone system couldn’t dream of. Conversely, digital phone systems have many capabilities that many people are unaware of.

Of course you want users to be able to customize their telephone buttons, speed dials, directories and call processing. You also want features that enable your small business to perform like a much larger one—things like unified messaging (voice mail, email and fax in one inbox), unified communications (multiple forms of communication managed from a PC, laptop or tablet), and the ability to use a PC or laptop as an IP soft phone.

These capabilities are becoming essential requirements even for small businesses. With Telesys Communications, you have the power of choice in how you obtain enterprise-class communications for your business.