325: Interview With John Moder of Crisp Solutions, LLC - Part One

Topics:

-This week we are pleased to welcome John Moder, owner of Crisp Solutions, LLC in Des Moines, IA

-Jerry asks John about his choice going to Synology after moving away from macOS server 

-John discusses his small team and his decision to move off on his own

-Crisp Solutions operates out of a co-working space

-Customer service is John’s focus and a building a “not transactional” relationship 

-Building a relationship with clients is of critical importance 

-Response time and letting the customer know you are aware of their situation makes a massive difference

-Jerry wonders about competition in John’s market and he talks about his relationship with them as well as with the Apple Store in Des Moines

-Building a rapport with the store is an art form that differs for each of us. Strategies are discussed. 

-With Ashleigh’s iPhone needing a replacement, Joe learns some interesting tips about repair costs and trade in values. 

-John is a very active participant on the MacAdmins Slack

-John runs into an odd issue in a Ubiquiti UniFi Deployment with a USG that would periodically stop communicating. He polls the hosts about what their next steps would be. 

-Synology backup solutions and cloud syncing tools are kicked around. John has been testing Synology’s own cloud backup solution, called C2. The thing to be aware of is that the data is stored in Germany. 

-Jerry picks John’s brain about managing Wi-Fi implementations as part of a monthly managed fee

-Ping monitoring and being proactive leads into a story about John’s ability to replace a dead AP before open of business for a customer

-John talks about keeping meticulous notes and making full rates known, even for MSP customers, to remind them just how valuable your services are

-Do you charge for notes or proposal creation? An important topic that you may need to consider. Listen to the crew and their take on the subject.

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324: Update Your Gateway, We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Topics:

-Jerry compares a client to an itchy mosquito bite. He also references one of our old favorite methods of troubleshooting - removing items in the /var/folders directory.

-While working on an iMac, Jerry hears that “pop” sound and immediately knows that it is the stand hinge has snapped. One method of repair is from “The Mac Hack”:
https://themachack.com

-Joe questions the organization and direction of icons on the Mac. Sam compares it to a direct opposite of Windows desktop icons.

-The Ubiquiti UniFi initial splash screen raises unnecessary alarm bells

-Ever since diagnosing the Cloud Key disconnects as being power related, Joe’s team has had major strides in stability of the gen 1 Cloud Key by connecting to power as opposed to relying on POE.

-Sam has some follow up on using his offsite controller and adopting his client devices into sites

-Although discussed before, figuring out how to sell additional services like UniFi monitoring to existing clients is a challenge

-Autofill options in Safari were prompting for Keychain credentials with one of Joe’s clients. After some research, he found similar instances with a laptop in clamshell mode. The odd fix was to disable Touch ID for use in Safari.

-As regular listeners are aware of, Jerry has recently located. He has an odd story of unmarked trucks making deliveries from Amazon. With enough pushback, he was able to push for a change to licensed drivers and companies.

323: Catalina Ready - Interview With Jason Dettbarn / Founder & CEO of Addigy - Cloud Based Mac Management Platform

Topics:

-This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Jason Dettbarn, founder and CEO of Addigy Technology. Addigy Technology provides Cloud Based IT Management of Mac Computers.

-Jason left his job at Kaseya to start Addigy in 2014.

-He talks about the annual Addigy User Summit, held in Miami, FL. The dates for 2020 are March 25-27. Go to addigy.com/command to find out more.

-Jason talks about how MDM is the path forward, but you need additional tools that go beyond the configuration profiles of MDM.

-Some of the macOS Catalina changes to watch out for are:
—64-bit application requirements
—Notarized software
—Z shell default

-A very interesting tidbit of information from Jason - Little Snitch is the genesis for Privacy Preferences Policy Control settings that began in Mojave

-Scripting is still a big component and Jason talks up its importance, as well as submissions from the community to assist others.

-The Addigy community is the future of the product and our peers is what makes it powerful: https://support.addigy.com/support/solutions/folders/8000086921

-With the big changes coming to macOS, blocking upgrades may be a necessity and Addigy is a tool that can assist

-The Addigy agent can also assist with peer to peer downloads of large packages, like the macOS installer

-Jerry asks the questions on pricing and how to get started: addigy.com/signup

-The fact that Addigy is a true multi-tenant platform allows consultants to have separate APNs certificates and Apple Business Manager tokens for each of their clients

-Okta integration is here and Azure as well as others are just around the corner. Keep up with Addigy updates to learn the latest and greatest.

322: Dante's Ring Of Sonos

Topics:

-Since Sam missed last weeks show, he wanted to get the latest updates from Jerry on his home/office move

-Jerry raves about the Eero product as he has a trouble free set up in the new house. https://eero.com/shop/pro-wifi-system

-With Joe doing more Synology installations, he questions his co-hosts on their choices of RAID and comfort level with redundancy.

-Continuing the NAS conversation, Joe mentions the options for SHR2 and how a client surprised him with questions regarding Synology RAID F1, a RAID format specifically for use with SSDs.  The idea being that SSDs would normally have a similar lifespan, so F1 is an uneven parity distribution approach will lead to that one SSD reaches its lifespan earlier than others 

-The elders of the Internet (IT Crowd reference)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

Joe’s discussion about a Synology causes Sam to recall the story of a Synology failure at a client.  The series of events, like restoring from Backblaze B2 and Hyper Backup’s proprietary format made a new approach necessary.

-Jerry recalls a funny story of how a client thought they were taking Drobo backups offsite by removing one of the drives and taking it home

-Sam has one of those days where he goes down the rabbit hole at a completely new client.  His almost comical experience with UniFi and Sonos equipment took him the entire day and still left him scratching his head.

321: Green Acres

Topics:

-Special thanks to Puelle Design in Portland, Maine for hosting Joe's mobile recording studio this week.

-Joe is in the Northeast! He is visiting family for some milestones before heading on the road again

-Jerry is in the midst of a move to a new home and new headquarters of MacWorks.  He calls it the reverse Green Acres.

-After having a car mishap, Jerry discovers CarPlay in his rental car

-A recurring theme for our show has been value based billing and, of course managed services plans.  Joe & Jerry share ideas about their formulas for monthly billing.  Ideas like billing per user or per device, preset hours per month, and services used are among the topics of discussion.

-Prepaid discounts are an enticing way for clients to buy in to ongoing services.  “Monthly check-ins” are also something that clients seem to be drawn to.

-Do you install Watchman Monitoring on client devices for free as a “loss leader” or break even point?  What happens if you end the relationship?

-Jerry has a couple of funny client anecdotes with his classic impersonations

-He also has his fair share of gripes

-Joe's client had an issue in Calendar on her Mac: "The server responded with an error. There is insufficient storage space for "event title" in "calendar name" in account "iCloud". The choices were Try Again, Ignore, or Revert to Server. He removed a calendar she didn't need that only had a few events on it, and it solved the problem. Then we added a few tests, and she seemed to hit the limit again. We then moved a calendar with a lot of events to a local On My Mac calendar for archival purposes, and instructed the client to move needed events back onto a calendar on the server. Hasn't happened since.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202158

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320: Ya Gotta Monitor The Monitoring

Topics:

-Jerry follows up with Joe about clients with monthly plans and miscommunications that can occur

-Sam has a story to share about how something related to this occurred to him and he had to rectify this with the client

-Using Daylite, Sam now has checks and balances in place to make sure alerts are functioning.  He does this by using the Forms feature for checklists

-Jerry also has a similar story to share with a Gmail account that needed security features adjusted.  He also discusses the need to “monitor the monitoring”

-VMs need monitoring too!  Joe talks about using Watchman Monitoring on virtual machines

-Joe wants an easy ability to view external displays via tools like Watchman Monitoring or Addigy.  It would help when creating specs for a computer upgrade.

-Joe continues on his wish list of items to include like mouse battery alerts, applications opened over time, etc.

-PSA from Jerry about upgrades.  All consultants with Windows 7 computers should look at upgrading to Windows 10 by January of 2020

-Another tip is an app from Saint Claire Software called Go64.  This will alerts you about apps that are not 64-bit and not ready for macOS 10.15 Catalina
https://www.stclairsoft.com/Go64/index.html

-Joe tries to make sense of names listed in ALL CAPS

-Sam is put out by a client that shortens all names to one letter initials

-What’s worse is people that text Jerry with computer issues and only their number is displayed

-Clients that frustrate us make us rethink the relationship.  Joe may have more patience than Jerry in that regard.

-Google Chrome’s messaging language is still a source of annoyance for Joe

-Always coming back to password management, we discuss phishing attempts in conjunction with old passwords