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031: Help Desk Ticketing Systems and Year-End Purchases

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What do I do?

What do I do?

Recorded live on December 17, 2013

Topics:

- Zendesk: Starter Plan @ $1 per Agent per month

- forward emails to help desk, ticket shows original email sender as Requester

- using help desk for calls, scheduling requests, and tasks

- continue using email for quick questions

- formal "discovery" process for new clients, or doing smaller/easier tasks before larger projects

- great to see outcome of others' tickets

- configure triggers to CC lead or admin on High Priority tickets

- End of Year purchases

- selling old equipment for clients for commission vs. fixing and selling old machines inherited from clients

Picks of the Week:

- Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal – Jerry's pick

- Promise Pegasus2 R4 Diskless 4Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID System – Joe's pick

Plus:

- Mavericks classes coming in January! Visit InstructUs Training or your local AATC for class schedules. First possible 101 class is 1/6/14.  First possible 201 class is 1/22/14.

- Mavericks training books out December 30, 2013

030: Interview with Ryan Powell of iLifestyle Consulting, plus Bonus Rants

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Recorded live on December 10, 2013

Topics:

- special guest Ryan Powell of iLifestyle Consulting discusses some cloud-hosted apps he uses to help run his consulting practice

- looking at the per seat recurring/subscription pricing models of cloud software as a predictable cost of doing business

- Work(etc)

- Wufoo for forms

- LiveChat for website live chat

- RingCentral for phone system

- Highrise for CRM

- Basecamp for Project Management

- Echosign for agreement signatures

- Timely for scheduling and automatic appointment reminders

- Xero for accounting

- Zendesk for support

- Mailchimp for email marketing

- HootSuite for social media

- Google Apps for email hosting

- Robot Cloud for client monitoring and policy management

Plus:

- Joe's rant about Yahoo Small Business

- Joe's rant about Apple Store

028: Client Gifting and Consultant Go Bags

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Recorded live on November 26, 2013

Follow Up:

Joe installed Knock app last week and noticed that it moved itself from the ~/Downloads folder to the /Applications folder without needing to authenticate despite being logged into a standard user account. Joe checked permissions on /Applications and found that the folder permissions were configured to give Everyone Read/Write access. Repaired permissions for the first time in forever and it corrected this and a few other things.

Topics:

New Mac Pro on December 3rd?  Expect Promise to release new Pegasus 2 alongside Apple's Mac Pro release.  Look for discounts on original Promise Pegasus models.

Jony Ive biography by Leander Kahney, recommended by Jerry

Fast Company Weekend Reading: An Oral History of Apple

Guest Pass app to generate iOS profile granting temporary access to a wifi network

KeyCard app to lock and unlock your Mac based on iOS device proximity

Indigo for home automation

Nest Thermostat and Smoke Alarm

Client gifts: how to select clients? Contract clients? Nurturing existing client relationships and rekindling old client relationships.

Client gift ideas: chocolate macaroons, iKlear kits, scotch

Tip from Ryan Powell: I gift throughout the year by giving new clients a "new client care package" with little Klear singles, microfiber cloth, referral cards  drive savers pamphlet and an explanation of my monthly support plan. The referral card is a little elevator pitch about the company, short link to the contact form with the promise of a free phone consultation, then when a client books an appointment I'm sure to give the referring client a small account credit as a thank you.

Sending a Thank You cards to new clients

Referral credit vs. something tangible like an iTunes gift card

What's in your Consultant Go Bag? Examples:

  • MagSafe to MagSafe 2
  • Thunderbolt to FireWire
  • Thunderbolt to Ethernet
  • USB to Ethernet
  • Ethernet cables
  • USB flash drive with partitions for Mac OS installations, diagnostics
  • FireWire 400 to 800
  • FireWire 800 to 800
  • USB, mini USB, micro USB
  • USB to Lightning
  • USB to 30-pin
  • iPhone Headphones
  • Tools including screwdrivers, spudger, putty knife
  • Memory assortment for all Intel Macs from lifetimememory.com

Joe's current bag: iBackFlip Somersault

027: Cleanup tools, repairing permissions, tracking down freezes and kernel panics

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Recorded live on November 19, 2013

Topics:

- Day 392: the Mac mini held hostage

- Apple Configurator insight/anecdote from Jerry; 20 device limit syncing to MacBook Air

- cleaning the dyld cache and font cache

- OnyX, Cocktail, CleanMyMac, TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior, memtest with 7 loops, Disk Utility's verify disk, Drive Genius hard drive test

- MacKeeper finds over 8 PB (Petabytes) of wasted disk space, courtesy Mike Kingsley

- use resetpassword Terminal command to reset home folder ACLs

- repairing permissions: helpful or just another 15 minutes of billable time?  Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions messages that you can safely ignore

- repairing permissions can fix some printing issues; reset printing system is the nuclear option

- Knock your iPhone to unlock your Mac; great third-party app (not secret Cupertino project)

- Apple Stores configure machines to use OpenDNS and block DNS queries to non-OpenDNS servers

- VPN Reorder: app to reorder connections in VPN Status menu, courtesy Allen Hancock

Picks of the week:

- iStat Menus

- whatsmydns.com – Jerry

Memorable lines:

- Another 15 minutes of billable time! - Jerry, re: repairing permissions

026: Interview with Greg Brasher, Field Sales Executive for Rackspace

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Recorded on November 5, 2013

Topics:

- RackSpace offers Exchange hosting, mail hosting, managed SharePoint hosting

- public cloud vs. private cloud vs. hybrid

- "Fanatical Support" and the Fanatical Straightjacket award ceremony

- O'Fixies, the internal support "bar" at RackSpace HQ

- OpenStack, partnership with NASA; open source, massively scaleable cloud operating system

- RackSpace Partner Network and how ACNs can benefit from it

- Cloud Sites

- Hybrid cloud

Plus:

- the challenges of hiring someone to grow your consulting practice: very important to find someone who's willing to follow through, who can keep a commitment, who has a good work ethic, and who works well as a team player

025: Mobile Device Management and More

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Recorded live November 5, 2013

Topics:

- Apple Configurator and the issue with Find My iPad and Activation Lock

- using Apple Configurator in combination with a cloud-based MDM solution; e.g. AirWatch with AirWatch app

- LinkedIn proxying emails using its LinkedIn Intro service; see also

- MTC vs. MTC+: MTC focuses mostly on Apple's solution, whereas MTC+ focuses more on third party solutions

- basic Mobile Device Management features for small office use: remote wipe, remote lock

- tip about updating to iOS 7.0.3, removing and re-adding the stored Fingerprints

- Sam's impressions on the Synology DS1513+

- plus, Sam teases what's to come from his trip to Apple Professional Services Camp

Follow up:

- Jerry "rolling back" his client to Mountain Lion