369: Treat Yourself To A Nice Cup Of COVID

Topics:

-As Sam ventures out to clients again, he realizes he is not prepared for some basic functionality out in the world.

-Both Joe & Jerry are fancy coffee drinkers

-Jerry was in for a shock as he walks in the door to a client where they were not practicing the same measures that he was for safety.

-Joe was hopeful of a video from Jerry’s incident but no such luck.

-Sam thinks he’s taking the brave approach of assisting a client in setting up Google WiFi remotely. That’s just a regular workday for Joe.

-Google seems to require the Google WiFi app for setup, then the Google Home app moving forward.

-Google WiFi vs Eero. Which would you choose?

-The iOS screen sharing via QuickTime didn’t work for Sam and Joe recalls having a similar issue lately.

-All this discussion of remote access get Joe all riled up again about screen recording on macOS.

-A once exciting and now disappointing “feature” of Ubiquiti UniFi was up alerts. Sam figured this would be a great way to find out once a device came back online but instead, he received repeated and unnecessarily alerts throughout the day. So much so that he had to turn this feature off.

-Joe is in for quite a surprise while attempting to remotely upgrade a client to macOS 10.15.5. His client ended up on the beta of Big Sur! He had to do some extra work to create a script in Addigy using the seedutil command. This would allow him to get the status of computers in the Developer Program. Thanks to Shawn Maddock for pointing him in the right direction with seedutil. Joe has submitted those as scripts and custom facts for the community. 

-Sam also mentions managing beta program access via MDM configuration profile.

-A bug that may occur when enrolling into the Big Sur beta is that your computer will display a message stating that “your computer is being managed by swscan”, as noted in the developer documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-big-sur-11-beta-release-notes

368: Finding Your Way Through The Chicane

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Topics:

-Jerry gets a real kick out of Joe’s texts of frustration with clients.

-Joe’s patience is tried with a client simply unable to deal with passwords. It’s a remote session that would have taken down the best of us.

-Jerry has a password story of his own that caused Apple to lock the account.

-In Sam’s early career, he accidentally forwarded a negative email about a client…to that same client. Jerry has a similar story from his past.

-HCS had recently picked up a new client from another consultancy. During a conference call with a vendor, the sales engineer decided to open up and bad mouth the consultancy after just meeting on the phone.

-Jerry has a Dropbox story where terabytes of data were attempting to be synced over a poor internet connection.

-After one of Joe’s clients went down a road of potential concern working with someone claiming to be Norton and providing private information, he decided to investigate. As it turns out, it was a legitimate service from Norton called LifeLock.

-It does bring up a conversation about the validity and safety of using services like LifeLock.

-Somehow we end talking about maps…

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367: Leaving A Trail Of COVID Behind Me

Topics:

-Joe starts rattling off the list of his beer flight.

-Joe is in Montana now and feels he has left a trail of COVID behind him.

-CCP is close to going into the political arena

-Both Sam & Jerry encounter situations where clients or others at a client site are not wearing masks.

-COVID fatigue is a thing.

-Everyone has their opinions about masks but various businesses and individuals have to contend with interacting with others.

-Sam realizes he needs something formal to make clients aware of his policies for onsite visits during COVID.

-Jerry has disposable masks that he uses in order to stay safe at client visits.

-Joe’s team has not reported anything alarming as of yet but Joe wonders if hazard pay is a necessity.

-Providing a disposable mask may be another way to protect yourself.

-Moving on to WWDC, we briefly discuss Apple’s move away from Intel. Joe recalls the similar move from PowerPC to Intel.

-A little Command Control Power Theater 

-Jerry laments the oncoming questions from users that will inevitably come about these changes and if they should wait on purchases.

-Joe is reminded of Osborn announcing the next generation while still trying to promote their current generation.

-Sam thought it was curious that Apple decided to use the names Universal 2 and Rosetta 2 in relation to apps that can work on both processors (Universal 2), and apps that were designed for Intel and need translation (Rosetta 2).

-Jerry was not that interested in WWDC.

-Thank goodness for the TidBITS Content Network to help capture significant announcements from WWDC and other events.  Visit http://tcn.tidbits.com to sign up.

366: Do You Think I'm An Idiot?

Topics:

-Jerry poses the question to the group: what if clients want to downgrade from macOS Catalina?

-Turns out Jerry has a real situation that dealt with this very issue. It turned into a cluster but it did require a Time Machine backup and reinstall of the previous OS. 

-An inadvertent sales tactic for Joe is reaching out to a client who has been sitting on a proposal for a long time and saying they will close the ticket. Astonishingly, it causes clients to immediately respond. 

-After two visits to a client, Sam experience issues out of his controls, one with Apple and one with Jamf. He describes how it just makes him look bad. Joe and Jerry can relate. 

-Jerry has a great relationship with an Apple Authorized Reseller, Micro Decision Systems in NY. Richard Cooperman has always made the client experience easier. In a recent instance, Jerry describes having a tough time swapping out a recently purchased problematic computer.  Jerry personally offered to step up to the plate for the customer but Richard came through in the end. 

-Sam can’t wrap his head around the mess at a new client. Various application and operating system versions, status of admin accounts, compliance are all factor that are making his head hurt. 

-Jerry hits the nail on the head when describing unexpected hours and a hurt to the bottom line. 

-Jerry is reminded of being frustrated with clients that always seem like they have something better to do. 

365: Interview With Richard Wingfield Of Envision Design

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Topics:

-This week we welcome back Richard Wingfield, Head Geek at Envision Design in Houston, TX.

-Richard has talent in photography and has taken a picture a day on Instagram @rbwaia

-Joe recommends a guided meditation app on iOS called Waking Up by Sam Harris.

-Sam has experienced float tanks as a form of meditation and relaxation.

-Working to calm your “monkey mind” can take practice.

-Currently, Envision is only working with their clients in a remote capacity.

-On the topic of photography, Joe mentions the Front Steps Project in Neeham, MA.

-Richard discusses some of his key components in working with his clients in a managed services capacity, like Synology, Dropbox, Barracuda, etc.

-As more of our clients work from home, we discover just how many only use their iPhone as a hotspot or those who are just stealing their neighbor’s wifi.

-Most of Richard’s clients have been respectful of not having his team in and much of their staff is still mostly remote as well.

-He did have one that needed onsite work to set up surveillance system for a client that just completed a new space as the pandemic hit.

-Sam has a client that has had a very tough time with video conferencing, even though their network and ISP speeds are very stable.

-Richard had suggested a device called Domotz to Sam, to investigate network related issues at his client. Richard installs Domotz at all of his clients as part of his services to them. Domotz has a hardware device that can be installed but even more handy is their Synology app.

-Domotz charges $19/month per site and includes a powerful feature set for reporting, network topology, and device priority.

-Richard put considerable effort into making billing changes in his company. In part, it was in response to clients not understanding what his monthly charges were for. In these changes, he split out costs for actual support time, called Consulting & Support and costs for items they may resell, called Software & Services.

-These changes to his billing procedure helped, especially when clients may look to shop around.

-Richard talks about minimum standards for signing and working with any new client.

-Some clients only learn after something happens.

-Syncing is not backup!

-As a gesture to his clients, Richard and his company gave many hours on top of MSP support to assist remote setups.

-Give a listen to Richard Wingfield’s new podcast, The Black Hole Cafe. He records the show with his daughter and the first episode is dedicated to coffee: https://www.theblackholecafe.com

364: Makin' A Ruckus

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Topics:

-CCP is doing video again!

-Sam has a yarn to spin about dealing with a Ruckus ZoneDirect 1200 that died. After hours and hour of support and three ZoneDirectors later, he had the situation under control. In short, he has a ZoneDirector 1200 to sell. It can be yours for a low, low price!

-The team discusses working with wireless vendors and the difference in price points. Justifying costs are a large part of working with clients in the SMB market.

-Sam was surprised to find out that Ruckus supported a complete replacement of their hardware, free of charge, even 7 years after purchase.

-In the end, Sam only billed 2 hours of time for the Ruckus nightmare. An old discussion gets rehashed about billing appropriately when time goes way over initial an initial estimate.

-Jerry makes what should have been a simple change with Crush FTP and it blows up in his face. The vendor worked diligently to correct the issue after a recent update.

-Joe sees the light about project based pricing vs billable hours.

-Jerry talks about a “not to exceed” price, which can be helpful to comfort clients who are concerned about cost.

-Do you read release notes? Joe does. After struggling with Finder copies to a new RAID on 10.15.4 and continual crashes, Joe looks to update to 10.15.5. The release notes for 10.15.5 says “large data transfers to RAID volumes no longer cause Finder to be unresponsive”.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_5_release_notes

-Joe recalls remote support in the early days, where we guided our clients almost by memory.

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