David Moisan & SATV – A Good Glimpse Into A Non-Profit’s Technology Needs

David Moisan is the IT Director for Salem Access TV in Salem Mass.

We have crossed paths over the last number of years due to SATV’s running SBS as their principle server.

Lately, David has had some very good blog posts on the need for technology in his organization. He provides some good insight into the how they use technology and why they need it.

He also speaks to the juggling that a non-profit has to do in order to finance their needed technology.

David’s blog:

• David Moisan’s IT

Some of his SATV technology posts that are excellent reads:

• Ten Years of IT at SATV- Onward still
• Ten Years of IT at SATV- Ups and Downs
• Ten Years of IT At SATV
• Fighting Power Outages at SATV

Contributing To Our Communities

We deal with a number of local as well as remote non-profit clients. We get to see first-hand just how difficult it is for them to make any real advances in their technology usage due to financial restraints.

For us as IT providers, we need to give back to our communities. One way to do so is to contribute in some way to a non-profit’s technology needs. We can do so by donating some of our technician’s time, giving significantly reduced labour rates, or by offering technology to them at little or no cost.

It is up to us to choose which non-profit’s mission statement and services best fit with our own business vision then create an offering plan that works and make contact with the Executive Director of the organization.

In the end, we both benefit from helping them out.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Outlook and Exchange – Send/Receive Settings Verification Needed

In most of our client sides we deploy Office 2007 via Group Policy as our corporate clients are on Open Value Agreements and most of our non-profits are using TechSoup for theirs.

When we run the Office 2007 setup.exe /admin [Enter] from the command line to create our MST file, one of the things we make sure to do is to customize the send/receive settings for the Outlook client.

By default, we prefer the Send immediately when connected setting not be checked for those, “oh oh, I missed something” moments where the user wants to get back into that e-mail and make changes:

After clicking the Send/Receive button in the above screenshot we are presented with:

Out of the box, the default Send/Receive time cycle is 30 minutes. When creating the MST file we make sure to set that to 5 minutes. Though lately, we have needed to make sure the newly set up client has the correct time interval settings.

For some reason, the default 30 minute Send/Receive cycle has been the setting in the user’s Outlook setup out of the box.

Now, for the critical setting:

Besides the Send/Receive setting not being the 5 minute interval, the Include the selected account in this group check mark has not been checked for the Microsoft Exchange account.

What we have been seeing is the Send/Receive immediately setting enabled, the above Microsoft Exchange account group not checked, and users calling us to ask why their Public Folders content was updating on everyone else’s system but theirs!

So, we now take a quick check to make sure that the above settings are indeed in place before handing the system, or new network profile, over to the user.

One other area we will be investigating is Group Policy management for Office 2007 settings as we get settled into the new GP setup in Windows Server 2008/SBS 2008. Once we have the Group Policy Objects in place, we will make sure the settings are in place for all of the SBS domain clients.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

SBS 2008 Software Assurance Fulfillment for Open Business

One of our non-profit clients is in the process of having their SBS 2003 Premium network migrated to SBS 2008. We needed the media for SBS 2008 OS as the install keys are not available on the eOpen Web site. Their original agreement was purchased through TechSoup at pennies on the dollar compared to our standard corporate client pricing.

The same is not true for our Open Value based clients and their SBS 2008 OS Software Assurance fulfillment as the Open Value program automatically ships any new OS versions of the product to our client while their agreement is in effect.

We put an inquiry into the eOpen folks to find out how we get the SBS 2008 media, and this is their response:

Hello Philip,

This is in response to your email regarding Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium.

Thank you for your inquiry. Please be advised, due to the Key type, Windows Small Business Server 2008 Premium is not available as a Product Download. To ensure you receive the highest quality of service, it will be necessary for us to redirect you to our Fulfillment Department at (800) 336-0098 option 4 then 1, as they will send the Physical Media free of charge.

For news and information about our Software Assurance and Volume Licensing program, please visit our website at: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/

If we may be of further assistance, please feel free to contact our customer service center at (866) 230-0560. Our office hours are Monday-Friday from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

A call into the first 800 number and five minutes later the order has been placed and we will receive a confirmation e-mail once it ships.

This process was probably one of the smoothest Microsoft Licensing Software Assurance fulfillment we have had to date!

If a non-profit qualifies, check out TechSoup for their licensing needs. The prices there are significantly less than Microsoft Charity licensing. But, the qualifications are quite stringent, so be prepared to test the waters with TechSoup before proposing them as an option. It can be a big letdown to a non-profit client if they get their hopes up for ordering through TechSoup.org only to find out that their particular business focus disqualifies them.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Working with non-profits? Then TechSoup has your licensing answer

When we began working with non-profit organizations, we were finding that licensing was in some cases just about as expensive for them as for our corporate clients.

One of our non-profit clients pointed out that they purchase a good chunk of their licensing from an organization called TechSoup.

It is amazing what the discounts are for software licensing. Microsoft's licenses are Open Business with Software Assurance for 2 years.

Server licenses for under $100US, SBS, Office, Windows XP/Vista upgrade, Office for Mac, and more. There are a lot of known and somewhat unknown software vendors who facilitate non-profit licensing there.

Check it out and use it with your non-profit clients. It could potentially save them thousands in licensing fees!

TechSoup.org.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.