BEI Blog
Once in a while you need a random number – not just a number that appeared in someone’s head, but one that is “officially” random. For example, we use a random number to determine the winner of our Quarterly Customer Service Survey. We generate a list of all surveys that we received and number them – say 1-500. We then generate a number between (and including)1 and 500 and the person who submitted that survey is the winner.
So, how do we do this? Excel has a random number function, RAND() that generates a number between 0 and 1. To generate a random number using this function, type =RAND() into a cell in your worksheet as shown below:
So, how do we do this? Excel has a random number function, RAND() that generates a number between 0 and 1. To generate a random number using this function, type =RAND() into a cell in your worksheet as shown below:
We are very excited to welcome Ashley Adair to BEI as our new Service Desk Director. Ashley has over 12 years of Help Desk management experience with a diverse background in IT operations, client and service delivery management within the financial, high tech and government sectors. She was most recently at SRA International where she implemented and managed Help Desk Operations for a number of their clients. At BEI Ashley will be responsible for all non-project service activities, managing BEI staff and working with our clients to make sure that we deliver outstanding service.
We hear that Ashley and her family are HUGE Virginia Tech fans and have season football tickets. We are bracing ourselves for the deluge of maroon and orange that Fridays in the fall may bring! Ashley will be visiting clients as she settles into her responsibilities – in the meantime please feel free to contact her at ashley.adair@beinetworks.com or 703-528-8300
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Are you still receiving faxes on a traditional fax machine? It might be time to think about replacing it with a fax service that will send those faxes to an email address as an attachment. This has a number of benefits:
- It may end up being less expensive than the phone line you are currently using
- Paper faxes get jammed or lost – it is much easier to track and store electronic files
- Electronic faxes can be easily forwarded, stored, etc.
We have used and like the following options.
There are many more – if you have one you like let us know! We don’t resell these services but are happy to help you set them up if you need assistance.
One of the reasons for purchasing an EHR is to gain efficiencies that do not exist in a paper-based practice. For instance, the practice’s medical records staff may be eliminated or reduced over time, because paper charts do not have to be maintained and filed. However, many efficiencies afforded by EHRs are quite often not captured by practices. One such area is that of interfacing medical devices such as thermometers, x-ray machines and densitometers.
Interfacing medical devices to EHRs has traditionally been a tricky business. That’s due to several factors: the lack of standards definitions and the requirement that both the medical device manufacturer and the EHR software vendor have a common standard implemented in order to affect the interface. The good news is that progress is being made. If you are in the process of selecting an EHR you should pay careful attention to those devices that are important to your practice and how the EHR(s) under consideration interface with those devices. You can read the entire article on Medical Devices & EHRs here.
We have had a number of questions about recovering deleted email in Office 365 and wanted to clarify how it works.
Recovering Deleted Items
Summary – when using Office 365 you have 14 days to recover any items that are deleted from your deleted items in Outlook.
Details – when you delete an email in Outlook it is placed in your Deleted Items Folder. It stays there until you manually delete it or until it is deleted by rules or archiving. In Office 365 items that are then deleted from the Deleted Items Folder are placed in the Recoverable Items folder for an additional 14 days before being permanently removed. Users can recover these items using the Recover Deleted Items feature in Outlook Web App or Outlook. If a user has manually purged an item from the Recoverable Items folder, an administrator can recover the item within the same 14 day window, through a feature called Single Item Recovery.
Recovering Deleted Mailboxes
Summary – you can recover deleted mailboxes within 30 days of the date the mailbox was deleted, after that they are deleted permanently..
Details – When an Exchange Online mailbox is deleted, its contents are recoverable for 30 days. A recovered mailbox contains all of the data stored in it at the time it was deleted. After 30 days, the mailbox is not recoverable. Administrators can recover a deleted mailbox using the Exchange Control Panel.
Adobe licensing can be expensive – Acrobat Pro is over $400, Photoshop is over $600. We use Dreamweaver for websites, dabble in producing artwork using Illustrator and sometimes needs Photoshop. This can be expensive, but when you need these programs to do something they work really well! Consider Adobe’s Creative Cloud Licensing – you pay a monthly fee and have access to ALL (almost all – there are a few that are not included but they are pretty obscure) Adobe applications. The standard rate is $49.99/month, but deals are available if you own current licensing. You can learn more here. If you own current Adobe licensing and are considering the Creative Cloud we’d advise calling Adobe and seeing what you can work out.
On June 25th Facebook changed everyone’s email address to an @facebook.com email address. The reaction has not been positive, to say the least. Note that you need to check and see what the Public View of your email address – the Private View will still be the email address that you provided, but the Public View has been changed to @facebook.com. If you would like to change it back here are instructions:
- Click “About” on your profile and scroll down to your email address. Click “Edit” to change them.
- Click on the circle next to your Facebook email address and change its setting to “Hidden From Timeline”.
- Click on the circle next to your other email addresses and change their settings to “Shown On Timeline”.
- Click the Save button at the bottom of the Edit popup
Here are some great WORD shortcuts that struck our fancy this month:
- Enter Current Time: Alt+Shift+T
- Enter Current Date: Alt+Shift+D
- Repeat any action: F4
- Insert a Page Break: Ctrl+Enter
- Toggle through Capitalization Options: Shift + F3
Interested in more? You can download a very nice list from TechRepublic. (You need to register on the site, but we find TechRepublic to be a great resource.)
May, 2012
We participate in the Business Bank’s Annual Golf Tournament each year and this year were ably represented by Ryan McDonnell and Nick Zahra. They had a great time and enjoyed the day!
Some of our clients are opting for solid state drives in their laptops and we thought a brief overview might be helpful.
Why consider solid state drives?
The traditional hard disk drive that most of us have in our desktops and laptops use magnetically coated platters that spin at high speeds. Because of their construction, hard disk drives, while highly reliable, are prone to breakage, sensitive to vibration and are subject to performance limits dictated by their construction. Solid state drives don’t have moving parts, instead the use solid state flash memory to store data. They’ve been around as an option for a number of years, but as prices have gone down they’ve become a more viable option for our clients.
Why you might want a solid state drive in your laptop
Reliability is probably the #1 factor here. Most of the issues that we see with laptops are due to hard drive problems – and a solid state drive is inherently much less likely to suffer damage from the typical “road warrior.” They are also lighter, use less power and are faster.
So what’s the catch?
Price is the biggest barrier to purchasing a laptop with a solid state drive. You will typically pay several hundred dollars more for a laptop with a solid state drive. You’re also limited on the size of the hard drive – a solid state drive is typically smaller (120 GB or so.) This is OK on a laptop that is used in a corporate environment – you shouldn’t be storing anything on the laptop in the first place – data should be stored on the server, where it is backed up reliably. But on a laptop that you are using for personal use, you may want more storage for pictures, videos, etc.
Bottom Line
If you are buying a new laptop and are concerned about reliability, are willing to spend a little more and don’t need huge storage capacity, we think a solid state drive makes sense.
