Recent Blog Posts

Gmail Templates in a Nutshell Gmail templates are a built-in capability that enables a user to compose a boilerplate email to draw upon and edit as required, greatly reducing the time needed to prepare certain messages. As a result, your team members can be much more efficient in their use of Gmail. Using Gmail Templates The first step is to enable templates in the first place. Go to Settings > See All Settings > Advanced > Templates and make sure that it is set to Enable. Save Changes once you?ve done so, and you?ll be able to start building your own library of email boilerplate to use in all appropriate correspondence. Creating Gmail Templates, and Selecting Which to Use Once your templates are enabled, you?re ready to build some and put them to use: Start a new message and create your template as you want it. In the message, access the three-dot menu to find Templates. This option will open a sub-menu, where you?ll find the options to Save draft as a template, along with the templates you?ve already saved and the option to Delete template. From there, you can create a new template or revise the one you?ve already created. Hopefully, this will be useful to you moving forward. For more tips, keep checking back here!

Let?s consider why this may not be what you want for your business, and how to help your team members continue to socialize amongst themselves. What Happens When Your Employees Feel Isolated? Here?s the thing: when your employees buy into your business, it isn?t necessarily because of a mission you?ve established or a philosophy you subscribe to?much more likely, it?s because they?ve grown attached to working with each other. The community that a business forms can be a very powerful thing. So-called ?water-cooler chats” are what generally lead to more collaborative behaviors overall. Therefore, when your workforce is kept apart without the means or opportunity to have these casual interactions, the common theme is that they simply won?t have them. This has led to an interesting dissonance in office workers working outside the office. While remote work has largely been embraced as a concept, most workers want to see the office remain as a means of collaboration. The kind of interaction that a shared work environment can support leads to a litany of benefits in terms of teamwork?increased trust, improved performance, and maintained productivity. However, without that shared work environment to encourage such interactions, these relationships become difficult to sustain. How to Improve Remote Socialization Fortunately, this problem can potentially be minimized considerably by using the very collaboration solutions that enabled it. Encourage your team members to chat a little more idly throughout their day via their professional tools, or perhaps investigate some tools that have popped up in response to this very problem. Many teams have taken to tools like Discord?a platform designed to make online gaming more communicative and social?to enable a means of persistent communication throughout the day. Regardless of what is added to your business? toolkit, the culture shift also must be in place to ensure that your team utilizes the tools at their disposal. Without this buy-in, any efforts you make may not be accepted by your workers. While we?ll leave your company culture in your hands, White Mountain IT Services can help ensure that your team members have access to all of the tools they need to work productively, no matter if they?re in your office or cooped up at home. Find out more about what we can do to support them through our managed IT services by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800 today.

Technology is no different. There are technology holidays all throughout the year. These include National Technology Day on January 6, Data Privacy Day on January 28, and National Clean Out Your Computer Day on February 8. In March, however, there are three technology-inspired ?holidays? that we thought were important enough to point out. The First Weekend in March ? National Day of Unplugging (March 4th, 2021 to March 5th, 2021) It may not seem like us to tell you to take a step away from your technology, but for years people?s exposure to technology has had people (parents and doctors mostly) concerned about the effects of too much screen time. On a National Day of Unplugging, it is suggested that you limit the amount of time you spend on your technology, just to get away and to get some perspective. Doing this regularly can actually give you a better perspective about how you interact with all the technology that is constantly around you. The National Day of Unplugging was formed from a project that grew from a Jewish arts and culture nonprofit?s small gatherings for technology-free Shabbat dinners to an international campaign to help slow down our normally fast-paced lives. It has expanded to support digital wellness initiatives around the world, growing in scope every year. At White Mountain IT Services, we understand that part of having a healthy work-life balance is finding a balance between your downtime and your screen time. Try putting your phone away (they still make paperbacks) on March 4th and support the National Day of Unplugging. March 16th ? National Freedom of Information Day Since 1966, the Freedom of Information Act has provided an avenue for U.S. citizens to review public information. The National Freedom of Information Day; every March 16th, coincides with one of the founding fathers of the Republic?s birthday, the fourth president of the U.S., James Madison. Madison, who is often referred to as the Father of the Constitution, was a major proponent of transparency in government. In choosing his birthday for the National Freedom of Information Day, open-government advocates such as the National Freedom of Information Coalition have combined Madison?s spirit with a celebration of the accessibility of information in the republic.  March 31st ? World Backup Day Being advocates of backing up your data is not selfless, it makes our jobs easier, but that doesn?t mean that it doesn?t come from a good place. Nowadays, we have World Backup Day, which was created in 2011 by Ismail Jadun. He wanted to get the word out about how important it was for businesses to back up their data. He figured that the day before April Fool?s Day was the best time to spread the word about having a data backup. Today, data is more valuable than ever and data breaches routinely destroy businesses. Keeping a secure backup can help any organization keep operations going after a major data-loss event that can be triggered by about anything: Disasters, system failure, negligence; you name it, it can cause data loss. Having a strong backup and recovery strategy in place will ensure that your business won?t be caught off-guard. Today, World Backup Day works to promote the implementation of data backup, and should be observed by individuals and businesses, alike.  If you want to celebrate these technology […]

Today, we thought we would identify some phrases that we hear from people all the time either in improper context or simply just as an attempt to relate with us, and what they really mean.  ?Disruptive Technologies? What it means: Any technology that undermines the effectiveness of the existing technology used in any scenario.How it is used: Any new technology. The fact of the matter is that any truly disruptive technology, will sufficiently disrupt the market in which it is prevalent. it?s not just a new technology that disrupts people?s view of technology. When it is used improperly, it suggests that the technology just appeared and took over what was a static existence beforehand. Today, we hear the phrase ?disruptive technology? far too much, and almost always out of context. Innovation takes time, and most technologies evolve to become the useful tech we use each day. Calling something disruptive when it has been in the pipeline for some time is incorrect.   ?Digital Transformation? What is intended: When an analog system is transitioned into a digital system.How it is used: Adding more IT. One of the most overutilized terms we hear is ?digital transformation?. This is because a true digital transformation happens when moving from an antiquated analog system to a digital one. Unnecessary upgrades to digital systems, isn’t a digital transformation. A lot of the time, it?s just a waste of organizational resources. Technology is a tool, not the rule. Be sure that you have a specific strategy before transitioning any of your internal processes to digital. That way you can avoid the shortcomings that many businesses see when hastily?or unnecessarily?implementing new IT. ?5G? What is intended: The fifth generation of wireless that brings impressive gigabit data speeds and extremely low latency.How it is used: The technology that is going to save the world.  ?5G? is the buzziest of buzzwords. That?s because it is legitimately exciting. However, many people are taking the features and benefits of 5G way too far. In fact, a lot of the wireless carriers that are claiming 5G connectivity, don?t let potential customers in on the secret that 5G is only available in a very limited number of places. It?s actually just being used to boost their phone sales. Marketing a technology that you won?t have access to in the life of the device you are about to buy may seem shady, but that?s where we are.  5G is also already a term related to the 5 GHz wireless band on modern Wi-Fi router. The 5 GHz on a router tends to have a faster speed, but a smaller coverage area, and has a harder time passing through walls in your home or office. Older devices might not support connecting to a 5 GHz wireless router, but for those that do, that faster speed can make a big difference. ?Machine Learning? What is intended: A form of artificial intelligence that is able to compute huge data sets and handle them efficiently.How it is used: A tool uses basic automation to complete a predefined task. Automation is the future of many businesses, and your business should be looking for ways to automate some of your tasks, but many places people use the term ?machine learning? to describe any algorithmic approach to automation. This isn?t true.  Machine learning […]

Reviewing Our Options If you were to open your Start menu and click Power, you?ll likely see a few options: Sleep Hibernate (you may not see this option, based on your hardware or any group policies that may be in place) Shut Down Restart Each of these options kicks off a different process concerning your device that are well-suited to different scenarios. Shut Down and Restart should be pretty self-explanatory but Sleep and Hibernate might be less so. Let?s go over them, and when they are most appropriate to use. Sleep Sleep is a state where your computer is inactive, but still on, which speeds up the time it takes to get back to business. After all, because your computer is still turned on, the entire startup process isn?t necessary to carry out?you essentially just have to wait for your monitor and peripherals to wake up and for full power to be restored to all the components. This speed is partially because all data is put into RAM when the device is put to sleep, allowing it to be called up rapidly?however, this also exposes your data to some risk. If your computer were to lose power (or run out of battery) during that time, your stored data would be lost. Save often! Hibernate Hibernate is almost the middle ground between Sleep and a full shut down, as it still allows your place to be picked back up, but the computer is functionally turned off. To achieve this, the hibernate function saves the stored data to the actual hard drive, rather than the RAM. As a result, it is a safer means of saving your data in the ?longer short-term?, but it can take up a lot of space on your hard drive if you aren?t careful. Resuming work is as simple as pressing the power button on your machine. Which One You Use Will Depend on Your Needs Or, frankly, what is available to you. Your hardware of choice, as we mentioned, may not provide a Hibernate option or it may be disabled at the admin level. So, depending on what your IT team or resource determines necessary (or what your hardware is preconfigured to) you may or may not have Hibernate to make use of. Are there any other matters concerning your computer, its settings, or the rest of your IT solutions that you want more information or guidance into? Lean on White Mountain IT Services for the answers you?re looking for. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to find out more.