The Problem As we said, email is super helpful, but having said that, it is also true that the user can make their email more challenging to navigate. This challenge only elevates over time as more and more messages build up in the inbox? but what can be done to avoid this? The options you have may seem clear (you either answer them immediately or save them to take care of later) but either also has some significant drawbacks.  On the one hand, answering all incoming emails can take too long, but on the other, saving them for later then leaves you open to losing them in your inbox?especially if you?ve forgotten you have an email to tend to. Let?s go over the tools that each of the two major platforms offer to help eliminate this challenge. Gmail?s Labels and Filters While this will require a bit of time to set up initially and will also require a bit of upkeep as more contacts and email topics come in, Gmail?s capabilities can be of great assistance when you need to organize your inbox in perpetuity. Labels are pretty much what they sound like: indicators that can help to identify what an email pertains to at a glance, whether it?s one you?ve sent or one you?ve received. Even better, more than one label can be applied to an email, giving you context without sacrificing detail. All you have to do is add a label to your Gmail. To do so, you can select Create new label in your sidebar (hidden under the More button), or by selecting the Tag icon box that appears when an email is selected. Selecting it will cause the option to create a new label to appear in a drop-down, along with any other labels you may have created already. Once applied to an email, these labels show up as colorful tags, making them easy to differentiate between. You can also create filters to automatically apply these labels as messages come in. Once you?ve created your labels, go to your Settings, and enter the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. Once there, click Create a new filter. You will then be prompted to set your filter?s criteria from an assortment of options. Depending on your needs, you should select the options that will suit them the best. Easy! Microsoft Outlook?s Rules and Folders Microsoft Outlook offers a very similar process, with their sorting methods, called Rules, organizing messages into different folders and categories. Creating these Rules based on an existing message is a pretty simple process: Right-click the message and select Rules, then, select Create Rule. Then you need to select the conditions that activate the rule, and what that means.  Let?s say you want to separate messages from different clients. A Rule would allow you to automate that process. You could therefore create a folder (more on that momentarily) and dictate that any incoming messages from a specific address?in this case, the client?s?should automatically be filed there. Make sure you select Run this new rule now on messages already in the current folder (if you wish) and click OK to finalize your rule. Of course, this also means that you will need to have a folder to file these messages in. While the option will be presented […]

Generally speaking, the IoT benefits a process in any of eight different ways: 1.  Customer Service/Experience A business needs customers in order to survive, so in order to keep clients and customers coming back, their experience needs to be good enough to convince them to do so. The IoT offers a lot of opportunities to assist you in this goal, from the credit card readers that plug into a mobile device to the solutions that allow a shipment to be tracked and automatically notify the customer of their purchase?s process. Basically, the IoT can be used to help your processes and more efficiently supply the service or product that is desired. 2.  Business Opportunities and Potential Revenue It doesn?t matter how quickly your team is able to complete a given process, eliminating that process from their responsibilities through automation allows them to use their time better. In a way, this allows you to accomplish twice as much in the same amount of time, increasing your business? scope and generating more revenues. 3.  Workplace Safety The IoT can be used to minimize the health and safety risks that some workplaces inherently have. Through data collection and analytics, you can effectively predict a number of issues and proactively mitigate them. Security solutions with IoT integrations can increase your trust in your defenses, with protections like video surveillance and identity authentication measures preventing most threats. 4.  Productivity Most businesses have ?productivity? high on their internal list of priorities, something that the Internet of Things can be used to accomplish. As mentioned above, the IoT makes many of your team?s tasks far more efficient and can sometimes free them of some responsibilities, allowing them to spend their time on more productive goals. When your time-consuming tasks are taken out of the way, your team is free to innovate and thrive. As a bonus, certain IoT tools can help schedule your activities to take full advantage of productivity trends. 5.  Analytics One of the most important aspects to fulfilling a client or customer?s needs is how well you are able to predict them. After you have collected assorted data from your past clientele using the IoT, the IoT can help you further by compiling this data and concentrating it into actionable insights. Whether you?re looking at population trends or what an individual customer is likely to do next, these kinds of analytics can help you make the predictions you need to prepare accordingly. 6.  Cost Efficacy I know I don?t need to remind you of how crucial it is to pull every bit of value from the investments your business makes into its operations. Using analytical processes to dictate their use of the IoT, various business expenses can be optimized. Furthermore, unnecessary and avoidable costs like those incurred through downtime can be avoided, thereby reducing the total bill without making sacrifices. 7.  Data Functions Data plays a key role in all industries, so the data collection and tracking capabilities of the IoT are of great use in a wide variety of applications. From predictive analytics to optimizing operations, the IoT provides the information that businesses use in their considerations. This makes it easier to work on this proactively, and the predictions made become more accurate over time. 8.  Opportunities for Smart Devices Smart devices are […]

Firstly, business owners and decision makers must do what?s right for their business, that much is typically understood by most people. The problem is that in lean times, the first cuts are made to payroll, as it can free up large chunks of capital that otherwise wouldn?t be there. Everyone that works for someone has to know that when times get tough that they could lose their job. On the other hand, no employer wants to furlough or lay off anyone. People are hired to handle the workload, if they are let go, other people will have to pick up the slack. The more a business tries to do with less, the less things they?ll do well. Secondly, most businesses have some very dedicated staff, so letting people go isn?t only difficult, it?s heartbreaking. This holds especially true for the small business. If you only have a handful of workers, and you are forced to make the unenviable decision to lay some off, it can have a major negative effect on company morale. Lastly, it?s been proven that turnover in human resources costs businesses a lot of money. A study undertaken by the Society for Human Resources found that the average cost to hire a new employee is a whopping $4,129. Not only that, it takes an average of 42 days to fill the position. Other organizations find similar costs, but some find it to be substantially more expensive. It stands to reason that if someone is to be let go, they may not be able to make ends meet on the employment insurance alone and will need to start to look for a job elsewhere almost immediately.   The State of Employment With so much uncertainty in the current economy, it?s hard for businesses to properly forecast how the next 12-to-18 months will go. After all, businesses are dying by the thousands, up nearly five percent over 2019. One thing is certain, every business owner will need to be flexible to keep business moving forward. They will need to scale their business to demand, and unfortunately, that pragmatism can make some jobs dispensable. For others who are still working, but doing so from their own homes, things are a little more optimistic. By-in-large employees that can do their job from home are happier and more productive than if they are forced to go into an office. Remote work does have its drawbacks, but compared with their neighbors who have lost work because their company shuttered their doors, being asked to be productive while working from home is a godsend. What Can You Do to Engage Your Employees? It has become evident that businesses of all sizes, despite what the reality suggests, need to engage with their employees to give them both the peace of mind they need and to keep them productive as they navigate their remote workplace. Here are a few. Set Expectations Up Front – Nothing is worse for an employee?s morale than thinking they did a job proficiently only to find out that they didn?t hit the mark at all. This typically comes from not having clear paths of communication. It?s important to set your expectations for everything up front. One way to do this is to make a remote work playbook. This can help every employee […]

While this may just seem to be a mildly amusing annoyance, this phenomenon has some concerning security ramifications. Let?s discuss how deep the rabbit hole goes, and what the impact could be to your security. What Do Our Smart Assistants Actually Hear? You?re certainly aware by now of how these smart assistants work. A small device lives in your home or office, either as a standalone device or piggybacked into your phone or other appliance. With a simple voice command, assorted information can be shared or activities can be completed with little effort. By default, this voice command is dictated by which device is being used: Amazon Alexa devices respond to the term ?Alexa,? ?Computer,? ?Amazon,? or ?Echo.? Google Home devices wake up to ?Okay/Hey, Google.? Apple?s Siri responds to ?Hey Siri.? Microsoft?s Cortana reacts to its name, ?Cortana,? or ?Hey, Cortana.? However, we?ve all also seen examples of these smart assistants picking up other sounds when we aren?t expecting it to react. How often have you seen someone say something, only to be interrupted as their smart assistant responds? To be honest with yourself, how often have you been the one to say the wrong thing and trigger an out-of-context response? You are far from alone. Many people have done the same, and there are some legitimate security concerns paired to this phenomenon. In fact, these incorrect wake words have even inspired academic research. The Research In their report, Unacceptable, where is my privacy? Exploring Accidental Triggers of Smart Speakers, researchers used a variety of smart devices to listen to various samples of audio material, including popular television shows like Modern Family and Game of Thrones, news broadcasts, as well as the professional audio data used to train these speakers. With this approach, the researchers analyzed when the terms that successfully activated the assistants were spoken, ultimately generating a list of over a thousand audio sequences. From there, they were even able to break down the words into their individual sounds and identify other potential false triggers that also activated the voice assistants. For instance, depending on the pronunciation of the word, the following substitutions awakened the voice assistants: Alexa devices also responded to ?unacceptable? and ?election,? while ?tobacco? could stand in for the wake word ?Echo.? Furthermore, ?and the zone? was mistaken for ?Amazon.? Google Home devices would wake up to ?Okay, cool.? Apple?s Siri also reacted to ?a city.? Microsoft?s Cortana could be activated by ?Montana.? This phenomenon was not only found in devices trained in English, either. Speakers set to German and some from Chinese manufacturers set to Chinese were also tested, with some samples being more resistant to accidental activation, while some new examples proved very effective?for instance, the German phrase for ?On Sunday? (?Am Sonntag?) was commonly mistaken for ?Amazon.? What This Means to Privacy While the results of this study are fascinating, the true purpose is more disconcerting. Let?s go back to the way these assistants work. As we said, once the wake word or phrase is recognized by the device, it actively begins listening. In an ideal world, the assistant would only recognize the predetermined words and activate when those specific words were spoken. However, we know that isn?t the case, as this study proves. So, now we have a situation in […]

Secure Your Data with Multiple Backups Your backup is more than just an insurance policy for your business operations. In the case of a disaster or other cause of data loss, your backup essentially takes your business? place, allowing you to recover more quickly with fewer consequences. This means that your backup needs to be kept safe. The first step to doing so is to make sure your data backup is stored separately from your primary data storage. We suggest using the 3-2-1 rule, which is three total copies of your data, with two available onsite and one stored offsite. This will help you avoid a situation where the same disaster that damaged the original data wipes out your backup too. Cloud-based backups are especially effective at preserving your data in a major disaster. Create a Disaster Recovery Strategy How quickly could your business return to full operation after undergoing a disaster? While establishing an off-site backup to preserve your data is a good start, you also need to have a plan in place that will allow you to put that data to use as quickly as possible. This is where it is useful to have a disaster recovery strategy, as it allows you to proactively prepare for circumstances that would otherwise lead to data loss and wasted time and productivity. Make Sure Your Backup is Working Imagine what it would be like to go through the entire process of establishing an offsite backup, only to have it fail when you?re relying on it. Fortunately, this can be avoided through some simple tests to ensure that the backup works effectively. You?ll be happy you did if you ever find yourself in the position that you need to restore from a backup and it works. If you can?t trust your data backup, it needs to be modified. White Mountain IT Services can help. Reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.