July 04, 2016

162: RAID ( random assortment of independent discussions )

July 04, 2016/ Jerry Zigmont

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TOPICS:

This weeks podcast is a RAID ( random assortment of independent discussions) starting with Episodes 1. Hopefully you will find this listen, fun and informative.

For the listeners stateside, have a happy and safe 4th of July!

- Enjoy Command Control Power and want more commercial free programs? Please visit our Patreon Page where you can support Command Control Power and help us bring you more commercial free programming.

Thanks to all our Contributors:

Kevin Ginger, kGinger Consulting - Weldon Dodd - Rewind Tech -Mats Schwieger - envision design, llc - Adam Rice - Daniel Escobar, Proactechs - JD Strong, Strong Solutions - Luis Giraldo, Ook and MonkeyBox

And thanks to our other wonderful supporters who chose to donate without any reward.

June 28, 2016

161: Husbands and Wives Who Work Together -Proactechs & Waples Networks

June 28, 2016/ Jerry Zigmont

Recorded June 9, 2016

Thanks to all our Contributors:

And thanks to our other wonderful supporters who chose to donate without any reward.

TOPIC:

This show features Matthew and Sabrina Waples of Waples Networks in Dallas TX along with Daniel Escobar and Valeria Colimodio of Proactechs in Miami Beach, FL.

We discuss the delicate balance and challenges that couples face when they work together in a business environment.

It was a fun topic and we hope you enjoy!

June 07, 2016

158: Balanced Billing & The "Partner Plan" With Richard Wingfield Of Envision Design

June 07, 2016/ Jerry Zigmont

Recorded on may 31, 2016

TOPICS:

Richard B. Wingfield - Head Geek, Envision Design, LLC of Houston Texas:"I have been using Mac's in business since original Macintosh in '84 and Envision, as a consulting firm, has been around since 1993. Started part time as sole proprietor and 20+ years later we are now a firm of 5 full time consultants here in Houston.

I tell people I am a "recovering architect" as I got my start in technology practicing architecture and being the "tech guy" in every firm I ever worked for. I even helped manage a DEC vax/vms system for a firm in Austin soon after graduating from The University of Texas with a degree in Architecture.

This episode examines Richards own "recipe' for Managed Services. Here is a brief description as discussed:

… Simple Hybrid Partner Plan is setup so almost all the clients “get it” and are not confused about how it works

- 3 part invoice is made up of

- small monthly fee per device (each mac, each windows, each iOS or android, each server… fees like $25/mac or $49/windows or $250/server etc) client must enroll ALL computers in the office (cant get cheap and have some on the system and some not)

- our “consluting fee” - which is time for humans to do the work to manage, monitor, secure and maintain systems and ALWAYS includes a minimum of one 2hr visit per month

(more if needed or requested)

- fees for services or hosting (if we host kerio email or rackspace or web or crashplan backups or re-sell backblaze)

-----------------------------------

You can find more about Richard and Envision design here: Web: http://www.envisiondesign.net

Twitter: @GEEKSapplied

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Thanks to all our Contributors: JD Strong - Strong Solutions
Daniel Escobar - Proactechs, Luis Giraldo- MonkeyBox

May 31, 2016

157: Watchman Monitoring & Zendesk Integration - Getting Started

May 31, 2016/ Jerry Zigmont

Recorded on May 24, 2016

This weeks show is sponsored by Drobo, a family of safe, expandable , yet simple to use smart array. Drobo's are designed to protect your important data forever. Visit www.drobo.com to learn more.

This week we welcome back, Jack-Daniyel Strong (aka “JD” in the ACN Community) is the President of J-D Strong Consulting, Inc. and Strong Solutions. As a member of the Apple Consultants Network, J-D Strong Consulting grew over the last 12 years from a one-man consultancy to Strong Solutions, an Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider for the Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho area. Strong Solutions' sole focus is on Mac OS and iOS solutions for Small and Medium Business.

Twitter @SpokaneMac
Website: Strong Solutions - https://jdstrong.com
Email: jack@spokanemac.com

Watchman Monitoring is a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

- Zendesk - https://www.zendesk.com/

"Zendesk provides a cloud-based customer support platform which allows quicker and easier interaction between businesses and customers"

- Zendesk Pricing - https://www.zendesk.com/product/pricing/
Note: Requires TEAM Level For Both Macros & Automations

- "Reopen Unanswered Tickets In 7 Days" & "Resolved. Close In 3 Days"
https://community.watchmanmonitoring.com/t/zendesk-automation-to-reopen-an-unanswered-ticket-in-7-days/1428

- Turn Tickets Into Prepared Responses WIth Macros
https://www.zendesk.com/blog/tip-of-the-week-turn-tickets-into-prepared-responses-with-macros/

- Join The Watchman Community - https://community.watchmanmonitoring.com

- Stop Sign Sticker - https://www.mavericklabel.com/products/cheap-labels.html

- Watchman Monitoring Sample Support Agreements
https://github.com/watchmanmonitoring/SupportAgreement

- Go To Strong.care to test the mailer

November 19, 2014

077: Trust No One, Yoseminite Sam

November 19, 2014/ Joe

Recorded on November 19, 2014

Topics

- Jerry bails out Joe onsite, and diagnoses an issue where a specific website wouldn't load or respond to pings from a client location, but loaded fine from elsewhere; turned out to be a block on the client's static IP due to three failed login attempts

- we discuss clients trying to set things up and fix things themselves

- do you give clients easy access to their servers, e.g. Screen Sharing?

- Sam lands a client on bowtie alone: "I'm a no-nonsense guy, and you look like a no-nonsense guy too."

- what's your dress code for consulting?

- Joe details troubleshooting serious permissions issues in Yosemite after a prior "consultant" tried to set up shared calendars

- how do you bill for extensive cleanup work like the saga Joe describes?

- Joe notices a pattern to Security Questions answered by a prior consultant

July 30, 2014

061: Phony Tech Support

July 30, 2014/ Joe

Recorded live on July 29, 2014

- one of Joe's clients fell for a popup window claiming virus infection and imploring her to call phony tech support, who proceeded to run harmless utilities (ping test, CPU History, netstat, top) and claiming they were evidence of malware; paid $300 for two years of support from "Mac"; Joe removed LogMeIn, TeamViewer, and ran a full scan using Sophos Antivirus and removed 8 instances of malware

- Sam's wife received a call from phony tech support; thankfully she proceeded to interrogate the guy about his badge number, company, and credentials until he hung up

- Social Engineering techniques on the rise, demonstrated in this scene from Hackers

- Network World reports: FTC takes out “tech support” scammers; $5.1 million in fines, retribution

- Jerry reminds us to manually remove updates downloaded by Software Update service when no longer needed!

- Joe recovered data from client ZIP disk, wrote AppleScript to convert old Word documents

- xkcd: Automation

- Joe discovered issue with Time Machine failing to complete a backup, with no error messages displayed, due to nesting of folders too deeply: "destination path too long"; not sure how long is too long, but in this case is was over 50 levels deep