Coleman Technologies Blog

What is VoIP, Anyways?

Voice over Internet Protocol is simply a different, more cost-effective means of transmitting voice data from one telephonic device to another. Rather than using a telephone provider’s infrastructure, a VoIP signal utilizes the Internet. This eliminates an entire line item from your expenses by rendering your telephone provider’s services redundant. This enables you to simultaneously save money while enjoying many often-included features that would otherwise have cost extra—assuming that they were even available with traditional telephony.

Is That the Only Reason I Should Use a VoIP Solution?

Absolutely not! VoIP can help you save time and money in other ways, as well:

• With a history of being built upon open standards, VoIP solutions work on any device with sufficient specifications to support them—including mobile devices. This helps to minimize the investment you need to make to adopt VoIP, while simultaneously allowing you and your team to use your business telephone system remotely.
• As VoIP operates through an Internet connection, the infrastructure to support it should already be in place within your business. As a result, it is likely that no costly renovations or additional wiring will be necessary, provided that your infrastructure is up to par.
• Many businesses require costly Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment to properly utilize their internal phone network. VoIP eliminates the need for this expensive investment at all, also negating the need to maintain this equipment over time.
• VoIP telephony generally doesn’t cost your business any extra for certain kinds of calls, like long distance calling—and if it does, it generally costs you much less than the telephone company would charge for it.
• Unified communications are simpler to accomplish with VoIP, as many modern business solutions offer integrations with VoIP platforms. This makes communication easier to establish and track, which helps to keep the conversation moving forward efficiently.

All in all, utilizing VoIP as a part of your communications is not only a good strategy at the present, it is set to only show more promise as technologies—like artificial intelligence and 5G connectivity—continue to develop and improve.

Coleman Technologies can help you implement and maintain a VoIP solution that suits your business needs. To learn more, reach out to our team of experienced IT professionals by calling (604) 513-9428.

VoIP Improves Inter-Department Communication
Landline telephones in the office have been dated for quite some time. Even if they were once necessary to get in touch with coworkers and other departments, they are now quite antiquated compared to modern solutions. After all, there’s no guarantee that an employee will be available to take your call, as the workplace is filled with countless tasks that often require their full attention. Sure, you could leave a voicemail, but there’s no guarantee that the employee will see the message until it’s too late to respond. Since Voice over Internet Protocol doesn’t rely on your employees having a traditional handset, and instead has them using more mobile devices, they’re more likely to be available when you need them most.

VoIP Is More Flexible
Some organizations have employees who aren’t always able to work in the office for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are simply on the move for conferences so often that they are just never in the office, or perhaps you have employees who work remotely from time to time (or even permanently). VoIP lets you stay in touch with these employees in the same way you can with your in-house team. Since VoIP can be used on mobile devices, laptops, and even desktops, it doesn’t matter where your employees work, as long as they have the VoIP application and a headset. In this way, VoIP is much more flexible than any traditional landline.

VoIP Allows for Additional Features
Landline phone services tend to have features built into them, but many of them are decided by the cable company that provides your telephone service. These features are often not what your business wants or even needs. VoIP services give your business all the features needed from traditional landline telephone services, including conference calling and voicemail, but with lots of additional features that add a quality to your business’ ability to communicate. You can take advantage of video conferencing and instant messaging built right into your VoIP solution. By going through a VoIP provider in this way, you save money by only paying for services you will use rather than those your cable provider assumes you want.

To get started with a VoIP solution today, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Why Effective Communications are So Critical

There are a few reasons that you want your business’ internal communications to be clear and effective.

Fewer Errors

Miscommunication is rarely a good thing, but in the business setting, it has the potential to be crippling to your operations. If the correct information isn’t shared at the right time, with the right people, productivity will suffer. On the other hand, proper communications can help minimize, or even avoid, many potential workplace errors.

Increased Accountability

When an organization keeps its communications open across the board, it is prone to see an associated increase in companywide accountability. From owner to intern, being responsible for (and being held responsible for) certain milestones in a process keeps each member of a team on-task and motivated.

Improved Teamwork

Naturally, when members of a team communicate properly, they are better able to work cooperatively. As a result, problems often become easier to solve, as ideas may more easily flow and develop. Additionally, potential issues between departments are more easily resolved, preventing interpersonal concerns from affecting the work.

Efficient Problem-Solving

The ability to communicate clearly enables a team to better pool their talents to much more efficiently overcome any issues that may arise. Whether a problem is strategic or technical, having the capability to swiftly solve it will only benefit a business’ operations.

Instant Messaging in the Workplace

Naturally, all of the above outcomes can (and often do) result from the use of an instant messaging application… as long as it’s the right one.

You need to make sure that your chosen solution is intended for business purposes, which means you need to use an enterprise-grade instant messaging application. In addition, you also need to be sure that you and your staff are properly leveraging your solution. Try to encourage the following practices and behaviors in your staff to ensure that your instant messaging solution doesn’t turn into an instant messaging problem:

• Keep it in check. You don’t want a solution that is meant to be a productivity booster to actually harm it. There’s a very real difference between your staff properly leveraging instant messaging capabilities, and aimlessly chatting all day. Encourage your staff to keep their conversations pertinent to the workplace and the task at hand (at least as much as possible).
• Remain professional. Again, conversations on your instant message solution should be far and away focused on workplace matters. It is important that your staff knows this, and resists using the solution to share jokes, GIFs, or memes excessively. Moderation is key.
• Don’t rely too much on it. Not all conversations are appropriate for an instant messaging platform, especially those that contain sensitive or overly complicated details. Some conversations are better shared in person, or in an email, where lengthier messages can be sent.

Have you ever utilized instant messaging in the workplace? Share your experience with us in the comments!

What Exactly is Hosted VoiP?

Hosted VoIP is easily described as a communications platform that utilizes an Internet connection to function. Unlike traditional telephone systems that are purchased through the telephone company and have their own dedicated lines, hosted VoIP is hosted in the cloud and allows a business to build a strong, customized telephone system that meets a lot of a company’s communications needs. 

While there are VoIP options for consumers, businesses need more. They need more control, more features, and more flexibility. A hosted VoIP platform allows businesses to add and remove lines from their system in minutes and provides them the options to customize the whole system to include more dynamic features designed to maximize a business’ ability to communicate and collaborate efficiently. 

The Difference Maker

Most business owners would probably admit to thinking that all telephone systems are the same, but that isn’t the truth. Hosted VoIP can help you control costs, build a more comprehensive communications strategy, and significantly offer solutions to the question of mobility that many businesses have absolutely no answers for.  Let’s look at some of the main benefits of hosted VoIP:

Cost

Obviously, for most businesses the cost of a solution has to be a prime consideration. Hosted VoIP can save even the smallest businesses money in multiple ways. First, since you are using your business’ Internet connection to fuel your phone platform, you can cut the telephone company right out of the equation. Secondly, you can customize your hosted VoIP platform to get the solutions that work for your business, presenting you with very little waste. Lastly, your VoIP platform alternatively serves as your business’ mobile platform, as you can use the solution’s mobile app to make and receive phone calls—from your assigned VoIP phone number—anywhere your mobile device has Internet access. 

Extremely Simple

A Hosted VoIP platform is extremely simple to set up. Working with a vendor, you can have a telephone system configured the way you like it in about a day. Compare that to the weeks of running cables and moving your business’ around to facilitate the installation of a traditional telephone system. For the end user it is even simpler. All you need to do is hook a VoIP-enabled phone into a workstation and you are ready to go. Additionally, you can add and remove lines extremely quickly, so you aren’t stuck paying for more that you need. 

Functionality

One major benefit of VoIP is the customization of the platform. You can literally get dozens of tools if your business needs them. Some of the tools you can get with your VoIP platform include:

• Audio and video conferencing
• Call forwarding
• Personalized extensions
• Call routing
• Call recording
• Automated receptionist
• Call queues
• Instant messaging
• Text messaging
• Integrated voicemail

...and there are many more.

Hosted VoIP can change the way your business looks at its communications platform. With reliable and crisp-sounding calls, the Hosted VoIP platform can be right for just about any business. To learn more about hosted VoIP, give us a shout at (604) 513-9428 today.

Cloud Productivity

One option a business can take is by adding in a cloud productivity suite. Options like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 can bring a business a lot of value, without the typically massive capital outlay the yearly software license would command. Besides, you probably already need licenses for a word processor and spreadsheet app anyway. Inside the software there are integrated collaboration options that allow your team to work on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations together in real time.

Communication

Efficient collaboration is not possible without strong communications. Today, there are options out there where an organization doesn’t necessarily need to invest huge sums in replacing their normal communications strategy to get the benefits that innovations made in the solutions can bring. By utilizing instant messaging, web-based conferencing, and cloud-based email companies can improve their top-to-bottom communication without taking on a lot of extra cost.

Collaboration Apps

New innovations in communication software are now available that provide advanced collaboration options. Developed like a forum, but with direct communication options, and integrations with third-party applications, collaboration apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams have a lot of options to help drive team productivity forward.

If you are looking for ways to improve your organizational productivity, call the IT experts at Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428. 

Method One: Clarify Roles

One of the first things that you should do is to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their role is with no misunderstandings. This will assist in establishing processes in which certain team members have a clear sense of what they are responsible for, and how that ties into the larger goal.

There are a few direct benefits that this transparency with your team can bring. First, you can give your team ample feedback into their performance and assign them new challenges and objectives to accomplish. Secondly, you can empower your team members to approach these objectives - all benefitting the same end goal - in their own way. By giving them this power over their own process, you encourage them to take ownership over their work and the end result.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather produce something good if my name was going to be associated with it, if my contributions could be traced back to me.

Method Two: Praise the Team

One of the biggest obstacles to true teamwork is the ego. To avoid creating interpersonal tensions amongst your team through your praise, try praising the team as a unit. While giving one member of your team the spotlight can easily make the other members more jealous than anything else, focusing that spotlight on the team as a whole will help to improve the collaborative efforts of the team. You can always praise that team member in a one-on-one conversation.

There is one caveat to this: while you shouldn’t single out a team member in public, you should make sure that all work done within the team remains transparent. This visibility will help to discourage team members from slacking off and piggybacking on their coworkers, keeping everyone accountable for their share of the work.

Method Three: Encourage Staff Socialization

In order for your workforce to act as a team, they will need to see themselves as a team. This can be accomplished in a few ways.

The real key is to ensure that your staff is frequently spending time as a group.

In an operational sense, team meetings can be invaluable, so long as they also remain productive. Not only can these meetings provide your team with valuable facetime with one another, you can focus on your business’ strategy by analyzing your staff’s status reports side-by-side.

On the more casual side of things, there are a few ways that you can draw your employees closer together. Social activities can help to build camaraderie and friendly relationships. While it might seem corny, ice breakers can be a good way to get your team to open up to one another and, well, break the ice between coworkers. Otherwise, lunches or an after-work meetup for happy hour can help your team see each other as something other than just coworkers, but as friends. Even if nobody finds their “best friend forever”, your team will at least know each other better, allowing them to work together more effectively.

Method Four: Leverage Technology

Finally, if your team is going to act like a team, they’re going to need the tools that enable them to do so. This is what makes collaboration solutions so critical to the modern business. With the right solutions, your team can work cooperatively regardless of where they are, sharing and editing files together.

Of course, not every team member will need to see the same documents, based on their role, which is where the capability to assign network and file access permissions come into play. With these permissions, you can ensure that each team member can locate and access the files they need to be productive and contribute to the greater goals of the group.

Coleman Technologies can help you implement these technologies to support your other team-building endeavors - as well as the success of your business as a whole. To learn what else we have to offer, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

A business telephone system has picked up some pretty costly requirements over the past several years. Not only does your business need to have a clear and concise calling system internally, it needs to incorporate video conferencing and remote communications. This can get pretty costly if you don’t have the right technology in place. That right technology is VoIP and it can save your business money and present options that allow your employees seamless communication capabilities.

What is VoIP?

VoIP is an acronym for Voice over Internet Protocol, which is the basis of the technology. Instead of using traditional phone lines to carry communications, these connections are completed through the Internet. Most businesses have surplus bandwidth that just goes to waste. By shifting your communications to VoIP, you remove the need for traditional telephone service and conduct business communications over the Internet. It provides some serious benefits, including:

Cost Effectiveness

One of VoIP's primary advantages is its remarkable cost efficiency. Traditional telephone systems often have hefty installation, maintenance, and long-distance calling charges. In contrast, VoIP leverages the power of the internet to transmit voice data, eliminating the need for a separate infrastructure for voice and data. Businesses can significantly reduce their communication expenses by adopting VoIP, especially for international or long-distance calls. The cost savings extend beyond just call charges, as the simplified infrastructure requires less maintenance, further reducing costs.

Flexibility and Scalability

VoIP offers unparalleled flexibility and scalability, adapting seamlessly to the evolving needs of businesses. Unlike traditional phone systems that are often bound by physical limitations, VoIP operates over the Internet, allowing users to make and receive calls from any location with an Internet connection. This is particularly beneficial for remote workers.

VoIP systems are highly scalable, making it easy for businesses to expand or reduce user accounts without the hassle of rewiring or reconfiguring a traditional phone system. With this, VoIP provides the agility needed to adjust communication infrastructure on the fly.

Innovative Features

VoIP goes beyond basic voice communication, offering a plethora of advanced features that enhance productivity and collaboration. Features like voicemail to email transcription, call forwarding, auto-attendants, and video conferencing contribute to a more dynamic and efficient communication environment. VoIP integrates with other business applications and tools, fostering a unified communication ecosystem.

For example, integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems allows businesses to streamline workflows and provide better customer service by accessing relevant customer information during calls. This integration saves employees a lot of time and improves the customer experience.

Enhanced Mobility

Many workers now work remotely, requiring communication solutions that can travel with them. VoIP empowers users with enhanced mobility, allowing them to make and receive calls using their business phone number from various devices, including smartphones, laptops, and tablets. This flexibility is especially valuable for remote workers, traveling professionals, and businesses with geographically dispersed teams.

VoIP's mobility features improve accessibility and responsiveness, ensuring that important calls are never missed, irrespective of the user's physical location. This adaptability aligns perfectly with the evolving nature of work and helps businesses maintain a competitive edge.

If you would like to learn more about VoIP's benefits and why it is the future of communications, call our consultants today at Coleman Technologies.

With communication rising to the top of many businesses’ priorities list, it’s no wonder that Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is one of the most powerful ways to revitalize your company’s communications infrastructure. If you’re still using your old traditional telephony solution, buckle up because you’re about to find out how to ditch it for good.

VoIP uses your Internet connection rather than a traditional telephone line to make and receive calls, making it a cost-effective, dynamic, flexible, and scalable solution that can quickly pay for itself. But what do you need to know when implementing it for the first time? Let’s go over the best way to implement VoIP for SMBs.

What Does Your Business Need?

Before you commit your business to a particular VoIP solution, assessing your business’ specific needs is important. Consider how many users you have and whether or not they are remote, in-office, or a mixture of the two, as this will determine the hardware you need to procure for them. Also worth considering is what kinds of features you need and whether or not you would benefit from more advanced ones. Most VoIP solutions come packed with all their capabilities right out of the box, so it’s more about picking the right provider. With all of this in mind, you can confidently approach implementing a new solution.

What’s the Right Provider?

Once you know what you need, it’s time to find a solution and a provider that offers just that, customized to suit your organization's specific requirements. You’ll want to work with a provider who has a proven history of reliability, security, and excellent customer support. The right provider should be able to help you answer questions regarding the services offered, the features of their solutions, pricing plans, and options to scale. Also, consider how well your new VoIP solution will integrate with your existing systems and how it will contribute to your company’s continued success.

How Do You Begin Integration?

Finally, you can begin the implementation process of getting your VoIP solution set up. Depending on how you want to set up your solution, it could be as easy as installing smartphone applications and creating accounts or as involved as installing new handset hardware and integrating with your CRM and other communications platforms. 

Make Implementation Easier By Outsourcing

Does your business want to implement VoIP, but you’re worried about making all of the right choices yourself? Thankfully, you can have Coleman Technologies explore your options. We can help you take a relatively hands-off approach to VoIP implementation. We’ll help you determine the best path forward, implement it, and maintain it for you so that you can focus on running your business. Learn more about how we can support your business by calling us today at (604) 513-9428.

To start, let’s consider the situation that we find ourselves in.

With COVID-19 still spreading, the general consensus is that spending time around other people is currently a bad thing, making the workplace a less-than-ideal environment in which to spend one’s time. As a result, many people have self-quarantined themselves in their homes. With today’s available technology, however, this does not mean that they cannot get work done, with the cloud offering great opportunities for collaboration and remote work. This plays into VoIP’s benefits quite nicely.

For instance…

VoIP Can Simplify the Remote Process

Consider what your team might require in order to complete their tasks while out of the office. They should have a workstation of some sort, naturally, whether that be a laptop that travels between their home and the office, or a desktop device set to securely access their work resources. However, another piece of equipment that is generally necessary for many employees is an office phone… something that was once a much less portable solution.

Today, VoIP can change that, by allowing you to use the phone through the Internet, not the traditional dedicated phone lines. This means that your employees can continue to make their typical business calls, without the need to be in the office. Using the same business number, an application on their workstation or mobile device can take or make calls (along with a wide variety of additional features) from anywhere that they can establish an Internet connection.

VoIP is a Secure Means of Communication

When your workforce has the opportunity (or, as we’re now experiencing, need) to work from home, they will still need to communicate with one another. However, many residential Internet services lack the inherent security that many business conversations will require. No matter how efficiently you want your business to operate, no productivity is worth sacrificing security for.

VoIP allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds. By combining the cloud-hosted nature of VoIP with the use of a virtual private network (VPN), you can be confident that any conversations held over the VoIP system are private and secure. This is handy, as your employees could find themselves having to share protected data over the phone with their teammates. A VPN will protect their conversations from being listened in on, as the connection will be distorted to any outside observers by the inherent encryption of the VPN.

VoIP Incorporates Other Forms of Collaboration

Namely, video conferencing. Many VoIP platforms offer some kind of video conferencing feature, permitting a face-to-face interaction between callers, regardless of the distance between them. A big concern that is common amongst remote workers is the feeling of isolation that can develop from working alone.

By using the conferencing capabilities that the right platform has to offer, your team can interact with each other in a more personal way. This reinforces the idea that they are a part of a team, keeping up their morale and encouraging them to work collaboratively to accomplish their shared goals.

To learn more about implementing a VoIP solution for your team’s use, reach out to the professionals at Coleman Technologies by calling (604) 513-9428.

When we say digital signage, what we mean is having digital displays in your office. You may have seen them out and about in other locations, such as fast food restaurants using monitors as menu boards. In essence, digital signage solutions give your business the opportunity to broadcast content to screens around your office for a variety of reasons, and they are great opportunities to make your workplace a more dynamic experience as a whole.

Showcase Important Information or Statistics

Sometimes you need your employees to see announcements, but you want to make the information known in a more public location. Otherwise, you can use it to display statistics, like the number of sales or a countdown to a certain date or time. Either way, digital signage can be used to keep your staff informed.

Digital signage is also helpful for navigating the office. You can have signs indicating where important locations, like a conference room or bathroom, are located. 

Display Upcoming Dates and Events

All businesses have deadlines of some sort, and digital signage is a perfect way to broadcast it to your entire office… or at least the locations where digital signage is used. It’s an easy, supplemental way of drawing attention to certain times, dates, or events that are arriving in the future. 

Monitor Goals More Effectively

Digital signage can help your organization keep its employees accountable through the display of goals and key performance indicators. You might even be able to foster some healthy competition between your organization’s employees, as their performance will be displayed in an easy-to-understand format.

Does your business need assistance with setting up or acquiring resources for digital signage? Coleman Technologies can equip you with all the assets you need to make effective use of digital signage. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Skype, once a popular and beloved video chat platform, has reached the end of its rope (in a manner of speaking). Microsoft is discontinuing the 20-year-old communication application, instead focusing its efforts on Microsoft Teams. The last update to Skype will be on May 5, but that doesn’t change the impact Skype had on the development of modern communication tools.

Teams Really is Replacing Skype

Microsoft is enabling Skype users to import their communications, including chats, contacts, photos, call history, and so on, all to the Teams platform, effectively preserving and replacing it at the same time.

This will occur based on a pop-up that Microsoft has added to Skype; you can watch this YouTube video for a look at it.

But Why?

The one big reason why Skype is disappearing is because all the other tools it inspired have surpassed it.

Skype was founded in 2003, then acquired by Microsoft in 2011 as a part of its efforts to expand its enterprise collaboration solutions. During this time, it also acquired Bing to help out its new Windows Phone 7 OS (look how far that went). Microsoft then completed a rebrand of its existing communication platform, Lync, as Skype for Business, and bundled it with Office until 2021, when it was discontinued.

Unfortunately for Skype enthusiasts (we know you’re out there… we think), its time has come to join the ever-growing list of discontinued software.

Skype is a Reminder of IT’s Ugly Truths

No software lasts forever, and it’s beneficial to keep an eye on new technology innovations, even if they will eventually fade with time.

Technology by nature will grow outdated with time, so you should expect improvements, updates, and changes to happen while you’re going about your business–whether you’re ready or not. You should always be ready to adjust your technology plans according to what big software developers like Microsoft are planning for widely-used solutions. Thankfully, we can help make any new adjustments easy with our managed IT services.

To learn more about how Coleman Technologies can support your business’ IT, contact us at (604) 513-9428 today.

1.  Use the Best Tool for the Job

Your contacts should never find it difficult to reach you, so you need to make sure you’re providing them with plenty of options for them to make contact. Don’t pick between a phone number or an email address, give them both, along with a live chat feature, conferencing options, and other forms of communication. Making use of things like a blog and social media give you a great way to reach out to them first, starting the conversation.

With all of the options you can now give to your clients, they will feel much more confident about getting an answer to their questions and having their concerns addressed. They’re also apt to pay more attention to you as well.

2.  Automate as You Communicate

Of course, in doing so, you may make it more challenging for you and your team members to keep the conversation going with your clients while also accomplishing what needs to be done each day. After all, if your whole day is spent answering questions on the phone, it’s going to be a little difficult to do anything else. Fortunately, there are solutions that you can use to better manage all these communications. Automated phone systems can keep your whole team from being interrupted as a client plays phone tag, while following up with emails and other communications can help minimize the questions that clients ultimately reach out with and simplify their experience.

3.  Coordinate Your Team

For your business to provide a good experience for your customers and clients, your team all needs to work together as they deal with them to avoid repeating or contradicting messages. Improving your internal communications will only make your external communications stronger. Tools also exist to facilitate this, including instant messaging and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

For assistance in implementing this technology (and others), reach out to our team here at Coleman Technologies. We can discuss the tools that will suit your needs the most, as well as figure out how we can optimize them to your needs. To learn more, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Sorry for the loaded title. There’s a lot to talk about, even for those of you who don’t use or even know what Telegram is.

We’ll try to sum this up, because we think there is a lot to say about security and the nature of technology in this, and like all things these days, there’s some odd rabble-rousing about this whole series of events. Who’s up for a wild ride?

Maybe you’ve seen the headlines:

Telegram Founder, Pavel Durov, Arrested in France

The entrepreneur is facing a pretty broad range of crimes. Let’s take a step back and explain who he is, and what Telegram is.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is a communications app. It’s an instant messenger, similar to WhatsApp (which is owned by Meta), Google Hangouts (which is owned by the owner of Google, Alphabet), and Signal (which is owned by the non-profit Signal Foundation).

Telegram is sort of unique, because it checks a few boxes that some users can’t get from other alternative apps, such as:

• Telegram offers end-to-end-encryption (E2EE). We’ll explain what that is momentarily, but it’s a big one.
• You don’t need a phone number to use it, so it feels less invasive and more private (and it’s also easier to make an account).
• Telegram isn’t owned by some major social media conglomerate like Google or Meta.

So this supposedly super secure, super private messaging app isn’t beholden to the two biggest giants in the tech industry, and that is pretty enticing to many people.

In fact, Telegram has an active user base of about 900 million users. Facebook Messenger has around a billion active users, and WhatsApp sits at 2 billion. This clearly makes Telegram a popular service.

End-to-End-What-Now?
End-to-End-Encryption is a really important feature of modern-day messaging apps. Most anything on the web can encrypt your communication. Technically, when you post something publicly on Facebook, there is a level of encryption that keeps your activity secure.

E2EE is where your information is encrypted, and it isn’t unencrypted until it gets to the intended recipient. That means, theoretically, that not even the app provider, the Internet Service Provider, or anyone in between can intercept and view your content.

When communication is E2EE’d, and you send me a message on Telegram, it means Telegram the company doesn’t know what you sent to me.

You can see why folks would like this, right?

In a world where it feels like you can mention something in passing, and have social media sites deliver ads to you about it within minutes, it sure can feel refreshing to have a communication app that promises to keep its nose out of your business.

Seriously—just a quick tangent. I was talking with my partner about a chain restaurant we went to on a recent trip. This chain restaurant doesn’t have locations anywhere near us. The closest one is a six-hour drive away. I mentioned it to them in the car. Obviously our phones were with us at the time. I’m now getting Facebook and Twitter ads about this chain. This happens a lot, and it’s a topic for a whole other blog. Stay tuned.

So Telegram is popular, and promises security. Sounds good, right?

Oh, one more thing about the whole privacy and security thing—Telegram only uses E2EE in calls and what it calls “secret chats.” Not all communication is encrypted end-to-end on Telegram. It’s worth mentioning that because users often claim that WhatsApp is less secure, but WhatsApp does encrypt all messages, calls, and video calls.

Overall, at least on the surface, there’s a lot to like about Telegram. It’s safer and more secure than most chat apps, and if you don’t like being married to Facebook or Google, it will likely check most of your boxes.

The Telegram Controversy

Everything sounds good, right? So why is the founder and owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov, being held in France?

This doesn’t happen very often in the tech industry, but Mr. Durov, 39, is being charged as being personally liable for the behavior of users on his app. The list of crimes he’s being charged for is pretty wide, but the short of it is that Telegram is being used for a lot of illicit activity. 

Pavel Durov was detained by French authorities and is being charged with complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions by an organized group. This could lead to a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Some of the other charges included complicity in crimes such as drug trafficking and fraud,  enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.

This is an extremely unique case because we rarely see big tech entrepreneurs held accountable for something that their products and services enable others to do. Telegram probably wasn’t inherently designed to do evil, but due to its privacy and security, it is a safe haven for criminals to commit crimes.

Modern Technology: Privacy Versus Moderation

How long have we (collectively, not just those of us at Coleman Technologies) been talking about the importance of security and privacy? How long has the world been talking about the level of moderation these massive communication platforms have (or don’t have)? It feels like it’s been a long time.

For almost a decade now, Facebook/Meta has been playing tug of war with itself when it comes to moderating and controlling what sort of content spreads easily and what doesn’t. We’ve seen a major social media platform all but die the goofiest death imaginable with Twitter (or X the Everything App if any of you happen to use its newly adopted name), all in the name of moderation.

Nobody likes to be moderated. Nobody likes their chats and conversations recorded and read for the sake of advertising or analytics. However, a complete lack of moderation seems to turn a platform into a Mad-Max-style playground for bots, scammers, and cybercriminals.

Maybe AI is the answer (but someone needs to moderate the AI, and AI is extremely easy for the savvy user to deceive). Maybe we need to rely on users to be better at reporting problems. 

There really isn’t a simple answer to any of this. We are all living in a world full of misinformation and opaqueness, and it’s very easy to become absolutely exhausted by it all. Of course, content moderation can quickly go too far, and nobody wants that either.

The Cybersecurity Take on All of This

First and foremost, Telegram, Signal, Google, Facebook—all of the platforms we mentioned today are all fine to use. No matter what technology you use, there are going to be people thinking about ways to take advantage of it.

Heck, my son can’t play Minecraft without someone coming in and cheating and sneaking away with all of his coveted diamonds.

If a technology interfaces with people, some people might try to spoil the experience.

That’s why it’s important that you make yourself aware of scams and exploits. All of those platforms mentioned above aren’t designed to share malware, but a person can figure out a way to trick you into clicking a link that infects your device. None of the platforms are designed for perpetuating abuse or selling illegal substances either, but people will find a way. No technology is perfect, and even if it were, when millions of people use it, some of those folks are going to be bad eggs.

This is an important lesson for cybersecurity. You aren’t in a constant uphill battle with Microsoft, or with the concept of malware. You are in a battle against people who want to upset your business and take your money.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you are a business owner who is stressed out about dealing with the complexities of technology, give us a call at (604) 513-9428, and we’ll do our best to simplify and optimize it for you!

Ultimately, your employees are going to be the ones using your technology to accomplish their daily duties, so it helps to treat them like customers rather than end users. If you examine industry trends to make the best decisions possible with your technology and communications solutions, then you’ll allow your team to flourish in the process.

Salesforce conducted a survey of 500 industry leaders and 6,000 customers to determine how people consume communications solutions and how their expectations have changed over time.

Online and In-Person Experiences Are Equally Important

One thing you should take away from this study is that consumers want communication experiences that aren’t exclusive to just in-person or digital. 51% of respondents preferred to do business online, while 40% wished to visit an in-person store for their communication needs. 64% claimed they visited the provider’s website over the past month, and 35% have done business both online and in-person. The takeaway here is that your employees will seek help with their communications technology both in-person and online, so you need to respond to their needs appropriately.

Your Customers Do Matter

Great customer service is crucial to keeping your business running, and it all stems from having great internal operations—at least, that’s what 90% of the survey respondents believe. 40% claim they are unsatisfied with the way their providers handle their cases. If you think of your employees as customers, you can ensure they are getting the support they need from you to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Your employees are more likely to use a good or service if they know they have support from you and they know their feedback is appreciated and valued.

Digital Transformation Is Important

Most customers might prefer to use online services, but it’s equally important for you to embrace your own use of digital services within your own communications infrastructure. You should implement tools that can be effective in both a remote and hybrid work environment. One way you can do this is by implementing cloud-based solutions. You might find that your organization benefits greatly from their implementation.

We Can Help You Make Communications Easier

Your communications infrastructure is not simple, and you need tools that allow you to stay in touch with both internal and external stakeholders for your organization, be they employees, clients, or prospects. Through the use of tools like Voice over IP, instant messaging, intranet solutions, and more, you can share your knowledge and services with your clients while also giving your team the tools they need to be successful. To learn more, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.

There are multiple add-ons and browser extensions available to help boost your email templates with more dynamic options, but today, we’ll be focusing on the baked-in capabilities that Gmail comes with.

What is a Gmail Template?

A template is Gmail’s digitized version of a form letter—a stock piece of correspondence that doesn’t change much (if at all) each time it is sent. Naturally, by eliminating the time it takes to repeatedly re-type what is essentially the same message over and over, a template can make your more routine correspondences much more efficient.

As a result, you can spend more time on your more important tasks, without short-changing your communications.

Activating Gmail Templates

In Gmail, access your Settings by clicking on the gear-shaped icon. From there, select See All Settings, and then Advanced. On the page that appears, you should find an option for Templates. Enable it and Save Changes.

Now, you’ll have the capability to create whatever template you need for your usual correspondence.

Creating a Gmail Template

Generating a new template is very simple. All you must do is start a new email and write it out the way that your template should replicate. Once your template is written to your liking, click the message’s three-dot menu and navigate to the Templates option. In the sub-menu that appears, you can Save draft as template (which also gives you the option to overwrite your old templates if they need an update). The Templates sub-menu is also where you’ll find all the templates you have saved in the past, when you’re ready to use them, as well as the option to Delete template if one is no longer applicable.

Hopefully, this will help you make much faster use of Gmail in the future. To learn more time-saving technology tricks, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

Effective communication often operates behind the scenes, yet it serves as a vital cog in the smooth operational ability of business, lending support to a multitude of functions. Consequently, making judicious investments in the right tools can markedly elevate your business. In the contemporary landscape, one such indispensable tool is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Let's delve into VoIP and explore why it has emerged as the preeminent choice for businesses seeking a robust and feature-rich communication platform. VoIP, in a nutshell, delivers more value for less.

VoIP is a telecommunication method that harnesses your internet connection, removing the necessity for a dedicated phone line to cater to your business' communication needs. This not only reduces ongoing telephone service expenses but also confers access to a host of supplementary features, some of which would typically come at an additional cost or might not be available at all. By leveraging the power of the internet, VoIP offers a broader spectrum of capabilities compared to conventional phone services.

Naturally, VoIP emerges as the optimal solution for modern businesses. Furthermore, it's adaptable for mobile use, with user-friendly mobile applications at your disposal.

If you believe that VoIP could be a valuable asset for your business, don't hesitate to reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Hardware

Fortunately, the biggest hurdle to collaboration isn’t usually having the right solutions in the office, it’s primarily making sure that these solutions are being put to use properly.

Consider your Internet setup - is it strong enough to wirelessly provide your entire office with connectivity, or would you be benefitted by implementing additional access points? Do you have the hardware needed to communicate and share data with mobile employees, and most importantly, can you properly secure all of it? Speaking of mobility, you will also want to consider if you want to provide your staff with company-owned mobile devices instead of leveraging a Bring Your Own Device Policy. There are options out there to procure these devices for well below retail rates, as long as these devices are bought in bulk.

Software

Depending on your type of business, you may have more or less to do in order to promote collaboration in your organization. A brick-and-mortar establishment will likely have its resources centralized, which means that employees will need to have access to these resources in order to properly communicate with one another, sharing progress on their work. While a private cloud platform would serve this need quite well, these solutions are typically far too expensive for the average SMB to consider.

These SMBs do have other options. Cloud-hosted software allows a business to leverage just about any computing resources they need, whether its a productivity suite, a business management platform, or a communication tool. Adding to these benefits, these resources can be accessed wherever an Internet connection can be established thanks to an integrated access management system. This same system allows administrators to keep threats out of their network as well.

Policies

Finally, for there to be collaboration, there needs to be the policies in place that “encourage” (enforce) the stress-free sharing of pertinent data with team members. In other words, you need to know that you have a way for your employees to access the data they need to complete their tasks as the need arises.

Having these policies can be to your organization’s advantage. While some of your data needs to be kept on a “need-to-know” basis, giving your employees some guidance to navigate how other data should be shared can help you to keep your business’ data that much more secure. It also doesn’t hurt that digital communications are becoming more of the norm, so it only makes sense to give your employees an outlet to communicate in what is likely their preferred manner.

In short, businesses are communicating in new and exciting ways. Not only should you not want to be left behind, you can’t afford to be. For assistance in expanding your internal collaboration and business communications to fully embrace today’s capabilities, reach out to Coleman Technologies’s IT professionals at (604) 513-9428.

The landscape of telephony for small businesses has changed dramatically. It’s likely that you don’t rely on your phone nearly as much as you rely on other technologies, like your Internet, communications solutions, and email. Still, an antiquated phone system can hold you back, so let’s explore the other viable option for your business: Voice over IP.

Let’s break down why your traditional telephone is no longer viable for your business first.

Adding New Users is a Pain

When you first started your business, you were meticulous about finding the right space for the moment, just to get things off the ground. You may have had to run wires across your office for a specific number of employees, workstations, and handsets. When your business started to grow, suddenly you found yourself limited by the infrastructure you had spent so much time cultivating. Adding new users to your infrastructure becomes costly and time-consuming, which is something that only a traditional telephone business makes you suffer through.

Organizational Communication is Already Challenging Enough

When you use your office landline, you are, for all intents and purposes, stuck behind your desk if you want to use your phone. This is the opposite of what you want to happen; you want your employees to have the freedom to do what they need to do without being tethered to a physical location, and a solution which allows for this means that your company will have more flexibility for remote work and operations.

Your Telephone System Adds Hidden Costs and Services

More likely than not, you’re paying more for your landline telephone than necessary, and it’s all because of bundled services that you have no need for. You might be paying for cable television in addition to your phone service, for example. A service that allows you to customize your services according to what you need is ideal for businesses, particularly small businesses that cannot afford to waste their valuable budget on unneeded services.

There’s No Reason to Suffer with Old Technology

Using your landline is just like using any other old frustrating technology; it’s completely unnecessary. If you rely on outdated technology for too long, you’ll fall behind your competitors, which is something that no business can afford. You can get ahead of the game with a VoIP solution that uses your current IT infrastructure and Internet connection, effectively replacing your company’s landline by turning all of your desktops, laptops, and smartphones into your telephone system.

VoIP Can Be the Solution to Your Communication Troubles

If you are ready to get started with VoIP, then Coleman Technologies can help you make the transition. All you have to do is pick up that old dusty handset and use it one last time to call us at (604) 513-9428.

Team Building Benefits

Many modern businesses have employees who don’t always work in the office, instead electing to operate remotely. However, it is important that these employees are still assimilated as a part of your team as a whole. A conferencing solution can allow you to keep your remote employees on the same page as your on-site employees, building camaraderie between coworkers despite any distance between them. The better your team is able to collaborate, the more effective they will be able to be in accomplishing their tasks, as they will have each other as a resource to lean on as needed.

Keep Your Team On-Task

Let’s face it, it can sometimes be hard to be sure that your employees are focused on the task at hand. This is especially true when you can only hear their voice, or see the responses they send back to you. A conferencing solution fixes this difficulty by giving you and your team a visual of each other, keeping everyone involved accountable and engaged.

Increase Your Collaborative Footprint

It wasn’t all that long ago that collaborating with someone a distance away was only possible over the phone or by physically traveling to meet with them. However, collaborative conferencing solutions have taken this distance and shrank it down to effectively nothing. Like the team building benefits we discussed earlier, your team is no longer restricted to one place, or to dealing with exclusively local coworkers, partners, and other resources.

Promote “Face-to-Face” Communication

A sizable portion of communication is non-verbal, which means that your solution needs to account for this balance. More traditional solutions didn’t take this into consideration - or rather, couldn’t. Modern collaboration solutions, on the other hand, allow you to communicate more completely by allowing you to witness these non-verbal cues. 

Conferencing Can Simplify Your Solution Set

Compared to legacy solutions, modern conferencing tools offer a much more comprehensive selection of features. As a result, you can reduce the number of solutions that your operations rely upon, cutting expenses and streamlining your processes. This makes it much easier to find success in communicating with your team, without sinking all of your capital into your solutions.

Coleman Technologies can assist you in establishing the collaboration solution that fits your needs, as well as any other IT implementation your business requires. Learn more by calling (604) 513-9428.

The Development of the PDF
The PDF is best known for promoting the sharing of information as it was created. A PDF looks the same whether it is in digital format or if it is printed to paper, no matter what OS is being used. Before this format was created, sharing information between the two was extremely difficult, but in 1990, Adobe co-founder John Warnock wrote a paper titled A Camelot Project, in which he described the limitations of sharing information. He would go on to found Team Camelot, the group of software developers that created the PDF, a file that can be universally shared across all computing platforms.

At first, however, it held very little utility as users had to purchase Adobe Acrobat in order to use the file type. Team Camelot, however, built additional functionality as the Internet got more popular, and as its utility increased, it was eventually adopted by the International Organization for Standardization and opened up to the masses.

Advantages of the PDF
Nowadays, there are multiple types of PDFs, and their utility is tied to their makeup. The types are as follows:

• Digitally Created PDFs - PDF files created in a digital environment, whatever that environment might be (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, etc.). These PDFs are fully customizable and editable.
• Scanned PDFs - A Scanned PDF is effectively an image of a document. They are not inherently customizable, but there is software that can be utilized to change that.
• Searchable PDFs - Thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software adding an editable text layer to an image layer, a PDF becomes searchable. This process enables greater interaction with PDFs like this. In a document management system, many document scanners come with the kind of software users need to convert a scanned PDF into a searchable PDF. As such, it is a core component of a paperless office.

PDFs have shown to be extraordinarily useful for businesses. They are convenient to use, universally compatible, and can be extremely secure.

For more great technology information, return to our blog regularly.