Coleman Technologies Blog

What Exactly Is Phishing?

The practice of phishing is not new. It has been used for much of the past decade. The strategy goes like this: hackers use deception to get a user to provide their own credentials, thus giving them unknowingly to the hacker. The hacker then accesses the account legitimately (as the user) and has free reign over the entire account. Sometimes they will go in and siphon data and sometimes they will hijack the entire account, but regardless of the hacker’s intentions a successful phishing attack is a successful transfer of power over an account. 

What’s worse is that you can get phished in multiple mediums. Email is the predominant channel where phishing attacks are carried out, but people can (and do) get phished over social media, instant message, or via text message. There are even phone-based or snail mail phishing attacks that direct users to go to a fake website where they would provide their credentials and/or personal information. 

There are even different forms of phishing based on their intended targets. The general strategy behind traditional phishing attacks is to send emails out to as many people as possible, hoping to snare unwitting recipients into their phishing nets. Today, with more personal information available about people, there is phishing that targets individual people. This is called a spear phishing attack. Then there are spear phishing attacks that are carried out against business and organizational leaders. These are called whaling attacks. The intended imagery aside, phishing attacks are getting more direct, more deceitful, and more serious. 

Spotting Phishing

For all of the bad news surrounding phishing attacks, there is some undeniably good news: with a critical eye, you can tell when you are being phished. You aren’t going to fall for these types of attacks if you know what to look for. Today, we’ve put together a short guide on how to determine if you are dealing with a phishing attack and how to proceed when you are.

Look for Warning Signs

There are a litany of warning signs that will help you spot a phishing attack. Most of them are pretty obvious, and some of the more subdued ones come with telltale signs. 

Does the message have spelling and grammar mistakes? 

Not many businesses will send out official correspondence with grammar and spelling mistakes. This should be the first sign that something is amiss. Most phishing messages come from supposedly-reputable organizations and while a spelling or grammar mistake does happen from time-to-time, several mistakes won’t happen.  

Does the message deal with curious circumstances? 

One of the biggest telltale signs that you are dealing with a phishing attack is the tone of the message that is received. Does the message reference immediate situations that need to be remedied? Does it mention money or illicit a sense of fear or anxiety? If it has these elements, it’s probably not legitimate. Think about it: most organizations that need you to act immediately will have specific ways of contacting you and that correspondence will make it clear that you are dealing with a legitimate organization.

Does this message have a trusted URL?

Most phishing attacks will redirect to a website that is set up by the hacker. You probably shouldn’t be clicking on any links sent to you in an email unless you are sure who sent the email. One way to determine whether or not a link is from a reputable source is to mouse over the link and see where the link goes. If you get an email from Amazon and the link goes to amazorn.com, you are staring at a phishing email.

Protecting Your Assets

There are a couple simple ways to ensure that you or a member of your staff doesn’t fall for phishing attacks:

• Use technology. A spam blocking filter on your email will go a long way towards removing unnecessary and potentially-malicious emails from hitting employee inboxes in the first place.
  
  
• Training. Make sure your employees are trained to spot and properly handle attempts that may come through. By starting with the end user, you’re taking away a lot of the power that phishing has.

At Coleman Technologies, we appreciate the importance of secure workplace practices. If you’d like to learn more about phishing, and how we can help stop it from hurting your business, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

For context, it helps to know that Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage platform that just about any business could make use of, regardless of its size. After all, any size of business will have to remain organized.

Speaking of which, our first tip covers how OneDrive can make this organization super convenient for you.

OneDrive Files On-Demand

Files On-Demand gives your users the ability to effectively link their File Explorer to OneDrive, which enables them to work with files found in your OneDrive without downloading all of them to their device. Not only does this save real estate in the device’s storage, it allows work to continue offline through a simple proactive switch in a particular file’s settings.

Known Folder Move

OneDrive can also work as a simple backup option, although it certainly should not replace a comprehensive plan. Regardless, Known Folder Move allows users to have the contents of certain folders automatically synchronize with their OneDrive storage. This can be set up during the initial installation of OneDrive, or at any time you have need for it.

Integration with Microsoft Outlook

Consider what typically happens when you try to share some kind of Office document as an email attachment for someone to work on: you aren’t sending them access to your file, you’re simply sending them their own copy. OneDrive fixes that by enabling a user to share their files as though they were attachments, editing the permissions provided on the fly. As a result, the actual file is being collaborated on, really allowing work to be done.

What has been your experience using OneDrive? Share your impressions, as well as any other questions we can help with, in the comments!

There are countless examples of IT turning to a reboot as a quick fix for technology issues in popular culture. Going back to August 4, 1999, Scott Adams’ syndicated comic strip Dilbert featured Dogbert working in tech support, interrupting a caller with the instruction to “Shut up and reboot.” The Channel 4 comedy, The IT Crowd, turned it into a catchphrase for one of its characters…

The joke has appeared in countless other places, including Supernatural, the long-running show that airs on The CW…

Even South Park used the concept as a joke, as Kyle effectively saves the world after the Internet stops by traveling to the “center of the Internet” and discovering that it is a giant router. I bet you can guess how Kyle fixes it:

As it turns out, this trope really is an example of art imitating life.

Why is Rebooting So Effective?

Well, let’s consider how much you actually do with your computer (or your mobile device, or your router, or your washing machine, or anything else that now has its own operating system) on a regular basis.

You start processes, you may install new programs, and that’s not even considering the massive amount of computing that goes on behind the scenes. A lot of these processes and activities will start things up in the background that are never really resolved, which means that your system resources are being used up. This usually has the biggest impact on your Random Access Memory, or RAM. Ultimately, your solutions aren’t able to work effectively any longer, and you see the effects.

However, rebooting inherently ends all of these processes, as they all require power in order to work. As a result, once the computer starts back up again, these processes are no longer running and impacting your system’s resources.

As a result, you have a better-working computer, and the IT stereotype is proven correct.

Keep in mind: if an issue seems to come back and persist despite a reboot (or multiple reboots) you likely have a bigger problem at hand. If this is the case, you can always lean on the professionals at Coleman Technologies to assist you with your technology.

Just don’t be surprised if we ask a particular question.

Subscribe to our blog for more great tips, IT tricks, and best practices!

Even if you aren’t planning on replacing your phone soon, it may make sense to pay attention here, as this process will also make it easier to restore your data to a new phone if needed. Either way, this process is much easier if you make some proactive preparations on your current phone.

Enabling the Native Android Backup Capabilities 

The first step is to make sure that your current phone has the backup service running. It can be found in your Settings, under System. Tap the Backup option, and check to see that the option to Back up to Google Drive is selected. If it isn’t, do so.

Now you have a copy of your current phone’s configuration to restore from, which you can do from the initial configuration of your new device. If you were using the Google Now or Pixel Launcher, even your backgrounds, icons, and folder structure is saved.

During setup, hit the Let’s Go button that appears at the welcome screen. Tap Copy your data, and connect to Wi-Fi.

Now, you’ll be presented with your restoration options. Since we just went over how to save a backup in the cloud, let go with the option to use A backup from the cloud. You’ll be prompted to sign into your Google account, and to agree to Google’s Terms of Service.

From the list of backup options, select the correct one. You can easily hit Restore to recover all of your previous device’s settings and data, and can select which apps to reinstall via Apps.

As your data is pulled over, you will be guided through the rest of the setup process.

Voila! Your new phone is now equipped with your selected tools and settings, ready for you to jump right back in. For more handy tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

Rotate the Document

It is very easy to accidentally scan a document into your computer so that it doesn’t appear upright on your display. A program like Adobe Acrobat Pro offers an in-menu option that allows you to do just that - in Document, find Rotate Pages. This option will allow you to select the pages that need to be rotated, and how to rotate them. Other programs may feature a toolbar button that allows you to rotate each page.

Fixing your pages, despite taking a few moments of time, is certainly a worthwhile thing to do, as it makes the document easier to read, promoting accuracy and convenience.

Password Protecting the Document

As long as the person or people who need to see a particular PDF have the proper password, protecting the document in question with a password is a generally good idea - especially if it contains “for your eyes only” information. To make these files as secure as possible, make sure that the passwords are distributed through secure means.

In Word, you can save your files as a PDF using the “Save as” function, simply selecting the PDF option as you do so. You will also see a button offering More options, which brings up a second dialogue box where you can find “encrypt document with a password” in that box’s Options button. By selecting encrypt document with a password, you will have the option to provide a password (and confirm it). At that point, anyone opening the PDF will need to enter that password to view it.

Merging PDF Files

It isn’t uncommon for different parts of the same document to be saved as different PDF files, or for multiple copies to be saved with different information filled in. It is usually better to have all of this information consolidated, to make reviewing it much easier. While many free and paid software titles can allow you to do this, you should reach out to us before you select one, as we can help you make the right choice for your needs - you probably don’t want the program’s watermark on your finished document, or find yourself needing to merge more documents than a free program will allow.

If you’ve already acquired Adobe Acrobat, merging your files is fairly simple. After opening the program, access the Tools menu and select Combine files. Doing so will give you the ability to Add Files… and once you have selected all of the files that should create your new PDF, click Combine. Once they are combined, clicking Save as will allow you to store it where it belongs.

Signing a PDF

Many times, a contract that needs to be signed will arrive as a PDF. While many resort to printing these documents out to sign them, there is an easier way - signing them electronically.

This time, the free Adobe Reader software can get the job done, but you should still check with your IT resource before using it.

If Adobe Reader is approved and installed by IT, you can easily sign PDFs electronically. By opening the PDF file with Reader, you have access to a Fill & Sign button. Click it, then Sign and Add signature. You’ll then have access to three options:

• Type - you simply type your name into the field, and an electronic signature is rendered (which will not look like yours).
• Draw - you use your mouse to draw out your signature.
• Image - you use a scanned image of your actual signature that is then saved for future use.

Once you’ve positioned your signature where it should be, click apply and make sure you save your revised PDF.

Always remember to check with your IT team before you download any software! For more IT tips and other useful pieces, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

1. There’s an Unexpected Attachment or Link

It’s one thing to get an unexpected email from someone, it’s completely another thing entirely to get an email from someone that includes an unexpected attachment or link. Neither of these is a good thing. Attachments can easily contain hidden malware files, and links can be disguised with very little effort.

Don’t believe me? Try visiting google.com. Go ahead!

Not exactly what you were expecting, eh? Keep in mind that you can double-check links by hovering your cursor over them, and if you weren’t anticipating an attachment, don’t click it unless you have confirmed its legitimacy through some other means.

2. The Sender’s Email Seems Off

It isn’t uncommon for scammers to disguise a fraudulent email address by making it look at lot like a legitimate one would. For instance, let’s say that you normally worked with a business vendor, hypothetically named “Super Business Supplies.” A scammer might send you an email from “sales (at) superbusinessupplies.com.” Looks pretty okay, until you notice that there’s one fewer ‘s’ than there should be. Scammers can get downright devious with these replacements, replacing “Amazon” with “Arnazon” and other blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tricks.

In short, read carefully.

3. There are Other Questionable Elements

While that may be a very vague tip, it is only because there is such a wide variety of warning signs that an email is actually a phishing attempt. For instance:

• Spelling and grammar errors. Look at it this way: would you anticipate a company like Microsoft, or Google, or the likes of such to send you an email riddled with mistakes? Of course not, so if you receive an email that purports to be from a company of high repute, but features these kinds of errors, red flags should be going up.
  
  
• Time-sensitivity. One of a scammer’s go-to tools is to put their target off-balance, especially by pressuring them into immediate action. If you receive an email that offers you a great deal by acting right now, or threatens to shut down your account unless you act right now, the first thing you should do is pick up the phone and call up the organization or individual that sent the email.
  
  
• Requests for personal information. Similarly to any messages that rely on cultivating a sense of urgency, you need to look at any emails that request personally identifiable information, access or financial credentials - really, any data that you and your company rely on - with a critical eye. This is another case where calling to confirm is probably your best bet.

Email can be an extremely helpful business tool, but it can also be an equally useful tool for cybercriminals looking to victimize your business. Coleman Technologies can help you secure it, with best practices and practical solutions to lock it down. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

First, let’s delve into what ITAM actually covers.

Understanding ITAM

Consider all of the internal resources that your business uses, with the exception of your living, breathing employees. Everything that’s left can be considered an asset. ITAM narrows this down further into specifically the assets that pertain to your comprehensive IT infrastructure. This includes:

• Hardware (like workstations, servers, printers, etc.)
• Software (antivirus, productivity titles, etc.)
• Any Peripherals (Keyboards, computer mice, other devices)

With these assets identified, ITAM assists you in tracking their purpose, how they interact, and other crucial details. This means, as you’ve likely realized, ITAM covers a considerable breadth of your resources, which makes it important that you keep it organized.

How ITAM Helps

A well-organized ITAM can help you save time and hassle by streamlining your processes, simply by keeping the data you need in a manageable and accessible record. As a result, you can make a variety of processes easier through improved data. This data can also help inform you of potential issues, or of the minimum requirements you have to meet to implement change.

Making the Most of ITAM

As promised, here are a few ways that you can optimize your use of IT asset management practices.

• Make it a proactive process. Managing your technology assets needs to be something that you start before you are required to do so, and that isn’t abandoned after reaching a certain milestone. This will help keep you prepared for a wider range of circumstances.
  
  
• Leverage automation. While Excel used to be an invaluable tool for asset management purposes, there are better options now that don’t require you to contend with spreadsheets that extend into the thousands of rows. Not only are automated solutions easier to manage, they come with a valuable set of added features to make your work life that much easier.
  
  
• Track your assets. This one especially applies to your software. There is often a difference between what an agreement says can be deployed, and what can be deployed practically. Keeping your agreements and receipts helps you pass audits by proving compliance.

Coleman Technologies can assist you with your IT assets. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Consolidate Your Email with the Clean Up Tool

Businesses will often use email to communicate between groups of people, which is a really useful practice for keeping people apprised and in-the-know of what’s going on. However, these messages can quickly become repetitive, incoherent messes--especially in chains made up of larger groups--as participants reply to them, duplicating the thread within itself. Outlook includes a utility known as the Clean Up tool to fix these problems in your email conversations, and even in entire email folders.

By finding the Clean Up icon in the ribbon at the top of your Outlook window, you can access a drop-down menu. This menu offers to Clean Up Conversation, Clean Up Folder, or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders. Once you’ve confirmed your choice, you can access Clean Up settings, which allow you more granular control over how the tool sorts through your existing conversations.

Schedule Out a Message with Future Delivery

Sometimes you’ll have an opportune moment to send an email, but it isn’t the right time for this email to be received. For instance, if you want to share something with your employees to keep in mind throughout the next day, it doesn’t make sense to distribute it at the end of the day before for it to be forgotten. Outlook allows you to use your opportunity to your full advantage with Future Delivery.

Once you’ve written an email, click on Options, and then Delay Delivery. This opens a Properties box for that specific message, including Delivery Options that include a checkbox labeled “Do not deliver before.” Selecting this option and specifying a time and date will prevent your recipient from receiving your message before that point. Once you’re satisfied, close the Properties box and send the message just like any other.

Taking Advantage of Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are used to simplify access to commonly-used functions in many computer programs and applications, and Outlook is no exception. For instance, Outlook features shortcuts for a wide range of its functionality - covering the basics (like composing a new message by pressing Ctrl+Shift+M), organizational tools (like moving a message with Ctrl+Shift+V) or annotating your messages (like adding flags to important ones with Ctrl+Shift+G).

This is really just the start of Outlook’s capabilities to help your operations. Subscribe to our blog to find out whenever we post other tips or IT blogs.

In OneDrive, a user can share a singular file or folder pretty easily. All they have to do is log in, right-click on the file/folder, and click Share.

Sharing this way allows a user to share their content with one of their contacts, send it to an email address, or copy a shareable link and send it along through an instant message or, again, and email. Doing so gives the recipient access to make edits to it by default, but the sender can restrict them to read-only access if desired.

However, you probably don’t want to micromanage your entire team to make sure they are sharing files and folders with people actually authorized to receive them. Fortunately, by using the global settings of OneDrive, you can take control past the file/folder basis to control how a user can share documents.

Controlling a User’s File Sharing in OneDrive

Assuming that you have administrative access over your OneDrive account, sign in by visiting https://admin.microsoft.com/ before proceeding with the following steps:

•  Look for Admin centers on the left side of your display. Click SharePoint.
• You should then be directed to the new SharePoint admin center. If you are brought to the old one, you can go to the new on by clicking on Open it now.
• Again, on the left side of the screen, find Policies and click on Sharing.

Doing so means that you have edited the global settings, applying your changes to all accounts. To manage settings on a case-by-case basis, access Users, Active Users, and select the individual who you are attempting to manage. You should find a OneDrive tab, with adjustable Sharing options.

With privacy and security being so critical for contemporary businesses, you need to make sure you are doing everything you can to maintain control of your company’s information. Our security experts can help - reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

There are a lot of tools used to manage projects. Regardless of what platform your company uses, there are some simple, common sense practices your team can use to enhance its project management proficiency. Here are five:

Tip #1: Hash Out Details Before You Start

Sometimes getting a project off the ground is harder than actually completing it. Depending on the number of stakeholders involved, many projects may find it difficult to get off the ground. Ensuring that the project is viable, has the support it needs to come to fruition, and has the resources in place to be most efficiently implemented are important before a minute of work is done on the project.

You will want to identify what workers will be responsible for what work, while also doing your best to come up with a timeline for the project that will not waste resources.

Tip #2: Choose One Project Manager

Today, there are a lot of collaborative interfaces out there that make managing a project much, much easier. As a result, sometimes a project won’t have a single project lead, it will be carried out with a team approach. You may get through a project or two like this before it becomes painfully evident that there needs to be someone to run point on the project.

The role of project leader will cultivate positive team dynamics and act as a mentor to the rest of the team. Also, you just need one throat to choke when things aren’t done on time.

Tip #3: Define Specific Milestones

For any project, there will be benchmarks it will have to be met. As a project begins, defining the metrics that will have to be met will give any project team a good idea what the expectations are at the end of each phase of a project. By frequently checking in on the status of deliverables, the project manager can ensure that all elements of the product are aligned with what customers will invest in.

Tip #4: Manage Risk

Managing risk is important in any business endeavor. There will be times when, in the course of the phases of a project, where one will go horribly wrong and will put the entire project’s success at risk. One of the best ways to identify and manage risk is by keeping the lines of communication open. Most project management software provides options to communicate, whether they be integrated through an existing system, or if they are localized as a part of the software.

Tip #5: Evaluation

Through success (or failure), lessons can be learned from any project. By reviewing and scrutinizing every aspect of the project, you will get some fuel on how to improve your project management moving forward. Identifying what went right, what went wrong, and how they make up the final result. One way to ensure that a project was a complete success is to determine its return on investment (ROI). Often, project managers will provide a planned ROI to stakeholders at the beginning. By comparing the two after the end of the project, you can establish whether it had the value you were planning for.

At Coleman Technologies, our technicians thrive on project management. Whether it is running cable, building, testing, and deploying hardware, or simple proactive maintenance, we have an answer for all of your business’ computer problems. Call us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

Create Procedures for Both Routine and Emergency Patches

Many patches are released on a predictable schedule, so as to make it easier to keep up on patches - after all, if you know that a patch is going to be released on a certain date, you can set aside time to apply that patch. There are also emergency patches that are released when a vulnerability is discovered and remediated.

As you might imagine, both are important to maintain - one, to keep your business as free as possible from vulnerabilities, and second (and perhaps more obviously), to keep your business secure in the face of an impending threat. That’s why you need to make sure you have set processes in place to ensure that all patches are tested and applied. While it may not always be a pressing security issue, it is better to be prepared for anything that the vendor is concerned about.

At Coleman Technologies, we always build out and update our procedure, and test updates before they are applied to prevent downtime and other issues. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Have a Controlled, but Realistic, Environment for Testing Purposes

Let me ask you a hypothetical question: someone comes up to you on the street and offers you a pill that would make you immune to the common cold, but with no peer reviews by any medical board or the FDA. So, do you take it?

I would hope you would say no, simply because you have no idea of the effectiveness of the pill without it having been tested. Patches are the same way. Without any testing, you simply don’t know how well the patch will work, or if it will interfere with another process. Before you apply any patches to your primary infrastructure, you need to have made these evaluations in a reasonable approximation of it. An effective means of doing so is to spin up a virtualized environment and stress-test the patch there, before actually applying it - just make sure you give your tests enough time to produce trustworthy results.

Keep Track of When Patches Are Released

Depending on the hardware and software you use, patches are going to be released on a different schedule. This is because different manufacturers and vendors manage their schedules differently. Just look at Microsoft and their famous Patch Tuesday (typically the second and sometimes the fourth Tuesday of each month). In order to properly keep your patches up-to-date, you need to know when to expect them.

For assistance with your business’ patch management, you can always turn to Coleman Technologies. Give our professionals a call at (604) 513-9428.

Leverage Automation

Answer me this: would you rather pay your staff to accomplish their responsibilities, or pay the same amount to have them work just as hard but only accomplish half as much?

That’s what I thought.

Automated solutions and processes can make your business far more efficient than it would be otherwise, simply because it makes it so your staff doesn’t have to take care of rote responsibilities and can instead focus on capital-generating endeavors. As a result, you can streamline how your dollars are spent, making more for a relatively small investment.

Ditch the Landline

Let’s face facts… all technology follows the same trajectory: it starts as an invention, is innovated upon, becomes the established norm, and is eventually phased out by the next invention. Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone is almost 150 years old - suggesting that it is high time for the next innovation to step into the fold.

In a large way, it already has, with Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP leverages your business’ Internet connection to place calls, meaning you no longer have to pay the telephone company for service. Furthermore, it is far easier (and cheaper) to expand a VoIP solution, making it an even better option for a growing business.

Invest Wisely

When selecting a solution, there’s a lot to be said about seeking out a bargain. However, you need to lean more towards frugality, and less towards being miserly. A solution that you may have gotten for a considerable discount, but ultimately costs you three times its worth in maintenance and repairs can barely be called a solution at all. Furthermore, cheaper devices are often cheaper because the manufacturers skimped on key aspects, like performance, security, and durability. The same can often be said of emerging technologies - it is better to be late jumping on the bandwagon than it is to be in the front row when the whole thing crashes.

Coleman Technologies is here to guide you as you outfit your business with the technology solutions it needs for success. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to talk to our seasoned professionals.

Using the Taskbar to Highlight Folders

If you’re like most users today, a large amount of the work you are responsible for only requires you to access certain areas of the company’s storage, which can quickly make navigating there a frustrating inconvenience. Fortunately, there is a Taskbar feature that can streamline this process considerably.

You can add direct links to folders (and their contents) to the Taskbar.

Here’s how it’s done:

• Right-click any unused space in the Taskbar to open a menu of options
• Hover over Toolbars and select New toolbar…
• Find your desired folder in the directory that appears, select it, and click Select Folder

That folder should now appear in your Taskbar, with a list of its contents quickly and easily accessible to you.

Using the Taskbar to Quickly Access Websites

If your responsibilities more frequently require you to be on the Internet, you might find it useful to have a quick-access URL field in your Taskbar, enabling you to skip the step where you have to open a browser before beginning to navigate to a site.

• Again, access your Taskbar options by right-clicking in any unused space
• Again, hover over Toolbars, this time selecting Address

A URL field will have appeared in your Taskbar. Typing a URL into it and pressing Enter will open that website in your default browser.

Would you like to learn more about what the Taskbar can do? Let us know in the comments!

Shake to Minimize

Sometimes when you are working in any Windows platform, you will have too many windows open and you just want everything out of your face except the thing you are currently viewing. Well in Windows 10 there is a cool little feature you can use to make that happen very quickly. Just take your mouse (or your finger if you have a touchscreen) and click-and-hold the title bar of the app you are working in and shake it back and forth. This will minimize all other open applications. To get them back, simply repeat the action.

Choose Folders on Start Menu

The start menu is extremely useful in Windows 10, but sometimes it can get cluttered. To choose which folders you want to see on your Start Menu go to Settings > Personalization > Start then click on the “Choose which folders appear on Start” link at the bottom of the screen. From there you can toggle the folders you want to see in your Start menu. 

Find the Original Control Panel

The settings options in Windows 10 are far and away easier to use, but if you are one of those people that likes working with tools they know, the old Control Panel is still available in Windows 10 as it is still the go-to option for customizing advanced options. The easiest way to access the control panel is by clicking on the Cortana icon on the taskbar and typing in “control panel”. It will give you immediate access to all user settings. 

Selectively Sync Folders with OneDrive

One of the best parts of using Windows 10 is the integration with OneDrive cloud storage. Windows 10’s OneDrive integration provides users a lot of flexibility. To sync folders with data stored in OneDrive, make sure OneDrive is running and right-click on the OneDrive icon in the notification area. Select Settings and then navigate to the Account tab. Under the Account tab you will see the option to “Choose folders”. Click on choose folders and you will see a list of the folders you have in OneDrive, select the ones that you would like access to through Windows 10 and select OK. Now you have access to this data through your File Explorer in Windows 10.

Customize Your Application Notifications

Having too many notifications is one of the most frustrating parts of modern technology. To keep from being bogged down with too many notifications, you can customize which notifications you see in Windows 10. To do so, click on Start > Settings > System > Notifications & action. Once there all you have to do is scroll down and select the notifications you want on, and which ones would be better served not notifying you.

Windows 10 has hundreds of options for any user to customize their experience. Check back next week when we provide some more advanced tips on how to best experience the OS.

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.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar can be found at the top left of the window, with default options like Save, Undo, and Redo. It’s pretty easy to spot, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons that adjusting it to your preferences can be so helpful.

Making these changes is fairly simple. Your first step is to access the Quick Access Toolbar’s options. Under File. select Options, and in the window that appears, click Quick Access Toolbar in the sidebar menu. It should look like this...

From here, you can see that the typical Save, Undo, and Redo options are in the Quick Access Toolbar - which is all well and good, but you can easily use keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the same things.

You might find a different assortment of tools more handy to keep in your Quick Access Toolbar. Altering them is simple enough from this menu, all you have to do is select the item and click the appropriate button, Add>> or <<Remove. The list on the left defaults to Popular Commands, but there are plenty of options to choose from, based on your needs. For now, we’ll stick to Popular Commands.

Let’s assume you use Word to put a lot of data into context, so you use a lot of lists and tables… and it needs to be spelled correctly. You can easily change your Quick Access Toolbar to meet these preferences.

Once you’ve done so, just click OK and your changes will be saved. You can always revert to the default settings by using the Reset option as well.

Customizing the Ribbon

The Ribbon in Word is where you find your options like Home, Insert, and the rest. Depending on your usage, you may not have much of a need for some of these options. Let’s assume that you don’t have any purpose for the Mailings tab, or the Draw tab, for that matter.

Again accessing File and Options, this time we’re looking for Customize Ribbon, which looks like this:

Just as we did with the Quick Access Toolbar above, you can adjust what is displayed in the Ribbon. Since we’ve established that - in this example - we have no purpose for either the Mailings or Draw tabs, we can uncheck them to remove them from the Ribbon display.

Customizing the Status Bar

At the very bottom of the window is the Status Bar, which can be altered to provide other valuable information based on what you have prioritized. Doing so is very simple: just right-click on the Status Bar, and select (or deselect) the options.

There you have it- three ways to customize Microsoft Word to better suit your purposes. For more technology tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

Before we get started, we want to make sure that you know to consult with your IT department or provider before you go to make any of these changes. That way, they will be able to undo any mistakes you or your employees might make during the following processes.

Customizing Word’s Rules to Meet Your Preferences

It’s likely that there are some things that you regularly type into Microsoft Word that it may not agree with. Your company’s name might not exactly jive with the grammatical rules that the rest of the language should subscribe to, for instance, or you may prefer to stylize certain terms or phrases differently. Word isn’t going to like this, and is going to try to let you know that a mistake has been made. Of course, it might also just change the word you typed to what it is “supposed” to be.

These corrections can be a pain to repeatedly make, and there’s always the chance that one will be missed. Fortunately, Word offers you the opportunity to “teach” it new rules via a fairly simple process.

To access these rules, select File, and from there, Options. A new window should pop up with a Proofing option in the list. That page looks like this:

Adjusting AutoCorrect

Here, you can alter a variety of proofing options, including your AutoCorrect Options. Clicking that button will present you with another window.

This window allows you to set your AutoCorrect rules, identify any exceptions you might want to make, and review how misspelled text can be automatically revised.

Establishing Grammar Rules

Returning to the Proofing List window, you also have other options that allow you to adjust Word’s corrections. For instance, clicking the Settings... button under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word provides another window. From here, you can control which grammar rules Word will flag or ignore in your copy.

Stop Worrying About Word Changing What You Write

By implementing these changes, you can prevent small annoyances from interrupting you as you work with Microsoft Word. This way, you can accomplish more without having to worry about dealing with automatic corrections again.

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However, as with any changes you are considering to your computer, you should lean on your IT resource to determine if it’s okay to make these adjustments. Better yet, IT may want to make them for you. One way or another, make sure you get the all-okay before switching anything on a work device.

Cleansing of Bloatware
Whether you picked something up during your browsing or the device’s manufacturer installed it during production, your computer can easily collect programs known as bloatware or adware. These programs, while not always harmful per se, can easily eat up system resources for nothing. Ask your IT resource to seek out these programs and eliminate them for you. This alone may result in some considerable boosts to your computing speeds.

Adjust Power Settings
While it may sound like a good idea, the Power saver plan that comes baked-into Windows 10 can actually make your experience as a user more of a pain. This is because this setting cuts your device’s processes to minimum so that energy can be conserved. Furthermore, desktops are plugged in as a rule, leaving little reason to use Power saver anyways. To improve performance on your Windows 10 laptop, stick to the Balanced power option when unplugged, and switch to High when power is available.

Kill Windows Tips and Tricks
Yes, it’s ironic that we’re recommending that you disable Windows Tips and Tricks in a tip-based blog post, but there are a few compelling reasons to do so. Most pertinent to our current conversation, the fact that Windows is analyzing your usage with these capabilities enabled means that your device’s performance is going to suffer.

In order to disable these invasive bits of advice, click the Start button. Under your Settings, access System and from there, Notifications & actions. Under the Notifications section, you will find the option to Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows.” Deactivate this option, and you won’t have anything more to worry about.

Finally, the Cliché: Restart Your Device
Yes, this suggestion has become a joke in and of itself, as the IT field’s go-to question. However, there’s a really good reason for this: restarting a device can often solve its issues. This is because it clears out the use of the computer’s resources, wiping unneeded memory usage and stopping equally unneeded background processes. Restarting your workstation effectively gives it a fresh slate, allowing it to run much better than it did when it was bogged down.

Let us know if there are any other tips you want us to share in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe!

1. Prioritize

One of the biggest time sinks to be found in any business is the simple act of deciding what to work on next. We’ve all been there at some point: having finished one task, we suddenly reference our to-do list and encounter the same problem as a kid has in a candy store… too many options.

Taking a few moments at the start of every day to organize these tasks can greatly improve how you spend your time throughout the rest of the day, and can ultimately lead to far less waffling later on. With a set process laid out, you no longer have to make the decision over what to work on next - it has already been made.

To create this order, look at everything you have to work on and establish how urgent each task is compared to the others. Deadlines are a handy way to help establish this, or if someone else in your organization needs it before they can continue their work. Identifying these qualities and ordering your tasks accordingly from the start is a small time investment, especially when you consider the impact it can have on your productivity later on. Utilizing a communications and collaboration solution can help you establish the organizational priority of each of your tasks with the help of your team.

2. Habitually Limit the Time You Spend on Rote Tasks

There are always those tasks that pop up throughout the day that seem insignificant at the time. Take checking your email, for example… how long does it take to do that? However, checking email and a variety of other tasks can quickly grow from a momentary activity to an extended process.

After all, there’s always the chance that briefly responding to an email could pull you into an extended and time-consuming debate.

Furthermore, some of these tasks carry the expectation that you will immediately drop what you’re doing to take care of whatever’s needed. Emails are notorious for communicating this urgency, whether or not it was intended. Regardless, it puts pressure on the employee to switch their focus, which hurts productivity.

Instead, establish a practice of setting a concrete period out of your day where you will check and respond to your email, or whatever task it is that applies to your situation. Actually schedule this time into your day, using the business management solution that your company has in place to control schedules. Outside of that time, leave that task alone… if an email’s contents are truly that important, you’ll find out about them some other way before long.

3. Delegation and Outsourcing

We get it, business matters and activities tend to be kept close to the chest. After all, if you can’t trust yourself to do something right, who can you trust? Who else has the incentive you do, to do the best job possible?

Frankly? Someone you’ve hired to do a job.

Delegation can be difficult, of course, but only if you don’t trust those around you. However, there are plenty of resources out there, both inside your business and available through outsourcing, that could do exactly the job that needs ro be done. As a result, you can divert your focus to tasks that need it more, trusting the resource to produce.

You may have to put in a bit of time picking the best resources, especially when outsourcing, but the results will be well worth the time.

Coleman Technologies can help you put these practices into action, with the added effects of the solutions that can be implemented to make these practices easier. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to further discuss any of the solutions we’ve described here, and for more handy tips that could help you better leverage your time, subscribe to our blog!.

One Account, Two Accounts, Three Accounts, Four…
Based on your work responsibilities and how your office is structured, it is quite possible that you need regular access to multiple email accounts. You could have one you use internally, one for communicating with clients, one to reach out to vendors, one to use to sign up for resources… you get the point. When all is said and done, that’s a lot of email messages.

However, you presumably have other work responsibilities beyond just checking your email, so switching between all of them just isn’t a practical option. Well, it just so happens that you won’t need to switch, as the email client you choose will be able to consolidate these multiple accounts for you. Before we get into how, we need to make sure that we’re speaking the same language here.

- An email account is the individual address used to send or receive a message. In your organization, you might have This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Likewise, each employee may have a different account for their different responsibilities - for instance, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

- An email client is the program that allows you to send and receive emails. Gmail and Microsoft Outlook are two perfect examples. If you have multiple clients stored on the same server, they can be used pretty much interchangeably, each client presenting all emails. An email client also has a few features that enable you to better keep track of multiple email accounts, provided you have set it up to do so.

Let’s go over your options now.

Multiple Inboxes
The people who developed the email clients that we use weren’t naive. They understood that a given user isn’t going to be tied down to a single email provider, and certainly not a single account. This is why email clients can support multiple inboxes, assuming they are configured correctly. Multiple inboxes allow a user to access a single client to manage multiple email accounts, streamlining the process greatly and enabling customized organization.

Multiple Email Personalities
On the other hand, some users don’t mind leveraging one inbox, but might still need to utilize more than one address in their correspondence. There is also a method that enables the use of a single, catch-all inbox, but enables the user to select which email address (in this case, known as personalities) their response is sent from.

To do so, you will first need to set up an email account that you do not give out, as it will serve as the catch-all address that all of your emails ultimately accumulate within. Once it has been set up, you need to set all of your other accounts to forward their contents to that mailbox - your internal IT resource should be able to help.

Once your messages are all being sent to the catch-all account, you will be able to respond to these emails from the address that they were originally sent to.

Setting Up Inboxes and Personalities
In order to accomplish either of these tasks for your client of choice, you will need to adjust a few settings.

Gmail
To add another account to your Gmail client, you’ll need to access your Settings, which means you have to click on the gear icon. Once you’re in your Settings, you should see a tab labeled Accounts and Import. Under that tab, there is a Check mail from other accounts section. Click on Add a mail account, and follow the instructions provided.

To add additional personalities to your Gmail account, you’ll need to again navigate to the Accounts and Import tab. There, you will find a section labeled Send Mail As, with the option to Add another email address. This will also allow you to choose your default email address.

Outlook
As it happens, there are too many different versions of Microsoft Outlook and too many variables to allow us to provide a walk-through. Fortunately, Microsoft does offer some documentation that instructs users how to manage their "connected accounts.” Of course, you can also call (604) 513-9428 for our assistance, as well.

Are there any solutions that you frequently use that you’d like some extra tips for? Tell us which ones in the comments section, and don’t forget to subscribe!