Tony Dye

Training Tips

I'm fairly regularly asked about training stuff 'we' do at Perimeter.  Just to be clear, 'we' is about 90% Jim LaBarr, so I want to be sure to give credit where credit is due.  I've said a few nice things about Jim in the past which you can find here.  One of the seemingly little things Jim does is to regularly publish "Tips" for our staff.  Well, darn, this just suddenly hit me -- why don't I re-publish those for all to see!  If it's something that might fit your environment, steal it, or work from it.  If it's nothing useful, just go ahead and skip over it.  Easy enough?

All that to say, expect an occasional post in the Training category that's simply a redistribution of some of Jim's previous work.

Another Benefit of Outsourcing

I chose not to mention this one in my original Outsourcing post, but it’s worth noting.  And I'm hoping you Church IT people will hear this the right way -- a lot of grace, please.

Contract workers don't have to adhere to all the same "rules" as church staff.  One of those differences has to do with meetings.  Contractors don't attend staff prayer times.  Nor division meetings.  Nor pretty much any other "staff" meetings.

Now please don't anybody turn this into a "Tony is against prayer" thing!  I'm not even saying "meetings are evil" (at least not ALL meetings).  Interestingly, a lot of 3rd parties do "better quality" meetings than churches.  Isn't that interesting?

Bottom line: when a contract worker comes in for 8 hours, you tend to get 8 hours of real work.

Copier Selection Process

We are quickly approaching the time to replace our old fleet of copiers.  Have I ever mentioned that I HATE copiers?

What's really important in choosing a new copier brand/company?  I remember discussion all the way back to the 2006 Fall Roundtable where there was a lot of positive comment about Canon.  I've heard that many times since.  Is Canon really that much better?  How can you tell?

Some things that seem important:

• Reliability
• Use as a printer
• Color & BW in single unit, with different per-copy pricing
• Network administration (copy and print accounting)
• Scan to file.  Is this really important?  Why?
• FAX capabilities.  I already hate FAXes, why provide another solution? 
• Scan to email.  Kind of like Scan to File, I'm not exactly sure why this is good, but manufactures sure seem proud of it

Does price matter?  Or Size?  Or speed?  Or in these "days of green," should I be looking for low power consumption?  What about a flexible contract where you can change the mix of equipment without penalty? 

Somehow...those all seem minor to me compared to the one biggie: they have to work!

When a vendor talks about their fleet of service trucks, and trained personnel, and all the parts they stock, that sounds like bad news to me.  I sure wouldn't want to need that kind of service on my computers or printers.  Why are copiers so different?

So, anybody have an easy answer for me?  What's the simple way to make a great copier choice?  Here's a thought: if the vendor can't direct me to a large church IT person who flat-out LOVES their product, then we strike them from the list.

ProVision Clarification

In my "If We'd Done Our Homework" post, I may have over-stated when I said we've been waiting 2 1/2 years for ProVision.  We've been *looking* for 2 1/2 years, but actual development on the CRM base didn't start until February of 2007, and really didn't start on what's now ProVision until June or July of 2007, so we're not even to the one year point yet.  Still not where we want to be, but I don't want it to sound like our vendors have just been sitting around doing nothing!  Not at all....

Update On Our Internet Outage

After our outage yesterday, our Internet Service was restored a bit before 7PM (that's when we noticed it, apparently it was actually earlier).  Being without service is painful, but it also helps us appreciate how well things usually do work!  Sometimes I need "bad things" to help remind me of how good things are most of the time.  Reliable power, reliable Internet, etc.  Anyway, I digress.

Here's the early report from AT&T:

"We had to replace one of the cards on a BellSouth router at the POP which was causing the outage for a few hundred customers yesterday.  The new card was changed out at 6:35pm and as such this should have been the time that your service was restored."

One card.  A few hundred customers.  What's the cost of the card and the value of that lost time?  Around 4 1/2 hours from failure to full repair.  If we had an outage of one of our pieces of hardware, how quickly could we respond?  Hmmmm....

5 Hour Internet Outage

A very frustrating afternoon.  AT&T experienced a "major failure" in a router and we were without stable Internet for about 5 hours today, starting just after 2PM.  OUCH!  It's amazing how much we expect, and generally receive, great Internet service.  We're expecting our email backlog will take much of the night to catch-up.  I can hardly wait to check my inbox in the morning for all that I didn't see today :-(

Find Me On TimeBridge

Jason Lee recently introduced me to TimeBridge. It's a simple service that helps people set up meetings.  Basically, when you want to set up a meeting with a lot of people, especially people outside your organization, instead of emailing back and forth, you propose a *series* of times when the meeting would work for you, and let others indicate which of those options would work for them.  Then,when everyone has responded, you look to see what options remain and are best.  Very neat.

There's even an add-in for Outlook that lets you synchronize your calendar between TimeBridge and Outlook and then let you show your availability to people outside your Exchange network.  Great idea.  Here's my availability, as published by TimeBridge.

Now I'm sure some of you are already thinking: "Google Calendar would do that too."  OK, fine.  I'm sure there are plenty of things that would do it.  This is the one I'm choosing, for now.  So far, others I've shared it with have found it useful.  I'm also waiting for some Mac user to tell me about the better thing they have, and how Mac users don't need calendars because their brains automatically sync.  OK...I'm happy for you. Really!

I sure like this concept.  Hopefully others will too.  (or, if not, will propose a better alternative)

More Thoughts on Outsourcing

Jason brought up the subject of Outsourcing on the Church IT Podcast, episode 26, and I did a bit of rambling there.  Jason asked for "more data," and at least David Drinnon responded.  Not just once, but twice!  If you haven't read David's posts, go ahead and do that now -- he has a lot more valuable stuff to say than the few comments I'm getting ready to make!

Before I say much, I need to put in a sort of disclaimer here.  Perimeter is a large church, with a large staff, and a decent budget (I dare not use "large" again here).  There are a lot of smaller churches out there who might immediately think that outsourcing doesn't apply to them.  Well...consider this alternative point of view.  A small church may not be able to hire a full-time IT person.  But, could you hire *part* of one?  What if you had a qualified guy for 1 day a week?  Even a half a day a week?  Would that improve your IT function, without breaking the bank?  And what if that 1/2, or one, day a week person was from a company that had your best interest in mind, and maybe didn't send exactly the same person every week?  Suddenly, you might have a team of individuals available to you, without the commitment of dollars needed for such a team.  Just something to think about.

Perimeter has used some form of outsourcing for as long as I can remember.  When I first came on staff, our IT department was one person - me!  The rest of our staff was growing rapidly, we'd just moved into a new facility, and there were lots of tasks to accomplish.  Our staff leadership was supportive of me doing what was necessary, temporarily, to get things ramped up.  How do you do things like that temporarily?  You use contract labor.  I found a great guy, Don Brake, who was working on his MCSE, and we partnered for what ended up being more than two years.  With Don's help (as in he did most of the work), we transitioned from NetWare to NT, brought Exchange on-line, got everyone on the same version of MS-Office, and eliminated all the random MS-Office alternatives that were still around.  Oh yeah, we also got rid of the last of Windows 3.1 that was around.

A bit later, we partnered with a commercial outsourcing company, located in Huntsville AL, who managed a lot of the core of our network for a year or two, and we came close to also giving them all of our helpdesk.  We never could find a way to do that last part.

Without stretching this out too much, we've worked with a one-man consulting shop with good results.  We worked with a larger group, also with good results.  The relationship with Viant was almost an accident, but what a great accident!  John Dolan was actually on my staff a while, having saved my bacon a couple of times, but he wanted to do his own business, and we were trying to keep staff lean, so we had the basis to get John jump-started and meet our staff needs.  John's being an elder at our church didn't hurt the situation any :-)

Now I mentioned all the good results of each of these relationships.  There were downsides too.  We have yet to find a vendor (or staff member, for that matter) who is flawless.  That's important to keep in mind -- outsourcing is not going to give you perfection.  Just flexibility.

Having had mostly good results through the years, I think I have only a small amount of advice to give.  Look for those who are already engaged with the church community.  And, this is a bit hard, look for those who are focused on the future, not the past.  This is a bit like the ChMS challenge -- there are a lot of companies that have been around a long time, and are somewhat comfortable resting on their large customer base.  Then there are the few who are pushing the envelope.  Who do you want to be teamed with?

If I were looking for a new outsourcing partner, I think I'd start with some very small criteria:

• First, I'd look at their website and see if it was useful.  Does it mention church?  Does it offer tips and tricks, for free?  The partners I'd look for would be giving back to the church community, even if not working for it.
• Secondly, I'd ask about the company's bloggers.  Do they have any?  Do any of the people in the company follow other church blogs?  [When a company say "I don't have time for blogs" that's a good time to feel a bit uncomfortable]
• Thirdly, pushing the second point a bit further, how is the company involved with CITRT or similar church oriented technology groups?  Maybe I've just been fortunate, but I have contacts with several firms that attend events, or host events, or present for events.  Not selling -- sharing technology.  Of course, they don't mind if I buy something from them
• Finally, the thing that may happen automatically: find out what other churches are using the vendor.  None?  Hmmm...that says something too!

OK, that wasn't much of a checklist.  It's a start.  Fire back with questions and maybe we can flesh this out somewhere.

If We'd Done Our Homework

Continuing the "If We'd Known Then..." thought, I've realized there are a few things we've done were we *still* don't know enough!  Is it a case of not fully doing our homework?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  I'm certainly reminded of the difference between CIOs and CTOs (briefly mentioned in my Church IT Paradox presentation and more specifically in Jonathan Schwartz's blog).  Sometimes, in our CTO role, we *must* pursue things that we don't know enough about.  That's just the nature of our function...

There are really only two big things on my "wish we'd waited," or "we should have done more research" list, and again, I don't fee too terrible about jumping in based on the research we did and the premise of each of these.

MS-CRM, or more specifically, ProVision CRM
I think I first mentioned interest in CRM back in 2005, with no expectation of it ever fitting the Church market.  A few months later, while doing lots of other research on ChMS solutions, we got the call the eventually led to us being involved with the ACTS group and working toward what's now called ProVision CRM (and internally, we just call it ProChurch).  Here we are two and a half years later, and we've invested a lot of money, time, and other resources into the project, and what do we have?  Um...well...some really neat ideas, and some stuff that sounds good, and even some things we can demo, sort of, at the vendor site, but basically nothing in house for our efforts.  Ugh!  Is this a lost cause?  Certainly not.  We are scheduled to be a few weeks away from snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.  We've been scheduled for that before :-(  Ask me again in about 30 days.

SharePoint
SharePoint goes along with CRM.  Like many others (how many attended the SharePoint training at Northwoods?), we believe SharePoint can be the solution to a lot of problems.  We also continue to learn that it's not quite as easy as just installing it and telling our staff to "go have fun with SharePoint."  We knew it was time to replace our Intranet, and the CRM push made SharePoint an easier decision, so we jumped in.  That was more than a year ago, and the vast majority of our staff haven't seen it yet.  The best of intents, with very low payoff.

So, what's a guy to do with this?  I'm thinking back to a couple of very basic principles we've relied on in the past:

1. Given a choice of the latest whiz-bang technology, or something that's popular and a lot of people understand, go with what's popular unless you have an incredibly overwhelming reason.  (and if you think you have an incredibly overwhelming reason, research once more)
2. Choose vendors who are tightly aligned with your values.  This is actually a previously unwritten principle that I've been trying to articulate a bit (I don't have it right, yet).  For instance, when I look at potential vendors, there's something significant, and new, I'm beginning to look for: Do they blog?  Do they share?  Are they already engaged somehow in the Church IT Community?  (have they ever heard of CITRT?)  Alternatively, I want to look at who in the Church IT Community has heard of them.

So, how do you choose when to jump into a new technology, and when to wait?  I need a better formula!

 

If We'd Known Then...

"If we'd known then, what we know now"...what would be different?  Thinking back on products and technologies of the past, if you had known more, what would you have done differently?
.

Looking at some things we've done, I might have decided differently on these few.  Just to clarify, I think these are all good products.  I'm just questioning if they are the right products, or best products, for our needs, so please don't hear this as a bad report on any.

Astaro firewall.  We went live on the Astaro in December 2005.  It's been good.  However, it's taken a lot of work to get it "right," the reporting is far from trivial, and the support is a bit lacking.  Overall, I don't see that it's gained us much over, for instance, a SonicWall.  When it comes time for our next major maintenance contract, it will be hard to write that next check.

IBM 4300 SAN.  When we did VMware back in August 2005, iSCSI wasn't a supported option, so we went with a "real" SAN, the IBM 4300.  This is a nice SAN.  Fiber Channel.  Dual everything.  Fiber Channel even for the disk drives.  What that means is EXPENSIVE!  300GB drives are over $2k.  It has been a great SAN.  We just don't want to spend more to add to it, so it's time to consider replacing it.  Ouch.

Lenovo desktops, notebooks.  We had used Dell for years, and a few years ago when Dell's service started slipping, badly, we moved to Lenovo.  For a while, things were great.  Well...the honeymoon is clearly over.  Lenovo, you had us, and you could have kept us forever.  But, alas, it's time for us to go elsewhere.  HP?  Back to Dell?  Bueller?

Citrix.  This really was the right answer when we implemented it, back in 2003 I think.  Just a few months ago, we made the switch to Provision Networks, and I'm pretty sure that's a "more" right answer.  Could we have selected Provision Net years back?  Probably not.

Level Platforms.  We've been using a monitoring solution from Level Platforms for years.  It mostly works.  Except for this annoying little problem -- some of the times when the things fail that it's supposed to be monitoring, it doesn't tell us.  Now, it's certainly conceivable that my team is a bunch of idiots and can't figure out how to make it work.  Or...maybe it's just a bit too hard to configure.  I think I'll go with the latter.  (A new solution is in the works, soon.  Hopefully John will be telling us about that), although the new baby is probably keeping him busy right now)

NeoWare (now HP) WinTerms.  We tried out a lot of WinTerms at the beginning of our Citrix implementation - Wyse, of course, some clones, some other brands I no longer remember, but we finally settled on the NeoWare Linux-based devices.  One of the great features was the internal power supply that didn't require a brick.  Well...in retrospect, there's good reason why nearly everyone else uses a brick.  The failure rate on the NeoWare units is pretty high around the 2-3 year time period.  So much for our anticipated 5+ year life span.

Desktop Authority (vs. ScriptLogic)  We love ScriptLogic!  When it came time for our first maintenance renewal, we stepped up to Desktop Authority.  Seemed like a good idea, but surprisingly (our bad!), we hardly use the extra features.

to be continued...  "things were we still don't know NOW"

Do you have any "wish we'd done something else" stories?