We are asked this question quite often and the best way to describe it is: Managed Services is a way of monitoring, maintaining and supporting business networks – remotely, securely and proactively.  Servers, workstations and networks are not “plug it in and forget it” devices.  Just like your car, they require routine maintenance to keep everything running smoothly.  Just like cars, if you wait until YOU detect the problem, you’re probably facing costs that are not only financial, but also time and resource related. Here are a couple real world examples of situations with our clients in the past week where our Managed Services service really saved the day.  But this is a needed service for your business, regardless of the IT support company you use.

1) We received an alert on Saturday AM about XYZ Lawfirm’s Exchange Server database going offline.  Exchange Server is the master Outlook database of all email, contacts, calendars and other Outlook information for the entire firm.  Within an hour, we had logged onto this server and discovered they had exceeded the default size restriction on the database.  So we increased the limit in the Windows registry then put the database back online and they never knew anything even happened.  Without Managed Services, no one would have realized this problem until one of the firm’s employees realized Outlook data was unavailable (probably on Monday) and contacted us to fix it.  In the meantime, Outlook would have been unavailable for anyone that wanted to work over the weekend and there would have undoubtedly been delays in receiving email.  The  downtime went from potentially 48 hours to 40 minutes and it’s unlikely anyone even noticed there was any downtime at all.

2) We received an alert last Thursday about ABC Lawfirm’s main application server experiencing long disk queue length. This can mean many different things and have many causes but users will notice it because applications will be running slower than normal.  Very soon after receiving this alert, we logged onto their server and began investigating the problem as well as called the Office Administrator to let her know we were working on it.  As it turns out, the cause of this problem was solved by installing a driver update for the RAID (hard drive) controller on the server.  Considerable downtime was again avoided by an early alert and quick response to a problem instead of waiting for users to notice the problem (and probably reboot their computers thinking it’s a workstation problem) then contacting us and we begin investigating without knowing what is going on because we are not monitoring the server.

Any size office may benefit from Managed Services – by proactively monitoring your important technology assets, you can best protect against unexpected breaks that cost you time, energy and money.  You can cover any combination of elements that may be included in your office – workstations, servers, etc. For more information or specific questions, please contact Brian Cluxton at the Columbus office.  bcluxton@affinityconsulting.com

February 14, 2010 marks the ten year anniversary of the Columbus-based Affinity partner, HMU Consulting. Clients, friends, family and staff gathered on Thursday, February 4th to celebrate this milestone at an Open House. 

The Columbus team kicked off the evening with a champagne toast to founders, Barron K. Henley, Esq. and Paul J. Unger, Esq. and celebrated throughout the evening. “It was great to have so many people who we’ve had the opportunity to work with join us tonight,” said Unger.

As a sign of their appreciation, the Columbus office also presented the founders with a framed copy of the event invitation. As John Federico said during his toast, “statistics say that 90% of small businesses fail – what you two have accomplished deserves to be recognized and celebrated.”  Congratulations to Barron, Paul and all members of the Affinity Columbus team.

Users of the LexisNexis products PCLaw™ and Time Matters® and Billing Matters®  may have recently heard that LexisNexis is requiring customers to purchase or reinstate their Annual Maintenance Plan (AMP) by May 1, 2010. While news of additional software costs can sometimes be alarming, it’s important to remember that purchasing an AMP is something that Affinity recommends to all its clients.

Having an up-to-date AMP ensures that your firm stays on the most current version of the LexisNexis software you own and that you have immediate access to any patches that LexisNexis may release.  Going forward, this new policy will also allow you to better plan for your annual software costs and budgets.

If your AMP has lapsed or you need to purchase one, now is the time to do so, not only to meet this requirement, but also, because LexisNexis is offering significant discounts to customers who need to bring their AMP up to date on or before April 30th. If you do not renew your AMP by May 1, 2010, be advised that LexisNexis will charge you a “reinstatement fee”.   Thus, please contact your Affinity Practice Management consultant if you have any questions or concerns as soon as possible. We remain committed to helping you select, implement and use the best software products that are available.

Sometimes it is helpful to view two different parts of your document at the same time.  In Word 2007, there are two ways to do this. 

(1) Split Screen.

The first way is to use the split screen view.  The split screen view “splits” the screen in two, and presents two different views of the same document.  To enter the split screen view either click the split button on the View tab:

and click on the screen to place the split; or hover the cursor on the black line above the scroll bar and click and drag to create the split:

The split screen will contain two different scroll bars that work independently to present two different views at the same time.  This makes it possible to look at pages 1 and 3 at the same time:

(2) Separate Screen.

The second way is to open a separate window containing the same document.  To do this, click the “New Window” button on the View Ribbon.

This will open a second window with the title “<Your Document Name>:2”, where <Your Document Name> is the name of your document.

Both of these windows show the exact same document.  Typing in one window will change the other (they really are the same document).  The only difference is that now the scroll bars work independently and it is possible to show different pages of the same document in different windows.  In the picture above, Page 1 and Page 3 are being shown in two separate windows.