Author: kbbj4

Setting up remote workers

What’s needed to get companies up and running remotely so employees can work from home.

Need people to work from home? Probably. These tips are especially useful to key decision-makers and will help get people up and running quickly. Silicon Valley has an obsession with something called, “Minimum Viable Product,” and that will be your goal here. You don’t need to wait on everything being perfect to get value and you can really start having people work from home with a few things.

  1. A computer. Their computer, your computer, whatever. Don’t wait on Amazon to have a good sale on laptops, just get your people out the door. Their computer is going to be a little more anxiety-inducing than sending a computer home from the office, but it will be okay. There are a few ways to mitigate that anxiety we’ll get to.
  2. The internet. Obviously.
  3. Email. Make sure they can remotely access email. If you use Google or Microsoft Office 365 you are already set. If you use an on-prem email system it may take a little bit of work, but not much.
  4. Instant Messenger +. Microsoft Teams is awesome and currently free. If you have Office 365 definitely use Teams. You can also use Slack, which is pretty slick and free(there are some paid items you can research later if you want them, but no need right away). These applications keep email inboxes from being clogged and allow more streamlined and collaborative communication. I call it an instant messenger + because they do so much more than just messages.
  5. Multifactor authentication. Set this up where you can on your applications. It will really help with security. On the useful-easy to implement curve, it’s about the highest thing.

Those are the basics. If you can do them, send everyone home right now; it will be fine. At some point, you may want the following if you need access to files on computers or servers, payroll databases, etc.

  1. VPN or Virtual Private Network. It’s a fancy tunnel into your company’s network and is great for remote workers needing to access on-premise items. If you have a business firewall, you probably have one already and it just needs to be set up. A small warning with firewall VPN’s is they slow down and cause bottlenecks a lot quicker than a dedicated VPN server. If you have over 50 people or start noticing a slowdown on your network, I would recommend going with something like Watchguard or OpenVPN or Cisco AnyConnect. You can also set it up to split the tunnel into items required to be on the business network and those that aren’t, such as Spotify.
  2. Remote Desktop Services. Setup correctly this will help those folks using their own computers be a little more secure on your network. It creates a session to a Windows desktop in your network and allows employees to work as if they were in the office. If you have a Microsoft Windows environment, it’s not too difficult to set this up and provide direction to your employees. I prefer the ease of a VPN, but if your employees are using their own computers, this may be a better choice for you.
  3. Softphones. This is the coolest piece of technology to me. Either your IT department or phone vendor can probably set this up. Employees download a fancy little application on their computer or cell phone and now have access to the phone that sits on their desk.

I look forward to seeing what other types of advice people have. This is by no means written in stone by me and so many people have been studying and implementing these things for years.

If you have any questions or would like some help setting up, don’t hesitate to reach out. I can be reached via email at contact@benstitt.com or called at ‪(616) 552-9759‬

Little Things

Trying to get some work done at my house, I ended up calling an old client. The woman who answered the phone immediately knew who I was and told me how much she missed me and how I saved her life on many occasions. I’m pretty sure I didn’t literally save her life, but to someone working in a front office who can’t do something like email or print, when you fix that it’s pretty close. Something challenging like finding the minimum attenuation for wireless devices in a warehouse are the most interesting, but clearing Internet Explorer cache so a website works again makes someone a magician.

oh hey there

I’m Ben. This is my site. Welcome aboard. Quick one for you: I like technology, political theory, games, books, my dog and cat, race cars. I also haphazardly run spaceforce2024.com, which is home of my hobby video game project. Yup, I’m learning to make video games so I can hone my programming skills that are lackluster, at best. Also, I’m working on my pet project that has been trying to burst forth from my brain for a couple years now: thehackernomicon.com. It’s a great documentation site for IT pros that let you cut through the garbage of trying to find how to do something.