2018 is almost here! Automated Business Solutions is here to provide you with some tips to make sure your office’s technology helps you reach your goals. Here are a few ideas:

1. Use productivity apps to help you meet your personal goals in the office

One of my favorite productivity apps is Forest by SeekrTech. If you’re anything like me, you may easily be distracted by your phone. When it isn’t productive for you to be using your smartphone, use Forest. With Forest, you can set a timer for how long you need to remain focused on a task outside of your smartphone. If you keep Forest open until the timer runs out you will earn credits and plant a virtual tree. These credits are exchanged to plant real trees in the world. Forest accomplishes this in partnership Trees for the Future. Using Forest makes your productivity time charitable, and rewards you for staying focused. Forest is available for iOS, Android, and now has a Chrome webapp and Firefox addon. You can find out more about Forest at the website at https://www.forestapp.cc/en/

Mindfulness meditation has proven to boost productivity and focus in the workplace and its practice is often a New Year’s resolution of its own. Headspace and Calm. are apps designed to assist with practice of mindfulness. Headspace now comes with business plans and is used by companies like Linkedin, Airbnb, Google, and Spotify. Each app walks you through guided meditations designed to relieve stress, anxiety, and to improve positivity, focus, and energy. Although each comes with a free trial, both require paid addons or subscriptions in order to continually progress with the app.

If you don’t have a personal goal yet (we won’t tell anyone) there is an app help you find vision and ease to attain it. The TED app gives you access to thousands of videos of TED talks on almost every topic. Speakers offer inspiring and visionary ideas in your area of expertise. If you need motivation, start with the TED app to set your 2018 skyrocketing.

When using your phone as a productivity tool, use the Outlook app to access your calendar, set reminders, access email from your smartphone. The Outlook app integrates with Office365 so your Outlook webapp, Outlook desktop application, and phone application will always be in sync. Just sign in with your company’s Office365 account and get moving!

2. Check your backups

When backups are initially set up they don’t operate under the policy of ‘set it and forget it’! Although your managed services provider may be getting positive backup reports they may not know that you want a new drive backed up, or that the new laptop that came in holds mission critical data. Take the time to think through where some of the most important information is being saved and have your managed services provider check to make sure those areas have backups, If its only a few files that are the most critical such as a Quickbooks file, Barracuda MSP backup may be the best solution for you, if it’s the whole network, ask about our Barracuda Backup appliances, that keep a local copy of your backups on the network and uploads to the cloud to provide high reliability and efficiency in your backups, ABS covers both solutions in our MaxxD plans. Hard drive failures don’t happen often, but when they do, give yourself the peace of mind that you have a backup.

3. Have your network evaluated for efficiency and security

Your office may be less secure than you think. Hackers and malware creators use phishing methods that, without a careful eye can deceive some of the most vigilant technology users. It’s good to have powerful antivirus on your network to combat viruses and malware but it is better to prevent malware from landing on your network. Using tools such as a Dell Sonicwall firewall or a Barracuda Essentials Email security filter can reduce the risk of malware by more than half.

4. Have toner replacements ready to go

If you’re looking for greater efficiency from your office in 2018, there is nothing more frustrating than having that efficiency interrupted by a stalled printer, this can leave a whole department down until  that printer is serviced or until toner arrives. You can prevent that from happening by keeping backup toner on hand or if you have a supplies contract sign up to use a tool like FMAudit to make sure your printing supplier is aware when your toner is starting to run low or if a maintenance kit is close to expiring, That way replacements will arrive before you run out.

We hope you can reach every goal you set this coming year.

From all of us at ABS have a Happy New Year!