Command Control Power: Apple Tech Support & Business Talk

-Jerry talks of how business has slowed down for him since all of the recent events have occurred

-Joe has been busy setting up remote access for corporate clients and he hasn’t felt an impact as of yet

-Sam starts to broach the subject of maintaining security on home computers

-One of Sam’s client laid off 95% of their workforce 

-Projects have been put on hold

-How long will the shelter in place for the New York area last?

-An office move that Sam had referenced in the last episode is still going to move forward under special circumstances.  An HCS tech will arrive on site when nobody else is in the office in order to connect equipment.

-Jerry has retail clients that are cutting prices due to the times

-Could we learn something from retailers slashing prices?

-Jerry reminds us that we are relying on supplies from other countries like China, which could cause delays even if we do want to start projects.

-Sam ordered a new MacBook Air

-Simply asking is an approach that Joe says could speak a discussion for moving on work

-Jerry inquires about “Sam’s buddy” with the restaurant, who is surviving with curb side pick ups and delivery

-One of Jerry’s clients receives a very well done phishing scam that does a redirect through Microsoft One Drive.  Thankfully they caught it in time.  Jerry was surprised as to how casual the compromised vendor was about it.

-As the topic of newsletter and reaching out comes back up, Joe has some thoughts of dark web scanning and phishing tests.  Sam has some ideas of reaching out just with information as opposed to a marketing pitch, followed up by individual calls to the client.

-Some of our fellow consultants like Michael Thomsen of Origin 84 and Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys have contributed to the show with some of their ideas for contacting clients

-Thank you to all of our newest Patreon sponsors: Daniel Carroll Tim Hannon Sikko Lucas Nick Harvey Sara Gepp - Close to the Earth IT AJ Protebka - Campfire Technology Group Remie Cremers - Tesla Pro Tips

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We welcome Adam Engst from TidBITS back to the show!

-Adam comes in to discuss the current times and finding ways to adapt your work life to this new environment

-Things have moved quickly in a short amount of time

-Joe actually headed out west shortly before many of the recent events and had to self quarantine

-Drive through testing for COVID-19 is available but not in all areas

-Adam describes how hard it has been to concentrate on work lately

-This has also affected his local runner’s club events

-Adam’s never had an office and life working from home has been normal for him.  But for others, it’s not the norm and it presents its challenges.

-Another unexpected part of this, as Jerry & Sam have experienced, is working with children at home, who have their own work to accomplish.

-It is important to take breaks!

-Sam has a client move to complete that may not be able to shift dates.  He is trying to figure out how to deal with that.

-If you do go out, it is advised to change your clothes.  But as Adam mentions from an emergency responder, it matters how you take those items off.

-Joe has hardware labor to complete and is contemplating various methods of exchanging equipment, like “dead drops”.

-Take Control Books has a new free book called “Working From Home Temporarily” by Glenn Fleishman: https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/working-from-home/

-Adam’s son attends Cornell University and they, along with other colleges and universities, have their own situations to deal with

-Restaurants are another industry that is taking a major hit and some have shut down operations preemptively since they cannot afford to lose that much business

-Currently, IT consultancies are in demand to support clients with remote support and home office setup.  But how long will that last if businesses do not have the money to move forward?

-A discussion brews about newsletters and what we should be said and how much should you push services

-Adam has been pondering what the theme of April’s TidBITS Content Newsletter (https://tcn.tidbits.com) should be.  Working remotely will be a prime focus

-Some advice from Adam: Offer something new to your clients if possible

-An amazing product that Adam recommends is called Otter: https://otter.ai - which offers real time transcription and can integrate with a service like Zoom.  

-Do your research and get information from verified locations like World Health Organization, CDC, Johns Hopkins University: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

-It’s nice to see people and neighbors offering to help those that may not be able to get their own supplies for one reason or another

-Adam wraps up with some excellent tips about how other countries have dealt with this and what we can do

-In tech news, Apple released new products, including the new MacBook Air!  This is discussed on the TidBITS site: https://tidbits.com/2020/03/18/new-macbook-air-features-magic-keyboard-and-lower-price/

-Jerry & Sam sit down to talk about how current times are affecting our businesses

-Next week we will have Adam Engst from The TidBITS Content Network to talk more about tips for operating our businesses during trying times

-Sam describes reaching out to monthly clients to make them aware of remote support for the next couple of weeks

-Speaking of TidBITS Content Network, Jerry talks about reaching out to clients with information

-Sam is very curious about how our fellow consultants are handling the situation

-Due to a Jamf 200 class coming up, Sam has to be in New York City this week and expresses his concern. But it does make him think about how to handle interactions

-Misinformation on social media aggravates Sam tremendously

-Supply availability is a very real issue in Jerry’s parts

-Jerry has small client visits this week that he is keeping on the calendar as of now

-Remote access has been a feature that is keeping some of us very busy

-Chrome Remote Desktop is a decent alternative for remote access that can be used in smaller environments: https://remotedesktop.google.com

-Syncing a local Synology NAS with a cloud service can make access to data simpler

-While Sam has not sent out a message to all of his clients but Jerry has taken the step of keeping his clients informed

-ACEs Conference has been postponed until October 20-21, 2020.  Justin & team are working to hold a virtual conference May 19-20 and Command Control Power will be a part of it!  10% of ticket sales are being donated to No Kid Hungry.  Stay tuned for more information.

-If you have topics or something you would like to discuss on the show or mail in to the show, let us know!

-Deliveries is a great app from JuneCloud to track shipments for your business or your clients from any carriers

https://junecloud.com/software/iphone/deliveries.html

-Very top of mind is the delay of shipments from China due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

-It is reminiscent of the shortage of SSD drives from Taiwan due to extreme weather

-Conferences like Google IO, Facebook F8 have been canceled due to virus concerns as well

-Joe suggests to run a report to see where core equipment and hardware come from to make sure you have stock in case of shortages

-Jerry recently had to do a big restore from BackBlaze.  Both Joe & Sam suggested having a drive sent.  But Jerry proactively prepared the backup overnight and then restored all 70 GB before arriving to the client site. 

-After struggling to unzip the data using multiple GUI tools, Jerry was able to use the command line to extract the data

-All this reminds the hosts how many end users don’t think to backup their Mac

-DollyDrive anyone?

-With the uncertainties about data integrity on Catalina, listener Chris Hart writes in to provide his workflow for migrating to Apple’s latest OS.  Steps include booting from an external volume and using Carbon Copy Cloner.

-Another option for comparing files that Joe suggests is using the ‘diff’ or ‘rsync’ commands

-Any listeners have their own methods for migration to mitigate the risks of data loss?

-Command Control Power has a few new Patreon sponsors to announce. Thank you to the following patrons for responding to our call: Bruce Corson Rocco Russo Kevin Cox Steven Kurtz

-Joe wants to know how many billable hours his fellow consultants bill in a given week

-Sam & Jerry quickly produce their numbers as they were not aware there was a quiz

-An addition that Sam mentions is the recurring revenue from MSP clients, which helps as a stable baseline for those slow weeks/months

-Jerry wonders how relevant those billable hours are in comparison to simply knowing how much revenue is needed to “keep the lights on”

-Subtracting raw numbers of a 40 hour work week (for admin tasks, internal meetings, etc.), Joe ends up with 19 possible billable hours per consultant, per week.

-With Joe & Sam having employees, Jerry poses questions about incentives for them to keep the numbers up and bring in revenue for the company

-Sam had an issue where his employee was not documenting quick fixes with MSP clients because he thought it simply didn’t matter.

-Even when time is not billable, or you extend a discount to a client, you should always document and show this to the client. You never know when you need to call back to this information.

-Jerry pushes Joe & Sam to find out how they physically document hours not dedicated to clients

-Quoting job estimates takes time that a consultant can master over time

-Sam disappears right in the nick of time!

-Command Control Power needs your help. If you feel like the show has benefited you and your business, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

-Joe happens to be in his office for a change yet Sam is recording at 65+ MPH

-As Sam is using AirPods to record, they discuss the naming convention behind AirPods Pro

-Joe has a mail migration to handle for a client and is sad to discover POP mailboxes in the mix

-Local mailboxes create a need to migrate to a mail server using a mail client.  Both Joe & Sam prefer Outlook over Apple Mail for this purpose.

-Curve balls in a project like mail migrations always make billable time a challenge

-This calls to mind a recent proposal that Sam presented to a new client, only to find that they had additional devices that he didn’t account for

-As Sam looks to increase monthly revenue, he is focusing on additional services like JumpCloud & Backupify.

-One of Sam’s clients decides to openly risk data loss when presented with cloud backup options in Backupify.

-This same client recently had a migration from a local file server to Google Drive and even with a planning meeting involved, still came up with surprises and workflow changes that made the process an ongoing challenge

-Joe recalls a story of hanging up on a client after being disrespectfully addressed

-“They’re not jerks.  They’re just stupid!”

-Respect in a working relationship is an absolute necessity 

-Sometimes you should not take on a new client if you see red flags

-A benefit of “co-opetition” is warning each other about difficult clients

-Joe has been performing a number of migrations to Dropbox lately

-Sam has a question for Joe & fellow consultants when choosing cloud storage services if a client has a product that already has that functionality

-“Failure mode observations” by Joe.  Could this be another corner?

-Command Control Power needs your support. If you feel like the show has benefited you and your business, please consider supporting us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

-Jerry has a real head scratcher with a new client who had files disappearing from the desktop. He tried various fixes, including the keyboard shortcut to show hidden files: Command + Shift + Period. As it turns out, it was Parallels Desktop that had a toggle to hide items on the desktop. Face Palm!

-The next thing Jerry had to deal with was, how much should he charge?

-PSA from one of our listerners - 10.15.3 appears to correct the bug of data loss in Apple Mail. Thanks to Claire @ Passion Support for bringing it to our attention

-Another listener and “verified oldster” Glenn Kowalski describes the details behind some older network terminology like AppleTalk & LocalTalk

-Joe describes some helpful details about local IP address reporting within Watchman Monitoring

-Joe describes his frustrations with diagnosing logs on macOS

-Shout out to our friends at The TidBITS Content Network for their invaluable contributions

-Joe shares a story from listener Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys where a client fell for a painfully obvious scam

-Jerry has a positive experience to share setting up Eero in a residential environment

-With mesh networks, Joe also leans towards Eero for ease of setup and maintenance.  But he does have concerns about privacy and ownership by Amazon

-The Eero Pro portal to manage all of your clients is a nice benefit to centrally manage things like updates and adding devices. https://pro.eero.com

-Not surprisingly, a UniFi topic kicks off the show.  As Jerry rolls his eyes about the UniFi Dream Machine, it appears UniFi has released a rack mountable Dream Machine Pro: https://store.ui.com/products/udm-pro

-Joe recounts a story of him installing a Dream Machine and Flex HD https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-dream-machine https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-flexhd

-Joe has a PSA  and UniFi best practices to share: Turn off Settings > Site > Uplink Connectivity Monitor (only if no mesh access points in use!). Turn off Settings > Site > Auto-Optimize Network. Turn off Settings > Wireless Networks > SSID > Advanced Options > High Performance Devices.  Modify the DTIM Period? 

-Wi-Fi channel management and manual vs automatic is something Sam & Jerry differ on

-DHCP vs static vs DHCP reservations.  What do you do?

-Joe has a new business idea for an auto power cycling router

-The gang jokes about photos clients take and send to help diagnose issues

-Sam discovers that you can set up a single UniFi access point without the use of a controller and simply use the app

-UniFi “rolling upgrades” via the controller can be confusing, as noted by Joe when doing it recently.  It's mostly been successful, because the Start Rolling Upgrade button is only available when viewing the "Wireless" tab, which only lists the APs – and yet, it includes the switch update as part of it 

-Jerry has a client that requires manual firmware of their 16 Ubiquiti UniFi devices using SSH

-Zendesk has a great API to use with mail clients so you can quickly change the status of tickets, assign to agents, etc.  Sam discovers this late in the Zendesk game but it has already made him much more efficient dealing with tickets: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203691006-Using-the-Mail-API-to-update-ticket-properties-from-your-inbox

-Another PSA from Joe, Apple has begun recycling serial numbers for Mac computers so companies like Watchman Monitoring need a new method of determining the estimated age of a machine. https://beetstech.com/blog/decode-meaning-behind-apple-serial-number https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/06/apple-randomized-serial-numbers-late-2020/

-Sam has an odd end result when dealing with an old issue of Spotlight being unable to search Outlook emails

-The “Focused” email in Outlook can be too easy to click on and confuse the user.  Jerry has seen this all too often.  Joe wants to rename it “randomly hide some of my stuff”.

-As the spotlight conversation goes on, Joe mentions a script he created in Addigy to destroy and rebuild the spotlight database: https://prod.addigy.com/#/macmanage/community/scripts/5dddb3325ff0a156d595558d

-Jerry & Sam have a rare show together

-Sam is short staffed for a week and, of course, everything happens at once

-A discussion brews about the state of business in Connecticut 

-Working remotely is something Joe is very familiar with but Sam discusses working remotely with clients that move out of state

-An Apple retail store is relocating to a closer location to Sam & Joe, possibly creating new opportunities

-When business is slow, Jerry has some methods of drumming up business by developing partnerships.  One example is Drive Savers’ partner program: https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/partner-programs/

-Another great podcast that Jerry suggest (and Sam won’t listen to) is “The Dream” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dream/id1435743296

-Sam was in a difficult spot training a fellow consultancy on Jamf Pro for a client.  When their newly trained employee left, the client was now left in the lurch.

-Jerry talks about some red flags to look out for when meeting with potential new clients

-As Sam tries to automate more in his business, he came across a Zendesk integration called Deadline, by SweetHawk: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/deadline/

 -A tip from Jerry for after hours or automated replies to inquiries is the smith.ai web widget: https://docs.smith.ai/article/pzfvnbq5xl-how-to-access-your-smith-ai-live-chat-widget-code

-Sam is exploring a similiar web widget from Zendesk: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203908456-Using-Web-Widget-to-embed-customer-service-in-your-website

-Teaser for another show, Sam goes head first into Addigy functionality and finds a treasure trove of features

-Sam is on the island of Manhattan teaching a Jamf class

-He also has an update to the issues affecting him since upgrading to Catalina, including the loss of iCloud reminders.

-Besides blocking Catalina with Addigy and other MDM solutions, ignoring Catalina in Software Update is a good addition: sudo softwareupdate —ignore “macOS Catalina”

-Sam describes frustrations when attempting to set up voice recognition using “Hey Siri” on his HomePod

-Making a push through Addigy is a focus Sam Is trying to make a priority in 2020

-A bug in Safari with Addigy is properly displaying APNs Push Certificate expiration dates.  Other browsers work as expected.

-Joe has had success with clients using secure passwords with the strong password feature in Safari

-Follow up to Joe’s SIM hacking issue with his client - the department that handles issues with porting at Verizon is the Unauthorized Port Team

-A client that Sam parted ways with had decided to fight his final bill so a mutually agreed upon number

-Sam decided to add verbiage to his MSP that ensures his company is always involved in the decision making for technology related purchases

-A big thank you to Richard Wingfield and Justin Esgar for solid advice in Sam updating his MSP agreement

-New billing practices, additional details, and per user/per device pricing are some of the changes and updates that are being planned out

-The next trick is to find the time to implement all of these changes