Requesting IT & TeleCom Support

Everyone, please note, in order to increase safety and minimize exposure due to COVID-19, we are enacting the following policies:

1.  If you are assigned a device or a device is requested for you from a supervisor, you will have to pick it up from Collingswood and sign the Agency Property form there. Any devices that have been turned in by staff leaving the agency must also be returned to Collingswood.
2. Anyone having issues with a specific assigned device (smart phone, cell phone, tablet, laptop, aircard, etc) will have to bring the device to Collingswood for troubleshooting, and pick it up when the device is repaired or replaced.
3. If you are in need of a replacement minor computer component (such as a keyboard or mouse) you will have to pick up the device from Collingswood.

The IT department is located at 235 White Horse Pike, Collingswood, NJ 08107. Any major issues that arise (replacing computers/terminals/monitors, repairing client computers, printer issues, site service outages, etc) will still be handled by a visiting IT technician.
 
If you need help with either an information technology or telecommunications related problem, employees should email the Help Desk, helpdesk@voadv.org. Emailing the Help Desk creates a work order for the IT department.

When emailing the Help Desk, please include a short description of your problem in the subject heading (e.g. printer problem, application problem, telephone problem, etc.) of your email and a detailed description of the problem in the body of the e-mail (this includes any error messages that you encounter). Everyone, simply emailing the IT department something is "down" without providing a complete description of the problem (more often than not) increases IT's response time because someone from the department will need to contact you to ask for details about the problem (that could have been included in the initial email request).

If, after sending an email request to the Help Desk, you do not receive an email response from the Help Desk within 10 minutes (see the example below), your request was not received and you should either text or call the IT department at 856-425-0449.

If you need to add additional information to your initial request, reply to the email from the Help Desk or use the appropriate hyperlink listed within the email.

If email is not an option for you, please call for support, 856-425-0449.

Also, if you are working from home and you need help accessing/using Remote Desktop, please request support via VOADV IT Rescue Me during business hours by completing the little form (and then clicking on VOADV IT  Rescue) located in the upper right hand corner of this site.

IT Knowledge Base (New Resource)

In SharePoint, there is a new IT Knowledge Base section in the Public Documents library.

 http://adspv/Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx

We have added the following guides:

• Migrating to Word 2010 from 2003
• Migrating to Excel 2010 from 2003
• Migrating to Outlook from 2003

The Microsoft provided guides will help everyone:

• Learn about key parts of the new interfaces.
• Find free training.
• Locate features.

To open the guides, click on one of the links, and then select 'Open' (instead of Check Out & Open).

Printing Securely and the Danger of Social Media

Fellow employees, today's IT tip concerns printing sensitive data/information (i.e. performance appraisals, client records, etc.).

To print the previously mentioned types of documents, the best way to do so is to use the 'Secure Print' feature available on many of our large copier/printers. Secure Print allows a user to set a password on a print job. Thus, the job isn't printed until the user walks to the machine and enters in the password he/she assigned to the print job.

Dan Scheingold, our IT Specialist, created a  step by step guide regarding  how to use the 'Secure Print' feature; it is available on SharePoint within the Public Documents Section, http://voadvdm/Documents/How%20to%20Secure%20Print.pdf.

Besides providing everyone an extremely useful tip, I would also like to use this little piece of inter-web pie to remind everyone of the danger social media poses to our network. Besides, consuming lots of memory (since the sites constantly update), they (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) harbor malware, malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer functions or sends personal data about the user to unauthorized parties over the Internet. We have, too many times, needed to clean infected servers, adversely impacting the important work of our employees. Therefore, we advise everyone to limit browsing to social media sites and other non-work related sites.

Information Technology Survey 2013 [Ended]

Hello Everyone,

If you haven't completed the survey already, please do so as soon as you can. The more feedback IT gets the better.


Click here http://voadvdm/Lists/Voice%20and%20Data%20II/overview.aspx  or simply open SharePoint and click on the survey named Voice and Data II which is on the lower left menu bar of the page.

Thank you!

Oscar Rueda
Information Systems Administrator
Volunteers of America Delaware Valley, Inc.
235 White Horse Pike
Collingswood, NJ 08107
Phone: 856-425-0449

SharePoint: How to Cancel a Workflow

1. Locate the workflowed document in SharePoint.
2. Place your cursor over the document to bring up the drop-down menu.
3. From the menu, select (click on) Workflows.
4. Click on the workflow listed below the Running Workflows section (e.g. Approval).
5. Click on Cancel this workflow.

Requesting IT Support

Requesting IT & TeleCom Support

If you need help with either an information technology or telecommunications related problem, employees should email the Help Desk, helpdesk@voadv.org. Emailing the Help Desk creates a work order for the IT department.

When emailing the Help Desk, please include a short description of your problem in the subject heading (e.g. printer problem, application problem, telephone problem, etc.) of your email and a detailed description of the problem in the body of the e-mail. Everyone, simply emailing the IT department something is "down" without providing a complete description of the problem (more often than not) increases IT's response time because someone from the department will need to contact you to ask for details about the problem (that could have been included in the initial email request).

If, after sending an email request to the Help Desk, you do not receive an email response from the Help Desk within 10 minutes (see the example below), your request was not received and you should either text or call the IT department at 856-452-0449.

If you need to add additional information to your initial request, reply to the email from the Help Desk or use the appropriate hyperlink listed within the email.

If email is not an option for you, please call for support, 856-425-0449.

SecurManage Conference (Pittsburgh, PA, Oct 14-16, 2012)

For the second year in a row, I had the pleasure (and honor)  of representing the Volunteers of America Delaware Valley at the SecurManage Conference (yes, the e is purposefully missing)  and, once again, I had the opportunity to speak with all of the SecurManage employees who were at the engagement. The following is what I learned during the three days I spent in Pittsburgh.

New Features:

• Dynamic Report Writer
• Using newly adopted technology, the SecurManage support team can now create and add customized reports to the application more efficiently and quickly. Additionally, they can remove reports from any of the report queues their customers identify as unneeded. The ability to remove reports exists on the 'company level' and not the program level.
• Dynamic Page Allocation
• The SecurManage support team can now easily rename fields and hide unneeded fields from the Intake module. In the future, the application will allow customers to make changes to other modules as well.
• High Availability Clustering
• The application is becoming a true 'cloud' program in the near future. The SecurManage technical team is setting up/partnering with a west coast data-center to cross save data between it and the east coast data-center to improve accessibility. The impact/benefit on our end is guaranteed up-time because if one data-center goes offline we will seamlessly switch to the other one.

On a side note, I toured the new Pittsburgh based data-center, PAIR Networks. I can assure you that is a state of the art facility; it has multiple levels of redundancy and an exceptional staff.

My contribution to the conference this year, during the "create a SecurManage wish-list" for the developers portion of the conference, was purely techie. Several of the organizations expressed a concern regarding how SecurManage fails to intelligently segregate case notes and other treatment related data during a clients different stays at programs. I diagrammed how the preceding could be accomplished effectively via schema and normalization best practices. (I will not bore you with the details.) The SecurMange developers  were receptive to my ideas.

Please email me, Oscar Rueda, with any questions pertaining to my time spent at the SecurMange conference.