April 12, 2024 - This week’s notables

Infrastructure & Support  

This week our infrastructure and support efforts focused around resolving issues. As much as we aspire to be more than ‘break-fix IT,’ there are times that is exactly what we are. For instance, despite the endorsement of Xerox XPPS in last week’s newsletter, we ran into a process failure with a contracted printer supply fulfilment. We spent an inordinate amount of time advocating on behalf of our customer and finding alternative supplies while the issue is being resolved. While it was a major failure on Xerox’ behalf, it did help us strengthen our side of the house and as a result we identified opportunities to provide a better customer experience in times when external processes fall short. 

Another issue we are tackling this week is making sure that our customers’ email authentication records are set up properly. In most cases we have adequately configured the Domain Name Server (DNS) records as part of tenant configuration. In some cases, things may not be set up as modern security requirements demand - depending on the age of the tenant or how it was configured initially by other support providers.  

A little background on the issue. 

The problem is that Google and Yahoo mail are rejecting emails if the proper Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM) or Sender Policy (SPF) records are not added to DNS. You’ll know this is a problem if you sent an email and received a non-deliverable report with the error message: “550 5.0.350 Remote server returned an error -> 554 Message not allowed.” 

We’ll be in touch if we identify this as an issue for your organization and we don’t have the information needed to resolve it, otherwise, there’s no action required for you. If you do receive the error message mentioned above, let us know and we can help get you on the right track! 

As a fun aside, since Monday is our day to focus on Infrastructure & Support, we also took some time to appreciate this week’s Solar Eclipse! Hope you got a chance to see it! Ilya traveled with his family to experience totality, and while cloud cover prevented a direct view of the eclipse, he reports the darkness was an experience to behold! 

Devices 

This week Ricky participated in an Intune refresher hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management solution that offers a range of features to help organizations manage devices and applications used to access company resources. Its primary features include device management, application management, policy deployment, and self-service capabilities. These features support dynamic workforces, ensuring secure access to organizational resources wherever work happens. 

Taylor is training up on WatchGuard Endpoint Security features as the offerings are an increasingly important part of our security practice. WatchGuard offers a comprehensive suite of endpoint security solutions to combat these challenges. With products like Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Endpoint Protection Detection and Response (EPDR), users can benefit from a layered approach to security, focusing on prevention, visibility, detection, and response.  

Additionally, WatchGuard emphasizes the importance of managing computers effectively within their environment using filters, groups, and the versatile Endpoint Agent, which offers ease of deployment and robust monitoring capabilities. Furthermore, Threat Sync, a cloud-based service integrated with WatchGuard solutions, provides incident management and automation policies to streamline security operations and enhance overall protection. With a focus on understanding threats, managing incidents, and leveraging automation, WatchGuard equips users with the tools needed to navigate today's complex security landscape effectively.

Operations & Growth 

Taylor has made excellent progress with our Dynamic 365 optimizations! We’re finishing the week with a review of changes that have been made in the sandbox environment, and if all goes well, we hope to have the solution published for our use soon!

Information Radiation

We’ve been talking about LMS365 a lot lately, and you may recall our most recent episode of the How Do I Happy Hour, where we briefly introduced the platform and its features. To our surprise, LMS365 re-introduced themselves as ‘Zensai,’ the world’s first Human Success Platform. This is late-breaking news, and we’re excited to learn the details. Stay tuned for an update soon! 

In other news, Taylor is exploring Power Pages – a new Power Platform tool that can be used for creating, hosting, and administering external-facing business websites. We’re looking forward to a How Do I Happy Hour feature on this topic soon.