April 17, 2025 - This week’s notables
Happy almost Easter! From smooth migrations to smart homes and snazzy new portals—big things are blooming at INW!
Upcoming Events
Mark your calendar and join us at Longview Farm for the following upcoming events! We're excited to welcome you—just make sure to set your GPS to 143 Cedar Ln. Glenmoore, PA 19343 (avoid Cedar Ridge Ln) for the best route straight to the fun!
📆 April 26th | 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Earth Day at Longview Farm
Event Highlights:
Nature Walks: Explore our scenic walking paths through the woods and fields.
Art Exhibit: Visit The Longview Gallery to see our latest artist solo shows and group exhibits.
Family Activities: Fun and educational activities for kids and families to learn about sustainability and the environment.
📆 May 3rd to June 28th | Pushing Up Daisies will be on display at the Longview Gallery for two months.
Opening Reception | May 3rd from 5 to 8pm
If you cannot make it to the opening, mark your calendars for the 1st Saturday in June — we will have Shayna Parker’s Artist Talk followed by live music!
We are delighted to host this body of work at the Longview Gallery, and we look forward to sharing it with you.
Infrastructure & Support
This week has started off much more calmly than the previous one, and we are grateful for it! Recent migration efforts have demanded constant monitoring, detailed communication regarding project progress, and meticulous examination of thousands of potential errors to ensure that the migrated files are accessible to users. Although sometimes challenging, we are thrilled to see this project nearing completion.
Lastly, we are continuing our work in Copilot Studio to develop a virtual chat agent for a customer account, and we're discovering the potential for enhancing INW's HelpDesk support with Copilot Studio. What are your thoughts on using a virtual agent for technical support?
Devices
We are closely monitoring how tariffs impact technology prices. This week, we reassessed the purchase cost of an item we sold last week. Although we anticipated some increase, we were stunned by a rise of over 28% within just one week. To put this in perspective, the item was a laptop, and its cost increased by more than $250.
A recent article from PCWorld highlighted broader effects on the tech sector beyond merely price hikes. Catch the summary below, or read it yourself here: U.S. tariffs disrupt the tech industry: 8 vital things you need to know | PCWorld
Key Points:
Increasing Tariffs: The U.S. has imposed escalating tariffs on imports from several countries, including China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Tariffs on Chinese goods have reached 54%, and steel and aluminum imports face a 25% tariff.
Impact on Tech Prices: The tariffs are causing significant price increases for tech products, as companies cannot absorb the sudden tax hikes. Retailers like Best Buy and Target have warned of immediate price increases.
Production Shifts: Manufacturers are looking to move production to other countries like Vietnam and India, but this process is slow and doesn't guarantee price protection.
Unpredictable Prices: The ongoing changes in tariffs make it difficult for companies to predict future prices, leading to potential chaos in tech product pricing.
Global Effects: The impact of U.S. tariffs will ripple globally, affecting consumers outside the U.S. due to higher production costs and logistics changes.
Innovation Slowdown: The unstable economic environment may limit investment in new products, potentially slowing down innovation in the tech industry.
Operations & Growth
During this week's Operations & Growth Lab, the team focused on preparing for the rollout of the Business Central time sheet system to the entire LVF team. Licensing and configurations have been implemented to facilitate the transition, and we are eager to streamline the timekeeping process for all members of INW, LVF, and LVG. This initiative will also help us achieve better budget alignment and forecast expenses more accurately across the organization!
We are also giving more thought to the Home IT service, known as ‘Smart Home Solutions.’ This offering continues to gain traction with frequent requests from our customers for personal IT support. Although progress has been slow, our experiences provide valuable insights for effective marketing and implementation of this service line.
Lastly, an update on our conservation efforts at Longview Farm. This week, our contract with the USDA NRCS was approved, and we have scheduled a field visit with Timber Ridge Forestry LLC for next week! Exciting news to kick off the season! Additionally, we are busy with field and brush cleanup around the property and looking forward to a project that will enhance the barn entrance both aesthetically and functionally.
Information Radiation
This week finally allowed us to do some customization on the Longview Farm Events Portal. Although it's still in the works, so hold off on exploring it for now! We're thrilled about this development, not only because we’ll have a functional event portal, but also because it offers a real-world application to work with PowerPages, the new public portal platform for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Real-Time Events.
Microsoft Dynamics Marketing is a module within Microsoft Dynamics that INW utilizes for managing marketing emails and events. It is fully integrated with our CRM, Microsoft Dynamics Field Service, which is where we handle business contacts, customer assets, support cases, and more. It's a highly dynamic platform that deserves its own detailed post.
In the past year, Microsoft phased out the legacy dynamics portals and introduced PowerPages as their replacement. PowerPages is an advanced tool designed to assist organizations in creating, managing, and publishing web pages effortlessly. It offers a user-friendly interface and robust features for seamless integration with other Microsoft services, enhancing digital presence and customer engagement. This marks a significant improvement over the legacy portal, which required coding for minor changes to the portal’s appearance.
So far, PowerPages is living up to expectations and is quite enjoyable to work with. Its intuitive interface allowed for a relatively quick refresh of the default page. The LVF Events Portal is starting to feel more like home. Up next for renovation is the inWorks LLC Support Portal...yes, we have one of those!