March 15, 2025 - This week’s notables
Technology Roadmaps, Renaturalization and More!
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!
📆 Sundays, 12 to 3 p.m. – Join us at the Longview Gallery every Sunday to view and shop from our current exhibition, "Wildflower Joy" by Raven George from March 1st to April 26th, 2025!
Infrastructure & Support
In this week's Infrastructure & Support call, the team worked on closing outstanding support tickets.
We've been monitoring an issue with signatures in the new Outlook. A few months ago, Microsoft started updating the legacy Outlook desktop app to a new web-based desktop app, creating a unified experience for both Outlook on the Web and Outlook desktop. Generally, this transition has been smooth, aside from the minor inconvenience of adjusting to relocated settings and features. However, pre-configured email signatures have posed some challenges. We have noticed two distinct issues.
The first issue is that signatures, despite being set, saved, and tested, seem to disappear from settings as if they were never configured. The initial occurrence of this problem involved a complex mailbox setup with multiple accounts. Even after consulting Microsoft engineers, the issue remained unexplained and unresolved. As a workaround, the user manually inserted the signature. We have now encountered a similar situation with another user, but in this instance, the signature cannot be manually inserted.
The second issue involved copying a generated signature from an .htm file and pasting it into the signature setup. Previously, this process worked without issues; however, the new Outlook does not recognize the formatting, resulting in the signature being pasted as plain text. To resolve this, we can open the .htm file with Microsoft Word, then copy and paste it with the formatting intact. This discovery helps us resolve an ongoing customer problem with signature compliance, and we'll be updating instructions to reflect the new procedure.
This week, we will conduct a quarterly IT hygiene review in line with NIST 800-171 compliance for one of our accounts. Although NIST compliance isn't mandatory for every company, the fundamentals of cybersecurity should be a priority for anyone aiming to safeguard their company's data. As part of the quarterly hygiene process, we create reports of all users in a customer's Microsoft environment, examine Azure Sign-in Logs to detect unusual activities, validate the device inventory, and review the devices registered to the customer's Entra ID. These reviews help ensure that unauthorized users cannot access sensitive data and act as a proactive measure for identifying potential security issues.
Devices
In today's ever-changing economy and business landscape, it's more important than ever to assess your technology equipment needs. We're starting to see some price volatility from our vendors, especially for items like computers and monitors. By partnering with inWorks LLC, we can help you proactively evaluate your requirements and make smart purchasing decisions that fit your budget and keep your operations running smoothly.
Price fluctuations can be a challenge for your financial planning, but together, we can tackle these disruptions. With inWorks LLC by your side, you'll have a clear technology roadmap, allowing you to take advantage of bulk purchasing opportunities and avoid those last-minute, high-cost purchases.
Operations & Growth
Our team is reinvigorating the "Lawns Are Bad" project, which seeks to transform suburban and urban properties through renaturalization. This initiative challenges the traditional American green lawn concept by promoting natural spaces that are environmentally beneficial. We have scheduled a meeting with a landscape designer to help bring this vision to reality, potentially opening business opportunities linked to Longview Farm. Additionally, the project includes an educational aspect to teach people how to maintain their new natural landscapes.
On the operational side, we are working on cleaning up contacts in Dynamics to enhance our marketing campaigns. This effort is anticipated to improve the effectiveness of our event and routine marketing activities.
Currently, we are engaged in several short-term, intensive projects, including major client migrations. Conversations with potential new clients are progressing well, and we are hopeful of formalizing these relationships soon. Regarding training, we remind our team of their access to SitePoint, an online platform rich with technology training resources. We will be setting up single sign-on for our team to facilitate easy access.
Overall, our team is making excellent progress across various projects and initiatives. With continued dedication and collaboration, we are well-positioned to achieve our goals and drive positive change both within our company and the broader community.