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âOur Offices are Closed Due to the Pandemicâ
By Joe Warren, Director of Technology
bility for âsoft phones,â so people could use their computer as their desk phone through the VPN. Terry Terenzetti, LASMNYâs IT director, contacted our vendor to see what we could do to expand that. The vendor stepped up and offered us the licensing we would need for 60 days. The catch was, we had to decide how many licenses we needed and then pay them to install them. At the end of the 60 days, we had the option to have them removed, or to purchase all of the licensing we had requested, all in all about a $15,000 expense.
The words came from Dennis at the end of March. My immediate reaction was âGood Golly Gosh! How in the snick- âThis wonât last longer than 60 daysâ, we said. We were erdoodles are we going to make this work?â Or something wrong. like that. Unfortunately, as we began rolling the software out, we began to have problems. Our firewall configuration had to After the initial shock wore off, I started to do an assessment on how to make the move from the office into peo- be changed to allow the softphones to work. I called our technology consultant, Just-Tech, and John Griener had a pleâs houses. technician available to do the updates within a day or two, People would need computers. Fortunately, LSCNY has at a reduced rate. As we added more people working rebeen moving towards a more mobile workforce, so most motely, our office internet connection started to slow of the staff attorneys had laptops. That left the people down. Once again the vendor stepped up. Northland Comwho normally worked inside the office to worry about. Our munications offered to double our internet speed for 90 helpline staff. Our administrative staff. Accounting. Recepdays at no charge. tion. I was lucky enough to have a few ârecently retiredâ âThis wonât last for 90 days.â Wrong again. laptops sitting around, waiting to be disposed of. A few upgrades, and they were ready to go. When those ran out, Then I started getting emails and calls about problems. some people were willing to take their desktop computers Normally I would walk down the hall, look over the userâs home. Everyone had some way to move their office into shoulder and help them solve the issue. That wasnât going their family room. So the exodus began, and I helped peo- to work. So, we purchased remote access software, so I ple pack up their computers, and talked them through could remotely see what the problem was and help. setting them up at home, or visited their house and set Along the way, one of the calls I got was from Karen about them up. the accounting software. It was never very fast, but reNext: They would need to access the data on our internal motely, it was almost unusable. Another call to a vendor. A servers from their homes. As part of our move towards week later, our entire accounting system was residing in being more mobile, VPN access was already in place. We the cloud. could accommodate up to 250 people working remotely. We were finally functional. Not great, but able to do our Up next: Our client management system. Fortunately, also, jobs. As we were looking to improve on what we had, in we had just move to LegalServer, a cloud-based client true Murphyâs Law fashion, curve balls started to come in. management system. No problem there. Microsoft said, âWe know youâre busy and all, but we think you need to move from Skype to Teams for your video After that: Phones. All of our desk phones werenât going meetings. Surprise!â And we learned how to use Teams. be usable remotely. Our phone system had limited capa-
