Tech Adapts in Time of Need

“Our Offices are Closed Due to the Pandemic”

By Joe Warren, Director of Technology

The words came from Dennis at the end of March. My immediate reaction was “Good Golly Gosh! How in the snickerdoodles are we going to make this work?” Or something like that. After the initial shock wore off, I started to do an assessment on how to make the move from the office into people’s houses. People would need computers. Fortunately, LSCNY has been moving towards a more mobile workforce, so most of the staff attorneys had laptops. That left the people who normally worked inside the office to worry about. Our helpline staff. Our administrative staff. Accounting. Reception. I was lucky enough to have a few “recently retired” laptops sitting around, waiting to be disposed of. A few setting them up at home, or visited their house and set them up. could accommodate up to 250 people working remotely. After that: Phones. All of our desk phones weren’t going be usable remotely. Our phone system had limited capability for “soft phones,” so people could use their computer as their desk phone through the VPN. Terry Terenzetti, LASMNY’s 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 pur-

chase all of the licensing we had requested, all in all about a $15,000 expense. “This won’t last longer than 60 days”, we said. We were

wrong. Unfortunately, as we began rolling the software out, we

began to have problems. Our firewall configuration had to be changed to allow the softphones to work. I called our technology consultant, Just-Tech, and John Griener had a technician available to do the updates within a day or two, at a reduced rate. As we added more people working remotely, our office internet connection started to slow down. Once again the vendor stepped up. Northland Communications offered to double our internet speed for 90 days at no charge. 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 user’s home. Everyone had some way to move their office into shoulder and help them solve the issue. That wasn’t 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. Next: 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. 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 Murphy’s Law fashion, curve balls started to come in. management system. No problem there. Microsoft said, “We know you’re busy and all, but we think “This won’t last for 90 days.” Wrong again. Along the way, one of the calls I got was from Karen about the accounting software. It was never very fast, but reWe were finally functional. Not great, but able to do our you need to move from Skype to Teams for your video meetings. Surprise!” And we learned how to use Teams.

Servers failed. And we fixed them. The internet, in general, took a beating with students studying remotely, video con-

ferencing increasing dramatically, and people staying at home, streaming their entertainment. And we complained and dealt with it. So, here we are, 235 days into this. I’m sitting at home on my piecemealed laptop, my dog’s head in my lap with my

The pandemic has redefined how business gets done. Oddly enough, we were already on our way to this. We just had to do it a little faster than we anticipated.

Batman slippers on. We’ve had our daily management Teams meeting (always great to see Sam’s shining beard as

he drives in) and I’m settling in to do some more work. It’s a whole new ball game. The pandemic has redefined how business gets done. Oddly enough, we were already on our way to this. We just had to do it a little faster than we anticipated. Thank you all for your patience in making this whole mess work. It hasn’t been easy on you. Pat yourselves on the back and give yourselves a hearty round of applause. As we continue, Terry and I are exploring new ways to make working remotely not only less painful, but a normal, everyday option. We’re constantly looking at what we did,

how we’re doing and what we can improve. Thanks. 