Has anyone been involved in an e-discovery action?

I have never implemented an e-mail retention policy. I really should. A quick Google brings up this document https://www.theemaillaundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Email_Retention_UK.pdf, which says:

Is your company in a heavily regulated industry that has existing data retention requirements? Outside of regulations
governing certain industries, the answer is usually a bit nebulous in terms of defining clear retention periods. In the US For
SEC- and FINRA-regulated firms, Rule 17a-4 of the Securities and Exchange Act requires retention of emails for at least three
years, with the first two years stored in an easily accessible place. In the UK the Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulates
financial services providers. The FSA's regulations require all financial institutions to store all business emails sent and
received for up to six years, and some emails indefinitely, so that cases can be reviewed.
But outside of financial services, there is no universal law for document retention. The only far-reaching requirement is to
preserve documents, emails and information when a company is on notice of pending litigation (per FRCP(US) CRP(UK)). At
this point, a “litigation hold” must be implemented to retain information the company reasonably believes is discoverable in
anticipated litigation. However, email retention requirements vary from industry to industry and from case to case.

I'm in Manufacturing, which doesn't appear to be regulated. I believe any retention policy should centre around less is more, ie delete as much e-mail as you can legally get away with to reduce your exposure during e-discovery. So on those grounds, I think I should be actively NOT backing up e-mail and should NOT use GFI to archive e-mail or purchase licences for O365 legal hold. I believe O365 retains deleted mail for a maximum of 30 days which covers you for accidents and malware but not much else.

Then again, should I be losing any sleep over this when the next President of The US gets away with just using Hotmail?

Any views?

@Joel said in Backing up Office 365 mailboxes:

I was going to look at GFI Mail Essentials and see if that does the trick.

This is what we use. I wouldn't recommend it. But I think you either need a third-party archiving service like GFI or the legal hold options on O365, neither of which is particularly low-cost, I believe.

Wherever I've worked decisions have always been made collectively amongst various stakeholders.

Often involving politics, diplomacy, compromise and ego-stroking.

@scottalanmiller said in Exchange Online Migration From POP3:

@Carnival-Boy still looking to move Sharepoint? Any progress.

I'd forgotten that Microsoft has killed Foundation (2013 will be the last version), so there is no longer a free version of Sharepoint. If you need it, you have to pay for it. I'd forgotten this even though I actually posted it on ML a year ago (I think my memory is going in my old age).

Add that to the fact that it appears that migrating from on-premise to online is not a simple task (compared with say Exchange), and I'm coming round to thinking it would be foolish to further invest in Sharepoint Foundation 2013 and we're better off moving to Sharepoint online asap. It will mean extra cost in the short-term, because we'll have to buy a load of O365 subscriptions, but less cost in the long-term (as eventually we will have to migrate from on-premise to online since Foundation is the only product that makes financial sense on-premise and Foundation has been killed).

@scottalanmiller said in A Mandate to Be Cheap:

Internal IT rules because businesses are not smart, are taught to fear the concept of external services and because business skills are not taught here...No one knows what crazy logic these companies have. But I've been preaching that any shop under three full time IT people is too small to even discuss having internal staff for many years.

@Breffni-Potter said in A Mandate to Be Cheap:

Why would a business owner choose an MSP when most MSPs are yeehaw cowboys who are out of their control a lot of the time.

Yes, that's generally been my experience, and the experience of many of my friends. Well, I haven't experienced cowboys, but neither have I been satisfied. I guess I'm just not smart

Do you mean your boss or the boss of the department making the request? Either way, clarifying via e-mail should be sufficient to CYA, shouldn't it? "Hey boss, do you want a printer with that?"

Employees at our place are given spending limits. So if you have a $500 spending limit, you can spent it without getting in to trouble - because we're trusting you not to screw up small purchases. If you're spending limit is $2000, we're trusting you a bit more. So no-one should get blamed for anything. My spending limit is actually pretty small, and that's the way I like it. I effectively order what I want, but the purchase orders always have my bosses signature on them, not mine.

Cos I can see this being his life:

Youtube Video

Looks good but I need to discourage this particular employee from going on gaming forums, not encourage them.

@scottalanmiller said in Programming Printers:

We used to have them like this.

We still do!

@Breffni-Potter said in Homeworking:

@Carnival-Boy said in Homeworking:

I believe it does, but I haven't used it. Note that I'm not just looking at chat between IT staff, I'm looking at using it company wide for users to chat to us.

Again, FreshDesk Have a chat window on the support page, this doubles up because if no one is online, they get to fill in a ticket.

You want to drive people to as few sources as possible.

I believe chat is only available on their mid-priced plans and higher (from $25 per agent). We're only on the free plan. I'm not sure it's a feature worth paying for at the moment.

Sounds like Skype FTW. Do you login with your O365 accounts or do you need separate personal Microsoft accounts?

@guyinpv said in Homeworking:

Don't think "how do I know how many hours he works"; think "is he getting work done that satisfies employment."
In other words, is he getting satisfactory work done in reasonable time, versus trying to time track which is only a measurement of time, not work. You might even consider going salaried since time-tracking makes less sense with a remote worker. Unless their job is heavily based on particular hours "doing stuff".

Good luck!

We're all salaried here. Agree with focusing on how much work is being done rather than how many hours are being worked though. Most companies are focused on measuring hours worked - partly because it's easier to measure than work achieved, especially in IT where it's not like you can count the number of widgets a worker has produced in a week as you can with a factory line. I just need to figure out some KPIs.

Because we're awesome and people just like to hang out with us

I'll take a look. I suppose it comes down to the fact that I find Freshdesk a bit mediocre. It's ok as a ticketing system, but I'm not sure how much I want to extend it to other areas.

@scottalanmiller said in IT Consultant / Manage Service Practices:

@Carnival-Boy said in IT Consultant / Manage Service Practices:

But I don't expect an individual consultant to be a generalist.

Why? If you don't expect that of internal IT, why expect it of consultants? Most consultants are generalists. The vast majority. Certainly not all, but definitely most. And almost all that do work for the SMB sector.

Because we have generalists internally. What we don't have is specialists. Why would we employ a generalist consultant when we already have that internally?

I believe it does, but I haven't used it. Note that I'm not just looking at chat between IT staff, I'm looking at using it company wide for users to chat to us. A replacement for them coming in to our office, which they won't be able to do when one us is working from home.

We use Skype already, although I don't use it myself, so I will look at that, but I'm assuming Skype currently lacks the team features of Slack.

Oh, I see. Not what I imagined.

I really just want a chat system that integrates with our helpdesk ticketing system (Freshdesk) and our project management system (Trello), which I know Slack does.

@c00l.ice said in IT Consultant / Manage Service Practices:

Local IT Team is capable of doing the day to day operations and management needed for all of the below. Where should a consultant fit it?

In our case, we're the local IT team capable of handling day to day operations. We're all generalists because we work for an SMB. We know a fair a bit about most things, but we're not experts. There are times when we need to bring in an expert, and that's where we employ consultants.

It's like when I go and see my local doctor. Most of the time he can fix me. But there are times when he needs to send me to see a consultant at the hospital.

But I don't expect an individual consultant to be a generalist. I expect them to be a specialist - expert in their field, but ignorant of most other fields. Just like heart specialist the hospital isn't going to fix my broken leg. So either engage with an IT company that employs a number of different specialists (an Exchange guy, a VMware guy) or I employ a number of different individual companies that focus on one thing.

I've never used Slack. I just fancy trying it. We currently use WhatsApp when we're out of the office, which is obviously pretty limited but functional.

A member of my IT tech support team is moving to another part of the country. Rather than losing him, I'm hoping to let him work remotely, with the occasional on-site visit if required (maybe once or twice a month).

Although my company has lots of home and remote workers already, this is the first time I'll have managed one. Do you have any tips on how to make the arrangement as productive and pleasant as possible, in terms of how to manage him, what tools to use to communicate with him (eg slack), and how to keep him motivated and feeling part of the team. I know a number of you work from home, and some of you manage staff remotely (eg @Minion-Queen )

I'm looking forward to it as it'll give us a chance to really utilise a few online tools like Slack, Trello etc etc that are currently under-used because the team is sitting directly opposite each other and so often finds it easier to just open their mouths and talk.