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“Please tell the boss of Enveloc he has great people for tech support. I have spoken with Josh and Ross…”

This is typical of the unsolicited messages we get. So how do we achieve great technical support? Here is what we do or strive to do:

1. Always have the phone answered by a human being, not a machine. This has been our practice for the past 16 years and we’re not going to change it.
2. Train the tech guys. As talented and educated as they are, they still need to understand the nuances of our product. We run on every Windows operating system, so they need to understand the quirks and differences in those. Our wide variety of clients use every kind of Anti-Virus and Firewall imaginable, and sometimes these products have a bearing on how ours works. So the tech guys need to be aware and know the answers in advance so you, the client, don’t have to discover them for yourself.
3. Keep enough tech support available so there is rarely any wait time. Most clients are as busy or busier than we are, and keeping you waiting does not engender a warm and fuzzy feeling. Sometimes a wait is unavoidable, but we do the best we can. If necessary, the boss will handle tech calls, too.
4. Establish simple and effective procedures and stick to them. There is a method behind our madness, and we have discovered over the years that following procedures makes for efficient support.
5. Don’t ever give up. Sometimes a problem arises that seems to be unsolvable. Sharing it with another set of eyes or thinking creatively often brings the solution into focus.

Try us and see if you agree that Enveloc Remote Backup not only gets the job done, but when you need great technical support, we deliver.

When was the last time you called any company’s Technical Support line and were not extremely nervous that:

• You’d have to wade through a dozen or more voice menu options
• You’d have to listen to advertisements or music on hold for 10 or 20 minutes
• You’d finally get connected to a script-reading monkey who didn’t know a bit from a byte

Sound familiar?

It is aggravating. Modern technology is supposed to make life easier, not more complex. No machine works perfectly forever so problems or questions will always pop up at some point, and that is precisely the moment you don’t need any further frustration.

Being in the on-line backup business, we are particularly sensitive to the fact that often when people call, they are in a serious bind because they have accidently erased a file, or their disc has crashed, or some other calamity has destroyed important data. They don’t need additional hassle.

Although we make it easy to restore data through our software, we also know that even technically proficient people sometimes encounter situations they do not understand, and need someone with experience to guide them through it.

Therefore at Enveloc, the phone is always answered by a human being and that one of our US based trained technicians are available, on average, within 30 seconds. This has been our practice for the past 16 years.

So when we say to call if you need assistance, we mean we are truly standing by to provide it.

Competent, helpful support should be ready when you are- in minutes, not days.

Competent, helpful support should be ready when you are- in minutes, not days.

Restore Like a Champ

May 7th, 2012 | Posted by wwo in Disaster Recovery | Restoration - (0 Comments)

Late Friday afternoon one of our clients accidently deleted critical files from their server via a workstation. How did this happen? Their main practice software provider sent some less-than-crystal-clear instructions on how to correct an error caused by a power loss, and the user deleted all the files in a folder, not just certain ones. It could have happened to anyone.

So the user setup a Restore job and started downloading the 4 gigabytes of files that had been properly backed up with Enveloc. Unfortunately, the power outage must have affected their router because their internet connectivity was off and on. Power blinked again during the night and stopped their download.

Our response Saturday morning was to copy the Restore job to media and deliver it to the user. Had she been located farther than 50 miles, we would have sent it by overnight express. We also provided her immediate support to help her restore the files to an alternate folder so that her software provider could assist her in rebuilding her system. Now, Monday morning, they are back in business.

If you are using one of the consumer-oriented backup servers ask yourself this: when you urgently need a large set of data restored to keep your business running, will your backup service react as quickly? At no charge? With live human beings?

Try Enveloc today with our no-risk guarantee: if you are not completely satisfied within the first thirty days, there will be no charge.

We’ve all heard the old saw, “Hindsight is 20-20.” The problem is, correcting a deficiency AFTER the fact is generally helpful for the future, but of little immediate value when you have suffered a data loss. To successfully provide for any eventuality, planning is important – but the correct implementation is paramount.

In almost 30 years of working with computers I have seen more than my share of computers suffer hardware failures and cost their users valuable and critical data. In many cases, there was some sort of backup, but not all of them were actually usable for various reasons. Tapes can stretch, break or simply fail to be read. Thumb drives can be lost or damaged easily and hard drives can fail or develop file system errors that render them unreadable. Cloud-based backups put your data in some ethereal storage location and may make your data susceptible to hackers and other miscreants.Enveloc Remote Backup: No hindsight necessary.

Security is a rapidly-rising concern on the minds of the computing public as well. Many of us in the IT field are very happy to finally see this happening as the average user has historically been dangerously blasé about making sure their data is protected. If your backups are even encrypted in the first place, where is the key? Was it a key you made up and entered during installation or is it one that was generated for you? Who has access to that key and what measures are in place to prevent misuse?

Some people may think that effective remote backup services are expensive or difficult to manage. They are concerned that extra expenses and labor needs will make the solution not quite so cost-effective. Well, if you have a crystal ball, you can always just look ahead to the day your hard drive fails and then implement a plan a day or two beforehand. That will certainly save you money, time and effort. Unfortunately, that only works in fairy tales.

One more thing you should consider is the company behind the backup. Do the people who work there care about you, your data and whether or not you back up? Are they responsive and knowledgeable when you call them for support or just to ask a question or do they sound like they are reading from a script? Are they US-based or are they just part of a huge offshore call center handling thousands of companies’ customers? Most importantly, do they notify you if you do not back up on schedule? If the answer to all these questions is not a resounding “YES,” you are putting your faith in the wrong backup company.

The good news is the solution is fast, easy and affordable. Automatic offsite backup by the right company, using industry-proven methods and actively managing the backups can ensure that, regardless of what happens to your computer, your vital data is always protected.

A lot of people are especially concerned with backing up e-mail, often in the Outlook format. Here at Enveloc, we cover this important data set in several ways. Microsoft Corporation’s Outlook provides Contact, Task, Note, and Calendar utilities. All of this information is typically stored in one large file with the extension “.pst”. The size of the pst file depends on how many e-mails, contacts and calendar items you keep. With a little housekeeping each year, it’s easy to keep everything you need and also keep the pst files to a reasonable size of, say, a few gigabytes.Enveloc's Outlook Agent - Brick level backup and restore.

But before we talk about the housekeeping, how can you effectively backup a five gigabyte file that changes significantly every day? Because of the way Microsoft organizes the pst files, they change significantly whenever they are in use, too much for traditional block level analysis. At Enveloc we developed a method to backup each Outlook item- e-mail, calendar date, contact – as an individual file. We keep a table of metadata so that when you need to restore an item (or all the items in a folder, or all the folders in the pst), you can search by addressee, date, subject, etc. All these small files and metadata are encrypted, just like regular files, and transmitted as part of the backup set.

Why is this an advantage? It means that even though you might have thousands of emails and contacts, each time you backup, only the new or changed ones are saved. In practical terms, a 6 gigabyte Outlook data set can be backed up in 10 minutes each day. It also means that restoring lost items does not mean replacing the entire pst file, just adding back in the items that are missing.

Additionally, the user may back up the Email Accounts files as part of our regular file backup, and we offer on-site disc imaging to quickly backup the entire pst file as part of the disc image. With these backups you can restore the entire Outlook data set in case of a major crash.

Now about housekeeping. One method is to keep all important e-mails in your Inbox, not marking them as “read” until acted upon. Then, right after the end of each year, you can create an entirely new Outlook store (pst file) and name it, for example, “Archive_2012”. You can do this by clicking File/Data File Management/New and following the prompts. Inside Archive_2012 make an Inbox, Sent, and any other folder you need. Then arrange your emails in date order, and copy the previous year’s e-mails to the Archive pst. Then delete them from the current folders. Backup the Archive once and you’re done backing it up. This entire process takes a few minutes of work, though you may want to plan it just before lunch to allow time for the copy to complete.

If you’re not already using it, try Enveloc Remote Backup on your Outlook files and see how quickly and securely we can keep your e-mail, contacts, and calendar items.