Spam Show 5: New friends, Old Friends
Spectacular event, nearly everyone showed up and through the magic of social networking we wrapped up some old friends and some new friends.
Joining us from Autotask, CEO Bob Godgart, talked about the upcoming event Autotask Live that OWN/ExchangeDefender will be sponsoring. Bob talked at length about the IT space, Web 2.0 and the control of company information as well as tracking data and availability. This is really the beauty of the SPAM Show, where the leaders of the industry drop in and you never know what they have on their mind that they are willing to share. Bob also discusses a lot of development and investment in Autotask, the community that surrounds it, the value of the SBSC.
Mark Crall walks us through the new Microsoft SBSC program and all the effort that went into getting it put together. Mark discusses in great detail the specifics of the new brand, the new requirements and the new benefits that all Microsoft partners need to be aware of.
Erick Simpson joins us to talk about the success and lessons learned from the first MSPU bootcamp, that OWN/ExchangeDefender was proud to play a part of – we will be sponsoring the entire circuit this year so join us at next one happening in Baltimore later this spring.
Last but certainly not the least, the pioneer of SMB IT broadcasting, my good old friend Chris Rue pays us a visit to talk about social networking and the way to leverage it for SMB marketing. Chris talks about cost control being critical as he tries to take his regional IT Service Provider business nationwide. Chris also goes at length about the personal and social value of Web 2.0, something I unfortunately had to strip from the show because it really did not fit the format, however, you will soon be able to hear it on Chris’s blog at www.chrisrue.com
Kudos to Karl @ www.smbbooks.com for the conference bridge hookup!
So there you have it, SPAM Show #5. If you’re doing great things and want to talk about them, the door is open.
You can listen to it live at www.ownwebnow.com
New ExchangeDefender Client Software Suite
We are proud to announce an upgrade for ExchangeDefender Client Software Suite. You can read more about the software here. They are free and recommended for client interaction with ExchangeDefender service.
Bug Fixes – 03/10/2009
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– Fixed an issue causing some users spam/surespam to not be displayed correctly.
– Fixed an issue where the application would Pop-up each time the application loaded.Features – 03/10/2009
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– Added an “About Form”
– Automatic version checking has been added as a feature upon viewing the about page.
There are several other minor bug fixes. If the current software is working for you there is no reason to upgrade. However, if you do experience an issue our support teams will ask you to upgrade to the latest version before working the case.
Downloads are available at www.exchangedefender.com
Better Support Escalation
Have you ever asked a support question that you regretted a moment later? It happens to all of us, when complexity meets lack of time and a skipped lunch, we tend to ask some of the most obvious questions. Even more frustrating activity is trying to get basic answers that were probably covered somewhere in the wealth of documentation and knowledge base articles.
How about a frustrating system outage on your dedicated server that you needed addressed immediately but didn’t want to pay for escalated support? Even though we fulfill 99% of our support requests within the Urgent SLA window free of charge it still doesn’t seem friendly to get the nastygram about fees required for urgent support – especially when something out of your control is down.
Today, we fixed both of those problems with a small, even elegant, option that you may not even notice most of the time when opening a ticket. But trust me, you will like to know it’s there working for you. Take a look at the new “Service” dropdown option that is available when creating a new ticket:
This dropdown allows you to select the service that you are requesting support for. This helps us route the request to the most qualified individual on the support team that can address your request quickly.
Note that when you select an item you will be presented with a checkbox to tell us if this is a service outage. If the outage affects the entire organization, and you check this box, we will escalate the request for free and bump you to the front of the queue.
Please be mindful that we are monitoring for fraudulent use of this function. So in case your “system down” scenario consists of a single Exchange 2007 mailbox whose password expired, you might find this setting disappears if it is abused. Please be courteous to the other clients and use this feature when it’s absolutely needed, it’s here to save you money and I’m sure that in your time of need you wouldn’t want our support giving priority to something other than a true outage.
But wait, there’s more!
When you select the given category you will immediately be presented with the “Popular Answers” section right on the new support page. These articles are written by the staff that provides ongoing product support and contain a lot of information that you may want to look through and save time waiting for a response.
Hope you enjoy the ongoing improvements and keep on sending us your suggestions so we can serve you better.
This feature will be making an appearance in SM 3.0 for our MSP partners this May.