SLA Impact March 28th–31st
During the last week of this quarter (March 28th-31st) we will be holding a company-wide training event across all departments. While we will continue to be available on the phone, web and support and while we will continue to meet the support requests within the SLA, the responses may not be immediate.
Over the years we have improved our service significantly to the point that your calls and support requests are answered instantly and this will not be the case while we conduct extremely important staff training for the new services that are coming from ExchangeDefender.
When the training sessions begin we will put up alerts in Shockey Monkey advising our availability and followup times.
Thank you for your patience!
-Vlad
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
vlad@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x500
(407) 536-VLAD
Hosted Exchange and Exchange Essentials 2010 by Domain
I just got great news from Hank (our VP of Development) and his guys. They have completed the Service Manager enhancement that will allow our partners and Shockey Monkey users’ clients to view Hosted Exchange/Exchange Essentials 2010 mailboxes by domain.
Doing our quarterly feedback outreach last quarter we found that this one of the big pain points in managing items on our infrastructure and we’ve been able to address it. I’ll take this opportunity to walk you through how to enable it for yourself (this is a per user setting, and the user must have “Client Admin” or higher permissions).
Once you have logged into our support portal or your Shockey Monkey portal click on “Options”.
Once on the “Options” page scroll all the way to the bottom and select “group accounts by domain”.
Now you are set to go back to the Service Manager and see your changes. You will be presented with a collapsed drop down that contains all of your domains hosted with us in our two Exchange environments. If you are missing a domain please submit a support request letting us know and we will get you squared away.
I hope you guys enjoy this change, as I know it was a fairly common request.
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
Shockey Monkey–SOAP Callback
This week our development team here at Shockey Monkey has finished the SOAP Callback framework and has published this new release to all portals. This new framework enables you to configure automatic code level responses when certain conditions are triggered. Current the only supported triggered events are related to tickets (create, update, close). Over the course of this year we will expand the available list of triggerable events as demand for them increases.
The most elegant design feature of this entire framework is the dynamic interface structure that allows virtually any SOAP interface to communicate with our software. Let me briefly walk you through the process for configuring the callback mechanism.
Settings -> Callback
The first time you visit this page, it will seem fairly empty but these two fields you should notice at the top. Simply provide the remote SOAP WSDL location and press “Validate”.
Now, the system will examine the URL and fetch any valid methods that exist inside of the requested module. You should notice the section below; it will become populated with new fields.
You should now see that you have three sections.
One for (Create Ticket, Update Ticket, and Close Ticket).Select a method from the dropdown list. You will notice these are all valid methods from the request API that we defined above in the previous step.
Once you have selected a method from the dropdown list, you will notice additional (parameter) fields. These fields are loaded dynamically depending on the parameters available in the provided SOAP API.
Note: One thing to keep in mind is complex types. If your method requires complex parameter types such as (arrays, objects, etc.) they will not be supported at this time. Basic types like (strings and integers), should be used mostly for parameter types.
The text box next to each listed textbox is where you will enter the desired value for this parameter. If you would like your method to use TICKET variables (“which is most likely”), they are provided in the dropdown menu to the right of the text field. Click the list and select the desired variable and it will prefill that variable into the text field to the left.
Also keep in mind each trigger is optional. You don’t have to assign a method for every section, only the ones you want to use. After you have finished assigning each of your methods and their corresponding parameters, click “Save”.
That’s it, callbacks are now enabled and you should begin to see the results!
Hank Newman
VP Development, ExchangeDefender
hank@ownwebnow.com
St. Patrick’s Day Promotion!
It’s sunshine and rainbows here at ExchangeDefender! So yes, we are running another promotion for the St. Patrick’s holiday!!!
Check your mailbox for a special postcard about the promotion!
We really value our partners and want to give you ways to have a more profitable and successful partnership with ExchangeDefender.
The St. Patrick’s Day promotional offer is for our Offsite Backup solution. Our offsite backup solution is offered in 10 GB increments. The promotion is $1/GB and we are waiving the agent fee – that means NO agent fee for the rest of the year! This is a great promotion to take advantage of. Our Offsite Backup solution comes with:
*Global Redundancy
*Continuous Data Protection
*Built-In Retention Policies
*Seeding & Bandwidth Throttling Options
*All-Inclusive Agents
*Reporting, Access, and Reliability
*And so much more!
The promotion will be running from March 17th through April 17th, and will only be valid on any new Offsite Backup accounts that are signed up during that promotional period. Also, the assigned coupon code must be used at the time of ordering for the promotional pricing to be applied to your order.
For more information about ExchangeDefender’s Offsite Backup solution click here, http://exchangedefender.com/offsite_backups.php, also, for more information on this promotion click here, http://www.exchangedefender.com/promotions.php, or as always feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
Shockey Monkey Email Connector
Today I am going to cross over into the Shockey Monkey realm to clarify some things that we didn’t document in as much detail based on a few assumptions. And we all know what happens when you assume.
We assumed that nobody would point their MX record to ExchangeDefender without signing up for ExchangeDefender. And this is why I’m blogging about it on the XD space, because it ends up as a support issue within in ExchangeDefender.
I just signed up for Shockey Monkey in what order should I go about employing the email to ticket gateway?
First you need to sign up for ExchangeDefender for Service Providers (It’s Free!) and it will allow you to deploy ExchangeDefender for your portal’s desired email domain. Remember you must add your domain to ExchangeDefender for ExchangeDefender to process your email. The following guide walks you through the entire ordering process and deployment process. My personal piece of advice, don’t touch the Exchange portion until your domain has propagated through ExchangeDefender.
http://www.exchangedefender.com/ExchangeDefender_Deployment_Guide.php
So don’t make any DNS changes nor any Exchange side changes until the work in admin.exchangedefender.com is complete and has been propagated.
Can I test this before I make changes?
Absolutely, you can do manual SMTP tests for both by telneting on port 25. But here’s a full walk through:
http://www.exchangedefender.com/blog/2012/02/mail-flow-reloaded/
Once you have confirmed we are accepting mail on your behalf, then you can go back into the top link here and finish the DNS changes and Exchange side changes.
Finishing Touches
The smallest thus easiest thing to overlook is the vanity address forward. If you intend to use something that’s NOT yourportal@rafiki.shockeymonkey.com as your email to ticket address, then you must set up a forward on your exchange or pop server to forward from (as an example) example@superawesomemsp.com to yourportal@rafiki.shockeymonkey.com.
NOW, you’re all set.
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
Upcoming Maintenance…
During the weekend of March 23rd – March 24th we will be performing the following maintenance and upgrades to servers across multiple platforms:
Friday March 23rd 2012 22:00 – Saturday March 24th 06:00 Eastern:
NETWORK/ALL SERVICES: All services in our main cage in Dallas will undergo a quick network reconfiguration which will momentarily impact service availability for the following services
· SharePoint 2007 and 2010 (Excluding Rockerduck)
· Exchange 2007 (Scrooge, Huey, Dewey)
· Offsite backup
· ExchangeDefender inbound nodes
· ExchangeDefender apps (Encryption, Web File Share)
· Own Web Now Support Portal
· LiveArchive
The network reconfiguration consists of replacing network switches and rerouting network uplink distribution.
ROCKERDUCK: All servers to be relocated to new cabinet in Dallas. Service will not be interrupted during server moves.
Saturday March 24th 13:00 Eastern
LOUIE: LOUIEMBOX3 will be placed into production and pre-process steps to phase out LOUIEMBOX1 will begin. Service will not be interrupted during the turn up of LOUIEMBOX3
Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com
2 More Days!
*Attention!!! There are only 2 more days left of our Valentine’s Day promotion!
You don’t want to miss the chance to get a great pricing discount on our best full featured offerings. Take advantage of this offer for our Hosted Exchange solutions for one flat, all-inclusive rate per mailbox per month. You can offer your clients a hosted messaging solution that is flexible enough for their varying needs today and tomorrow, and robust enough to enable you to turn a profit on every mailbox every month.
With Hosted Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 from ExchangeDefender, data is stored on our globally-redundant infrastructure and accessible via Outlook Web Apps, Outlook desktop client, and mobile devices. Hosted Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 from ExchangeDefender is protected by the world-class ExchangeDefender security suite, so in addition to being reliable, messages will be free of malicious code and safe for consumption anytime, anywhere, and also comes with the LiveArchive service built right in.
Hosted Exchange Essentials is a budget-friendly security solution that covers the basic needs of many small businesses.
Whatever your clients’ needs are, you can get your foot in the door and start or continue building a strong relationship with the powerful combination of Hosted solutions and ExchangeDefender. Now you can offer your clients an attractive combination of rich features, affordability, security and flexibility on our globally-redundant infrastructure that even most large enterprises cannot build in-house.
Hosted Exchange 2010 + SharePoint 2010 – $8.00/mailbox/month
Hosted Exchange Essentials 2010 – $6.00/mailbox/month
Be sure to use the coupon codes that are associated with the offers to receive the promotional pricing.
Stay tuned to your mailboxes and also our ExchangeDefender Promotions page, www.exchangedefender.com/promotions.php to always be on top of all of the great offerings available to you!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
Backup90: Offline Upgrades
Throughout the past week users with accounts on backup90 have noticed sporadic periods where service was interrupted (events were posted on the NOC blog), restored, and would randomly go back offline after 8 hours. Since this was an event that wasn’t reproducible on demand the amount of time to diagnose the issue was slightly longer than normal. Once the issue was discovered to be a faulty disk we elected to upgrade the entire storage controller for backup90. Over the past quarter backup90 has seen a 340% growth in accounts and doesn’t appear to be slowing down – unfortunately the current controller risks slower performance to clients as growth continues in the next month.
To alleviate this issue we’ve shutdown service on backup90 to start a copy process to the new controller. After all data has been copied to the new controller we will start a random write/read seek test to ensure the stability and performance of the new controller. Unfortunately since backups are an extremely intensive IO operation, leaving Ahsay service running while trying to copy would yield extremely poor results and more than likely would require multiple attempts to copy the data – all in all, it would eventually lead to a longer downtime for clients.
We estimate that the copy process will begin tonight (3/7/12) around 5:30 PM and is expected to continue throughout Friday and Saturday. We will create a new NOC entry once the upgrade process on backup90 has begun.
Travis Sheldon
VP, Network Operations, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x757
travis@ownwebnow.com
Tips to a Speedy Resolution
Anybody that works in technology is familiar with ticketing systems and while at times they can be effective, it’s merely as effective as the two people interacting with the ticket. So here are some tips that can help make your tickets “one update” answer. The most important thing you can consider and rely on when opening your ticket is to maximize the effectiveness of the information you’re providing. If you give the person on the other end all the information they need, you’re improving your chances for a speedy resolutions. “But Carlos! I do this every time!”, well if you’re not following the guidelines below you’re now.
The Ticket Title has a character limit.
That’s correct if you write your entire ticket.
See? That didn’t help me get my point across, what I wanted to say is. If you type your entire ticket into the title we only see what fits in the title.Please don’t copy and paste your end users report to you.
When we receive a ticket that says it’s from Mary (with no address) and it says I emailed Tom (with no address) and it bounced back, we basically have zero information. While we’d love to help, we don’t know your client and to that extent their clients on first name basis.
After you submit a ticket, click on it to see what we see.
This becomes pivotal, when you’re pasting data with markup codes in it, it’s important that you see what you’re sending us. Because sometimes your ticket may have too much markup to the point that it won’t render and we’re left with no content or partial content. And knowing your luck and mine, it’ll be the information we need to research your issue.
Carlos Lascano
VP Support Services, ExchangeDefender
carlos@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x737
ExchangeDefender Password Synchronization
Password synchronization was first implemented inside of ExchangeDefender about 2 months ago. It was also at the same time we released a new version of XDSYNC that also included a password synchronization option. This has been a little confusion among a few partners on how exactly this works and what to expect with password synchronization.
There are two primary configuration models, which are described below.
Hosted Exchange & ExchangeDefender Synchronization.
If you have a Hosted Exchange mailbox with ExchangeDefender, password synchronization happens automatically. This is because both the Exchange mail account and the spam protection layer both exist within servers that we own/operate. So anytime a password is changed through our management portals, that password is now updated in both places. After a chance occurs it may take up to 5 minutes for the Hosted Exchange password to update across our servers.Private Server & ExchangeDefender Synchronization.
If you operate your own private Exchange mail server and use ExchangeDefender as your SPAM protection, password synchronization will require the XDSYNC tool. XDSYNC will automatically push new accounts into ExchangeDefender minutes after they are added to the mail server. You also have the option to enable password synchronization. In this case, it’s a one way push and will update password changes from within ExchangeDefender back down to your mail server. Keep in mind anytime a change occurs it will typically take about 5 minutes for that modification to be applied to the server.
Hopefully this will help define the two configuration models a little better and what you can expect with each configuration.
Hank Newman
VP Development, ExchangeDefender
hank@ownwebnow.com