Blog

We’ve gone over what revitalization looks like and why your organization should do it. We’ve also offered suggestions and examples regarding how to get started and how you can expect this revitalization to impact your team. But, as with any new endeavor, it’s essential to know... Read More

Does project management seem like an unadventurous, tedious process? Perhaps, if you are relying on the old dogs of project management — the been there, done that approaches you’re keeping. But when your organization works to revitalize IT project management, you will discover... Read More

Revitalized IT project management is well within your grasp. Though this approach will change your organization (it’s supposed to!), this change needn’t inspire fear. Your organization is not the only one out there considering how to do IT project management in a new,... Read More

IT project management involves assessing, prioritizing, and planning any project that will involve technology. This includes assigning resources and responsibilities to meet objectives. Plus, it includes creating a realistic timeline from the planning stage through to the... Read More

As technologies change and expand, and users place increasing demands on the tech an organization employs, it is increasingly important to have strong IT project management practices in place. IT project management spans the planning, organization, responsibilities, and... Read More

Summary of the Situation The CDC has announced that there are 720,630 cases of COVID-19 in the US alone, and 2,407,537 globally. The World Health Organization has already classified this outbreak as a pandemic and it continues to spread across the globe. Schools, restaurants and... Read More

NOTE to readers: These first two paragraphs of comments in April 2020 lend perspective to a working-from-home [WFH] situation forced upon many. Future readers will also benefit from this perspective whether a WFH situation is part of a planned strategy – or is part of a... Read More

In leadership, one of the most important skills is knowing how and when to delegate. But when all of your employees are working from home and in some cases where teammates are in different time zones, delegating can be a bit challenging and confusing. We’ve gathered some tips... Read More

Now that “working from home” has become the new normal for many organizations, let’s also become productivity geniuses while we’re all inside our lovely homes with our family. Advantages Obvious advantages with this work environment include having adaptable around the work hours,... Read More

In response to the COVID-19 threat, a lot of companies have moved their work arrangement to a fully remote team. Companies like the American Express, Xerox, United Health, and many others have integrated this set-up to their current workforce. And with this, it could change the... Read More

A lot of us work more than we can cope with, which can lead to extreme pressure, stress, and a possible burn out in the long run. With our current work arrangement where more and more of us seem to be working from home, it’s more different, often, challenging for us to ask for a... Read More

It’s increasingly common for companies now to break from the traditional way of doing work in a physical office and allow employees to work from home. Almost 3.4 million Americans are reported to have opted for this work arrangement according to the 2020 report of Flex Jobs. And... Read More

More and more people are now working from home as companies have been resolved or forced to make this kind of work arrangement for various reasons. (At the time of publication of this article, the Coronavirus outbreak is the most recent widespread reason. With potentially 200,000... Read More

The world is transforming every day. Ideally, your organization is evolving too. At GroupLink, we’re excited about the potential digital transformation brings to organizations of all kinds and we strive to be your partners in that evolution.  We hope our series on digital... Read More

A Utah-based SaaS company, GroupLink® Corporation, is doing all it can to provide free use of it’s cloud tools to help schools and businesses beat the Covid-19 crisis. Salt Lake City, UT — 16 March 2020 — GroupLink® Corporation, a leading solutions-based software... Read More

With a solid understanding of digital transformation, how to implement it, what to focus on, and what to avoid, it’s time to create a solid game plan. CIOs and CTOs are responsible for putting their teams’ ideas into goals, metrics, and timelines to make digital transformation a... Read More

Digital transformation often sounds like it’s all or nothing. The word ‘transformation’ is right there, making it appear like your organization needs to move from legacy infrastructure to a full-on, ultra-modern transformation in one fell swoop. The intimidation of this idea... Read More

You are not alone if your organization is struggling to adopt digital transformation or if there’s a sense of reluctance to start because of looming challenges. Riverbed’s digital performance global survey from 2018 looked at how 1000 business decision-makers handle digital... Read More

While, of course, technology has a starring role in digital transformation, organization culture and team strengthening are perhaps even more important. The idea of rolling out new tech and having the whole organization fall in line is compelling. In most cases, however, it isn’t... Read More

Digital transformation is a big topic of interest for CIOs and CTOs. It is poised to effect every industry. Companies and organizations need to adapt to change and digital transformation in its many forms or fall behind the competition. That being said, it can be challenging to... Read More

Digital transformation can be a nebulous concept, shifting depending on who is defining it, what type of work they do, and what industry in which they work. We’re here to help clarify the definition, as well as explaining the flip side — what digital transformation is not. What... Read More

Here at GroupLink, we are excited to play our part in ushering digital transformation into the way our clients’ companies do business, especially digital transformation led by CIOs and CTOs.  Digital transformation means taking all that you do and using digital technologies... Read More

It is always a good idea to have a strong handle on what is going on within your organization, and that includes your service assets and configuration items. Service asset and configuration management (SACM) is another organizational process that helps you identify, control, and... Read More

Imagine being able to log into your help desk knowing you won’t encounter several users with the exact same, all too common issue. A good problem management system takes your help desk from a reactionary scramble to fix a problem for a user, to a proactive approach based on... Read More

Change is an inevitable part of running a successful organization. As your work grows and shifts, it’s important to manage that change wisely. A change management system gathers ideas, plans, and priorities for change, and structures it all into a standardized process. It’s a... Read More

Having top IT skills can only carry an individual so far in his or her career path. Personality traits improve potential. These traits matter in every job and every field, IT included. These are our top ten personality traits for successful IT professionals across the industry.... Read More

Ideally, a CIO or CTO can put together a team of complementary personalities to make the most of the team. But it’s hard to do that without objectively knowing each person’s personality type, especially when it comes to new hires or potential candidates. That’s where personality... Read More

Ever since the internet has been around, people have been trying to find ways to manipulate and subvert companies’ websites for malicious reasons. Today, with so many businesses online, and so many people sharing their valuable and sensitive information over the internet, the... Read More

What is PowerShell and how is it being used to its best advantages by IT administrators? A Windows shell, or user interface, developed by Microsoft, PowerShell allows users to automate tasks. It is also commonly used for configuration management. As an open source project, it can... Read More

PowerShell and Python are both powerful scripting languages and interfaces. Each has its advocates and its detractors. The PowerShell and Python Basics Python has historically been mostly used by Linux IT administrators, as the system came about through open source programming.... Read More

Business software suites put all of the valuable tools companies need to manage their work in one place. These are sets of programs that work to support an organization through organization, automation, and other improvements in workflow and processes. From customer relationship... Read More

Hybrid cloud is the best of both worlds — the ease and convenience of public cloud services, and the security and control of private systems that operate on-premises. For organizations concerned with privacy and regulatory compliance, or for those that just want to keep a closer... Read More

Digital privacy is a very hot topic these days, between media reports of major corporate breaches and failures, and the ever increasing stringent regulatory requirements of policies like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Chief information officers (CIOs) should have... Read More

In a field as fast-paced and constantly changing as technology, training is key and it can be a big challenge. Cost, time, and choosing the right training are some of the main pain points of figuring out how to best get the next generation of IT professionals ready. CIOs and CTOs... Read More

Technology is evolving remarkably rapidly, opening up a lot of opportunities for organizations poised to take advantage of all that new tech has to offer. For IT professionals, especially CIOs and CTOs, understanding what is coming in 2020 and beyond needs to start now, in order... Read More

Blogs are a window into the world of other educators, administrators, and school staff. For a Chief Information Office (CIO), blogs focused on CIOs in education, be it K-12 or university level, offer new perspectives on topics that hit close to home. A CIO is often someone who is... Read More

For a chief information officer (CIO), staying on top of technology trends and learning from others’ insight is key to keeping one’s organization at the forefront of success. CIOs are, of course, busy people, and every minute matters. That’s why we have sifted through the... Read More

Multitasking, Context Switching and a Soggy Soufflé Picture a world-class master baker who spends her days putting delicious cakes, cookies, and soufflés in the oven. She is trying to multi-task, so she shortens the oven cycles. The result is that the cakes, cookies, and soufflés... Read More

Micro-Applications and Micro-Administration In the first part of this series, we talked about how to set your help desk up for success with the basics of a strong help desk platform and best practices for knowledge sharing. Today we are going one step further with... Read More

Teaching One to Fish Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach that person to fish and you will feed them for a lifetime. Staff your help desk with bright, capable people and fail to ‘teach them to fish’ and you are in for a headache. There are many tools to teach... Read More

A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing… In Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism he tells us that a little learning is a dangerous thing; we should all drink deep of knowledge or not do it at all. Albert Einstein has often been misquoted on a similar vein — “A little knowledge... Read More

Anything free of cost is always appealing — save money, while still getting what you need. There are freebies everywhere in the world, IT included. For every software platform your business needs, there is a free and/or open source option. The only big challenge is that you have... Read More

Keeping up to date with patch management is an important part of any technology infrastructure. Software patches are a vital aspect of keeping your systems secure and up to date, and keeping in control of those patches gives you peace of mind and the ability to efficiently handle... Read More

Passwords are an integral part of strong security practices in an enterprise of any size. That being said, human nature and human error have a tendency of winning out over the best IT department attempts at keeping password policies in place. Employees are walking, talking... Read More

The Importance of Monitoring and Alerting Software For IT staff, the integrity of the IT infrastructure is of the utmost importance. With monitoring and alerting in place, your company can avoid downtime and take proactive measures against interruptions in service. This means... Read More

Why Ticket Management Software Matters Whether it’s called a Incident Management, Ticket Management, Help Desk or Trouble Ticket solution, a good ticket management software selection can truly transform your business, streamlining your end users’ access to assistance, thereby... Read More

We understand: every IT department has a budget and, in many cases, there is not much budget to work with in procuring software. According to a recent IT report on IT budgets and tech trends, 43 percent of large enterprises expect their IT budgets to remain static. Others are... Read More

Not all help desk providers are created equally. If you choose one that’s inefficient, it can end up being less of a help desk and more of an unhelpful frustration. A help desk should be an asset to your business, not something that creates more problems than its supposed to... Read More

When calling a support professional with a technical problem or issue, it can be frustrating to the user who clearly does not understand how to remedy the problem. The situation only intensifies when the user encounters short one-word responses or cryptic questions from the... Read More

Answering customer questions and complaints is all part of being a help desk technician. There are different approaches to this type of customer service, some of which work better than others. It’s possible to keep people satisfied with good customer service, but you can always... Read More

The technical skills of an IT technician, especially one working on a help desk, are vital. Your IT techs have been hired to support clients and/or coworkers, providing the valuable troubleshooting, problem-solving, and technical know-how to keep people happy. However, that’s not... Read More

A student-run help desk based on campus is an excellent way to alleviate the burden on permanent IT staff while educating students with an interest in technology. With tech know-how and the practical experience that comes with running a campus support center, students will come... Read More

Do you think your company is too small for a dedicated help desk system? No matter how large or small your organization is, what budget you have, or what existing systems you have in place, help desk software is a solution for everyone. And here are 4 reasons why. 1. Email is... Read More

Everyone expects IT support staff to have all the answers. But what if tech support has its own questions? If this is you, we have some tender love and care for you. So, keep reading. IT service desk staff handling hundreds of help requests everyday need support too. Here are... Read More

Having to scale up your IT infrastructure is a good sign. It means your organization is growing! With that growth comes considerations for making the process run as smoothly as possible. 1. Financing Your Growth Even if your organization is experiencing strong growth... Read More

Salt Lake City, UT – GroupLink® Corporation is pleased to announce a new partnership with SUSE® collaborating on software solutions, support training and materials for academic organizations on Linux. GroupLink, a leading provider of help desk and related support software to... Read More

Of an IT budget, one industry source says that 80 percent is typically dedicated to keeping things going, with only 20 percent earmarked for strategic initiatives. To maximize your school or city IT budget, you need solutions to make maintenance more affordable. This will free up... Read More

It’s that time of year again — industry leaders are making their predictions for the help desk and IT support trends to watch for in 2018. Part of keeping your organization in good shape is following industry trends that will help you reach your goals. See how you can make the... Read More

As the majority of Schools and Cities operate bare-bones IT teams on tight budgets we offer these 3 smart tips every school or city IT team should implement: 1. Create an IT Team that Fits Your Needs Choosing the correct members for your IT team is very important for your... Read More

Not all help desk features advertised by big software companies save you time and effort. And not every organization has the exact same needs. But whether you are underutilizing your current help desk’s features or considering a new one, keep an eye out for these features to get... Read More

Micromanagement is a style most managers would like to avoid. It demotivates staff, frustrates progress and ultimately breeds under-performance. As a help desk or support manager, it is very tempting to insert yourself into the detail work of your staff. You feel ultimately... Read More

Technology provides new opportunities for people to get creative, and modern classrooms can be considered especially creative places. Even the U.S. Department of Education has said tech in schools creates big advantages, everything from helping students prepare for a digital... Read More

When you think of a well-disciplined school, you may conjure up the image of a strict educational environment. Perhaps you imagine a place where students simply do not act out because they will face punishment. However, many of the most well-disciplined schools use supportive... Read More

School administrators know their jobs are tough, and the stats show why. With increasing demands and dwindling budgets, a lot of work goes into being a school administrator, and it can sometimes feel like an impossible job. Fewer School Administrators to Go Around US Department... Read More

It only takes one support tech can make the difference between a smoothly running help desk and one that is not helpful at all. When you’re looking for a help desk technician, keep an eye out for these three skills. Excellent Communication Generally, help desk technicians need to... Read More

With the school year coming to a close, IT departments will be hard at work maintaining and improving for next year. One of the main culprits of a poor performing IT department at a K-12 school or district is the way in which mobile devices are used and the way in which the... Read More

As your organization or business grows, so does a list of issues from both employees and customers. Without proper management and scalable tracking of concerns and requests, it is most likely that issues will only escalate leading to many unhappy stakeholders. Thankfully, the... Read More

Student conflict and violence including bullying (verbal, physical, and social) is a continuing issue in American schools. In 2015, about 21% of students ages 12-18 reported to have experienced bullying and 20% of students in grades 9–12 reported being bullied on school property.... Read More

More than 7000 students in the U.S. become dropouts every school day, nearly 1.3 million students per year. Experts are now finding that the lack of adult mentoring is a major reason for the increasing dropout rates. When you really think about it, every student could use... Read More

1:1 and BYOD initiatives usually conger dreaded images of overflowing support queues for the IT department. With such programs becoming common place in K-12 education, the increase of users and devices bring with it various challenges. Some K-12 support teams are enlisting... Read More

Self Service Self-service tools empower customers or end users to efficiently answer their own questions and ideally solve their individual problems. With such tools, support teams can cut redundant issues and FAQs saving them both time and headaches. Aircall posted their own... Read More

  As an administrator, you have a lot of balls to juggle. Between teachers’ wishes, parents’ demands, and students’ needs, it gets difficult to find the time to aggregate data that spurs meaningful change. Perhaps one or several students keep bubbling to... Read More

Make the holiday season bearable — or even enjoyable — with this GroupLink Holiday Help Desk Guide to help you through what is often the most stressful and busy time of year. It is often before the winter break that customers and users are catching up on their to-do... Read More

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Sadism isn’t a trait that many teachers possess.... Read More

Instinctively, most educators understand that rewarding students for positive behavior is better than punishing them for negative behavior. Of course, some negative situations will inevitably arise that require disciplinary action to be taken, but whenever possible, student... Read More

Problem behaviors in the classroom can be a challenge for teachers and administrators no matter what age group you’re working with. The difficult and disruptive behavior some students engage in can take a wide variety of forms and require a robust set of skills to deal with them... Read More

Image credit: Ed Tech Magazine eSchool News shared what a panel of CTOs and educators at ISTE 2016, one of the biggest education conferences in the country, determined how technologies are changing the role of these Chief Technology Officers in school districts: Blended Learni... Read More

Image Copyright: ximagination / 123RF Stock Photo Millions of students and teachers are preparing to begin another school year in the coming weeks. Your IT team is busy implementing and updating new technologies that enhance the student’s experience. Is your next... Read More

Image Copyright: mrdoomits / 123RF Stock Photo Dr. R. Stephen Green, Superintendent of DeKalb County School District in Georgia, recently shared his opinion on the need for discipline culture change in education. His op-ed in the Atlanta’s WXIA Channel 11 was inspired by new... Read More

Denver, Colorado – GroupLink, a Utah corporation, announced at the ISTE 2016 conference the release of its K-12 focused “GroupLink Student Behavior & Incident Resolution Engine for the SafestSchools” product, a cloud-based software solution. This solution is a best-in-class... Read More

Excerpts from an edtechmagazine.com article: Financial constrains in today’s school districts have found many cutting essential budgets to facilities and IT. In the name of efficiency many have seen decisions that could potentially cause even greater financial loss in the... Read More

Excerpts from a CIO.com article by Chris Doig Though there are many reasons not to change enterprise software, possibly the biggest is inertia. If it isn’t broken, why fix it? The cost of not replacing old software must be estimated to answer the above question, especially for... Read More

Excerpts from a GCN.com article by Derek Major: Even as the number of Internet-enabled devices flowing into the market seems unstoppable, policymakers debate government’s role in managing the risk they present. Allan Friedman, director of cybersecurity initiatives in the... Read More

Image: Kevin Marks/Flickr Taken from the Education Week article “State K-12 Cybersecurity Audit Finds Missouri District Unprepared” “It is a very comprehensive report,” said Doug Levin, the president of EdTech Strategies LLC, a consulting group. “Clearly the auditor has developed... Read More

CoSN just made available their 4th Annual K-12 IT Leadership Survey Report. The survey was conducted in January of 2016 and distributed to U.S. school technology leaders.   Top 10 Key Findings from the 2016 K-12 IT Leadership Survey Report:   1. Broadband and network... Read More

Do you feel alone in the help desk universe? Perhaps no longer with this kanefilms.com created Star Wars Help Desk video showing what it is like supporting the “Empire’s greatest weapon”. Maybe our daily support challenges don’t differ too greatly from... Read More

IMAGE CREDIT: (DAVID JOLES/STARTRIBUNE) Excerpts from an The Journal.com article School buses used to serve one purpose: getting students to and from school. But driven by a mandate to provide Internet connectivity to all students, some creative districts have deployed mobile... Read More

The world is constantly evolving in business and technology. Teleworking has quadrupled over the past decade allowing agencies to save on office and utility costs while employee satisfaction improves. The increasing mobile workforce also places an interesting challenge in... Read More

Being called “almost as big a deal as when we went from wireline to wireless”, software-defined wide area networks are the next biggest networking trend being adopted by schools. According to an Ed Tech Magazine article, Fresno Unified School District has firm plans... Read More

These trends are excerpts adapted from the Forbes article The Year Of The Customer: 16 Customer Service And Experience (CX) Trends For 2016 The user and their  mobile phone are going to rule: When it comes to customer service and user experience, users know the difference between... Read More

Bill Gates starts his January 5, 2016 blog post saying, “Melinda and I visited Ricky’s classroom at Betsy Layne High School during our trip in November to Kentucky, where schools have been making some amazing progress. Since 2011, ACT scores have been going up. The... Read More

2015 is ending but 2016 brings new and exciting technology to our schools. Here are 5 tech trends from an EdTech magazine article by D. Rank Smith that could supercharge education in 2016: Virtual Reality (VR) Several global companies have staked millions of dollars developing... Read More

Another example of a help desk helping people! India plans to implement a massive help desk in government hospitals. Read excerpts from the the India Times article below: In a bid to support “disabled people, pregnant women, and the elderly,” the health department of... Read More

We have reviewed 1:1 deployment management before and one of the many issues in current school implementations is maintaining a network that can handle hundreds of devices. Aerohive Networks published an article sharing their efforts of live testing their own system in ... Read More

Rest assured you are not the only IT tech handling less grateful and unpleasant users. We perhaps can forget that our jobs are not so much fixing technical issues but helping people. In the face of turmoil, the best thing we can do is be patient and courteous. The following... Read More

A TechCrunch.com article by Dana C. Hackley, Ph.D. recently stated that “over the next decade, nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled, but the skills gap is expected to result in 2 million of those jobs going unfilled.” A STEM (Science, Technology,... Read More

IBM recently revealed that just 5 percent of Mac users call IBM’s internal help desk for assistance, compared to 40 percent of PC users. Many are agreeing with the statistics that Mac users experience less technical difficulties requiring help desk assistant than PC users.... Read More

Working for a help desk or IT team can sometimes be a bit contradictory. Sure solving people’s technical needs is usually rewarding, especially if people call you a hero and sometimes give you food. But admit it, there have been times when you think you could get more done... Read More

Like so many organizations, you probably have a lot of people running their own little “IT Systems” outside of the main environment. Frustrated by the inflexibility of many legacy systems, users went off and created their own way of managing their portion of a... Read More

We thought we would have a little fun this time, and share some of the things we have seen and heard about automating your help desk. Presented here in no particular order, in a point – counterpoint format are the worst ideas we have seen. Feel free to add your comments and... Read More