Phone System

Since the firm switched phone providers last year, phone service for many has been, to say the least, sub-par.  We have been working to address this problem and are on the verge of implementing a complete solution.

Margolis Edelstein has contracted with iCore (recently acquired by Vonage) to install an entirely new Voice over IP (VoIP) phone system.  Everything will be new: new phones, new lines, new carrier, new voicemail.  With this change, the firm will shed all of its existing communication problems once and for all.  In addition, there are a great deal of behind the scenes upgrades as well.  We are replacing all the tie lines that connect all of the offices.  We will be putting in Power over Ethernet Switches in all offices to power the phones.  We are also getting all new routers to connect voice and data between offices.

VoIP does not work like traditional phones.  Voice is converted to a digital signal and sent over the same digital line that connects your computer to the network.  Some businesses have been using this technology for over a decade, and almost all large and mid size law firms have adopted this system.  That said, to the end user, the phone will look pretty much like your standard office phone.  They will have a new color LCD panel that will provide you with more information.  But they have a basic hand set and key pad just like any other phone.

If you want a closer look, everyone's phone will be replaced with a new Polycom VVX 410 IP phone.  Several of the conference rooms will also receive a Polycom Soundstation 6000 (a conference phone).

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting additional blog entries on how to make the best use of the phone's advanced features, and the many more capabilities we will have.  But today I am simply going to discuss the transition to the new desk phones.

Network installations will start tomorrow (Thur 8/27) when iCore professionals will be installing new switches and routers in several offices.  We will then deploy the new IP phones to your desk.  This will all be done while your existing phones remain in place.  Once we are confident everything is working properly, we will cut over your current phone numbers to the new phones with a minimum of down time (a matter of minutes).  The final cut over will be scheduled after testing of the new equipment is complete, but we plan to move relatively quickly and have everything in place within the next few weeks.

Once complete, you will continue to use the same phone number and extension that you always have had.  Many people currently do not have a direct dial.  When we move to iCore, every single phone will have a direct dial.  This will mean some changes for people who do not have a direct dial now.  You will receive a new number and can be reached by others in the firm who dial the last four digits of your new number.

That said, your old extension will not go away.  We have set up alternate extensions for everyone whose extension is changing.  If, for example, you are used to calling Lucy Harding at ext. 5416, you can still dial that extension to reach her phone.  Lucy will also have another extension that is the last four digits of her new phone number, which will also reach her phone.  In other words you can use either extension to reach her. Both will ring her phone the same way.

As part of the installation, iCore will offer phone training either in person or via Webex to all offices.  If you want a head start though, here are links to some of the training documents they have already provided to us.

iCore Phone Training Powerpoint
Polycomm VVX410 User Guide
Voicemail Setup Guide
Phone Transfer Tips

To reiterate, you will receive training so don't feel you have to dig into all these materials yourself.  I just posted them here in case anyone is curious.

While I realize that any change can be disruptive, we have done our best to minimize disruption for you.  The new system will be to the long term benefit of the firm.

Exporting Gmail

Save as PDF

There are times when you may find it necessary to export some of your emails to another format for some reason. Of course, the easiest and best known way to do this is simply to "print" an email to a PDF file from within Gmail.  But this only works for printing a single email or a single conversation.  If you want to print more, you need to open each conversation separately and print as a separate document.

Bulk Export:

There may be times when you may want to export dozens, maybe even hundreds of emails at once.  Exporting each email individually would be tedious and time consuming.  Fortunately, there is an App that may save you the trouble.  Gmail Print All Pro allows you to select an entire folder full of email and generate a Google Drive document that includes all the messages.  You can choose to exclude images and/or attachments as you prefer.

This is a free app available in the Chrome Web Store.  Once installed, simply select the folder you wish to print, make sure the settings are as you want them and press "create".  A Google Drive document will be created in your Google Drive with all of the email.  Attachments and images are stored separately.  However, images should appear in the document and the attachments will be accessible from a link within the document.

Limitations

There are a few limitations.  First, the printer limits you to up to 80 conversations.  More than that will be saved to a second document.  The reason for this is that the documents should not become too large and unwieldy.  Keep in mind that if you have conversation mode on, you may have a back and forth with someone that includes dozens of individual emails.  That counts as only one conversation.

Gmail Print All Pro will only print documents connected together in a single folder or label.  If you want to print a bunch of miscellaneous emails, you can select them, then add them all to a single label.  Then, run the print job.  After it is done, you can simply remove the label again if you wish.

Once the emails are stored in Google Drive, you can share those documents with anyone else who uses Gmail and give them either read-only or edit rights to those files.

In my brief testing of Gmail Print All Pro, I found a few problems.  One was that some emails seemed to become double spaced rather than single spaced with no explanation why.  Another issue is if I wanted to then take that Google Docs file and create a PDF out of it.  The links in the PDF would only go back to the original Google Docs folder unless you manually edited all of them.  Therefore, I don't recommend using this unless you are only sharing via Google Drive, or you don't care about links to attachments.

Conclusion

If you need to share select emails with someone and don't want to bother saving each one individually, this can be a good option.

Hold off on Windows 10 upgrades for now.

Windows 10 officially released on July 29.

Some of you may be receiving invitations from Microsoft to "upgrade now" right on your computer.  Microsoft forced through these invitations as a Windows update.  I want to reiterate that you should not upgrade your computer to Windows 10.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• The upgrade may fail and leave you with an unusable computer.  I have read several reports of this happening to others.
• After a successful upgrade, you  may find some of your programs do not work properly
• You may also find that some older hardware, such as printers, or other devices may not work properly.
• Windows 10 has a very different interface from Windows XP or 7.  You may find it difficult to figure out how to do basic things or find your programs.  The Help Desk is not ready to help with any such problems yet.
• At present, there is almost nothing of significance that can be done with Windows 10 that cannot already be done on Windows 7.  The reverse of that is not true.  There are a number things Windows 7 can do that Windows 10 cannot.

You may recall my concerns about upgrading in an earlier post that I published back in March.

We will begin testing shortly to see how compatible this new version is with our existing hardware and software.  Over time, I expect the firm will make the move to Windows 10.  I just do not want to rush the issue.

If you are using Windows 7 at work, you may receive pop up ads from Microsoft encouraging you to accept a free upgrade to Windows 10.  PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS.  Although I have heard good things about it in many reviews, I need time to test that it works with our systems before we upgrade.  We have a whole year to take advantage of the free upgrade if we wish, and there is no easy way to go back if you upgrade and find that things do not work.

If I find there are problems, or that things are good, I will let you know my findings in this blog.  If we get to the point where I think an upgrade is safe, you can upgrade at that point.  Of course, if you are happy with the way things are working on your computer now, there is no need to upgrade your Windows 7 computer to Windows 10.  Microsoft will continue to support Windows 7 until 2020.  We will continue to support it as well.

If you have Windows XP still, your computer is not eligible for a free upgrade.  However, we are trying to retire XP where we can.  If you would like a new computer with Windows 7, let us know.  We are probably working our way around to you, but if anyone wants to be at the front of the line, just let us know at the help desk.  If you want to move from XP to 10, we are not ready to deploy 10 yet.  Hopefully, we will be ready some time this fall, unless we find any serious problems during testing.

If you buy a new Windows 10 computer or upgrade a home computer, keep in mind that you are on the cutting edge.  We cannot provide help with any Windows 10 specific issues yet.  There are typically numerous problems in the first six months of any OS release.

I recommend patience.  Let others deal with the bugs and upgrade once they are resolved.  Also, unless there is a good reason, you are usually better off buying a new computer with Windows 10 pre-installed rather than upgrading an existing computer designed for an earlier version  Upgrading typically comes with complications that are not worth it.

New PDF Editor

For many years, the firm has been using PDF Xchange Viewer as our preferred program to work with PDF documents.  I discussed some of the benefits and features of Xchange Viewer in an earlier blog post back in February.

The firm has upgraded to a new product from the same company called PDF Xchange Editor.  The new program has all the same features as the old one, plus a few extras.  You should not lose anything you do already by upgrading.

One of the most significant added features of the new Editor is the ability to edit PDF text.  As long as the document was created from actual text (and not simply a scanned image of text), you should be able to add, delete, or change text.  I still don't recommend creating a PDF if you still plan to edit it, but this feature may come in handy when you need to make changes to an existing PDF.

Another very nice feature is the ability to add Bates Stamp information to your PDF documents.  This will now be the preferred method for Bates Stamping PDF documents, as it has more flexibility than a program I had recommended in an earlier post.  There is an actual Bates Stamp feature built into the PDF Xchange Editor program.  But if you need even more flexibility, you can use the header/footer feature to create even more advanced Bates Stamps.

You may have received a scanned document in another format, such as TIFF or JPEG. PDF Xchange can open these documents as well and allow you to mark them up or run an OCR on the text.  However, you may have to save the altered document as a PDF to retain your changes.

If you want to learn more about all the features and functions of this program, there is a manual that goes into great detail.  You can read that manual here.

We are installing the new PDF Editor on all new computers.  If you think you may benefit from the new features, we can help you get it installed on your existing computer as well.

Spam

Spam Email

Spam has been the bane of email almost since the invention of email.  The term "spam" is the nickname given to unsolicited commercial email.  It gets the name from a Monty Python sketch that involves a couple ordering a meal in a diner.  All of the menu choices have spam in them, with each choice seemingly having more spam than the next.  The patrons in the background also began chanting "spam" until pretty much everything in the diner is overwhelmed with the word "spam" to the exclusion of everything else.

That is the same problem we generally face with spam email.  It can become so overwhelming, that our inbox can file with so much unwanted repetitive nonsense that we cannot find the emails we really want.  At one point in 2014, about 80% of all emails sent were classified as spam.

Spam is not only merely annoying.  It can be dangerous.  Spam messages can provide links to infected web sites, can try to lure you into revealing your account names and passwords, or can contain attachments that infect your computer with malware.  Years ago, I used to click on links in spam just out of curiosity to what they were about.  But with the dangers that can exist today, I don't click on any unknown links and never open an attachment from an unknown source.  Getting a zip file attachment from an unknown source is a particular red flag that danger could be packed inside.

Combating Spam

Efforts to combat spam are difficult.  Authorities have shut down or blocked major spam servers.  Spammers then turned to infecting millions of individual computers all over the world and turning each one into individual mail servers to send spam.  This has made it impossible to choke it off at the source.  But all major email providers are focused on this problem.  They have managed to reduce spam traffic to around 50% of all messages, but this is still very high.

Working with Spam in Gmail

Before we had Gmail, we had a centralized anti-spam system in place.  Thousands of emails were dumped into a central file which typically was only checked if someone asked us to see if something ended up there accidentally.  With Gmail, there is no longer any central spam location.  Every user sees all incoming email addressed to them, but with Gmail putting suspected spam into a special folder labelled "spam."

I have found Gmail's anti-spam algorithms to be highly accurate.  It relies on the feedback of its users to classify messages.  If large numbers of people mark a message as spam, then similar messages get classified as spam automatically and are sent to a user's spam folder.  Similarly, if enough people mark a message in "spam" as not spam, Gmail learns that similar emails should not be sent to the spam folder in the future.

Going through one's spam folder can be a tedious and time consuming process.  At one point, I was receiving over 200 spam messages each day.  Even though that number has now dropped to about 30-40 each day, that is more time than I care so spend looking at ads.

Spam Folder Maintenance

Different people take different approaches to spam.  Some people look at all of them individually, some ignore them, some simply delete them without much review.  Personally, I fall into the "ignore" category and recommend that to others as well.  Because I find Google's spam filter to be so accurate, I am fairly confident that anything in the spam folder is not something I want to see.  As a result, I only look in that folder if I think something was sent to me and I did not get it.  Otherwise, I ignore that folder.  Reading through all those messages is simply a waste of time.

On the other hand, I also don't delete my spam.  Google holds spam messages in your spam folder for 30 days, then deletes them automatically.  Deleting your spam en masse without reviewing it means it is gone forever.  If some important email did go to spam and your realize it later, you cannot recover it after you have deleted it.  On the other hand, leaving your spam folder alone, means you have 30 days to realize some important email might be in there and give you a chance to search for it.  After 30 days, Google deletes it forever, so you don't have to worry about them continuing to pile up and use up your available space.

Searching Your Spam

If you need to search for something in your spam folder, you must specify it in your search.  By default, Gmail search does not include results from spam or trash when you do a general email search.  If you want to search your spam, you musty type "in:spam" before the search time.  For example, if I wanted to search for the word "computer" in my spam folder, I would search "in:spam computer"   If I find something I want to save, I simply open it, click on the "not spam" button at the top of the screen, and it moves to my inbox.  In doing this, I am also automatically telling Google that similar items should not be considered spam and Google gets smarter about how it classifies future similar emails.

Video Conferencing? You have it already!

From time to time, I get asked about the firm's capacity for video conferencing.

The firm has not invested in professional grade equipment for large conference room style video conferencing.  If you need that, you will need to go to a third party provider.  Many Court Reporters offer such services.  Recently Kaplan Leaman & Wolf did a CLE in the Philadelphia office which discussed its ability to provide these services, among others.

For direct person to person video conferencing, however, you already have everything that is necessary.  I want to warn at the outset, that the help desk has virtually no experience with video conferencing.  These tips are more for the self-sufficient among you who like to try new features.

Hardware Requirements

Your laptop has a built in camcorder and microphone.   This is all that is necessary for hardware.  I do, however, recommend at least a better microphone for sound.  We can provide a USB headset.  We also have a few desk microphones that connect via USB if you don't want to wear head gear during your meeting.

Video Chat on Google

Video Chat is part of the Google Apps package that we already use for email an other purposes.  It is a part of Google Hangouts.  If you want to have a video chat with someone, simply click on the chat icon in the lower left hand corner of your Gmail screen, below your folders.  Select the icon that looks like a video camera and then enter the name or email address of the person with whom  you wish to chat.  You can chat with anyone in the firm, although support staff, who do not have laptops, do not have camcorders and therefore cannot appear on screen.

You may need to register for Google + or download a few plug-ins for Google Voice or Google Hangouts the first time you use this feature.  It is fine to do these things.

Chat with anyone on a variety of devices

You are not limited to people within the firm.  You can communicate with anyone in the world who has a Gmail account with Google plus added.  These are free accounts that anyone can create in minutes  You will receive a warning though if you invite someone outside the firm.

You are not limited to laptops either.  Some or all participants can use a smart phone or tablet (Apple and Android are both supported, among others) to participate.  They just need the free Google Hangouts App installed on their device.

Live Demonstrations

If you wanted to give a demonstration to a large group of people, you can create an internet link so that hundreds or even thousands of people could view the presentation.  In these large groups, however, the conversation is only one way.  Viewers can only respond by typing text into the chat feature.  The chat feature is access on the left hand side of the screen. Click on the blue chat icon to bring up a chat box on the right side of the screen.  Participants can type in notes that the others can read.

Other Features

Another nice feature is the screen share.  If you are demonstrating something on your computer, you can allow all other participants to see your screen and what you are doing (similar to WebEx if you have ever used that).  There are other options that allow you to take a screen shot of the what is happening, or allow a presenter to show a YouTube Video (hint: if you want to share a private video, you can upload to YouTube as private then share that video with the group here).

Once your conversation is complete, hang up and you are done.

Other Video Chat Programs

There are, of course, other free video chat programs that are available for use.  Skype is one of the most popular.  A big benefit of Google is that you know everyone in the firm already has an account and can be contacted through the firm's contacts.

Video Tips

You usually see an image of yourself in a small box in the corner so you know what others are seeing.  Be sure to center your face in the screen.  Don't have a bright light or window in the background as it will make you look like a shadow.

Clipboard - Copying and Moving Text

The ability to move around text in a document was probably one of the first things we liked when we moved from the typewriter to the word processor.  Hopefully cutting and pasting is second nature to most of you.  But for those who may need a few tips to speed up the process, this post is for you.  This function is known as "clipboard" in Windows.  You are essentially saving data to a temporary file, the "clipboard," and then pulling it out again.

Basic Cut, Copy and Paste

The difference between copy and paste vs. cut and paste is that copy makes a second copy of the text, where cut and paste deletes the text from the original location and moves it to the new location. A common method to do this by using your mouse to select the text to be moved, clicking on the tool bar or right clicking to select "copy" or "cut" then move your cursor to the new location where you again go to the toolbar, or right click to select "paste."

Drag and Drop

Windows also gives you the ability to highlight a section of text in one Window, click on it with your mouse, then drag it to a second window and release the mouse button to paste.  This can save you a few steps, but you must have both windows open and visible, neither using the full screen.

Keyboard Commands

For the keyboard user, you may do the same thing by holding the shift button and using arrow keys to select the text you want.  Then use ctrl-x to cut, ctrl-c to copy and ctrl-v to paste.  You can also select an entire document all at once by using ctrl-a.  Another important command to know is if you just cut or copied something and want to undo, use ctrl-z.

Works across programs

In Windows, these command will work across almost all applications.  I frequently will "select" document in Word or WordPerfect, then paste the text into say Google Docs to create a new document.  Usually most formatting will come along, but some advanced formatting may not.  Pictures will also usually be copied if the new program supports them.

Lose the formatting

There are times when you want to copy the text but not the formatting.  For example, you don't want a different text size or color if you are pasting a sentence into another document.  For this, use ctrl-shift-v to paste the text without the formatting.  This option is also available on most mouse menus when you right click.  It may say "paste as plain text" or "paste special" and then select "plain text."

This saves time in many ways

We mostly use this feature to move a longer clip of information that would take too long to retype, or for specific information like a phone number or name that we don't want to mistype.  Another time this is handy is when you have a special symbol or word that uses foreign characters.  Sure, you can figure out how to generate those characters yourself.  But it is often easier to find the word somewhere else and quickly copy and paste it into the document where you need it.

Remembering your Clips

The clipboard feature has been easy to use because of its simplicity.  It is a quick way to get move information around.  But a price of this simplicity is the limitation on it is that you can only move one thing at a time.  You cannot even move to separate parts of same document at once.  There may be occasions when you want to clip multiple things before placing them in the new location.

One easy option for this is to quickly cut and paste your selections into a a word processing document such as WordPerfect, Google Docs, or even just Wordpad - built into all Windows computers.  Then simply grab them from there when ready to place them where you want them permanently.

There are also several "clipboard" programs that will allow you to clip multiple items, allowing multiple clips to be "remembered" by being saved in the program.  You can then select which once you want pasted when you are ready.  A good free program that does this is CLCL.  Which is easily installed on any Windows computer.  Personally, I don't use a program like this much.   Basic cut and past works well enough for me and keeps things simple.  But if you are so inclined, you can give it a try.  Keep in mind that the help desk does not use these Apps, so their ability to help with problems is very limited.