Four months after we announced our first Managed Service product offerings, two of us had a focus meeting with one of our largest clients. Yes, two of us ganged up on her at lunch. We heard the platitudes that we were hoping for, but we also were asked a question, "What are you guys doing for us with this new plan?"

We were sort of expecting this question, since we'd been discussing how to better communicate with our Managed Service clients.

Managed Services, by it's very nature, if successful, tends to DECREASE communication between a service provider and their clients. The primary reason for this, if we are doing our job properly, is very simple: problem reports tend to decrease. We are monitoring your network, your servers, your workstations 24/7. We not only know when a problem occurs but, in many cases, what the problem is.

• Hard drive going bad on a server hard disk RAID array?
• Lost the internet?
• Memory module going bad?
• Anti-virus, backup software running properly?
• Server, workstation, web site down?
• Printer problems?
• System blue-screened?
• Hard drive reached capacity?

Remote monitoring gives us the tools to be notified of these problems, and many others. With our Managed Services higher level plans, we can task a technician to correct the problem either remotely or on-site.

Daily Backup Monitor

But the piece we have been missing until now is the communication on a continuing basis to inform the client and their personel What we are doing and When.

Thus was born MICRO_NOTES (MICRO-Micrometric Integrated Customer Report Organization) (NOTES-Notification Of Ticket Events with Selectivity), an optional tool you can use to be better informed about the status of work that MicroMetric is currently doing for you, our client, as Your Information Technology Team.

We want to let you know what the status of work in progress is, such as when a Trouble or Project Ticket is opened or closed. Such as when Server or Workstation maintenance has been scheduled and when it's complete.

MICRO_NOTES is an automated tool that utilizes both email and our web site to communicate with you and provde current information. And it's controlled by you - you decide what events, if any, you want to be informed about and at what frequency you receive Notification emails - you can set individual events to notify you as soon as they occur, or summarize all Notifications in a single message at the end of the day. Or let you easily suppress all notifications.

Service Ticket Type Summary

The primary design goal of NOTES was to create an automated system that would monitor the data added to MICRO, and then report the pertinent information to the appropriate client personnel in a timely manner.

NOTES is an opt-in system, that allows each user to not only select the Events they want to be notified about, such as all work on your computer, but also how frequently you want the Notifications to be sent.

Web-based Individual Event Notification Schedule

Design work started in April, 2008 with focus meetings with Clients, while programming began a month later, and limited beta testing followed in July, with Backup Monitoring Reporting to select Managed Services Primary Contacts and in-house staff. Limited release, to Managed Service Clients is slated for September, with full release to all Clients shortly thereafter. An additional group of events are in development and slated to be added during 2008.

NOTES is an evolving system and we welcome your comments and encourage your suggestions.