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The JMARK Comprehensive IT Services & IT Support Solution

JMARK provides IT outsourcing solutions that really work to reduce complexity of IT for your organization. By properly managing technology specifically to match your business goals our strategy improves your organization's efficiency and profitability.

You need business IT support that increases productivity. We believe that technology should help you generate profit instead of burdening you with cost. By streamlining your IT operations we help you enhance employee performance and heighten customer satisfaction.

We're the technology experts, so you don't have to be. Our IT support services allow you to stay focused on your business and improve your bottom line. We provide round-the-clock monitoring and support services to improve network performance. We keep your data safe and secure which prevents downtime, reduces your business risk, and affords you peace of mind.

Our philosophy and culture build a roadmap for success.

Business profitability, personal customer service, and absolute accountability for every action are at the heart of the JMARK culture. It shows in everything we do, and our clients frequently comment that we've helped them improve their organizations as a result of their partnership with JMARK.

JMARK is selective in both the people we hire and the companies with whom we partner. Most of our employees have over 5 years experience in the industry and have delivered solutions for multiple companies.

We believe in a complete solution to every problem every time, and making absolutely certain our clients' businesses are better as a result of their strategic partnership with JMARK. If you're ready to see a change in the way IT serves your business success, you've come to the right place.

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We pride ourselves on exploring IT and Technology topics that matter to you and your business success.

Mobile Device Management – If you’re not ready, it’s time to stop and make a plan.

Posted by Thomas Douglas on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 @ 09:06 AM

Help Prevent Business Risks with Mobile Device Management

 

Business today requires users to be connected all the time. Responding to internal and external requests in real-time has become the clear expectation. It’s not uncommon for people to send and email, and if they haven’t received a response in a few short hours to pick up the phone to make sure someone saw it and encourage a response.

As a result of this, organizations have quickly adjusted by providing email, application and portal access on the mobile devices of their team members, regardless of who owns the device and what type of device they are using. This isn’t unlike any other scenario where business must adjust to stay competitive and the security catches up after the fact.

However, the threats of breach, corporate data loss and client security have reached a point where the risks of an unmanaged mobile environment are no longer acceptable. With the ever-increasing amount of data that resides on a mobile device, a simple lost phone or iPad could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in data theft, recovery and even severe fines — not to mention the negative press involved with a breach or loss of personal and/or private information. Organizations have maintained security on their local networks and computers for many years as a part of “best practices”. Now, because that same data resides on the mobile device, organizations must take the same approach to their mobility.

Mobile Device Management is a simple and affordable solutions to this problem. It will enable an organization to lock a device, locate a device and even erase corporate data from a device when it is lost, stolen or when there is employee turnover. It also provides solutions for data-leakage to ensure the wrong information isn’t uploaded, leaving client lists in the hands of a soon to be ex-employee.

If you’d like to know more about the dangers of mobile device management in your organization, fill out the short form below.

Office on iPhone: A Classic Tale 1.0 Version Heartbreak

Posted by Darren Taff on Fri, Jun 14, 2013 @ 12:08 PM

I’ve been interested in getting an official Microsoft office suite for iOS for a very long time, so it was with great excitement and enthusiasm that I followed the link to the App Store and installed the office suite.  The first thing to note was that the version of Office requires a subscription to Office 365.  JMARK has a subscription, but if you haven’t gotten hooked up with Office 365 yet, you can get yours here:

Subscribe to Office 365

 

Upon launching the app for the first time, I was greeted with a series of introductory slides.  Then I was permitted to connect Office on my iPhone to my JMARK cloud account.

After setting Office up, I was ready to edit some documents.  I selected the type of document to create, in this case a low-impact meeting agenda — you know, just to warm up before giving Office Mobile a real workout.

Selecting a document type on Office Mobile for iOS on iPhone

I noticed the auto-correct suggestions were a little odd.  Apparently there should be no managers present in a meeting.  I’ve never seen this suggestion on my iPhone before when typing in the word “Managers,” (it normally just recognizes the word “managers”) so I must assume that Microsoft has done something with the spellcheck within the app.

Strange auto-correct suggestions

 

 

Moving on, I decided to save a draft to the cloud and see how it looked in my browser…

Microsoft Office for iOS on iPhone

… but the app crashed.

Office Mobile for iOS crashes

… and crashed, and crashed.  Okay, I thought, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt, and see what else it can do.  This time I decided to try an Excel spreadsheet to track vehicle mileage.  I figured since that was one of the available templates it should go great.  I did find it odd that the input for numerical fields default to iOS’s alpha keyboard instead of the numeric keypad.

Numerical input uses the wrong keyboard

That raises a pretty substantial usability concern, but I’m sure we’ll see this addressed in a future release.  Having run through the basic app experience, I was ready to try saving again.

The save screen on Office for iPhone

Naming the spreadsheet before saving to the cloud

 

… But the app crashed again.  I rebooted my phone and cleared all the memory, but sadly, it crashed every time.

Save changes to Office document on iPhone Microsoft Office for iOS on iPhone
Office Mobile for iOS crashes

 

After trying everything in my iOS troubleshooting arsenal, I finally gave up on trying to save any document to the cloud using Office Mobile.  This is a great app, as long as you don’t mind spending twice as long creating or editing documents, having your correctly-spelled words automatically replaced with incorrect words and phrases at random, and don’t need to save or share your created files with anyone.

As excited as I was to have an official Microsoft-approved version of Office on my iPhone, I think I’ll stick with iWork for now.

I tried Office on an Apple iPhone 4S running the latest version of iOS.  Your mileage may vary.  If you give it a try, I’d like to hear your thoughts.  Post a comment back on this article, or better yet, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter.

Road Trip to Moore

Posted by Thomas Douglas on Fri, May 24, 2013 @ 12:32 PM

jmark-crew-headed-to-moore-ok

Oklahoma Relief Effort

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
-Charles Dickens

Help Provide Relief For Oklahoma

JMARK IT Technicians & Staff To Aid Moore, Okla.

Dear Friends,

In order to try to help those impacted by the devastation in Oklahoma, JMARK is putting a team together to go and do what we can to help. We plan on sending 8 to 10 people to do everything from chainsaw work to IT work getting organizations and businesses functioning; focusing on medical facilities that we might be able to help.

We ask for your patience over the next few days while we operate with a lighter team, which may cause some of our response times to be delayed.

If you would like to help, we’re accepting donations through a not-for-profit partner of JMARK’s by the name of CommonWorks. They are a 501(c)3. All donations received will be given directly to families we come in contact with. If you would like to help in any way, please send an email here, and we’ll coordinate with you.

As we are able, we’ll update our Facebook page with information about who we’re helping and provide any images possible. You can find us here.

Sincerely,
The JMARK Support Team

Our Mission

Communication & Restoration

JMARK is sending a group to help medical facilities and the community in Moore, Okla. to get them back online, donate computers and clear debris.

Departing Springfield, Mo. 5/22/2013

Please Join Us

JMARK is working in conjunction with non-profit, CommonWorks, to organize all support for the relief effort. To help send an email to: JMARK4OK@jmark.com

photos from 5/24/2013

photo

quick lunch break

 

Zack

tony-stephen-landon

 

photos and videos from 5/23/2013

Just a couple of videos so far from today.  Another good day of work in Moore.  The crew was able to help recover family and yearbook photos from the ground.

video:

Video of Tom helping secure a tarp to a roof in Moore OK after the tornado

 

video-of-moore-ok-neighborhood-we-worked-in-on-may-23-2013

photos from 5/22/2013

Tech Tip: Ninite and Adobe Flash

Posted by John Gable on Tue, May 14, 2013 @ 10:00 AM

There is a great website called www.ninite.com that techs and home users alike use to install tools like Google Chrome, iTunes, Java, and Free Anti-Virus tools like Microsoft Security Essentials.  It is a one stop shop for freeware programs.  The best part is that it installs these programs with just a few clicks — without the toolbars, adware, spyware, and other unnecessary additions that often accompany free software.  Another great feature is that if you already have these programs it updates them to the most current levels with just a few clicks.  I personally have used this site countless times over the last two years, and sing its praises every chance I can get.

Click Here to read entire article…

Four Ways IT Support Companies Drive Us Crazy

Posted by Darren Taff on Fri, Mar 29, 2013 @ 08:15 AM

Poor communication

It’s like those days when you wait, and wait… and wait for the TV repair person to show up.  You planned your day so you could be there at the right time and have people anxiously awaiting your return to the office.  And there you sit, alone, waiting.  We won’t get into the importance of being there on time, but really — how hard would it be for someone, anyone at the company to call and let you know they’re running behind?  Why is it that so many tech support companies will just leave us on the hook while they work their magic behind the scenes?  We don’t always care about the details, but a simple call or email once in a while to let us know how things are going?

Getting things almost done

You’ve taken care of all the paperwork and 5-minute meetings that had stacked up waiting for your attention.  Just in the nick of time the tech wraps up and you are once again able to get back to work — with one exception: you can do everything except that one really critical thing you never knew would break when they fixed the other stuff.  You take a deep breath, go to your happy place, and pick up the phone… again.

Sneaky ninja tech support

You step away from your desk for an hour and come back to a post-it note stuck to your monitor stating everything is fine now.  Huh? “Oh yeah,” you think to yourself, “I think I remember mentioning something about a problem a couple of weeks ago.”  And then you discover that all of your programs have been closed, your previously opened documents strewn to the far reaches of who-knows-where, and you can’t put your finger on exactly how, but things look… different now.  What did we need fixed again?

Over-geeking things

You’ve just been presented with a brilliantly-designed and intricate solution to all of the problems that have ever wasted ten seconds of your time, wrapped up in a nice neat package that took just over three weeks to put together. Can you say overkill?  Surprisingly, tons of IT support companies don’t get this, and spend days or weeks designing solutions we never knew would be so complicated.  If someone would have simply picked up the phone to let us know how things were going, we might have been able to stop the train before it left the proverbial station and saved everyone a lot of time and trouble.  That sounds a lot like the first item on the list.

Here’s wishing you a day free of IT-related insanity.

Which Tablet Best Supports My Business Needs?

Posted by Darren Taff on Fri, Mar 15, 2013 @ 09:58 AM

Windows vs iPad vs Android for Business

Tablets have certainly been around for long enough for everyone to have become at least somewhat familiar with them, but with all the options available you may be wondering how to go about finding the right one for you.  Which device is least likely to frustrate you or get left on the shelf six weeks after you buy it?  We think we have a few ideas to help answer that question.

Click Here to read entire article…

Microsoft Decides to Allow Transfers of Office 2013 After All

Posted by Darren Taff on Wed, Mar 6, 2013 @ 06:38 PM

Nevermind-shutterstock_1715235-resized-600

Last week we told you about a licensing policy that had would-be Microsoft Office 2013 customers in an uproar.  Under that policy, customers would have been unable to move Office 2013 to a new computer as was possible in previous versions of Office.

The policy was considered by some to be a hard push toward Office 365′s software-as-a-service licensing model.  This week, the company seems to have reversed the policy, as has been posted to the Office Blog.  The only major stipulation now seems to be that these transfers may only occur once every 90 days per installation key.

Does Microsoft’s policy change affect your plans to install Office 2013?  We’d like to know.  Drop a comment on this article, or look us up on Facebook or Twitter.

As we said in the previous article on this topic: If upgrades are in your future, we encourage you to lean on your dedicated NetCare support team for help making the best decision for your business.

Internet Safety Update

Posted by Thomas Douglas on Mon, Mar 4, 2013 @ 07:28 AM

Even the most prominent websites can be compromised and can create issues for unsuspecting users. On February 21st, WeLiveSecurity reported that NBC.com was compromised in such a way that some anti-virus software solutions were blocking users from accessing the NBC.com site. If users were allowed to go to the site, their computers could have been infected and compromised.

This is an everyday example of how important it is that every computer have the proper protection in place. The unfortunate reality is that one solution isn’t good enough for businesses to rely on for complete protection. While it’s true that some A/V packages did block users from accessing NBC.com, many did not.

Click Here to read entire article…

The Microsoft Office Feature More Annoying Than Clippy the Paperclip

Posted by Darren Taff on Tue, Feb 26, 2013 @ 08:41 PM

update: we have released an update to this article since Microsoft has revised their policy on activations of Office 2013.

clippy

Bloggers and consumers are roaring about the licensing model Microsoft has introduced with Office 2013. After reading the releases, blogs, and following link after link on Microsoft’s website, it’s no wonder.  While we aren’t asking anyone to like the new rules, we do want everyone to be aware of them in hopes we spare some of you some headaches and grief.

Click Here to read entire article…

Your New PC Might Not Work with Your Email Server

Posted by Darren Taff on Tue, Feb 19, 2013 @ 07:26 AM

We’ve been learning and — mostly — enjoying Microsoft Office 2013 around the JMARK offices.  There are some great new features, but we’ve also noticed there are a few surprises we thought you’d like to know about before they became problems.  Here are some of the big ones:

One major problem our email experts have noticed is that Exchange 2003 is not supported in Outlook 2013.  Go here for a list of the dated features they’ve left behind in the new version.  If your email server is running Exchange 2003 you may want to look at updating it before moving to the new Office version.

New PCs will come with Office 2013, not Office 2010.

New PCs with Office 2013 cannot be downgraded to Office 2010 (see next bullet).

An available — although very expensive — version of Office 2013 that allows you to downgrade to Office 2010 is available.  Let us know if you need it and we can help.

But here’s what you can do in the new version of Office.

Office can store files in SkyDrive and Office 365 online storage.

outlook

Microsoft has improved integration with Facebook and LinkedIn.

Like every version of Outlook, power users will love the new features. Here’s a quick start guide. Here’s a quick-start guide for Outlook 2013

Excel has some interesting and useful new features, such as flash fill.

Office 2013 has much better multi-monitor support.  It is now much simpler to run Excel and other Office applications on separate monitors.  Comparing documents is much easier now than it was with version 2010.

PowerPoint adds a nice dashboard mode when presenting.  With features like showing you the next slide or bullet point, and how long you’ve been on the current slide, this is very helpful if you do a lot of presenting.

powerpoint

One tool you may not have been using will be more prevalent as the Surface and other touch-enabled devices become mainstream.  Microsoft OneNote is used heavily in the JMARK offices to keep track of and share notes between colleagues.  Here’s a video demonstrating how it works on a tablet. The video is a bit dated (from before the Windows 8 release) but you’ll get the idea of where Microsoft is headed with touch support in the future.

All told, Microsoft Office 2013 is a great product, and has been beneficial in our environment at JMARK.  Our technicians are up to speed on the new features and changes.  If you need to make sure your office is ready for Office, your account manager and support team can help.