Author: webatlanta_qruach

Ubuntu 16 server setup

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

adduser {{username}}
adduser {{username}} sudo

apt-get install apache2
apt-get install php
apt-get install libapache2-mod-php
apt-get install php-mcrypt
apt-get install php-mysql

apt install iptables
apt install fail2ban

apt update
apt full-upgrade
apt install build-essential
apt install tcl

add some swap

fallocate -l 1G /mnt/1GB.swap
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/1GB.swap bs=1024 count=1048576
mkswap /mnt/1GB.swap
swapon /mnt/1GB.swap
chmod 0600 /mnt/1GB.swap
echo "/mnt/1GB.swap  none  swap  sw 0  0" >>/etc/fstab

apt install mysql-server
mysql_secure_installation

{{su}}

curl latest redis.io stable
make
make test
make install
mkdir /etc/redis
cp redis.conf /etc/redis

create /etc/systemd/system/redis.service – e.g.

[Unit]
Description=Redis
After=network.target
[Service]
User=redis
Group=redis
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/redis-cli shutdown
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

now you need to diff your redis.conf – password, persistence, binding, etc.

when you are ready to move … (or to test, see ExecStart)

systemctl enable redis

next

cd /etc/apache2
ln mods-available/rewrite.load mods-enabled/rewrite.load

Switchboard

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

Naive phone numbers and internationalization

Naive phone numbers and internationalization

Set company switchboard + prefixed for country code here

Phone numbers should be entered as digits, and maybe sometimes a + sign if a country code needs to be used.

A naive phone number in the United States is stored as 2025551212 and formatted as (202) 555-1212.

Internationalization of a naive phone number is achieved by adding the company naive phone number prefix to the phone number, i.e. 2025551212 becomes +12025551212.

All phone numbers can be entered either as naive or international, if the phone number is entered with the plus sign and the country code, it is stored as an international phone number.

For example, most companies in WRbil are US companies, but, for example, Airbus in Toulouse has the internal number  +33561933333, and the formatted number of +33 (561) 933-333

If the WRbil company were French, with a company naive phone number prefix of +33, the phone number could be entered as 561933333 which would be formatted as (561) 933-333

Atlanta SEO

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

Small business presence in Atlanta

Stores, services and goods sold for the Atlanta market have more and more been relying on Web Atlanta to help improve their visibility with Atlanta consumers. Business owners are coming to see that the old ways of local newspaper advertising, direct mail and yellow pages are entirely replace by the era of consumers using the internet from their computer to find reliable companies to acquire goods and services. We especially know that consumers that cannot find their favorite brand names quickly on google can be lost to the competition. That is why our web-sites compatible with computers, iPhones and Android devices are so popular with Atlanta businesses and service providers.

Atlanta consumers are most likely to use the computer to find a phone number, even for a business that they may have looked up in the yellow or white pages just a few years ago. Even the web-sites that replace the printed versions of these directories have been replaced by google local listings, now called google places, and reliable consumer feedback sites like Kudzu.com, Yelp and Angiie’s List. Now the web 2.0 revolution involving Facebook and twitter has left many business owners worried that they might not be doing all they need to do to properly manage their brand name today.

Web Atlanta has the answers and offers a thorough program of internet management for companies that want to stay on the cutting edge. With the advent of the ‘Cloud’, the increased use of smaller devices like iPads, iPhones and Android tablets, and the newly evolving web 3.0 standards with the ipV6 revolution forward looling business owners have successfully lept over unprepared companies by using the computer science of Web Atlanta to grow against the grain of the general trends of the economy.

If you are ready to maximize your exposure to the marketplace and leapfrog the businesses that don’t see the importance of taking these steps, talk to the experts at Web Atlanta SEO for web presence management packages tailored to fit your needs and budget.

Long Password

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

Choosing a long password gives you increased security. Long passwords are harder to hack, and enabling your long password allows you to to two factor logins, where you only need your cell phone to log in wherever required.

However, if you lose your cell phone, the long password gives you a means to regain access to your account, where you can disable cell phone two factor access, and where you can change your cell phone number.

Choosing a long password is relatively easy. you could, for example, string together four or five different teachers names. The trick is that you must remember what you picked.

For example, I strung together six schools I attended and got lincolnwashingtontrumankennedyrooseveltcoolidge as a long password.

For me, that is easy to remember. You could capitalize and add spaces, that makes the long password more complicated, and the complexity gives your account a higher level of security.

Suggestions:

Phrase from obscure song
Phrase from a lesser known prayer
Phrase in French or German, if you know that well
Phrase from a quotation, especially if you start in the middle

Create a strong password

Some websites ask you to create a strong password, but limit password length to 12 or 16 characters. We will ignore that, this discussion is about creating a strong password that your can remember long enough to get your browser to remember, at which time we all tend to forget it.

Modern websites allow passwords of 64 or mare characters, and there is a good way to take advantage of that. One way is to associate a different song to every important website you use.

The example we use at WRbil.com is Stefani’s Sweet Escape – where we use the password;

sourmilkonthefloor shut the refrigerator

You would just have to remember that WRbil.com is your woohoo yeehoo website and this phrase and the spacing and you have a very strong password.

You could vary the password with capital letters, or shorten the password and put your childhood phone number in the middle. The trick is to associate a different song and key lyric, one song for the bank, another for Facebook and another song for your email.

Use your cell phone camera

Another approach would be to use the website
https://passwordsgenerator.net/ and take a picture of the password with your cell phone. Assuming your cell phone has fingerprint or face id, that is a secure way of storing passwords. Depending on user permissions you can use strong-16 or strong-40 to generate a working password.

HR HCM Packages

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

BambooHR

API, Benefits, Compliance, Custom Reporting, Authority settings by user, stores documents (internally), Scheduling, Surveys

Employee Self-Service

Pricing, secretive, rumored to be $7-10 per employee per month.

Contract, unknown

NaturalHR

State of the art css and javascript, might be clunky on older hardware, very appealing on windows 10 and snow leapord. Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge are very compatible.

API($$$), Benefits, Custom Reporting, Authority by User, document storage (internal), Scheduling, Surveys, Onboarding & Offboarding

Employee Self-Service, seems limited to changing address, bank information.

Pricing, $ – 2.50 to 7.50 per employee, depending on features

Premium features, custom fields($$), recruitment($$), timesheets($$), suggestions($$), compliance documents($$), expenses($$$), assets($$$), surveys($$$), triggers($$$), custom benefits($$$), social stream($$$)

Contract, unknown, possibly month to month.

Choosing HCM CRM ERP Software

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

Selling software is like selling water, claim it’s from a Pacific Island, market it to your sales people, throw in lots of cotton candy and coffee mugs, and charge a lot of money. At least that is what our competition does. You will be told that great things come from adopting their system, and when it fails, it’s your fault, you should have evaluated your needs more carefully.

This time you hire an army of consultants, to match your needs to the myriad of choices, and this time, you will find the right fit. You failed again. The consultants just had a song and dance to play on your latest lament, and empty your bank account.

Here is the fact you just won’t learn. No single computer program is going to handle everything. Some CRM systems dial your phones, others post to Facebook, some even interface with Quickbooks or manage a website shopping cart for mp3 audio files.

The answer is not to find one with the right features, but to quit looking. Quit looking for something that will never exist, and start building on what already works.

The heaviest selling occurs around ‘Customer Relationship Management,’ i.e. more than one of your employees needs to keep abreast of the activity on a given customer.

But an employment agency has dozens of recruits (inventory) and a handful of customers. You need to manage your inventory. Your workers are your inventory. Your clients need first and foremost to get willing, sober and responsible individuals to fill temporary employment positions.

Let’s look at what CRM claims to accomplish;

  1. it helps to improve and enhance customer communication
  2. it streamlines daily operations
  3. it allows you to focus on your customers

Cotton Candy.

How about steak instead. What have they bought in the past? When? How much did they pay? What is their phone number? If you are providing temporary help for a handful of local businesses, manage your inventory. If you sell lots of widgets to hundreds of customers with a dozen customer service people sending the same or similar quotation each hour, a shared contact book may suffice, but if your 10 or 12 sales people have hundreds of products and hundreds of customers and dozens of orders, you need a system.

That’s actually not CRM. That is ERP. So why are you shopping for CRM? Because you are shopping for the wrong thing. You have been mis-educated. By the very people that want your money, giving you what you don’t need, all while patting themselves on the back.

Why does CRM deal with fluff and not the steak?

Because to deal with the steak, you have to deliver results. Take for example a program like QuickBooks. You can produce invoices, make payments, and ultimately produce financial statements that can be used to evaluate the success of your enterprise from year to year. It can be used to complete your taxes, to enforce cash controls, reconcile accounts, monitor budgets and track expenditures.

But CRM is different, it’s a rolodex, that multiple people can use at the same time! Very little benefit for way more money than you paid for QuickBooks.

Also simple, but you will fail. You should start with Microsoft Exchange Server. Because with that, the company now can use email to communicate with your client base, all with a shared rolodex. The server is a few thousand dollars and the IT consultants are twice that per year. But the benefits are finally defined.

  1. aid communication among your team
  2. contact prospects, clients, leads, build relationships with contacts
  3. coordinate and communicate with co-workers
  4. distribute written policy guidelines and instructions to your sales force

For many businesses this would be worth amortizing thousands of dollars a year. But here is the problem. Why would you spend thousands of dollars for something that is practically free? You can implement gmail shared contacts for dollars per month. For ten people in your office, you could have save yourself the cost of servers, IT consultants, dedicated computer rooms, new network wiring and a proprietary framework and the expenditures might well be less than 200 dollars a year. A little elbow grease, and you save a lot of money. If you have fifty people in the office, the cost of an enterprise level server for email and contact management might change.

QuickBooks doesn’t look so bad. Quickbooks for the bookkeeper, the owner and the Vice President of Operations and gmail for everyone else. You can even cloak your gmail addresses behind your companies domain name, your customers will not know how simple you keep things.

The problem is not that everyone is gullible. The problem is that your sales force is gullible. And once you commit to a system, your sales force will be the first to jump ship. So before you begin, stop lying and let’s make an honest assessment.

  1. Do you need a trouble ticket system?
  2. Do you need to measure marketing campaigns?
  3. Do you need an industry-specific calculations to complete a quotation?
  4. If you budget 1 percent of gross revenues for software training and customization, what’s your budget?
  5. efficiency
  6. intuitive
  7. transition
  8. adoption

If an approach fails, can the data be quickly moved? Can the system communicate by phone, fax, email, post, Federal Express overnight, text messaging, multimedia messaging, whatsapp? Your number one goal should be to take the next step, not the next leap.

Wow, OK. Maybe there is a system that can do several things. Wrong again.

If you are looking for CRM, find a solution compatible with Zapier.com as this will be a step toward verifying that you can insert information and extract information from your CRM solution without undue expense.

Technology now makes the communication of data (if authorized) possible. Leverage that. Don’t enter into a system that does not meet that low threshold. That means, if you are comparing the notion of installing QuickBooks to Zoho cloud, the choice is made for you. If you are comparing the prospect of cloud based vs. local network-server QuickBooks, the decision is obvious. Whatever drawbacks there are to the cloud are outweighed by the pick up and move to a new platform criteria.

Training.

How much training did you receive from google on searching? On using email? If your CRM solution fails because of a lack of training, it wasn’t the solution they sold you. It was a lot of wasted training. You failed again.

Pragmatism

You will fail by being idealistic. Be pragmatic. Form a solution, move on. Your workforce may need written policy. Write it and enforce it. Until you change it. If they don’t like it, they can work for another company, where they may finally learn to accept it.

Lists

Posted on by webatlanta_qruach

With html5 forms and cloud computing, long held paradigms of data acquisition and data entry are changing, and WRbil uses a concept called Lists to advance the state of the art in data entry and management. Wyn Rocket List is a tool for populating drop down menus.

Some people remember checking out at the department store, and the credit card would be verified against a printed list of stolen credit cards. Visa and MasterCard would send a printed book to stores periodically and it was up to the clerk to check your card. The booklet was nothing but row after row of credit card numbers, and the entire book was in credit card number order.

The state of the art has advanced, instead of books now the credit card number is encrypted and information is exchanged via the internet directly with Visa and Mastercard. Stolen credit cards are identified and entire transactions are performed.

In the late 19th century, the United States Census Bureau adopted Herman Hollerith’s Electronic Punch Card and Tabulator to assist in the collection and processing of data. Time held techniques evolved to input and manage large volumes of data, some still stand.

Like the credit card example, modern technology has vastly changed the way data is entered. The Hollerith card no longer requires a cryptic customer id field, limited to five columns and carefully punched on a machine with no backspace and the hope that the number of transpositions and errors subordinates an acceptable level of fault.

Likewise, rather than populate a dropdown box with eight thousand part numbers or 32,000 customers, Rocket Lists allows users and managers to create lists for data entry efficiency. This aptly speeds entry and lowers the rate of error in the cloud to human interface boundary.

Lists relate to your WRbil company database, a list is a set of keys for records (rows) in major database files.

List Types

  • Session Lists
  • Saved Lists
  • Assigned Lists

Sessions Lists are the most common type of list. They are active for a specific user for as long as they are logged in. There is, in practice, one hierarchical Session List per logged in user, which is null for users that have not added items to the list. If an order, customer, part, vehicle, workcenter or employee is added to the list, that item actually lives on a sub-list of the main Session List that holds orders, customers, parts, vehicles, workcenters or employees.

Saved lists are Sessions Lists that have been named and saved by a user. They may be retrieved from the users’ saved list folder at which time they become added to Session Lists.

Assigned Lists are created by admins, and can be assigned to parametric locations or saved as company wide saved lists to be retrieved by any user. There is no such thing as a private Assigned List. There is no such thing as an Assigned List with restricted read access. Any Assigned List can be activated by any user.