Welcome Shaneen!

Our New Dell Servers & Rack

 We’ve been quiet with our blog posts lately but don’t think for a minute  that we haven’t been busy with our technology improvement program!

Throughout late August and Early September, we completed a series of  ambitious server upgrades. We upgraded & consolidated our network into 3 new Dell Servers and upgraded our switch to the latest Procurve switch.  

These upgrades allowed us to virtualize our servers, provided a better platform for CCH document and gave us improved remote access.

The upgrades and conversion went very smoothly thanks to the hard work and careful planning of William Shilson of Connected Technologies and the CCH support team.

Thanks guys, we really appreciate your help!

Coming soon: a virtualized terminal server!

Readers of this blog know that at MacGillivray we have a great interest in  using technology to make our business more efficient and to make our interactions with our clients as seamless as possible. Our client portal is an integral part of our strategy in this regard and at the user conference we saw the next generation of CCH products being released in the next year.

We saw CCH Portal (known as ProSystem fx Portal in the U.S) and CCH Workstream (known as Prosystem fx Workstream in th U.S.) and they are amazing. The nexgen portal software has addressed ALL the issues we have with the existing interface. We’ll have an improved login mechanism, the ability to handle corporate groups of multiple companies under a single login. As well, it now supports other browsers in addition to Internet Explorer.

I understand the SaaS versions are being released in the US now with non-Saas versions and access in Canada coming in 2o10. I encourage you to check out these products – we’re going to roll them out as soon as we can lay our hands on them!

We ordered awesome new desktops for Jamie, George and Linda. George will be joining the world of desktop-computer users – it’s new for him, but necessary since he started working in tax.

Linda and Jamie need new desktops too – their current machines contain faulty capacitors that are effectively ticking timebombs. It’s only a matter of time until they fail, and in doing so join my and Brian’s old machines on the scrap heap.

This time around – its Windows Vista of course, 4 gig of ram,  and beefed up video cards to support multiple monitors. When the machines arrive, we’re going to reshuffle things so that Jamie, George and Brian each end up with 3 monitors. Having spent two years developing our paperless best practices, it’s clear that 3 is the new 2 when it comes to monitors.

Me? I’m going to be testing the cutting edge theory “4 is the new 3″. 

We’ve installed and configured the latest version of CCH Scan (Thanks George!) This version has the new autoflow technology we saw in the training course last week. This technology is going to revolutionize the way we prepare personal tax returns – You’ll see how at our next training session.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone . I’m looking for to spending time with my family – I hope all you get to do the same.

Kyle has Arrived - Two Thumbs Up

We’d like to take the opportunity to welcome Kyle Kroeker back to the Brampton office family. Kyle just graduated from Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo and started with us full time yesterday. He’s well known to us – he spent two co-op terms with us and we’re glad he decided to join us after graduating. He’s a very funny guy who’s known especially for putting Frank’s Hot Sauce on pretty much anything and everything he eats.

If you haven’t met Kyle already, take a good look at his picture – there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get to meet him over the coming busy season.

Secure Client Portals

We’ve noticed that many readers of this blog are looking for information about secure client portals. I imagine you want to know the how, what, when, where and especially “why” of using a client portal, so that you can deal with the issue of client portals at your own firms. You’ve probably guessed that we’ve done a lot of work in this area, if you’ve been following this blog

I figured the best thing to do was to open this blog to your questions. So….that said, if you’re looking for information about using client portals, please feel free to add a comment to this post. Go ahead and ask your specific question(s) – Other people probably have the same question too anyway.

We’ll do our best to answer them and to get you the help you need.

The Other Guy

My New 2008 Chevrolet Suburban

I know this isn’t exactly on topic but I had a really bizarre Friday night and thought I’d share it with you. While on my way home from the office tonight, a car turned in front of me just as I entered the intersection on a green light, travelling at about 60km/hr.  I had no time to react and I hit him and hit him HARD. His car spun around two or three complete times.

The airbag went off in my face with a bang, but my truck just kept going straight ahead. I guess that’s what happens when you hit a little car with a BIG truck. I pulled over right away and was about to get out of my truck to go check on the other driver when the Onstar operator came on (just like on the commercials!) to ask if I was OK and to patch me through to the 911 operator. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t answer some of their questions as I hadn’t even had the chance to get out of the truck yet to check on the other driver.

They insisted on sending an ambulance, fire trucks and police (because of the airbag deployment, they said)who came and found us shaken up but otherwise not seriously injured. We were so lucky – have a look at the picture of his little Nissan. I am so grateful he’s OK and that there wasn’t anyone sitting in his passenger seats.

Everyone was so awesome, they made a crappy situation bearable – from the witnesses who confirmed it wasn’t my fault to the Caledon OPP and Firefighters, who checked us out and even to the tow truck drivers who looked after our vehicles.

I had them take my truck to my favourite dealership, John Logan Chevrolet. This is funny – they are clients of our Firm and I emailed them on my Blackberry from the accident scene saying “Keep an eye out for my truck – I just got in an accident and its going to be towed to you. Never thought I’d be helping improve your bodyshop profits so soon & in this way. Hope to see you Monday.” I can’t wait for them to put my truck back into pristine condition.

Lastly, thanks to Jen for coming to pick me up and for helping me grab all my stuff (laptop bag, Fender Telecaster, two weeks worth of mail, etc.) from my truck before it got towed away.

So…..in the end, I’m very thankful that no one was seriously hurt. After all, vehicles are so much easier to fix than people.

Our portal login is found at www.macgillivraybrampton.com. We’ve realized that we’re missing an opportunity – with so many visitors coming to this site regularly, it could be the perfect place to pass on useful information to clients.

Connected Technologies has started building a new “front end” for this site, that will be full of useful information for clients and staff. We hope to have it in place early in 2009. I’ll keep you posted.

Rupy and George set theirs up for testing and their initial reviews are good. They remind everyone that you need to step the resolution on your machine down to 1024 x 768 for them to work.