LEVEL UP: NEWS & VIEWS FROM RED LEVEL

Say Farewell to the old SQL, Windows, and Exchange Servers

You’ve probably heard about SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2010 hitting end of life. A lot of our clients are asking us what End-of-Support really means for them and their business? The answer requires an understanding of Microsoft’s product lifecycle. All Microsoft products have a 10-year lifecycle. The first five years is called mainstream support and that’s where you are going to get things such as new features, security updates, and non-security updates. The second five years is called extended support where you are going to receive security updates and non-security updates. During this time there is no additional product feature functionality added to the product. Important End-of-Support dates you need to be aware of: July [...]

2019-07-02T14:10:11+00:00By Justin Coffey|SQL, Windows|

Best From SharePoint North America Conference 2019

I have been involved in the technology industry, in the SharePoint community since 2007, just about the same time when SharePoint gained its popularity. This year, I got my first big chance to attend the 2019 SharePoint North America conference in Las Vegas and it was PHENOMENAL. There is a whole variety of things the SharePoint Conference covers, which made choosing what session to attend difficult. Every track really applied to me as I am a developer, a configure-er, an admin, and a user adoption and collaboration specialist. I went through a lot of different sessions at the conference and I would love to share my key take aways from the conference and what stood out for me from the [...]

2019-06-11T11:50:27+00:00By Ryan Charnock|Microsoft, Microsoft Partner, Microsoft Solution Provider, SharePoint|

We’re Proud to be the 2019 Valo Partner of the Year

Introducing the 2019 Valo North American Partner of the Year Award Winner: C/D/H! C/D/H, now part of Red Level, became a Valo Partner in late 2017 and has shown exquisite commitment towards Valo since the very beginning. “We are thrilled and honored to win the Valo Partner of the Year 2019 North America,” said Jack LaPan, Director of Products, Red Level. “We have a great team, bringing this dynamic communication tool to help organizations to succeed with a functional, modern and customizable intranet solution that facilitates collaborative work for a diverse and dispersed workforce.” Valo Partner of the Year Award is a unique award given to the partner who has shown awesome sales results, has created new innovations, and shown phenomenal [...]

2019-06-24T19:56:49+00:00By Red Level|Awards, Valo|

10 Things to Look for in a Managed Services Provider

As businesses start to grow, so do their technology needs. Growing businesses often find that they save time and money by contracting with the right Managed Services partner. Managed Services allow you to augment your existing IT staff and infrastructure by partnering with a dedicated IT firm to take care of your network, servers, computers, and all your technology needs. This is the perfect solution for companies who need to operate at peak efficiency but do not have the resources to manage a large on-site IT staff. Choosing the right partner for your Managed Services needs is important. Here are 10 Things to look for as you are evaluating a managed services provider: Evaluating a Managed Services Provider Availability You don’t [...]

2019-05-14T14:00:23+00:00By Red Level|Managed IT Services, Managed Services, Managed Services Provider, Uncategorized|

End of Support for SQL and Windows 2008

What could July 9, 2019 mean to you? What about January 14th, 2020? End of support if you are using SQL or Windows 2008. That means Microsoft is no longer going to provide automatic fixes, updates, hotfixes or online technical support for any SQL or Windows 2008 servers, including R2. As a business, you want to upgrade or migrate to a newer version of these servers to ensure your servers are up to date and protected. To prepare your business for a seamless and smooth transition, whether you are planning on migrating or upgrading the servers, consider taking these actions: For SQL server - You want to start the process by identifying what’s out on your SQL server and move [...]

2019-06-18T14:48:57+00:00By Dean Bostedor|SQL, Windows|

Top 3 Reasons to Recycle Your E-Waste This Earth Day

To celebrate Earth Day and welcome spring to Michigan, Red Level brought our clients, business partners, and community together to recycle their outdated technology at our annual Spring Cleaning events in Grand Rapids and Novi. The events encourage our communities to act on protecting the earth through proper recycling and helps them to retire outdated technology that leaves their organizations vulnerable. This year we were able to recycle 5,260 pounds (2.58 tons) of old servers, laptops, scanners, printers, and PCs at our Spring Cleaning events. When it comes time to clean out your tech storage bins don’t just toss your old technology equipment. Recycle it. Recycling outdated technology benefits your business in three major ways: Efficiency Devices that are over [...]

2019-04-22T15:44:39+00:00By David King|IT services|

Nintex User Group: Simple workflows can use simple approaches

Sometimes technology makes some scenarios worse. At our last Nintex User Group in Detroit, I presented an approach for solving small scale static approval processes (it was met with raving reviews – and lots of questions). The issue: The use of Nintex Flexi-tasks and Approval tasks are the standard tools to notify and gather approval feedback. They are feature-rich, scalable, and easy to use. However, they present a few barriers: Reporting: The SharePoint list item and process data are not in the same data-set. Since approval tasks are stored in a separate list, and their comments, in order to get a consolidated view of both the SharePoint list item and process approval history, you have to combine the one to many data sets [...]

2019-04-01T16:57:05+00:00By Ryan Charnock|Forms, Nintex, SharePoint, Workflow|

Use Report Builder 2012 to Visualize Your SharePoint Data

Quick and Dirty Reporting for SharePoint 2013 Applications - Part 1 Good restaurants are hard to come by. The combination of tasty food, atmosphere, price, and service is a mix many owners never master. The same is true in using SharePoint as a platform to develop a department sized application. Microsoft Access, Excel and Lotus notes have traditionally played in this “no-code” space. However, SharePoint offers: tables, forms, a workflow engine, but lacks a little in the reporting area. A simple tool I have been using to resolve this shortcoming is Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder (you can download it for free here). Report Builder is a free graphics interface tool that visualizes data in table or chart formats. [...]

2019-07-02T18:46:40+00:00By Ryan Charnock|App Development, SharePoint|

C/D/H now Red Level Nominated for Valo Partner of the Year 2019

C/D/H now Red Level has been nominated as a 2019 North American Valo Partner of the Year finalist. Each year the Valo Partner Awards recognize the contributions and successes of partners who have show a special dedication to ensuring client satisfaction throughout their intranet life cycle. “To be named as a Valo Partner of the Year Finalists a company must shine through their Valo journey but also have a desire to help employees collaborate and engage with their community by using Valo solutions” said Jenni Mattinen, Marketing Communication Specialist, Valo Intranet. “C/D/H is one of those Valo Partners that has instantly taken Valo as it was their own product. As a Valo partner since 2018, C/D/H has been actively sharing #ValoLove [...]

2019-04-30T15:06:06+00:00By Megan Testani|Awards, Valo|

Top 5 Infrastructure Trends for 2019

We’ve bid 2018 farewell and welcomed 2019 with open arms. So what's next? What’s going to happen in 2019 from an infrastructure perspective? The answer for 2019 is similar to that of recent years. Cloud and security are still the top priorities. Let’s take a quick look at what may impact your infrastructure focus. 1. Exchange Migration Migrations from Exchange on-premises to Exchange online and upgrades from older versions of Exchange to the latest version are both projects going strong in 2019. We continue to support our clients who are going through these Exchange migration and upgrade processes and predict that Exchange migrations, upgrades, and support will continue to be a trend with our clients. 2. Multi-Factor Authentication To add [...]