Who is PIRE IT?
- Hassan Al-Kizim - IT Generalist and Helpdesk technician
- Hassan is our newest hire and works alongside Mike to handle day to day tasks.
- Mike Lusby – IT Specialist and Helpdesk technician
- Joey Dacanay – Web Developer and Graphic Design
- Joey has recently moved under the IT department
- In addition to his graphic design work on posters, flyers, logos, etc… Joey works very closely with Paul and Tchikaya Brooks on managing web application projects.
- Tchikaya Brooks – consultant specializing in Web site architecture and design
- Tchikaya, goes by “T”, is our primary Web application platform developer.
- Specializes in both custom web design as well as SharePoint implementation.
- Currently working almost full time on PIRE work.
- Hank Stanton - consultant providing as needed CIO and resource/recruiting services.
- Paul Lavoie – IT Director
What’s going on at PIRE IT?
In addition to our day to day tech support, management of Qualtrics survey projects and active web application projects there are two other main tasks that IT has focused on in the last few months:
Planning and implementing a move away from Vonage as a phone provider.
- We are currently duplicating all the services that Vonage provides at Microsoft’s Cloud service – Azure.
- By the last quarter of the year we expect to port of our telephone numbers to Office 365’s Cloud PBX.
- This migration of phone services should have the smaller impact on staff once completed since the software (Skype for Business) and the desktop phones will all remain the same.
- Around the start of 2018 we expect Vonage to be removed as our phone provider and to be fully on Microsoft’s platform for all aspects of PIRE’s communications.
Streamlining the systems and techniques that PIRE IT uses to rollout new software features to provide these features to staff more quickly.
Some of you may have recently received a newer version of Office on your computer and this was to catch up those that had been overlooked. We are 99% done with this update and are beginning the next set of changes on the Office 365 side that will:
- Provide for consistent local synching experience across OneDrive and SharePoint online.
- Change the Office 365 sign-on to support what is called “modern authentication” – which essentially reduces the number of Outlook logon pop-ups that appear when opening both Outlook and Skype from PIRE computers.
We are also updating our KACE system, the IT Support Center to the latest version. KACE is both PIRE’s Helpdesk system and asset management system which helps monitor that the correct version of software installed on PIRE computer.
Finally, PIRE systems now fully support Windows 10. Thanks to the IT team for all the hard work over the last few month in testing all aspects of Windows 10 against our systems. From now on all new PIRE systems will be Windows 10.
All of these remaining changes will be implemented by the end of July. Please expect additional communication with needed specifics from IT next month. |
