Working from home and how Vinters can support you and your business

21st April 2020

Written by Ryan Seager

Working from home due to Covid-19 has presented many new challenges for everyone, ranging from how to keep the kids entertained to how to continue working effectively as a company. We at Vinters are here to make at least one of those challenges easier to manage.

The team at Vinters are working harder than ever to make sure that the IT side of working from home is a transition that’s as seamless as possible from your usual way of working in the office.

Below are the ways we are continually making sure that you can work productively from home as an individual and as a team:

VPNs will also allow you to easily access your work PC from home via remote desktop with a few configuration changes on your PC. This is particularly useful in giving you the same applications and access that you are used to and keeping your work separate from your home PC. Please speak to a member of our team if you feel that you would benefit from having this set up.

You can also take your work desktop PC or Laptop home with you which via the VPN you would be able to use your work PC from home as though you were in the office.

Remote Desktop Sessions

As mentioned above, some customers, including the staff at Vinters, are using RDS (Remote Desktop Sessions). This allows you to control your Office PC from home to easily and freely access any resources that you would usually be able to find.

As an individual working from home, you will see no difference from how we work when you have an issue with your PC. We are always ready to receive phone calls and emails from our customers; our team will work to resolve your issue and make sure that working from home is as easy as possible for you.

Another form of Remote Desktop is known as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). VDI means that your desktop is virtual and you connect to it via a thin client or another device with remote desktop from wherever you are located. We have found that our customers who are set up with VDIs were quickly able to work from home with more functionality than customers who used RDS or VPNs as it was already their normal way of working even when they are in the office.

Telephony and VOIP

Another challenge is making sure that people can still reach you via all of your usual communication methods including the telephone which traditionally was the more challenging device to relocate. Most modern systems now sit on a technology called Voice over IP which means the phone works via standard networks rather than a separate telephony network. This allows the phone or handset to be operated from anywhere with a network and is not locked to the traditional phone network in the office.

Soft clients allow you to take calls from wherever you are working as long as you have the program, such as Skype for Business, and an internet connection. It also allows you to set the client up on your personal or work mobile to receive calls while you are not at your PC. As Skype and Teams are a Microsoft product, it can also link in with your existing infrastructure, this means that managers and supervisors can easily access call records even if everyone is working from home.

What are the challenges of working from home?

One of the main challenges of working from home is keeping in touch with clients and even your own team. Most of us are so used to going and talking to one of our colleagues and communicate with them face-to-face, and this is where technology really comes into its own and Vinters can help you keep up to date and utilise Microsoft’s Office365 Teams, and Skype for Business so that you can keep in contact with your colleagues and clients seamlessly.

Video chat and conferencing has boomed in recent weeks with Microsoft Teams being our go to choice internally and to recommend to our customers. Microsoft include Teams in all Office 365 subscriptions so for most people they already have access to it and don’t need to allow for any additional costs.