Harness Group Blog

Watch Out for Ads as You Browse the Internet

As you navigate the web, it’s crucial to stay vigilant about the ads you encounter. Recent reports highlight that Google searches have become a significant target for malvertising hackers. These malicious ads can lead to harmful websites or download malware onto your device or get you to give them sensitive data. Always ensure your browser and security software are up-to-date, and be cautious about clicking on ads, especially those that seem too good to be true.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/google-searches-big-target-for-malvertising-hackers.html

Mastering VLOOKUP in Excel

I’m not an Excel guru, but I would consider myself a light power user. VLOOKUP is one of my favorite and most used functions. Excel’s VLOOKUP function is a powerful tool for anyone dealing with large datasets. If you’re looking to enhance your Excel skills, check out this informative video tutorial on VLOOKUP here. The video covers everything from the basics to advanced tips, making it easier to find and analyze data efficiently.

https://youtu.be/xIynD1gFOLo?si=5DRXtRKua-AFltrU

The Importance of Subject Matter Experts for Your Major Line of Business Applications

In today’s fast-paced business environment, having subject matter experts (SMEs) for your major line of business applications is more critical than ever. SMEs bring specialized knowledge and experience that can help streamline processes, improve decision-making, and ensure that your applications are used to their fullest potential. Investing in SMEs can lead to better performance, reduced errors, and a more robust business strategy overall.

Our primary line of business applications here at Harness Group are ConnectWise and Office 356 admin center among others. We require regular general and specialized training so that we can stay up to date on the use of the software and gain efficiencies as new features are rolled out. Every staff member has a baseline understanding of our platforms, but some of us go further so that we can be our own internal support for the tool.

Each of our clients has their own line of business applications where it would be of major benefit to invest in an SME(s) to help use your software to its fullest potential day to day. We help as best we can with software-related troubleshooting among the hundreds of pieces of software that our clients use daily, but someone who is in the software day in and day out with this specialized training is going to be a massive asset in the nuances of their company’s software setup, configuration, inner workings and functions.

NotebookLM - AI is starting to show promise for us common folks

NotebookLM is an experimental AI-powered research and writing assistant developed by Google. It allows users to upload their documents and then leverages the power of language models to provide insights, summaries, and explanations based on those sources. This tool is designed to help users synthesize information more efficiently by generating summaries, answering detailed questions, and converting complex material into easy-to-understand formats. NotebookLM aims to be a virtual research assistant, making it easier to connect ideas and gain deeper understanding from the documents you upload. One of its coolest features is that it has the ability to make an AI generated audio podcast with two AI hosts from documents that you upload! NotebookLM isn't something that we sell or support, but I wanted to share what we're seeing in the AI space as it progresses. Here are a couple of links to the NotebookLM site, and a Forbes article about the podcast feature:

https://notebooklm.google/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2024/10/04/how-to-create-an-ai-podcast-about-anything-in-seconds-with-notebooklm/

Welcome to the Third edition of our HG Newsletter. For any of you who don't know me, I'm

Seneca Allen, one of the partners here at Harness Group.

The IT landscape is constantly changing for the better and for the worse. New tools are

released to make our lives easier, us more efficient, save us time and money and

communicate better with each other. Bad actors are constantly looking for and inventing

new ways to trick us and play on the trust that we have for one another.

Here in this newsletter, I will bring to the forefront an item or two in each edition that

speaks to these topics. There's so much information constantly coming at us, that we here

at Harness Group want to do our best to highlight a few things for you to pay attention to

in bite size portions.

The title of this edition of the newsletter comes from a phrase that we hear often when

we're on site at a client's office. Our company's model is remote first support, so when

we're on site, we get lots of questions about nagging items but also about tips and tricks,

and asked for recommendations about tech related topics, and we want to address some of

that here in this newsletter.

If you like what we're doing and this content, please leave us a Google Review!

Outlook is not a good Task Manager

But it is good for lots of other things. Here is a video from Johnathan Edwards, one of my

favorite Microsoft 365 experts with 12 tips for better outlook productivity including a

reference to Microsoft's built in Task Manager tool, ToDo, which I've referenced in these

newsletters before and that I and my team use daily!

https://youtu.be/JVC9ZO9OvZU?si=_5uBmIUr5ts6Pe0I

It's time to lock down your Credit Report

2.9 billion people may have had their personal information when a background check

company doing business as National Public Data, owned by Jerico Pictures Inc., failed to

properly safeguard information it scraped. This was a major headline in the security world

last week, so if you're not aware, check out this article, and I would recommend locking

down your credit report any time that you're not actively looking to obtain new credit:

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/15/billions-people-social-security-numbers-and-data-

stolen-allegedly.html

Article on HOW to lock your Credit Report:

https://www.theverge.com/24224789/data-breach-freeze-report-security-how-to

Helpful stuff in Office 365

Office 365 and other Windows apps have a LOT to offer. Unlike the urban legend about

humans only using 10% of our brains, most of us do only use a small percentage of what

we have access to in Office 365. I create this newsletter in a Microsoft product called Sway

that's a part of my Office 365 subscription. Here are a few other items that you might find

useful that you may already have access to:

https://www.howtogeek.com/microsoft-365-hacks-you-didnt-know-you-needed/

OneDrive Beginner / Refresher Video!

You Asked for it, and here it is! Another fantastic video by Jonathan Edwards at Integral IT in

the UK about OneDrive. He reviews most if not all of the basics and best practices that we

share in our initial setup and migrations to OneDrive for all of our clients, along with a few

new items that we haven't shared previously. EVERYONE using OneDrive  and/or SharePoint

who sometimes needs a refresher should review and save this video for future reference

and new employees that they come on board.

https://youtu.be/vjeTALC_7Qg?si=BtgpsVkOziDo6LP4