Blogs

NO VOICE LINES

BT have fully broken all of our incoming voice lines.

As we are finalising the move to our new offices, and as BT now say that they are unable to port the number via our new exchange, we need to make a decision on whether to keep the old number 0114 258 5550 - which we've used for 23 years, or get a new number.

This is not the first time BT have badly let us down in this respect.

Until a decvision has been made, please use the Contact Us page if you have any issues.


DNS Database - 21st September 2015

We identified an iaaue with our main DNS Database server on Saturday night.  A migration to an alternative, dedicated server took place yesterday afternoon.

The replacement serve had a slightly different configuration (for the techies, it had a smaller /var partition), and this led to a number of issues.  We became aware of dropped queries to the main public facing DNS servers at 08.35 this morning.

We have now altered the configuration and all is back to normal.

Please accept our apologies for the Monday morning inconvenience.


DNS Move 25th August 2015

Our planned seamless DNS move today was not quite as seamless as planned.

A routing issue caused a corruption in refresh times, and around 200 domains (including our own) ceased to resolve for around 4 hours.

We placed an emergency resolution ticket with our core network team and the issue was quickly resolved.  We apologise for any inconvenience.


DNS outage - 12th August 2015

An issue with our database replication led to a brief outage of DNS resolution this morning.  Our systems picked up on this and the issue was resolved at 10.00hrs BST.

 

If you are still experiencing problems with DNS records, please email support@solis.co.uk


Sheffield Office - or lack of...

So the grand plan was to have the new office open, up and running by the 1st of September.

Well, as anyone who has tried to contact us recently will have noticed, we don't have 'a' Sheffield office at present - and we're ad-hoc working via three 'semi-offices'.

So - if you need to contact us - please use the Contact Form here, or call the usual number: 0114 258 5550 and someone may actually get back to you.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience - and if I sound a bit frustrated it's because I AM FRUSTRATED.

Please also note the new address, which will eventually be our office, maybe, if we can find builders who can build...


Contacting the Sheffield Office

As long-standing customers will be aware, March and April are our busiest times of the year as we have clients with underspend who need completion before the new tax year weighed against those who spent their money last November and will be chomping at the bit as soon as the new tax year starts and - basically - everybody wants everything yesterday, if not sooner.

 The crew are currently working silly-daft hours and although he keeps offering to come in and lend a hand, we've banned Martyn from the offices as he's recovering from a very painful operation.

THEREFORE there may be some delay in responding to technical queries of a non-urgent nature, or repetitive issues that we have previously fixed, and some customers (you know who you are!) have promptly 'un-fixed'.

Essentially, the more time we have to spend dealing with your major issue of not being able to tune into iPlayeron your iPad (neither of which are our responsibility) the less time we have to do 'real work', like answering the phone to invaluable PPI parasites...

We will deal with all setup and modification requests on a 'first come, first actioned' basis BUT WILL ADDITIONALLY WEIGH THE PRIORITY to take into account the severity of the request, and no, iPlayer and iPad don't come anywhere near the top of our priorities, in fact, they're not even on the list.

If we tell you it isn't a problem here, and your 'technical support IT provider' claims otherwise, you need to either change them, or us.

Thank you for your understanding.

Stuart

Head of Technical Operations


Sheffield Office Hours

Due to an unusually high number of new orders (customers with underspend in their budget which needs spendi9ng before the new Tax Year) together with new orders pending to be provisioned as soon as the new Tax Year starts - and finally, our own 'year end', we've taken the decision to close the Sheffield office for a couple of weeks until we catch up and clear our list of 'things toi do'.

Therefore the Sheffield office will be closed until Tuesday 10th April.

During this time support may be obtained by either leaving a voicemail on our main number (0114 258 5550) or by email.

Emergency support can be obtained by calling the Data Centre Duty Manager on 0114 255 5959

(Please, only for emergencies).

 


RIP - Graham Bagshaw

An email just arrived with the sad news that Graham Bagshaw (www.bgits.com) died unexpectedly last Friday (15th July 2011).

Graham after eating

Graham was almost a part of the furniture during the early days of Solis, especially so at TechKnow, our Cybercafe on London Road.

Graham Bagshaw - TechKnow 1998

A passionate interest in information technology - especially how it may be deployed within community organisations, Graham was a founder member and regular contributor to 'Snuffle', the email discussion list of the Network Users' Forum (www.nuf.org.uk)

Graham Bagshaw - eating

Graham also liked to eat - and would be guaranteed to turn up with Sue to any 'do' that had been arranged.

Graham - eating

Above all, Graham shared with Solis a basic and fundamental respect for the strategy of not taking ourselves too seriously.

Our thoughts are with Sue.

NUF December 1999

 

Martyn & Charlotte


Top Tip - Better than a USB stick!

Handy as they are for moving documents, files and photos between computers, home and office - USB portable memory sticks also very easy to lose, leave in another jacket, or simply forget to remove from ones computer. 

I was recently introduced to a little program called 'Dropbox' - and have now left my USB memory sticks in the office drawer.  Essentially what it does is create a folder on your computer that is then 'mirrored' on any other computer to which you load the Dropbox software.

So, I place a spreadsheet into the Dropbox folder on my work machine, and it's there waiting for me when I get home, or on my laptop - or (and this is the killer for me), I can access it directly on my mobile phone using the Dropbox 'App'.

Best of all - it's FREE for up to 2Gigabyte of storage!

You can get it here .

Neither I nor Solis are associated with Dropbox - but it's such a handy tool that we felt we really should let you know about it!


Can't download from Android Market!

I - and all the staff here have Android phones.

We also have googlemail.com email accounts.

...and we've found a problem.

As have LOTS of our customers.

Simply put - our phones had stopped downloading from Android Market.

The problem and solution:

PROBLEM: - Google 'mail' in the UK was, until recently known as 'googlemail'.  Now Google offer it as 'gmail.com' and users have the option to switch their 'main' googlemail address to a 'gmail' one.

SWITCHING CAN BREAK YOUR PHONE in such a way as you will either be unable to access the Android Market, or - more of an issue, although able to access the market, unable to download Apps - they go in a queue, but not actually download.

THIS WILL also slaughter your battery life, as your phone will be constantly using wifi, or *G to try and download your Apps in the queue.

SOLUTION: - Just login to your gmail / googlemail account, AND SWITCH BACK to your old @googlemail address.  You can still use either @gmail or @googlemail addresses, and after a reboot, your phone will download all the Apps you have been waiting for.

PLEASE NOTE:

If this doesn't work - tough.  It isn't a problem caused by us, is in no way related to the service we offer, and the fix provided above is simply as a courtesy.  We are not paid to give support to Microsoft or Google - if you still have a problem - go talk to Gooogle or your phone provider.  DO NOT CALL OR EMAIL US.

Martyn

 

 


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