johnbentleyii

E-mail has become an important communication for most businesses, and has become critical to many organizations. E-mail is used to communicate with customers, suppliers and partners as well as coordinate activities between associates. So, when e-mail has trouble, the operations of the organization are at risk.

A client used Microsoft Exchange extensively to manage all aspects of their business operations. The client had noted problems with e-mail. After reviewing the system, a corruption in the Exchange server was discovered as well as problems with the server itself. This represented a significant risk to the business.

To mitigate the risk, e-mail for over 30 people was temporarily migrated to Google Apps for Business with no e-mail loss. A new server was acquired with a clean install of Exchange. E-mail was then migrated back to Exchange without loss.

The greatest challenge in moving e-mail service is managing the domain name change (the part after the @, e.g. example.com in john@example.com). For a period of time, example.com will refer to both the old and new e-mail service, delivering e-mail in both locations in an unpredictable way. During this engagement, a technique was developed to guarantee delivery in a predictable manner.

Many organizations provide a service that requires a greater level of discretion and privacy. For example, behavioral health services require an extra level of discretion as part of good practice as well as by HIPAA. Behavioral health practices have the same need to communicate when patients need to be seen but must do so without disclosing patient names.

To facilitate the transition of patients through the front desk, health screening, and sessions with health care providers, a growing behavioral health practiced needed a way to leverage existing computers to facilitate the flow of  patients. To meet this need, an internal web site was built to track patients through this process, allowing providers to be dynamically added as the practice grew. This allowed the information to be conveyed in a discrete manner.