Summersault Blog

In a service business, it can sometimes be difficult to measure the true level of satisfaction that our clients experience. The testimonials they offer say a lot, and even after all these years its still surprising that so many of our clients consider working with us to be a relief from the norm of some poor customer relations practices in the technology industry.

Even so, it’s nice to be able to turn to cold hard numbers to see how we’re really doing, and one area where we do have those figures handy is in the customer satisfaction survey we ask every person who contacts us for technical support to fill out. Here’s what the numbers say from recent months:
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RICHMOND, IN – Summersault, a leader in database driven website solutions based here, marks its 10th anniversary on Aug. 15 with a $10,000 donation to support technology education and sustainable business practices.

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In October 2006, I received a postcard at Summersault asking us to try out a new web-based wage reporting system run by the Social Security Administration, that would hopefully save on paperwork and related costs. I don’t necessarily like what the Social Security system represents (as an individual and as a generator of paychecks), but I did try it out, and had an unimpressive experience with the site. As a web developer, I appreciate getting feedback about the tools that I help to build, so I thought I would do the same for the SSA. I guessed the e-mail address of the official whose name was signed at the bottom of the postcard, and sent him a note:
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We recently found ourselves with several dead computer backup batteries on our hands (they help keep things running smoothly during power outages), as well as some other computer equipment that we were ready to get rid of. This “e-waste” contains toxic chemicals that, if absorbed into our bodies can cause a number of serious problems like brain damage, so we wanted to make sure it was disposed of properly, even if it meant paying a fee. In our attempts to “buy local” even in waste disposal, some research led us to Rumpke and their “E-waste Recycling” program. (I’d like to provide a link to a web page with more information about this program, but Rumpke doesn’t have one now.)

The minimum cost for this service was $98, which covered a full service visit with two people coming into our business, and carrying out all the e-waste that we requested. Our contact at Rumpke was Brian Huffman. You can contact him at 1-888-242-0510 ext. 5294.

There are other options in Indiana, but finding information about them is also frustrating due the lack of accessible information. The Indiana Recycling Coalition publishes a directory of reuse and recycling options in Indiana, but it is not user-friendly. If you have an old computer to get rid of, do you think you would call a “Broker”, a “Processor”, a “Processor/Broker”, a “non-profit”, or one of the “Other Players in Indiana”? Your guess is as good as mine. Those are the category choices provided, and no detail at all is provided about the services provided by each organization. And since about half of these recyclers don’t have websites, finding the best option for your e-waste recycling needs, or any viable option is currently a daunting task in our area.

There are organizations like ours interested in recycling, and organizations in the e-waste recycling business, but there is currently a missing link between them— a failure to use the web effectively to provide information potential recyclers need to make purchasing decisions.

I hope this situation improves soon.

Microsoft Exchange is a common choice for organizations looking to share contacts and calendar events internally. It also works as a central mail server, allowing emails with large attachments to be sent around internally as well.

There are two major problems with Microsoft Exchange as a solution.
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RICHMOND, IN – The year 2007 will include the marking of Summersault’s 10th year in existence, and the company has begun making preparations to celebrate.

“We’re so excited to mark this milestone in our history, and we’re looking forward to doing so with our family and friends in the community,” said Summersault’s Principal, Chris Hardie.

The company was founded in August of 1997 by Hardie and Mark Stosberg, while both were Computer Science students at Earlham College. Stosberg and Hardie formed a partnership around a common interest in running a socially responsible business that made professional web development services more accessible to organizations with limited budgets. Read the rest of this entry »

When we started in 1997 and then opened our first real office in 1998, the first phone Summersault ever owned was a small, gray two-line office model with, I believe, five separate voice-mailboxes. It cost us around $200, after we spent a long time researching and discussing just the right one to get. It sat quietly on my desk, and when the occasional call did come in (it could even do a conference call!), everything worked just fine – we never had to open it up, reprogram it, reboot it, back it up, or monitor it. It’s not hard to long for those days, as Summersault’s growth has meant some costly and time consuming expansion in our phone infrastructure over the years. But our recent experience installing and configuring the Asterisk open source PBX phone system has given me some hope that we’re returning to an era where the phone is once again a useful tool that saves people time and makes communication more efficient, instead of less so. This article touts some of the benefits of this kind of phone system, and has some notes and tips on how it might help your business or organization – large or small – have enterprise-level phone system features on the cheap.
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A few of us were recently having a conversation with some colleagues about how effectively our respective staffs spend the time we’re present in the office. There’s a new related study out that shows U.S. workers “waste” up to 2 hours a day, with the important distinction that older workers (55+) only wasted an average of 30 minutes per day, while the younger whipper-snappers are the ones who apparently can’t stay focused.
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Even in a small office with only 6 people, there are still lots of opportunities for schedule conflicts and confusion. Even when it was just Mark and I, we often longed for the ability to share our personal and work calendars in a way that would make scheduling meetings more efficient. For a long time, it seemed that the options available to us involved either spending thousands of dollars on enterprise-level commercial software, or sacrificing ease-of-use by jumping through a mile of hoops for the most basic features.

With the emergence of some open industry standards for the storing and publishing of calendar information, however, we’ve come a long way toward making multi-platform calendar sharing a reality. This entry describes our setup in the hopes that someone else might find it useful.
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