60 million spam emails blocked

Sometime in the next week, Upic's dual spam filters will block our 60 millionth spam email for our email hosted members.

On average, we block 400 spam emails per day per hosted mailbox. Almost 88% of all emails that come into the Upic data center are SPAM...a figure that is hard to imagine.

For real time reporting, check out this link. http://tinyurl.com/bkpwy9

Upic Caravan 2: Tuesday noon

Greetings from snowy North Carolina (unfortunately, no snow pics here).

Last night, we arrived at the hotel around 8:00 pm (just in time for the reception that ended an hour earlier). Our US Airways flight (our third of the day) arrived at the Charlotte airport on time, but we were delayed 45 minutes because there was no arrival gates available.

We planned on spending Monday visiting with all of the Andar User Group attendees, but ended up just seeing a few of our friends. The "buzz" at day one of the conference surrounded many of the new Andar features in the most recent release. Many of our members are anxious to start playing with the new content management options built into Andar.

This morning, we met with the IT team from Charlotte. This team has managed to keep their United Way running during a very difficult campaign season with 50% fewer technology staff than a year ago. We presented the Upic story in hopes that we may be able to supplement their team sometime in the future.

Our next stop is Greensboro, which is slated to be the newest Andar customer very soon. We're going to discuss e-pledge and paper processing services today with their IT committee.

Upic assists winner of Truist promotion

Upic congratulates the United Way of Central Maryland (Baltimore) in winning the recent Truist promotion for the greatest increase in transactions for the 2008 calendar year among all United Way affiliates.

Upic is pleased to have played a small part in their victory. When UWCM faced a need for experienced Truist configuration resources, they turned to Upic to supplement their staff. Over a few short weeks, Upic executed 18 campaign accounts raising over $660,000 in employee donations.

We see this as a growing opportunity for United Ways who need to supplement their existing staff with experienced, certified Upic resources. If your United Way could use this help, or if you are an experienced Truist configuration resource, please contact Winston Faircloth.

Customer Satisfaction

Twice a year, Upic asks every end user of our member organizations to complete a brief Customer Satisfaction survey to provide service feedback and suggestions for improvement.

During our March 2008 survey (see results), we had a 50% participation rate with dozens of great ideas. We discovered which Upic services are used most frequently, which services provided the most value and established benchmark approval ratings which we will measure again in late 2008.

Congratulations to our March 2008 survey gift certificate drawing winners:

Jan Sherrell (Louisville)
Lori Terwilliger (Toledo)
Melissa Lohman (Cincinnati)
Marcy Wagener (Columbus)
Mary Jones (Indianapolis)
Phyllis Lile (Louisville)
Tiffany Baker (Cincinnati)

As a result of the survey feedback, Upic has developed the following service responses:

1. Created the Upic newsletter/blog to provide regular updates on Upic services and technology news
2. Replaced our Spam Filter with a new system which allows individual members to create their own settings
3. Launched Upic University on-demand webinar series providing 5-10 minute training sessions on your schedule
4. Started a new live telephone response for Andar "how to questions" using our toll-free help desk number
5. Secured discounted AT&T internet circuit rates to permit expanded internet bandwidth options for members

Our next survey is now underway until 5:00 pm on December 10, 2008. Once again, we will have drawings for $25 gift certificates (one per 50 responses). Results will be published the week of December 15th.

New notifications service: Irgent

Upic's new notification service "Irgent" can reach you by one of four contact methods: phone, fax, SMS or email. With each contact method, you can choose either a personal or business contact.

With Irgent, you are in control of how you want to be contacted, depending upon the urgency of the notification. And since this service is housed outside of Upic's data center, we can contact you in the event of a data center outage when traditional email notification processes are not available.

Notifications as a service have many other uses for United Ways. Instead of relying upon a staff "phone tree" in the event of a weather event, Irgent can contact and confirm receipt of the message. Also, Irgent could be used to confirm volunteer participation in upcoming meetings, including meal responses.

Upic members who would like to be added to the Upic notification process (in the event of a data center situation) are asked to contact Winston Faircloth by email. Irgent is available as a monthly subscription service via our partnership with Premiere Global. Contact Jay Young and mention the Upic discount program.

Urgent Windows update

(Sat 8:00 am update) Over the past 36 hours, Microsoft issued a critical security warning for all Windows operating systems. This required Upic Solutions to perform emergency maintenance on all data center servers and Upic member personal computers covered by our Technical Help Desk (Adagio).

Microsoft and Upic management believed that the severity of this issue warranted immediate action and therefore we are conducted an emergency shutdown of data center servers on Friday, October 24th starting at 8:00 pm Eastern. As of 7:00 am on Saturday morning, all Upic hosted services were completely patched and were fully operational.

Upic member PC systems (with the help desk A icon loaded)will also receive this Microsoft security patch via our remote control capability the next time they are powered on. All systems will require a short reboot cycle once the patch is applied, so this means that system startup will have this extra step on Monday.

You do not need to take action to receive and initiate this patch. Upic's remote management services will deploy and reboot all workstations to activate the solution and secure your systems covered by our technical help desk service.

Microsoft recommends that ALL Windows PC's receive this patch as soon as possible. For home PC's, please run the Windows update by going to Start> All Programs> Windows Update.

Technical details for Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 are documented here.

For ongoing news coverage (in non-technical language), please see the following links.
Microsoft's urgent security update: What it means
Microsoft Bug: Patch Now, Patch Fast
Time to patch Windows again ASAP
New Worm feeds on latest Microsoft bug

Our Help Desk technicians will be available to assist you or answer any questions starting at 7:00 am on Monday.

Emergency Plan in Action

Last weekend when the remnants of Hurricane Ike roared through the Ohio Valley, many of us expected torrential rain and wind gusts for a brief period of time. Our hearts and prayers were with our sister Upic members in Galveston, TX as they began the cleanup from a devastating blow. But then the unexpected happened.

We were notified by our commercial data center provider that they were switching to their auxiliary power supply. In the seven years of being in this location, this was the first time this had occurred. Then over the course of the evening, we learned that 90% of the Cincinnati region was without electric power.

Fortunately, Upic had prepared for just such an occasion. All of our staff associates are equipped with mobile technology that permits them to work from any location with electric power and broadband Internet connections. Using this mobile technology, our staff members could attend to their personal situation and monitor our customer's needs via our web-based help desk portal. Our VOIP phone system allowed us to redirect calls to home phones or other landlines. And our Virtual Office platform allowed us (and our Cincinnati & Louisville members without power) to access work email and other business files from any broadband Internet access point.

On Monday, we put our Upic emergency plan into action. Some staff members had power and others did not. Three of our associates went to Patti's house to staff our e-pledge support line and to monitor help desk tickets. One went to work at his wife's office. Still another went to a public wi-fi hot spot. We notified executive sponsors at each of our hosted customer locations about our emergency plan and to let them know that their Upic hosted data was safe and accessible. We also communicated to our members and customers through regular updates on our website and blog pages.

Today, it's Wednesday and our office park remains without power. But, our situation is very different from our friends in the Gulf Coast. We're inconvenienced but safe. Our emergency plan was tested this week and it worked.

Having family in a hurricane zone (the photo above is our neighbor from a prior storm), I've seen first hand the shock and disbelief that such destruction brings. It takes months to fully grasp the magnitude of nature's fury and destruction. But, there is something in the human spirit that stirs when faced with insurmountable odds. We pray for our friends in Galveston, Houston and those along the Gulf Coast still meeting these challenges from previous storms.

History of Power Restoration (Cincinnati region)

Sunday, 6 p.m. --more than 720,000 out

Tuesday, 10 a.m. --546,155 out

Thursday, 6 pm --168,335 out

Andar e-pledge upgrades

Over the past week, we've seen some intermittent issues with the Andar e-pledge application hosted by Upic. The WebPages would load slowly (or not at all) during certain periods of the day. We believe that the issue may be related to the recent upgrade of the Andar software package and are working diligently with the provider to isolate any issues.

In the meantime, we're putting additional hardware in place to handle the current and expected load. By this weekend, we will have 4 to 5 times the server capacity dedicated to Andar e-pledge than we did at the start of this week through re-allocation of existing server resources.

As an insurance policy against additional issues, we have purchased four additional Dell servers (approximately $20,000) and expect to have them in the data center within 10 days. We believe the combination of additional hardware and the work we're doing with software provider will resolve any issues for the remainder of the campaign season.

We will continue to monitor server performance and make additional investments as needed to ensure a successful campaign season for your United Way. Please let us know immediately via the e-pledge Help Desk (866-583-3742) if you experience issues with Andar e-pledge.

SAS 70 Audit of the Upic Data Center

How does your data center stack up? If your applications are hosted by Upic Solutions, your data is in a commercial data center which receives an annual SAS70 audit.

This audit assures that the proper procedures are in place and are being followed as validated by the auditors. Our data center provider, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions (CBTS) annually completes this audit and provides this to Upic Solutions. We've posted the highlights of the June 30, 2008 audit on our web site at www.upicsolutions.org/sas70.

In addition, Upic will be pursuing our own SAS70 audit with respect to our internal procedures during the next 12 months. Later this fall, we will complete a Type 1 audit (definition of controls). Our Type 2 audit (review of those controls) will occur six months later.

New Staples discount program

UPDATED: Upic member organizations now have access to the Staples Business Advantage program. This program is not for personal use. Our program provides the simplicity of online ordering and substantial discounts compared to your local Staples retail location. To enroll in the program, please email our dedicated Staples account manager.

See updated post above.

On Demand training webinars (part 1)

Introducing Upic Solutions On-Demand Training Series!

We know that your time is valuable...that's why we've developed 5-8 minute mini-webinars on various Upic services.

These sessions are free to all Upic members and may be viewed at any time from any broadband internet location. We even provide completion certificates after each track.

To sign up for our pilot of the on-demand classes, please contact the Upic University registrar. You will be enrolled in classes that correspond to your United Way's service level.

Orientation Track (All Upic members)
Designed to assist new Upic members with the basics of Upic University, our Help Desk, and Virtual Office navigation. Each class is approximately five minutes in length.
1. Welcome to Upic University
2. Creating a Help Desk Ticket
3. Logging into Virtual Office

Virtual Office Track (Virtual Office service members)
Designed to assist Upic members with the basics of Upic Virtual Office (VO) system. Each class is approximately five minutes in length.
1. Logging into Virtual Office
2. Options & Settings
3. Spam Filter overview
4. Web Filter overview (in production)
5. Printing in Virtual Office (in production)

Watch this space for more information on additional on-demand webinars.

"Pledge Card Freedom" deadline approaching

For the past two campaign seasons, Upic has been able to process almost ANY paper pledge card and is no longer limited to "scan card" formats. This new service works with any back-end campaign system as long as it can accept electronic import routines.

This year, Upic is projected to process over 400,000 cards at 99.5% character level accuracy and at a fixed fee per card--price determined based upon turn-around-time.

Our process requires about 2-4 weeks for process set-up and testing. With many United Ways starting their processing season around Labor Day, the deadline for set-up and testing is fast approaching.

We're excited to welcome a number of new processing members this year...either processing the majority of their paper pledge cards OR running an early pilot program: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and Phoenix are all participating this year.