According to the executive order made by Oregon State Governer, Kate Brown:“On Friday night, I frankly directed them to stay home. And now I am ordering them to stay home.”

The following guidelines are in effect for businesses:

• It closes and prohibits shopping at specific categories of retail businesses, for which close personal contact is difficult to avoid, such as arcades, barber shops, hair salons, gyms and fitness studios, skating rinks, theaters, and yoga studios.
• It requires businesses not closed by the order to implement social distancing policies in order to remain open, and requires workplaces to implement teleworking and work-at-home options when possible. They must also elect a representative who will be in charge of monitoring social distancing.

What FHN is doing?

FREE Remote Access – Just a re-iteration that all our monthly managed services clients will have remote access to their systems at no additional cost. If you are not a managed client then we can set you up with secure remote access to your data or network depending on need. Please call sooner rather than later as we have to take care of our managed clients first and there may be a wait at this point.

On-site support continues – At this time there is no restrictions on service industries who perform on-site visits to complete work, so Farmhouse Networking will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We will be taking precautions such as protective masks, gloves, or perhaps more extreme measures (hazmat suit) to insure the safety of our staff and clients. We ask that clients keep these visits to emergency needs and planned projects until these social distancing rules are lifted.

Stocking up on essentials – We have been closely monitoring our distribution channels and several of them have been stating that non-essential items would take up to one month to receive. As a courtesy to our clients and to better service them in times of emergency IT needs, we will be stocking up on computer and network parts that are most often needed. 

What should clients do?

Remote workers – Send unneeded on-site staff home to work remotely. With remote access capabilities, video conferencing, and VoIP phones – there is no reason to keep them in harms way. We are experts in these technologies and can get you up and running on them quickly.

Maintain infrastructure – For remote workers to be able to get access to their computers there needs to be a solid foundation at the business location.

• Workstations, servers, and network equipment should be on battery backups to keep them from going offline unnecessarily due to power fluctuations – triggering a need to go into the office.
• Is part of your network over 6 years old? Now may be the time to replace the network equipment to avoid downtime and unneeded office visits in the future.
• Now more than ever backups are needed in case anything should go wrong. Recovery times are bound to be increased as the lock down on businesses increases. 
• Don’t forget to leave the A/C on especially if you have a server closet, they work better in cooler temperatures. 

Planning – With a possible slowdown in business now is the time to take stock of your company, to get used to this new normal, and make plans for the long term implications of this craziness on our businesses. 

If your company needs any help weathering the COVID-19 storm, then contact us for assistance.