{"id":14806,"date":"2019-06-25T10:02:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T14:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/avtech.com\/articles\/?p=14806"},"modified":"2019-06-25T10:02:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T14:02:19","slug":"three-ways-environment-monitoring-protects-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avtech.com\/articles\/14806\/three-ways-environment-monitoring-protects-facility\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Ways Environment Monitoring Protects Your Facility When Short Staffed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summer is the perfect time for vacations. The weather is\nnice, the kids are out of school, and vacation package savings abound. Many organizations\nwill find themselves slightly short-staffed for roughly three months as their\nemployees take some well-deserved time off, or they shut down entirely for a\nfew weeks for a \u201csummer break\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When key staff members are away, it\u2019s important to have a\ncomprehensive view on all the factors and potential issues that could cause\ndowntime and disrupt normal operations. Your business continuity plan should\naddress chain of command in the event of an issue, however it\u2019s important to\nalso ensure the processes in place to monitor and protect your company are\nshared and easily accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environment monitoring is one of the primary business continuity\nprocesses than can help easily prevent prolonged downtime, data loss or damage while\nkeeping employees productive and healthy. Higher temperatures and heat index during\nsummer months and heat waves will have a much faster impact on productivity than\ntemperature changes in cooler months, so it\u2019s important to be on top of\npotential problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your organization is short staffed thanks to vacations\nand time off, here are three ways that proactive environment monitoring will\nhelp keep you protected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alerts keep your whole staff notified<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Key employees tend to have a lot of responsibilities at the\noffice, and often take well-deserved vacation time to relax and come back to\nwork refreshed. When those key employees are away, notifications and alerts they\nmay have received and responded to need to be re-assigned and addressed. Among\nthose notifications are alerts when high temperatures, water leaks, humidity, power\nloss and more are detected in your facility and sensitive areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many, if not all, environment monitoring platforms allow you\nto modify the alert recipients within the system. Even better are alerts that\nare sent to an entire group, not just one or two people. This ensures that the\nright team members are notified in the event of a problem so it can be\naddressed as soon as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your key employees take time off to enjoy their vacation,\nmake sure that any environment alerts they would receive via SMS or email are\nsent to additional team members to ensure nothing is missed. While emergencies\ncannot be avoided, making sure you have proper alert coverage is easy and only\ntakes a few minutes to set up and verify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reports spot problems before they happen<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Room<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Setting up reports to show environment trends can make a larger\nimpact on your business continuity than you realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While sudden emergencies do happen, there are several environment\nfactors that gradually change over time, indicating a potential problem. When\nyour staff has access to public reports you set up in your environment\nmonitoring platform, those changing factors can easily be spotted before they\nbecome a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, growing temperatures in your server room or\ndata center may indicate a problem with your HVAC. It may be something as simple\nas needing new filters or preventive maintenance\u2026 or something much worse. The\ninstallation of new equipment may gradually heat up your server room, and an improperly\nmaintained or underpowered HVAC may not be able to keep up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another concern is high humidity. Too much moisture in the\nair can lead to condensation which will short out sensitive electronic components\nfound in server, routers, switches and more. A report showing humidity trending\nup could indicate HVAC problems, or a potential slow water leak somewhere\nwithin your facility that\u2019s causing excess moisture in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regularly reviewing reports in your environment monitoring system\nwill allow your key personnel to identify problem areas and perform proactive maintenance\nso when they take a well-deserved vacation they\u2019ll have peace of mind in\nknowing their facility is operating well within acceptable temperature and\nhumidity ranges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remotely monitor undermanned and unstaffed locations<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing more frightening for an IT manager to come\ninto the office on Monday morning and be met with a blast of hot air and the sound\nof squealing server fans when opening the data center door. When that happens,\nimmediate action can be taken to mitigate the issue \u2013 turn on fans, bring in a\nportable A\/C and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your organization maintains remote locations that are unstaffed,\nenvironment concerns are amplified due to not having local eyes on the situation\nas well as the time required to travel to the site. In instances like these,\nproblems may not be noticed until it\u2019s too late and services are down and\nunavailable to staff and customers. If your key employees are unavailable due\nto vacations and travel the problems become exacerbated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potentially damaging issues can happen in locations that are understaffed as well, either due to vacation schedules or economic constraints<\/a>. Fewer hands on deck means more opportunities for failure and costly downtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environment monitoring can often be accessed from any internet-accessible\ndevice, making it easy to see the conditions of your remote facilities any time\nfrom anywhere. Pulling up reports or alerts from your phone or tablet allows you\nto identify any potential problem areas and address them before staff leaves on\nvacation, or while you have staff in the area who can stop onsite. Identify and\naddress potential problem areas with proactive environment monitoring, rather than\nbecoming aware of an issue after your phones are flooded with calls from staff\nand customers alike wondering why nothing is working and your key technicians\naren\u2019t available due to vacation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every organization, regardless of size, should have a\ndocumented business continuity plan to help avoid disasters and recover quickly\nwhen they unfortunately do occur. When environment monitoring is part of that\nplan, your staff and stakeholders will know that you\u2019ve put measures into place\nto help keep the organization up and running when you\u2019re not at full staff.\nSummer heat means you have a smaller window of time before temperatures rise to\ncritical levels, so be sure to install proactive environment monitoring now to\nallow your employees to enjoy the summer sun and fun knowing that your facility\nis protected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer is the perfect time for vacations. The weather is nice, the kids are out of school, and vacation package savings abound. Many organizations will find themselves slightly short-staffed for roughly three months as their employees take some well-deserved time off, or they shut down entirely for a few weeks for a \u201csummer break\u201d. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n