IT team update: May 2021

It’s been a very interesting time to be in IT to say the least. The team’s key goal has been to help everyone work efficiently from home while working from home themselves and continuing to deliver new IT initiatives and improvements. I am very proud to say we have achieved this and more.

Our remote working solution, RDP, has been greatly improved with additional capacity and configuration tuning. We constantly monitor its performance, gather user feedback and provide help for better utilization. However, the final link is dependent on the broadband service available to you and how much other traffic is going over the link in your location. 

RDP is a more efficient use of network bandwidth than VPN and the majority of users have embraced it, thank you, which has helped improve remote access for all. The next Partner for Windows upgrade, which is coming soon, will only be made available via RDP where the application is upgraded on the RDP servers rather than your pc which would cause significant degradation to remote access performance for all. 

We have been improving the network reliability by replacing old hardware and implemented a new data backup solution to help mitigate the top IT issues and risks. Further work is planned to help improve our infrastructure resilience.  

We are continuing to replace desktops with laptops for fee earners over the course of this year which will help remote working and provide greater IT resilience. Improvements and expansion of teleconferencing and AV (audio visual) equipment in the meeting rooms is also underway.

We have recently been trialing Soft Phones (accessing your landline phone via your computer or mobile phone) which makes remote working a lot easier and transparent when dealing with phone calls. The trial has been with IT and Finance and will soon be rolled out further particularly to support areas.  

We are currently investing in improvements to ways of working notably operational efficiency improvements and automated workflow solutions in Partner for Windows for Residential Conveyancing, Debt and Finance departments. Investigations into further improvements for Private Client and client matter update access has also started. More on these initiatives in the future.

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