Everyone's on vacation and you can be too!
In a small organization, finding cover for any department can be problematic. Often there is no obvious cover for the IT department. Yet, as much as anyone else, you need a break too. So how can you turn a paranoia fraught, stressed out week into a cool, calm, relaxed, and carefree vacation. Our top tips will show you the way.
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Take a laptop
Normally, everyone says don't take your work on vacation with you, and broadly we'd agree. However taking a laptop doesn't mean using a laptop and in the unlikely event that there is a problem you'll have the tools, hopefully, to fix it without cutting your vacation short. This mental safety net should help you to feel more relaxed about breaking ties with the office. Although if you're going somewhere really remote, then it might be connectivity more than computing power that is the real stumbling block.
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Leave Notes
There are certain events that are so common that you don't even consider them problems. That print server that crashes occasionally or the fact that when the label printer is rebooted the PC host needs rebooting too. Now, doubtless if you really had that much spare time you'd have spent it diagnosing the root cause of these issues but like so many you don't. This is no bad thing, spend time where it counts most. It's not just the smaller stuff either. Leave details of the location of your disaster recovery plan and associated documentation. Hopefully they won't need this in your absence, but you never know!
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Wind down early
Most people tend to wind down a little before their vacation, but you have a very good reason to do so. Now we're not advocating sitting on your hands for the whole week before you leave, but we are saying now isn't a good time to make really large and sweeping changes. Obviously if your scheduling is tip-top you'll have planned around vacation, but sometimes they creep up on the most organized of us. Besides, if all your major IT projects run bang on schedule, perhaps you should be writing this guide rather than us!
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Rearrange scheduled tasks
Having scheduled tasks, auto-updating anti-virus tools, auto-patching applications are all intended to make our lives easier. However, what if the unexpected happens? We certainly don't advocate disabling anti-virus updates whilst you're out of the office but it couldn't hurt to consider what might reasonably be disabled. For instance you could probably disable some third-party application updating. If you are running WSUS and auto approve updates, it might be a good time to re-evaluate that policy. Really anything you can do to minimise the likelihood of non-urgent changes being made that could cause issues. However be aware that taking this rule to the extreme could be counter-productive.
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Vacation Cover
Finding good ad-hoc help is difficult, but well worth the investment in time to find. There are a plethora of small firms that provide cover and outsourced IT, but not all are created equal. Plan well ahead and meet the people you'd be employing first. Ask them the sort of questions you get asked, get references for other companies they've assisted and follow them up. Effectively you're interviewing them, treat it that way. But be realistic; explain what you're looking for. Also don't expect it to be cheap.
