Congratulations on your decision to make BCNS Technologies your host! Please review the following as the information will answer many of your questions about getting started with BCNS Technologies' services.

1. How will my data get to BCNS Technologies?

One of our technical representatives will call your office and we will schedule an appointment with you to retrieve your application data (and E-mail or other data if applicable). Typically, we will get your system data first, and then within a day or two, we will arrange to get your users' data for Outlook, and then any other data after that.

When our technical department calls your agency at the appointed time to transfer your data or to set up user PCs, please have ready either an on-site technician or one appointed person in your agency that is capable with Windows navigation and commands. This cannot be anyone who is responsible for answering incoming phone calls during this time. It is very time consuming and frustrating to pass our call around from desk to desk to set up the PCs for remote access.

When on the phone with our technical support department, please keep in mind that other BCNS clients may be calling in and waiting for return calls, so it is difficult for our technicians to remain on “hold” while your staff answers other calls.

*** One note for Windows 2000 & XP workstations: prior to workstation setup, please check with the appropriate technical party or Network Administrator to make sure that your PC's security will allow you to install software. If you are not an administrator on your PC, you may not be to be able to continue through the entire setup.

2. When can i call BCNS Technologies for support?

BCNS Technologies’ Technical Support Department is available Monday – Friday 8:30 am – 5:00 pm PST. Technical support is also available 24/7/365 on an “on-call” basis. In many cases the on-call technician will be able to resolve your issue, but in other instances, a higher level technician may need to be paged to call you back. For this reason it is best to utilize the on-call service only for essential issues that can not wait until the next business day. For non-essential issues, when immediate resolution is not critical, you can email support@BCNSTech.com and will receive a response the following business day, or the same day if you email during office hours.

When phoning or emailing our office for technical support, please identify your company and your user name for security reasons. We have many customers and we can’t remember everyone by voice or first name!

3. How do I get help when I have a problem?

When calling our offices, if the party you want is unavailable, please leave a message in their voicemail. Technical support is Option 1; if you go to any other option there may be a delay in getting the help you need. Pressing -0- will get the general office mailbox which is checked periodically and there will also be a delay. For a faster response in most cases, you can email support@BCNSTech.com. If for some reason your ISP bounces the email back to you, we have an alternate email address you can use of rmumm2@yahoo.com.

4. What should I do if I can’t connect to BCNS?

Prior to calling for technical support, with the exception of being “locked out”, please power down. and unplug your computer and restart it after at least 5 minutes. Most errors will be corrected by this. If your local internet connection is not working, you will not be able to connect to our servers and need to call your Internet service provider for their status before calling BCNS Technologies.

5. How do I know if the problem you are having is a BCNS issue or a problem with your company software?

If you can’t access the Internet, you need to call your ISP (see definitions). If you can browse the Internet but can’t get in to a BCNS desktop session, then you should call BCNS. If you login to your BCNS desktop session and can’t print or open any particular program, or are having email problems, call us. If your problem is occurring within your application, other than a printing problem, you need to call your software vendor. You can call BCNS and in some cases we will be able to resolve your issue, but in most cases we will refer you to your software vendor.

6. What about local technical support?

While not every issue on a network or workstation can be addressed via phone or Internet connection from our main office, BCNS does offer technical support for your local PC’s and servers for a fee. For those issues requiring a part replacement or other local-only repairs, and you are outside of our Las Vegas support region, please contact a computer or network repair facility in your area.

7. When will I be Billed?

It is our standard procedure to email monthly invoices on either the 1st or 15th of the month depending on your due date. If email is not acceptable we can us mail them at your request.

*** Remember that your first 30 days of use are free while we work out any problems. It is very important during these first 30 days that your staff carefully communicate their issues and wants and give our staff some time to work on them. Every business operates differently so therefore we try to accommodate your company’s needs-– this may take time with some issues, but we will strive to do whatever is possible within the boundaries of your applications and Microsoft’s products.

**** If an employee leaves your employ, please let our office know immediately, no matter what day or time so we can disable their login to your data and auto-forward their email to the appropriate party.

8. Why can’t I set up my own custom desktop?

As an ASP, our server farm may house hundreds of users on dozens of servers. In order to keep costs manageable, and to keep troubleshooting as simple as possible, we have to scale some of our setups to a large number of users, including Windows settings, desktop profiles and Outlook configuration. You can imagine trying to fix a problem when 700 users have 700 different combinations of settings. Each time you enter a session, you can change the background colors and other desktop items, but these settings may not be saved when you exit.

As we mentioned, Outlook settings, such as custom auto-signatures or folder views, are managed in our data center. However, there is a method by which we can save desired settings. Please contact our support staff at Support@BCNSTech.com if a setting needs to be permanently modified.

Helpful Definitions:

ASP – Application Service Provider, aka BCNS Technologies. An application service provider provides you access to your programs on our servers along with backup and other services. An application service provider does not supply you with an Internet connection (see “ISP”).

ISP – Internet Service Provider, i.e. Sprint or Cox. This is the company that provides you with your access to the Internet. If you try to connect to your ASP and you get an error before even getting to the login page, it is most likely a problem with your ISP. Also, the ISP provides the speed to and from the Internet (aka “Up” & “Down”). For maximum results, you should purchase guaranteed up and down speeds that are adequate for ASP use.

Locked Out – From time to time you may get an error message after attempting to login telling you that “access has been denied and to contact your administrator”. Our servers are setup to lock anyone out who fails at three attempts to log in. For example, you have your caps lock on and your password is all in lower case letters. If you get this error, you need to call BCNS Technologies, your ASP, to unlock your account. This takes only minutes and you can be back to working.

Remote Desktop Connection - Remote Desktop Connection is a small program installed on your PC to enable you to connect to the BCNS server farm and begin a Windows session. If you are using Windows XP, Remote Desktop is already installed and is located by clicking Start> Programs> Accessories> Communications> Remote Desktop. If you are running any other Windows operating system you can install the Remote Desktop Client from the support page on our website, www.BCNSTech.com.

PopUp Blocker – There is “pop up blocker” software installed in the Internet Explorer browser. If at any time you click on a link and your requested link does not pop up, the blocker has stopped it. If you need it to open simply hold down your ctrl key and click on the link at the same time.

Simplified Printing – The software which attaches a user's local printers to their BCNS terminal server session, the configuration for which resides in the local workstation's Control Panel (called “Simplify Printing Client”). This program can be installed to your PC from our support page on our website, www.BCNSTech.com. There is a limitation to the number and kinds of printers which automatically attach, which means that the controls may need to be adjusted when first installed and from time to time. Also, printers with incompatible drivers may need to be “Denied” in the setup.