A concrete supplier asked us to set up email for a new member of the production crew at one of its Brisbane plants, and to tidy up the plant’s shared mailboxes while we were at it. It was a small request. By the time we closed it two weeks later, it had also produced a new laptop, a cleaner email set-up and phones that no longer went down with a PC.
We logged 5.5 hours on the main job and another quarter of an hour on the phones, in July 2026.
Getting approval first
The requested changes touched mailboxes and licences, so we checked with the person who approves changes at the business before making them. Getting hold of them took a day of voicemails, and the plant chased us in the meantime.
That delay is annoying in the moment, but it’s the right order. Mailbox and licence changes decide who can read what. They should be signed off by someone who can approve them.
The mailbox changes
Once approved, we turned the plant’s mailbox into a shared mailbox with three staff as members, reused the licence it had been using for the new crew member’s account, and removed everyone from an office mailbox nobody used.
Then something didn’t add up. The plant mailbox account had been licensing Office on two computers: the batch PC and a general office laptop.
The laptop that was carrying the phones
When we looked at that office laptop, it was freezing constantly and needing restarts. Worse, it was hosting the software that connects some of the plant’s phones to the hosted phone system, so every freeze affected the phones too.
We moved those phones onto the same software running on a more stable PC that afternoon. The business approved a quote for a replacement laptop, and the new one arrived the following week.
Moving the batching software
The new laptop took most of a day on site. Setting up Windows, Office, Outlook, our device management and OneDrive was the easy part.
The plant’s concrete batching software was the hard part. We contacted its vendor, waited 30 to 40 minutes on hold, then spent two hours on a support call while their technician looked at the old laptop, then the new one. Together we transferred the installation files, set up the licence, pointed the software at the right database and tested it with the plant.
While on site, we also created a distribution list so a servicing email address reaches the right people, and reset a password to stop repeated sign-in prompts.
Tidying up
Two days later, the plant confirmed the distribution list was delivering to everyone, so the old forwarding on the plant mailbox wasn’t needed. We reset its multi-factor method to an authenticator app on a staff member’s phone and set a PIN on the new laptop.
The same day, the plant asked us to move the phone software off the batch PC, which is switched off at night and which they prefer to keep for batching only. We moved it to a PC that runs around the clock, repointed the cordless base station and confirmed the phones were back online.
Where they landed
The plant has a new laptop running its batching software, a shared mailbox and distribution list that reach the right people, and phones running from a PC that stays on.
Pick one PC at your own site and write down everything it runs besides the obvious. If the list surprises you, do the rest.
If you’d like help untangling what runs where, get in touch.