Kayako is a wonderful support ticketing system that we use at PICnet for all our Soapbox clients. As we get a better picture of the macro effects of our growth, we're starting to realize that getting data out of Kayako is critical for us to understand how and where our clients need help.

As those who use Kayako know, there aren't much of any reporting tools in eSupport product. Actually, there's none. Luckily, Kayako has a well-supported forum community, from which I've been able to pull the following great SQL queries to run some basic reports.

Last year was our building year at PICnet. That's putting it lightly actually. Growing nearly three times in size, with two new offices in New York and San Francisco, the company has morphed into a true bi-costal enterprise (I enjoy using words like "enterprise" liberally in business).

It's important to my business management methodology to follow my mantra of MBWA: managing by walking around. I want to be in each of our offices at least a few days each month, making sure PICnetters have face time with me while also spending time doing partner and business development meetings in our three cities.

I think it's great that other technology companies can have their entire teams working virtually. That's not the way we work at PICnet though, as I'm a true believer that water-cooler time is the place where new ideas are sparked, and that team building needs to happen both online and offline, daily.

That's right folks, you read that headline right: I use Windows Desktop Search. And I love it.

I know, I should be using Google Desktop, with all sorts of Web 2.0 gadgets, widgets, thing-a-ma-bobbers, etc. I've used Google Desktop for a few years actually, but I was finding that in exchange for the 3GB of disk space that it started taking up, the benefits were a little limiting. I wanted to be able to sort my results in a variety of ways, to search things other than just basic Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook contents.

In short, I wanted more control of my desktop search.