Server, SharePoint customization helps Sleeping Dog grow

High-end design and building is an ultra-competitive market, where customer satisfaction is key.

Sleeping Dog Properties has delivered custom residential construction services to discerning clientele in Boston and surrounding areas for over 20 years. Whether completely rebuilding, remodeling, or renovating, Sleeping Dog can create a home to the exact specifications of a client. The Sleeping Dog team has the knowledge, skill, and care to bring any vision to life.

Prior to its partnership with Archetype SC, Sleeping Dog relied on an email server located in its office in Boston, which is subject to power blips due to heavy construction in the area. Each time the power failed to the office, an employee would have to manually turn the server back on to allow for email communication. On nights and weekends, not having access to email was not an option, meaning someone would go back into the office to get the server back online in the event of a power blip.

In addition, Sleeping Dog Properties utilized SharePoint to store data on its projects and clients. Employees saw that the SharePoint data server was failing, which could compromise the data on the server.

In order to better communicate with clients, Sleeping Dog Properties knew a change to its email server was needed. The company partnered with Archetype SC to begin a full Microsoft Office 365 migration, which would allow the company to access its email in the cloud, eliminating the power blip issue.

What began as a standard migration hit a snag when Archetype SC professionals found three email accounts at or near 50 GB of data in their inboxes – the maximum size for cloud-based email inboxes. In previous migrations, Archetype SC had not encountered an inbox that large, which led to the need for a custom solution. One such inbox had more than 70 GB of high-resolution photographs and high definition video showcasing the work of Sleeping Dog Properties for multiple years.

Before the cloud migration could be completed by Archetype SC, the 70 GB email account shut down the entire on-premise email server, leading to an emergency fix for the company. After reinstating email access, Archetype SC deployed a custom solution to ensure the email account with 70 GB of data would function on the new cloud server, using an auto-archive feature that syncs the bulk of the emails to a different storage area. This allows for the retrieval of the older emails when needed, but does not bog down the server for the rest of the users.

Aside from the custom solution for a large inbox, the cloud migration was easily accomplished by Archetype SC.

On the SharePoint side, Once presented with options to update its SharePoint interface, Sleeping Dog Properties chose to move to the most recent version of the application. In moving from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2016, Archetype SC had to license and update SharePoint 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015, an expensive and tedious process that was needed because the updates to the application build upon each other.

Archetype SC’s professionals met with Sleeping Dog to gather requirements for SharePoint use. In SharePoint 2016, Archetype SC built a custom environment that looked and operated like SharePoint 2003, to assist Sleeping Dog in maintaining comfort and usability.

Included in that process were the addition of different views, sorts, search capabilities, and the widgets and applications necessary to Sleeping Dog’s business. In their office, Sleeping Dog had a multifunction printer and scanner, which Archetype SC wrote code to include in SharePoint 2016.  Sleeping Dog also requested an integration for Outlook, which no longer exists in SharePoint, and optical character recognition functionality – things Archetype SC added to the customizations for SharePoint.

In moving to SharePoint 2016, Sleeping Dog Properties’ SharePoint is now based in the cloud, which allows for easy updating and licensing when new versions are introduced.

After moving to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud and a customized Sharepoint 2016, Sleeping Dog Properties has been thoroughly satisfied with its change.

The employees of Sleeping Dog have enjoyed the ability to send and receive emails through the cloud server from any location and have not had to go back into the office to reset the server. Sleeping Dog Properties contracted with Archetype SC for other IT needs and recommended the company to its clients.