Doors need lock, be it the door for your vehicle, your houses, shops, malls and offices. You lock your doors to protect yourself, your family members, your valuables.

Nowadays, magnetic lock is widely used. It is modern and very popular choice in the market. Other main point is that magnetic locks doesn’t have access to traditional locking components thus giving it defence again traditional lock attack.

A magnetic lock consists of a plate and an electromagnet lock whereby the electromagnet lock is attached to the door frame, and the plate is attached at the door. These two components will be in contact when the door is closed. And then, when the lock is powered, electric current will pass through the lock, the electromagnet becomes magnetized, thus creating a locking action. The force created is sufficient to keep the door locked for your safety.

The magnetic lock does not interact with any door knobs on a door, therefore a separate release button to open the lock is mounted near the door. Usually, the button has a timer and user can set the timer according to their needs and must follow the fire codes from local authority.

There are some DIY projects you can do for your office. I can list down a few:-

Re-purpose magazine holders, drawer dividers, hanging cute storage, hanging racks, mail sorter, desk organizer or a charming hand phone stand made from reclaim wood.

Those are the things that you can do on your own, “Do it yourself”. The list can go on and on, just let your creative juice flow freely.However, there are things or projects that you cannot or should not involve in it. DO NOT “do it yourself”. I can give a very good example: office telephone/telecommunication system wiring.

The wires involve is vary, ‘A’ wire is for ‘A’ capacity which can carry ‘A’ responsibility. And then, ‘B’ wire is for ‘B’ capacity which can carry ‘B’ responsibility. You must know and well verse of the wires involve and do not simply mix and match according to the pricing.

Yes you can do those projects on your own provided that you already learned by heart, and passed the test in the related subject. Otherwise, please talk to your telecommunication system contractor.

Even though cellular phone is very popular nowadays, perhaps you still need to use cordless phone. Why?

• You are able to make and receive calls from anywhere in your house (even at the basement) or at your office – without sacrificing the voice quality. As long as you use your cordless phone within a specified distance from the base.
• The quality of the voice and sound from cordless phone is better or greater against the popular cellular phones. This is very important especially if you have problems like hearing loss or your surrounding environment is always very noisy.

You may wonder why?

Cordless phone converts electrical signals to a radio signal that will be transmitted to handset. It using Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) technology, on 1.9-GHz frequency band. The benefit is, it minimizes interference with other electrical devices.

For your info, cordless phone was commercially introduced in the market since 1980 by Sony. Nowadays, some cordless phones can support up to 12 handsets from one base.

Is your company involve in travel and transportation industry? Or restaurants and food services?

Maybe healthcare industries or even financial services? These are among the businesses that will need a call centre facility. A call centre is a place to receive or transmit a large volume of enquiries by telephone, either for product or service inquiry, market research, charitable donations or even for debt collection matter.

In this case, you must know your requirement. Ask yourself, how do you want to run your call centre? There are a few types of call centre:

• Inbound – operated by the company itself.
• Outbound – operated by call centre company and the service is extended to customer that needs the facility.

Call centre needs agents or representatives. They will assist the callers from receiving complaints to selling products, taking orders or make reservations, handling enquiries and support issues. The first call centre agents in 1950s were housewives.

Since then, call centres have evolved with the advancements in the telecommunications industry.

Auto attendant System is also means a digital receptionist/digital telephone operator. What is the duty of a receptionist or a telephone operator?

Normally you will call a company and someone will greet you. You might request that your call to be transferred to HR Department or Finance Department. Now, the said duty can be handled by the Auto Attendant System.

The term Auto Attendant System is normally used to describe a voice menu system. The menu will allow calls to be transferred to an extension without going through a telephone operator or a receptionist. One of the reasons is to assist and reduce the workload of a telephone operator or the receptionist, especially when they are super busy.

This system is using auto attendant software to answer incoming calls. The callers will hear a menu of options; from what language they want to use, Bahasa Melayu, English or Mandarin, to numbers to press for different departments relevant to the business.

So, if you need to have a digital receptionist (auto attendant system) for your telecommunication system, please ask your telephone vendor.

It is norm these days to record telephone conversations especially for offices involve in public service, customer service (such as insurance) and financial companies (such as stock traders and banking).

It is called Telephone Voice Recording System or also known as Voice Logger System. Voice logger System is a highly reliable system, cost effective and is a telephone voice recording solution for all types of business to record telephone conversation.

It is used to record conversation (audio file) from telephones to computer’s hard drive or removable media for monitoring purposes. The recorded files can be converted to wav format for playback using window media player.

The voice logger system can be applied in these situations

• To record telephone conversation on business discussions
• To record telephone calls at call centres
• To record order taking for fast foods companies
• To record telephone conference
• Call handling and monitoring
• For the reason of security, safety and self-protection.

UPS stands for uninterruptible power supply. A UPS is actually an electrical device that supplies emergency power the minute the input power source fails. Nowadays, UPS protection is vital in the IT industry, telecommunication, healthcare, banking, factories and many more.

So, do you know how UPS works?

This device, “Uninterruptible Power Supply”, will be providing emergency power backup, similar to the function of a backup battery in the condition during the electrical power failure. Or if the electrical power drops to an unacceptable voltage level at once.

UPS comes in many sizes with different capacity. Small UPS systems is able to supply electrical power for a few minutes. Sufficient enough to supply power to a computer in an orderly manner. A bigger UPS system can supply electrical power for several hours.

Normally, UPS system will be used by big organisations to support critical systems from facing system failure or malfunction. This investment (UPS system) works like an invisible bridge between power failure and a backup generator or before the electrical power is up.

Do you ever wonder why cctv is required in offices or houses? It is not simply to eyeing on people’s activity, it is merely for security and surveillance purposes. You can monitor your baby when you are not around and you can watch your premises against intruders. And do you ever wonder why would anyone need a varifocal lens cctv camera?

Varifocal lens is special, it can zoom out and zoom in. Thus, you can fine-tune or adjust the lens so that it would capture a wider area or zoom to focus on specific area or subject. This type of lens will enable you to focus on objects that are close or far.

Normally, people will use or install this type of camera (with varifocal lens) at guardhouse. Because the security guard can zoom in to the visitor. Bank managers will also install this type of camera at counters, to monitor the customer and the transaction.

You can ask your contractor, if the varifocal lens can zoom manually or not. If yes, you can always adjust the view to enable it to capture a wider area, and at the same time you can see the image in detail. Some varifocal lens camera has the ability to automatically change the focus. Means, it can react to movement / motion within its view.

The thing that connecting the telephone handset and the telephone set is called spiral cord. Spiral cord is also known as curly cord.

Do you know why the so called ‘cord’ must be spiral? Couldn’t it be straight like a line cord?

When the telephone was invented and widely used, the ‘spiral cord’ was actually straight. But in the 1950s, telephone companies start using spiral type.

The reasons are:

• The spiral telephone wire is relative longer compared to straight type
• More convenient to pick up the phone
• More practical because spiral cords ensure that the cable does not snap back once you run to the end of the line. The spiral shape allowing the cord/wire to stretch and shrink
• Better signal reception (the spiral design allows the signal to transmit smoothly).

And what to do when your spiral cord got tangle?

First, hold your handset in the air. And then, let the headset hang, but be careful, don’t hit the floor. By doing this, the cord will spin and untwist itself. Look carefully during the process so that when it is untangled, you quickly stop the twisting, or else your spiral cord will get “over-twist”.

Besides computer, photocopy machine, time attendance system, even the smallest company needs a telephone. It’s a must. In this matter, you must know the type of telephone that your office needs. Hence, today you will be introduced to analog telephone type.

Analog phone, also known as single line phone, also, known as ‘Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)’ is using analog technology. Analog technology is the original telephone technology. It changes air vibrations into analog electrical frequency. Or in another word, analog technology is a system that will translate audio (human voice) into electronic pulse.

The sound quality of the analog telephone is substantially higher. Analog technology supports standard phone, facsimile machine and modem. In Malaysia, you can still use analog phone together with digital phone. Even so, you still have to check with your contractor because analog phones can only work on analog port.