Uh OH ... APS Stamp Store Closed Until Further Notice

Was just on their site and saw the following message:

"By Order of Governor Tom Wolf, the APS StampStore has been closed until further notice. Outstanding orders will be completed. Thank you for your patience."

Impacts of the coronavirus are getting bad when stamp shopping using the internet is affected. I assume it has to do with the number of employees in contact with each other at the Match Factory.

While the 'showroom' is online the APS Store and the process is highly dependent upon human resources. There are other online venues do not have this level of human dependencies.

Don

Nope, the entire state is closed...all state businesses for the next 14 days, except for essential business services (gas stations, banks, food markets, medical facilities.)

However, there isn't a roll of toilet paper to be had for the last week+ in this area, thanks to all the hoarders! Same thing with can goods, & some frozen goods. People have lost their mines!

I replied to Scott's post directly so I won't repost all of it here, but taking the online stamp store offline completely such that people can't even browse inventory or save items is completely idiotic.

"completely idiotic" is rather harsh. These governors' orders have given businesses literally hours to comply. In California I think it was 6 hours or less; we had that amount of time (in the middle of the night I might add) to outfit three employees with laptops and remote access training who never had them before because the nature of their jobs makes remote work of little value. APS could have been operating with short staff already, then had a couple of hours to decide what to do, and your solution might have required programming that there was no time to do. You are asking a lot of a nonprofit that is doubtless trying to do the best it can under the circumstances.

Sorry, I don't believe it is harsh... brutally frank perhaps, but not harsh. If planning for remote working was only started in the last 2 days, that is a huge failure at the top with respect to vision and being proactive. The governor's mandate should NOT have come as a surprise to anyone, unless decision-makers were completely oblivious!

Here's the timeline from the university campus where I work.

Thursday, March 5 through Tuesday, March 10: University starts mass-broadcasting about international travel restrictions, self-quarantine requirements, discussions about possibilities for remainder of semester; numerous administrative and faculty meetings discuss contingency plans.

Wednesday, March 11: University formally announces transition to online instruction to be in place by March 23 for an unknown period; prohibits all university-sponsored events of 50 or more persons.

Wednesday, March 11: I start gathering resources to be able to distribute to my unit to work remotely for the foreseeable future.

Friday, March 13: I email my unit to prepare for remote work for an unknown period; distribution of accessories (headsets, webcams, printers, scanners) and supplies to take home; I have everyone bring in their laptops Monday for checking and updates, testing Remote Desktop, Skype for Business, and Zoom. Configuring and testing multi-monitor setups with laptops and docks.

Monday, March 16: University officially cancels in-person for entire spring semester; all instruction will be online.

Tuesday, March 17: My unit's last day on premises. University announces work-from-home mandate for those able to do so.

Friday, March 20: Governor of Illinois issues shelter-in-place order statewide. My unit is good to go and has already been working remotely for several days.


I realize that a large organization cannot be as nimble as smaller entities in times of crisis, but if the appropriate people were paying attention, none of this should have come as a surprise.

The need for automation and application of technology for improving the APS Store process has been discussed for years.

It takes only a minute (two clicks on a Windows machine) to configure remote access on a computer. It might also require a port to be opened on the company router/firewall but this also only takes a minute or two. Remote access allows employees to work from home actually using their work computers. No additional cost software is needed, remote access functionality already exists in all current operating systems.

I have had remote access to various severs for decades and I have exclusively worked from home doing remote access IT work for the last 7 years.
Don

Scott posted this on another forum this morning