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Technical Notes

Write-ups from deployments we have actually run, organised by section. Specific problems, the reasoning behind the approach, and what it cost to get wrong. Client names are withheld under confidentiality.

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IT Support10 min read

Grafana dashboards that get used

Most dashboards are built to show everything, which is why nobody looks at them. A dashboard is a diagnostic tool with one question to answer, and the discipline that makes it useful is deciding what to leave off.

GrafanaPrometheusPromQLLokiAlertmanager
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Custom Software & CRM12 min read

Custom software vs SaaS

The build-or-buy question is usually asked about the wrong thing. It is not whether custom software is better, but whether this particular workflow is where your business differs from everyone else's — because that is the only case that justifies owning it.

LaravelNode.jsREST APIDocker
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Custom Software & CRM13 min read

Client portals vs customer portals

Both are logged-in areas where someone outside the business sees data from inside it. They differ in tenancy, in what a mistake costs, and in the single control that matters most: whether one account can ever see another's records.

LaravelVue.jsMySQLOAuth 2.0
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Communications13 min read

IT for BPO and call centres

A contact centre is one of the few businesses where infrastructure failure stops revenue in the same minute. That single property changes how every technology decision should be made.

FreePBXVicidialSIPGrafana
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Networking14 min read

VPN deployment: a practical guide

Choosing a topology is the architecture decision. Getting the deployment right is a different set of problems: protocol choice, addressing, certificate lifecycle, split routing and the rollback path you will want on the day it goes wrong.

WireGuardIPsecpfSensePKI
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Communications13 min read

FreePBX CRM integration

Screen pop, click to call and automatic call logging are three separate integrations that get bought as one feature. Each has a different failure mode, and the one that decides whether agents trust it is number matching.

FreePBXAsteriskAMIREST API
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Cybersecurity13 min read

MFA strategy for business

Enabling multi-factor authentication is a Tuesday afternoon. Choosing which factors, covering the accounts that matter, and handling the recovery path without recreating the weakness are the parts that decide whether it holds.

FIDO2TOTPMFASSO
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Cybersecurity16 min read

VoIP security for business

Voice systems are attacked continuously and automatically, and the objective is almost always money. Toll fraud is billed by a carrier who delivered exactly the calls that were requested, which makes it a loss you cannot dispute your way out of.

SIPTLSSRTPFail2ban
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Communications15 min read

SIP trunking explained

A SIP trunk is a commercial arrangement wearing a technical name. Understanding what you are actually buying — channels, numbers, routing and failover, which are four separate things — is what prevents the busy signal nobody can explain.

SIPRTPTLSDNS SRV
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