Ashley Unwin is an I.T. professional with varied skills and a talent for problem solving. After deciding on Technical Support as a career, Ashley sought professional training from one of the UK’s leading IT Professionals. During his training Ashley excelled in his exams, speedily gaining advanced professional qualifications in Microsoft operating system and products.
Ashley first found work during his training, working for the IT department of a local school and supporting over 1200 teachers and pupils. Then, soon after completing his professional qualifications, he sought work as a Helpdesk Engineer with a local company supporting over 50 businesses throughout South East England. In late 2011 Ashley was promoted to I.T. Manager and became Senior to three engineers at the firm. The company has continued to grow and now supports 70 businesses and over 1,000 active seats.
Professional Qualifications:
- ECDL
- CompTIA A+ (Technician)
- CompTIA N+
- Microsoft 70-270 (Installing, Configuring, and Administering XP Pro)
- Microsoft Certified Professional
- Microsoft 70-290 (Managing and Maintaining a Win Server 2003 )
- Microsoft 70-291 (Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure)
- Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
- Microsoft 70-294 (Planning, Implementing, and Maintaining a Win Server 2003 AD Infrastructure
- Microsoft 70-298 (Designing Security for a Windows Server 2003 Network)
- Microsoft 70-293 (Planning and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure)
- Microsoft 70-284 (Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003)
- Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Messaging
- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
- Cisco CCENT
- Microsoft Authorised Educational Reseller (AER)
- Gradwell Approved Professional (VoIP)
Software Support Experience:
- Microsoft Windows Server and Active Directory – 2003, 2008 inc R2, 2012 inc R2, 2016, 2019
- Microsoft Exchange – 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016,2019
- Microsoft Office – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 365
- Microsoft Windows – 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10
- Office 365 Web Admin & Powershell Scripting
- VoIP Phones, Snom Provisioning, Broadsoft systems management
- Powershell, Exchange Management Shell
- Linux – Ubuntu, Mailscanner, Apache, Baruwa, CentOS, Plesk, cPannel (basic)
- PHP, MySQL, HTML, ASP, Perl, Bootstrap CSS Framework (Basic)
- Sage – Accounts, Payroll, HR, ACT! (Now Swiftpage)
- CCH – Central, Practice Management, PerTax, Accounts Production
- TAS – TASBooks, TASPayroll
- FrontRange – Goldmine
- CareFree Group – CareFree
- InVU – InVU Document Management
- Capita – Schools Information Management System (SIMS)
- Promethean – ActivBoard
- Intuit – Quickbooks, Accounts, HR
- Adobe – Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver
- A wide range of Routers, Firewalls, IP Phones, Mobile’s, PDAs, Large Multi-Function Photocopiers and other Peripherals.
Coding/scripting experience
- Powershell Office 365 management and multi-layered menu system
- Snom Phone web controller
- Gradwell & DWS Recording Downloader and storage system
- H2Desk to OSTicket custom migration PHP Script
- LogMeIn Rescue Computer Registration System
- Call and Ticket Analytics for staff monitoring
- DWS Call billing platform
- IT Support Client Management Portal (quoting, billing, ticketing, information management, computer logging) (in development)
Experience
During my time working in I.T. Support I have worked on a range of minor and major projects for both internal and external purposes.
Staff & Directors – For customers I have worked with people in every part of organisations from staff to directors to ensure quality service and meet their needs.
Clear Information – I have created suitable specifications, quotes and detailed documentation to provide directors with the information in a way they can understand to assist them in making the right decisions for their businesses.
Project Planning – I have planned projects in detail, liased with external providers and ensured different trades and companies work together along the same plan to meet a customers needs.
Installations – I have installed and migrated servers, Active Directory, Exchange and SQL based application to new hardware and into virtual machines, and during these processes I have trained others in my team on how to do the same analysing every possibility to ensure a smooth transition.
OnSite Installs – I have managed customers opening new sites, installing new equipment and liaising with external companies to ensure customers technical needs are met whether that be direct by my company or by ensuring other technical competencies are up to date and working together.
Microsoft 365 – I have migrated customers to and from the Microsoft 365 platform, including sharepoint and exchange online.
Training – I have trained multiple apprentices developing their skills and working closely to monitor their work and progress and assist where required.
Policy and Procedure – I have developed office procedures and policies to ensure the helpdesk runs as smoothly as possible.
Contracts and Communication – I have written customer contracts to clearly outline the scope of the businesses responsibilities to the customer, the service costs and define services and support levels provided.
Qualifications – I completed the training and exams to allow the company to become a Microsoft AER and Gradwell Certified Partner and completed the DWS HV.Select VoIP reseller training.
Sales – I developed a sales pitch, sales materials and training materials then trained a new department of telesales staff, working with them to ensure they achieved results and providing technical knowledge and training to them to assist them on calls to potential clients.
Computer Registration – I have developed systems for registering every computer the company remotely connects to, and databasing the results to a web based interface to track client usage of our services, I then oversaw the further development of the system by an experienced web developer we later hired.
Snom Control – I created a system to locate and operate snom VoIP phones on a local network via a web interface.
Snom Provisioning – I worked with a web developer to create a VoIP Phone provisioning system with me guiding the functionality and usability of the system throughout.
Custom Migration – I created a custom PHP script to migrate 9 year of job tickets from an older little known ticketing system to the more common OSTicket and thus implimented a higher level of job logging, accountability and task management.
Git and OSTicket – I further implimented an adapted Git of OSTicket with specific adaptions to make the system work for the company, and then continued to pull updates from the lastest releases to merge into our own live release.
Call Billing – I built a call billing platform to simplfy the download and analytics of call data from DWS, allowing our accounting department to invoice customers without technical assistance and without purchasing expensive commercial systems.