Microsoft has unveiled some new and improved Microsoft 365 features. These upgrades, introduced during this year’s Microsoft Inspire conference, are more relevant than ever and were designed with the needs of the hybrid worker in mind. From third-party integrations in Teams to nifty tricks in Outlook, here’s a quick guide on what to expect from the latest version of Microsoft 365.

Work seamlessly with Windows 365

Windows 365 is a cloud service that allows users to experience a more powerful and more agile version of Windows 10 or 11. Also called the “Cloud PC”, Windows 365 will enable you to access your entire PC — including personalized apps and settings — from any device. This means Windows 365 users can start working from anywhere right away, which is especially useful when finishing an urgent task or getting the most out of a productivity streak.

Windows 365 eliminates logistical complexities and security concerns that often get in the way of efficient hybrid working. With a Cloud PC, you can start working on your office computer, pick up where you left off on your tablet during your commute, and jump right back in on your desktop if you’re working from home the next day.

Experience a more powerful Teams app

Teams is now loaded with new apps that are sure to make Microsoft’s communication platform even more collaborative. One of the new apps coming to Teams is Confluence Cloud by Atlassian, which allows users to take notes during a Teams meeting. The notes can be formatted as action items, mentions, tables, and the like to make the salient parts of the meeting more digestible. On top of this feature, the notes are also easily shareable in the Teams channel, allowing everyone to immediately access a copy of the minutes of the meeting.

Salesforce will also be available for Teams. With the Salesforce for Teams app, you can integrate Salesforce records into different chats, calendar meetings, or channels so you can access and refer to the documents during discussions.

There’s also a new Q&A app that will help improve question and answer sessions in meetings or webinars with a large number of participants. Attendees can now ask questions and reply to other participants’ questions throughout the meeting, and organizers can moderate discussions by filtering responses, marking the best answers, and pinning posts. This gives the Q&A more structure and makes it easier for everyone to search for relevant information.

Get better organized to improve productivity

It’s easy to get disorganized when you have several things on your plate. With Microsoft 365’s new features, it is a lot easier to prioritize tasks, organize events, and take necessary breaks in between.

For one, you can now pin emails to the top of your inbox so you can readily find important emails later. Message reminders in Outlook will also help you stay on top of your tasks by nudging you to take action on emails that you might have missed.

There’s also no need to sift through thousands of documents to find the right files to attach to your plan in Microsoft Planner. The app can now show you a list of files related to your agenda that you might want to attach, helping you save time and effort.

What’s more, a new setting in Outlook lets you schedule meetings early or late so you can carve out essential breaks between back-to-back engagements. Scheduling breaks between meetings gives you and your employees time to breathe and prevents you from feeling overwhelmed or burned out.

We’ve only just scratched the surface of Microsoft 365’s newest features. If you want the latest updates on this topic, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our tech experts are always ready to answer your queries.

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If you want to keep everyone updated on each other’s assignments or improve your team’s productivity, sharing your calendar on Microsoft 365 is a must. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can sync your schedules on different versions of Outlook.

Outlook on the web

If you have Microsoft 365 or another email service based on Microsoft Exchange Online, follow these steps to share your calendar:

1. Open the Calendar by clicking on the calendar icon at the bottom of the page.
2. Once you’re in Calendar, go to the toolbar at the top of the page. Click on Share and choose which calendar you want to share. Keep in mind that you can only share calendars you own and not other people’s.
3. Indicate whom you want to share your calendar with by entering their email address or name.
4. Select which activities recipients are permitted to perform on your calendar. You can choose from the following:
   • Can view when I’m busy ⁠– if you want the calendar to show when you’re busy but hide certain details
   • Can view titles and locations ⁠– if you want the calendar to indicate when you’re busy, as well as key details like an event’s title or location
   • Can view all details ⁠– if you want the calendar to reveal all details about an event
   • Can edit ⁠– if you want recipients to be able to modify your calendar
   • Delegate ⁠– if you want recipients to be able to alter your calendar and share it with other users
5. To proceed, click on Share. If you change your mind, click on the Trash icon to cancel sharing your calendar.

Alternatively, you can publish your calendar and share it with others using a URL. Here’s how you do it:

1. In Calendar, go to Settings and click View all Outlook settings.
2. Select Shared calendars.
3. Go to Publish a calendar and choose which calendar you want to publish and how much information is revealed to recipients.
4. Click Publish.
5. You will be given the choice between using an HTML or an ICS link. The HTML link can be used to view your calendar using a browser like Firefox or Google Chrome. An ICS link allows recipients to import your calendar and view it on their own Outlook calendar.

Outlook.com

Like Outlook on the web, Outlook.com allows you to share your calendar directly or publish it. The steps for sharing are exactly like those used in Outlook on the web, too, except you only have two options for how recipients can use your calendar. These are “Can view all details” and “Can edit.”

Publishing your calendar on Outlook.com requires you to::

1. Click on the calendar icon to open the Calendar view.
2. In Calendar, go to Settings and click View all Outlook settings.
3. Go to Calendar and select Shared calendars.
4. In “Publish a calendar,” select which calendar you’re publishing and how much information it contains.
5. Click Publish and choose to use either an HTML or ICS link.

Outlook on iOS and Android

If you’re using a mobile version of Outlook, these are the steps for sharing your calendar:

1. On your Outlook app, click the hamburger button at the top-left corner and select Calendar.
2. Go to Share and tap on Add People to indicate your calendar’s recipients.
3. Input each recipient’s name or email address. Once you’re done, tap on the Check button at the top-right corner of the page.
4. You will see a list of recipients. Tap on a name to edit their permissions and how much information they’re allowed to see. As with Outlook on the web, available options are “Can View,” “Can Edit,” “Delegate,” “Only When I’m Busy,” “Only Titles and Locations,” and “All Details.”
5. To remove a user from your recipients, tap on Remove at the bottom of the page.
6. After you’ve set permissions, tap on the Check button at the top-right corner of the page.

The Outlook calendar is an excellent feature for managing your team’s events and workflows and can help boost your efficiency and productivity. If you have other questions and concerns about Microsoft 365, get in touch with us today.

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More than just offering apps and cloud services designed to boost productivity, Microsoft 365 also provides robust security tools for protecting data from loss and theft. Make the most out of these tools and ensure data security by following these tips.

Take advantage of policy alerts

Establish policy notifications in Microsoft 365’s Compliance Center to help you meet your company’s data security obligations. With these in place, your employees will receive policy tips about sending confidential information anytime they’re about to send messages to contacts outside of the company network. These preemptive warnings can prevent data leaks and also educate users on safer data sharing practices.

Secure mobile devices

Since employees often use personal smartphones or computers to access their work email, calendar, contacts, and documents — especially if they’re working remotely — securing employee-owned devices should be a critical part of protecting your organization’s data. Installing mobile device management features for Microsoft 365 enables you to manage security policies and access permissions/restrictions, and remotely wipe sensitive data from mobile devices if they’re lost or stolen.

Use multifactor authentication

Relying on a single password to protect your Microsoft 365 accounts could lead to account hijacking, which could put your data at risk of being compromised. Instead, enable multifactor authentication (MFA). MFA requires users to supply additional credentials on top of a password before they can access their accounts. This makes it difficult for hackers to access your accounts since they not only have to guess user passwords, but they also need to provide a second authentication factor like a one-time SMS code or a fingerprint scan.

Apply session timeouts

Many employees usually forget to log out of their Microsoft 365 accounts and keep their computers or mobile devices unlocked. This could give unauthorized users unfettered access to company accounts, allowing them to steal sensitive data. By applying session timeouts to Microsoft 365 accounts, email accounts, and internal networks, users will be automatically logged out after a period of inactivity, preventing hackers from taking over users’ devices and accessing private information.

Avoid public calendar sharing

Microsoft 365’s calendar sharing feature allows employees to share and sync their schedules with their colleagues. However, publicly sharing this information is a bad idea because it helps attackers understand how your company works, determine who’s away, and identify vulnerable users. For instance, if security administrators are publicly listed as “Away on vacation,” an attacker may see this as an opportunity to unleash malware on unattended computers.

Employ role-based access controls

Access management is another Microsoft 365 feature that will limit the flow of sensitive data across your organization. It lets you determine which users have access to specific files in your company. For example, rank-and-file employees won’t be able to read or edit executive-level documents, minimizing the risk of data leaks.

Encrypt emails

Encrypting classified information is your last line of defense against data breaches. If hackers intercept your emails, encryption tools will make files unreadable to unauthorized recipients. This is a must-have for Microsoft 365, where files and emails are shared on a regular basis.

Partner with us to ensure your organization’s Microsoft 365 accounts are always secure and compliant with changing data security requirements. Give us a call today — our team of experts are here to help.

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Many businesses prefer Microsoft 365 not only because of its powerful features and cost-saving benefits, but also because of its world-class security. However, the cyberthreat landscape is constantly evolving, so using this suite of cloud-based tools and services will always come with security challenges. Fortunately, Microsoft is continuously looking for ways to address these issues to ensure that your environment and data are protected.

Vulnerabilities in SharePoint

Businesses typically use SharePoint Online and on-premises SharePoint sites to store sensitive information like personally identifiable data. Failing to secure SharePoint content against unauthorized users is one way to expose data and your business to malicious actors. This can be critical for companies that are required to comply with stringent data privacy and protection regulations and may face serious consequences for noncompliance.

To prevent this, limit administrator-level privileges and enable encryption. Additionally, set the necessary security restrictions per user for every application.

Unprotected communication channels

Phishing attacks and malware are two of the most common ways cybercriminals infiltrate a system, but there are other paths of attack. Microsoft 365 applications like Microsoft Teams, which can connect to external networks, may serve as a medium for ransomware and other types of attack.

Train your staff to identify potentially malicious files and links. Also, offer guidelines on how to handle and route sensitive files and communication to safe locations.

Security risks in dormant applications

Organizations using Microsoft 365 often won’t use all the tools and services included in the productivity suite. You may use one or several programs like Word, Excel, and SharePoint but rarely use OneDrive. If your business has been utilizing specific programs, note that some dormant applications may be prone to attack. This is why it’s crucial to identify the apps that aren’t being used, and have an administrator tweak user settings to restrict availability on such apps.

File synchronization

Like most cloud services, Microsoft 365 allows users to automatically sync on-premises files to the cloud, such as in OneDrive. This useful feature is not without security risks, however. If a file stored locally is infected with malware, OneDrive will view the file as changed/updated and trigger a sync to the OneDrive cloud, with the infection going undetected.

Office 365 Cloud App Security, a subset of Microsoft Cloud App Security, is designed to enhance protections for Office 365 apps and provide great visibility into user activity to improve incident response efforts. Make sure your organization’s security administrators set it up on your systems so you can detect and mitigate cyber risks as soon as possible.

Cybercriminals will continue to sharpen their hacking techniques, and your organization must keep up to protect your systems, apps, and devices. Call our team of IT experts now if you want to strengthen your business IT security.

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The award-winning productivity suite Microsoft 365 comes in several different packages to suit the budgets and needs of various types of businesses. Read on to learn which one is best for your company.

Information workers or frontline workers?

Microsoft 365 is the obvious choice if you’re running cloud-based business systems, but the main question is which suite will serve your needs best. Microsoft has packaged their Microsoft 365 offerings to fall under two types of bundles: Information Worker plans and Frontline Worker plans. Both of these plans will give you access to Office 365 and file hosting service OneDrive, but there are significant differences between the two.

Under the Information Worker suite, there are two Microsoft 365 plans you can customize as per your needs: E3 and E5. You can expand said suite with specific service sets your business needs, such as a standalone Office 365 system, Enterprise Mobility + Security tools, and even sets of the Windows 10 operating system. Meanwhile, the Frontline Worker suite (F1, F3, and F5) is more compact, with Office 365 F3 being the only available add-on.

Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans have unlimited archive and mail storage space. They also come with advanced analytics tools such as Delve, MyAnalytics, and PowerBI, all of which are unavailable on the Frontliner plans. Information Worker plans also include access management, threat protection, endpoint management, and other advanced tools absent in the Frontline Worker suite.

In terms of SharePoint, a collaborative platform and document and storage system, Frontline Worker plans are short on enterprise search, Excel services, and Visio — a diagramming and vector graphics app — features. Frontline Worker plans also do not have unified communications.

With these points in mind, it may seem like Information Worker subscriptions are superior — and in many ways, they are — but Frontline Worker plans are more suited for smaller companies running on a tight budget. Microsoft 365 F1 and F3 cost $2.25 and $8 per user per month, respectively, while Office 365 plans E1, E3, and E5 cost $8, $20, and $35 per user per month, respectively.

As a general rule, only consider subscribing to the Information Worker plans when your employee headcount exceeds 50 people and users require more storage space solutions and advanced analytics. Otherwise, Frontline Worker plans should suffice.

E3 or E5

Once you’ve decided to go for the Microsoft 365 Information Worker plans, you need to choose which plan (E3 or E5) suits your business requirements.

E3 offers basic solutions, such as Outlook, Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Excel for $32 per month. It also provides access to SharePoint Team sites, video conferencing, and Yammer for social media for businesses.

E5, on the other hand, provides all E3 features together with unified communications, PowerBI, Microsoft Defender, Application Guard, and Safe Documents. It also comes with more cloud security tools, risk-based conditional access, privileged identity management, and both automatic and machine learning-based sensitivity labels. E5 costs $57 per month.

Small- and medium-sized businesses often select E3 and subscribe to third-party applications for their cloud security and VoIP needs. But for more robust data management and security requirements, the E5 plan is the way to go.

Migrating to Microsoft 365 is not an overnight task, and if you’re still undecided about which plan to opt for, contact us today. We won’t just provide Microsoft 365; we’ll also assess your business to find the best plan that fits your budget and business goals.

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More and more organizations across the globe are migrating their data and systems to Microsoft 365. If you’re thinking about making the move yourself, take note of the following common mistakes to ensure your migration is successful and hassle-free.

Not having enough bandwidth

Migrating your files and systems over to Microsoft 365 requires a large amount of bandwidth, which can result in slower internet speeds during the migration process. If the migration is carried out during business hours, you and your employees might struggle to do tasks online, such as sending emails and holding video conferences. To avoid this problem, schedule the migration after regular business hours or on a weekend.

Also, if you are already noticing slow speeds and service interruptions before deploying Microsoft 365, note that these issues will likely get worse after implementation. This is because Microsoft 365 services require a large amount of bandwidth. Ask your internet service provider to check your existing network connection to ensure that it can handle the migration and the day-to-day operations of Microsoft 365.

Lack of end-user involvement and buy-in

User involvement is key to the success of any IT project, including migrating to Microsoft 365. Make sure your end users know what to expect during every stage of the migration process. For one, let them know how long migrating to Microsoft 365 will take and how it will affect their tasks. Starting the migration without informing users that their files and email will not be accessible during the process can lead to productivity loss and resentment toward the new platform.

And to ensure you get your employees’ buy-in, train them on how to use the new platform. Introduce Microsoft 365’s apps and features, and explain how these can help them enhance their productivity and efficiency. This will ensure that everyone is familiar with the Microsoft 365 environment, preventing any disconnect or confusion, and pave the way for a seamless migration.

Rushing the process

While it’s tempting to try and migrate all your data at once, it would be foolish to do so. Successful migrations take months to plan, prepare, and execute. They are best done in stages. If you’re migrating your email accounts, for instance, it’s recommended that you move your emails to Exchange Online before gradually rolling out other apps. This way, all the data you need will be carried over to Microsoft 365 without any loss or corruption.

Stuffed mailboxes and large files

If your users have too many emails in their inboxes or have a lot of large files, the migration process could slow down significantly. Encourage your staff to archive their inboxes and delete large, unnecessary files to ensure that the process goes smoothly.

Outdated software

If your business is still using an older version of the Windows operating system (OS), such as Windows 7 or Windows XP, you’ll have trouble using Microsoft 365. The productivity suite works best with Windows 10, so if you’re planning to implement it, factor the cost, time, and effort it will take to upgrade your OS into your migration plan.

Doing the process yourself

On paper, migrating to Microsoft 365 seems like a simple and straightforward process. This leads many businesses to believe that they can do it on their own. However, without proper guidance from experts, you may run into problems that can harm critical business operations.

Ensure an error-free migration by partnering with us today. We’ll show you the proper way of migrating your business’s systems to Microsoft 365 without affecting your day-to-day operations.

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Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite widely used by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It comes in a wide variety of subscription plans, making it a popular choice for businesses. However, users have expressed some security concerns about storing and accessing data on this platform. Microsoft addresses this problem with Office Delve.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data solution, file hub, enterprise social network, and collaborative tool developed using Microsoft Graph. It is currently available for Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Standard, Office 365 Government, Office 365 Education, and Office 365 Enterprise. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Microsoft 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have done/started in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Microsoft 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information.

How does it work?

Microsoft created Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll find useful. Graph maps the relationships among the various Microsoft 365 users in your company and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with the information they need, when they need it. Content and information are displayed on a card-based screen, which is found under the Delve tab in the main Microsoft 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information and document links, users can also see likes, views, comments, and tags, bringing a deeper social integration into Microsoft 365.

Delve also orders content in different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

If you don’t have access to your desktop or if you’re working outside the office,you’ll be glad to know that Delve is also available for iOS and Android. The mobile app version of Delve lets you browse cards with files, search for colleagues, view documents they have shared with you, and view their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

Delve keeps all your documents private by default unless you want to share them with other users. For example, if you have a document stored in a private folder, you’ll be the only one who can access and modify it through Delve. If that document is in a shared folder, it’s accessible to you and the people you shared it with.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact us today.

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Businesses use Microsoft Excel for many purposes, including creating formulas, planning budgets, recording expenditures, and more. A spreadsheet can handle limitless amounts of information, making it an extremely useful tool for storing and analyzing data such as text and numbers. With its essential upgrade, Excel lets you do so much more.

Previous Excel upgrades include the addition of dynamic arrays and array formulas, a feature that enabled single formulas to return an array of values. Another upgrade was the Stocks and Geography function, which lets users add stock and geography data into a spreadsheet with the help of the search engine Bing. These are both useful, but Microsoft decided to add even more functionality to the program.

New data types

Excel has always been a formidable tool for storing text, numbers, and formulas and allowing users to process information out of them. Still, the data that one could put in Excel grids were limited because they were flat. Recent upgrades improve upon that limitation.

Luckily, users can now add data types to Excel, making the program more dynamic and intelligent. These data types effectively expand what information inside cells can do. In particular, cells can now contain not just text and number data, but a connected, up-to-the-minute collection of information such as currencies, cities, population, stocks, and the like. Simply put, cells can interact with charts and formulas with live data.

Data in cells can be used as a reference for an even larger collection of different data types, images, and actions. In other words, you’re no longer just typing data and writing formulas into a cell, although you can still do both. Rather, a cell can contain a specific set of information that branches out into subsets of data that you would otherwise need to type directly into the cell.

For example, if you’re creating or upgrading a customer information spreadsheet, things like transaction history, preferences, or phone numbers don’t have to be typed one by one. Adding customer-specific data types could simplify this process: entering a customer name in a cell would link to a network of information about a specific entry (i.e., customer) using a scroll-over menu, as opposed to having to enter all that information manually. This makes data input more flexible, efficient, and less prone to error resulting from copy-pasting and manual entry.

Enhancements for Power BI customers

It is, however, users of Microsoft Power BI, the company’s business intelligence program, who will greatly benefit from the upgrades. If your company uses Power BI, data published into your account will automatically link to Excel, which makes the flow of company data types into the program more seamless.

In addition, Microsoft’s data connection technology Power Query will allow users to create custom data types, while pre-configured data types (through a partnership with knowledge engine provider Wolfram Alpha) will also soon be added to let users track different types of information.

This only scratches the surface of what these Excel upgrades can do. For more Office and general productivity tips, consult our IT experts today.

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