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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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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Microsoft’s software offerings are filled with features that allow and even augment enterprise work from home (WFH) setups without sacrificing security. Here are some updates about the company’s applications, as well as other common third-party applications in the Windows and Office ecosystems, which will ensure data security when you’re working remotely.

Before the pandemic broke out, companies across the United States had already been on the lookout for remote work possibilities, because of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of the cloud. Back then, the technology was used to take advantage of market and location opportunities, but with entire cities going on lockdown to stem the transmission velocity of the coronavirus, enterprises across the continent have turned to digital solutions for their respective workforces to remain productive at home.

Microsoft’s Windows and Office 365 engineers have geared both sets of software to be user-friendly across different platforms — and by extension, many Windows-ready third-party applications enjoy the same benefit. For many organizations, especially small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this means no need to switch to a more remote-friendly system. But because of the suddenness of the transition, there are questions whether Windows, Office, and other supported software have ample security features in place.

Windows 10 1709

Microsoft announced in mid-March that Windows 10 version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) will remain supported for six more months, in anticipation of the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tech giant also stated that vital updates will continue for version 1709 through its regular channels, namely Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Through the service coverage extension, Windows 10 version 1709 can still be managed through all supported versions of Microsoft Configuration Manager. This will allow users to retain existing management workflows until October 30, 2020.

Remote-ready setups

Virtual private networks (VPNs) and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections are necessities for work from home setups, but this has left many IT managers worried about security risks. Experts have suggested deploying a trial version of Windows Server 2016 or 2019 as a workaround. This server software has remote desktop services that are bundled with remote desktop gateway (RDG) and RDWeb technologies, ensuring encrypted remote access.

Microsoft has also published optimization instructions for Office 365 users to properly implement VPN split tunneling for their remote work setups. Routing Office 365 applications — such as Teams, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online — through a split VPN tunnel ensures that the most critical, high-volume Office 365 traffic is quickly patched through to the company server, and not left at risk of loss that stems from the common customer-performance and network capacity issues many enterprise-level clients report.

Other practical tips for WFH

Remote performance depends largely on home internet performance, so that matter boils down to the reliability and speed of your employees’ internet providers’ services. Your staff can take steps to limit their bandwidth loads, such as by not using video streaming services while working, cutting down the recording quality of home security cameras from HD to standard definition, and allowing office IT to remotely optimize the personal devices your employees intend to use for remote work.

Lastly, consulting with your IT partner will surely put you in a better position to cope with the demands of remote work. Managed IT services providers (MSPs) like us are regular remote access practitioners. We handle remote services on a daily basis and provide you with valuable insights on how to keep your business running smoothly through these trying times. Contact us today to learn more.

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Workplace Analytics allows managers to assess their employees’ performance using the data gathered from Office 365. Unlike past Microsoft productivity tools that showed only the user’s own information, Workplace Analytics allows both employees and managers to view each others’ performance data.

How does Workplace Analytics work?

A paid add-on to Office 365 enterprise plans, Workplace Analytics extracts behavioral insights from data gathered from Office 365 email, calendar, documents, and Skype. This means any data an employee types into their email and calendar — whether the information is in the subject line or in the body itself — can be used to determine their productivity.

The program has an overview dashboard that provides specific information:

• Week in the Life provides an overall view of how the entire organization spends time and how members collaborate with one another
• Meetings Overview shows the amount of time people spent in meetings
• Management and Coaching gauges one-on-one meetings between your staff and their manager
• Internal Networks shows how people within the company connect with one another
• External Collaboration provides insights into how people from your company connect with those from third-party organizations
• Teams Collaboration takes a look at how employees and managers communicate with their colleagues

What does Workplace Analytics aim to do?

According to Microsoft, Workplace Analytics addresses businesses’ most common challenges: complexity, productivity, and engagement.

Using Workplace Analytics data, managers and human resources departments can form productivity strategies for the entire company. If most of your employees spend 60% of their time attending meetings and not enough time doing creative work, managers can come up with a strategy to reduce meeting times and focus more on productive tasks.

Workplace Analytics also identifies how employees collaborate with internal and external parties. Suppose one of your sales staff frequently communicates with certain contacts. By using Workplace Analytics data, the manager would be able to determine whether this particular collaboration pattern is helping the employee hit sales targets or he or she is missing out on other more critical contacts. Based on this info, managers would also be able to determine which employees are most likely to meet or exceed their targets and set company-wide standards accordingly.

Workplace Analytics also allows managers to determine an employee’s level of engagement (i.e., whether the organization’s collaboration patterns are good for the company), and whether workloads are fairly distributed among workers and/or departments.

Is Workplace Analytics useful for small businesses?

Large corporations have been using Workplace Analytics, but small businesses can also benefit from it. The data used to provide insights are what employees generate themselves — how much time they spend on meetings, whom they frequently communicate with, and how much time they spend on productive tasks.

Aside from letting managers examine their staff’s work behavior, Workplace Analytics also provides an overall look at an organizational level. If you want your organization to further harness the capabilities of Workplace Analytics and other Office 365 tools, give us a call today.

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Microsoft Office is one of the most popular productivity suites for businesses. Over the years, Microsoft has released several versions of the product, all of which were designed to target different users or update outdated features. Two of the suite’s latest iterations, Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2019, contain many of the same standard applications, but users should pay close attention to their differences when deciding which one to purchase.

What is Microsoft Office 2019?

Microsoft Office 2019 is the latest version of Microsoft’s popular Office suite. With apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more, it is mostly similar to all previous versions of Office. Upon purchase, you receive a license that lets you install and use the version on one computer. This license also covers all security updates, although it does not cover the upgrade to follow-up or future versions of Office.

Microsoft Office 2019 is sometimes known as a “perpetual” version. This is because after making a one-time payment, the license to use the program is yours for life. You may even keep using Office well beyond its natural life cycle, although at this point, you will no longer receive any security updates. To regain patches and support, you need to upgrade to a new version or buy a new product.

What is Office 365 for business?

Office 365 gives you the same apps offered by Microsoft Office 2019, but with other tools, features, and benefits mixed in. Unlike the latter, which is available only on the lone computer it’s installed on, Office 365 is cloud-based and can be used by up to six people at any given time.

Additionally, Office 365 is available only via monthly or yearly subscription services. You can also choose from several plans, all of which are optimized for varying user needs. For instance, the “Office 365 Personal” plan, which gives you access to all the apps in the suite, 1 TB of storage space on OneDrive, and Skype minutes, is great for single users.

Office 365 is also available to teachers and students as a free service, as long as you can provide a valid school email address. For your business, you may choose between Office 365 Business and Office 365 Enterprise plans.

Which is better for business?

Most businesses will benefit more from Office 365 because of its extra features and its superior level of security. Furthermore, the monthly per-user cost is usually lower when compared to the cost of licensing the same version of Office 2019 for each individual.

The other benefits Office 365 for Business include:

• All users are on the same version of Office – Because Office 365 for Business is based in the cloud and is managed via a central admin panel, you can ensure that all users have exactly the same version of Office, which in turn ensures that your files will be compatible with any user.
• Reduced licensing costs – If you purchase individual versions of Office 2019 for your employees, you could end up paying over USD $440 for the Professional version, which can only be installed on one computer. Compare this with Office 365 Business Premium, which costs USD $12.50 per user, per month, and offers the same version of Office, along with more features.
• Enhanced security and uptime – Microsoft guarantees that Office 365 software will be up and running 99.9% of the time, which means the programs you rely on will be available when you need them.
• It’s more mobile – With Office Web Apps and Office 2019 mobile apps you can take your work anywhere. Combine this with solutions like SharePoint that allow you to store documents in a central location, making it easier to access your files while out of the office. Furthermore, if you would like to use the Office mobile apps, you will need an Office 365 subscription.

Understanding your business’s unique needs will help you choose the best Microsoft Office version for your company. In any case, never hesitate to ask for assistance from IT experts in identifying the applications and software plans that will truly empower your company.

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We all undeniably have hectic schedules, and they’re made even worse with unorganized meetings, impromptu playdates, and unscheduled yoga classes. To move or cancel appointments, your clients would generally have to pick up the phone and call someone, which can be a drag. But with Microsoft Bookings, clients can schedule and effortlessly manage appointments. In case one isn’t enough, here are four more reasons to give it a go:

Visibility

Bid adieu to the days of scribbling on post-its and frantically going through your schedule to find out where you’re heading for lunch. Microsoft Bookings provides you with a unique webpage that is compatible on both desktops and mobile devices. Here, customers can select times and dates based on current availability — simply enter the contact information and then book it! The system fully automates the process of managing your appointments.

No more rain checks

Cancellations and missed appointments mean wasted time slots unless you’re able to fill them up with new bookings. Avoid lost income by controlling how much advance notice is required to make a cancellation. With Bookings, appointments appear immediately in staff calendars and can be added or revised by customers in their own personal calendars. Additionally, a confirmation email is automatically sent to the customer, which is then followed by another automatic email reminder before the appointment time. The web page also offers a rescheduling service: customers can simply click on the link on the confirmation email and pick a time that they’re more comfortable with.

Synchronization

Once completed, the booking is then synced to a centralized calendar where businesses are given the option to reschedule, cancel, or reassign the appointment to other staff members as they see fit.

If you do decide to reassign it to staff members, Bookings offers a nifty feature known as “split view.” This shows which staff members are booked at which times, and you can compare everyone’s schedules side-by-side. The appointments are synced not only to your calendar but to the staff members’ calendars as well. Moreover, this versatile system accommodates Office 365, Outlook, and even Google Calendar, so clients and staff can keep whatever calendaring service they prefer.

Double duty

Appointment setting might be the primary goal of Bookings, but the system can also be utilized to build your company’s customer list. Once customers input their information into the system, it automatically creates contact entries for those customers. The contact card contains personal information such as your customer’s name, address, phone number, and email address.

And, as your company grows, you can add more staff members as well as create additional booking pages for free. Furthermore, staff members aren’t required to have Office 365 subscriptions to be a part of the service.

Efficient tech resources aren’t enough to maintain a successful business anymore. To really stand out from competitors, you need comprehensive appointment management. Give us a call if you need any questions answered or issues addressed We’re more than happy to help.

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Arranging meetings that work with everyone’s schedules is a pain — especially if participants don’t work in your office. A calendar that is easy to share publicly simplifies everything from scheduling calls with clients to quarterly meetings with business partners. Here’s how you can achieve that with Office 365.

Share an Office 365 calendar with specific people

Click the Share button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. This will open an email window where you can enter the addresses of people you want to see your calendar.

From that window, you can limit how much of your calendar they see by choosing from Availability Only, Limited Details, or Full Details. The latter two will show recipients the meeting names and participants of events on your calendar, whereas Availability Only will simply display scheduled events as Busy. After you’ve sent the invitation, recipients receive an email with a link to view your calendar in a web browser.

Make an Office 365 calendar public

If you’d prefer to have a link that you can share in a variety of channels whenever you’d like, click the Publish Online button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. From the dropdown menu, first click Publish This Calendar, then Configure This Published Calendar. This will create a link that you can give to collaborators outside your organization. As long as you don’t change your calendar’s visibility, they’ll be able to open that URL and view your availability.

Share your calendar so others can manage it

Users who have administrative control over their Office 365 calendar can set up special sharing settings that allow someone else to send and respond to invitations. From the Account Settings window, click on the Delegate Access button. This window lets you add or remove delegators and configure how much control they have over your calendar.

Even something as simple as sharing your calendar outside your organization has the potential to increase office productivity and efficiency. If you have questions or concerns about managing various aspects of Office 365, get in touch with us today.

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Pairing your business with the right productivity-enhancing tool is a challenge. Fortunately, you can choose between two popular options: Office 2016 and Office 365. But which is right for you? Here are three main differences that may help you decide.

How they’re paid for
Office 2016 is a stand-alone suite, and regardless of the quantity purchased, is described by Microsoft as a “one-time purchase.” You pay a single, upfront cost, meaning the entire purchase price must be paid before receiving the license to legally run the software for life.

By contrast, Office 365 is a subscription service requiring monthly or annual payments. Office 365 allows users to run applications only if payments are made. If you stop, you will have 30 days to continue operating after the previous payment’s due date before the license expires.

How they’re serviced
Another aspect to consider is the service and support offerings. Microsoft provides monthly security updates for Office 2016 applications, and these updates fix non-security bugs. However, you don’t get upgrades for improved features and functionality. If you wish to run the latest edition, you’ll have to pay another upfront fee.

Office 365 users, on the other hand, get the same security patches as Office 2016 and also additional feature and functionality upgrades twice a year.

How they sync with the cloud
Microsoft announced a major change this April: As of October 13, 2020, Office 2016 applications acquired through an upfront purchase are required to be in the “Mainstream” support period (the first five years of the decade-long commitment) to obtain cloud connectivity. Office 365 subscriptions won’t experience this problem.

In order to achieve measurable results and enjoy business growth, it’s imperative that your business is working with the right Office solution. Give us a call and let our team of experts assess your needs and determine the better option.

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Every now and then we all need a little help, especially in today’s digital era. To keep up with the competition, companies are gearing up, especially in the IT department. With the help of cloud computing technology, Office 365 is a productivity and collaboration-enhancing software that is changing the way small- and medium-sized businesses operate. Here are four of the latest features added to Office 365:

Real-time collaboration in PowerPoint

Users will now be able to share a PowerPoint deck and update documents with others in real time. This means you’ll be able to see edits as your colleagues make them. Microsoft was committed to expanding real-time co-authoring of a company’s native applications, with Microsoft Word already rolling out this feature beforehand. Currently, real-time collaboration is available for PowerPoint on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program and for PowerPoint Mobile on Windows tablets.

Move attachments to the cloud and share with colleagues in Outlook

According to Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team, this feature allows users to transform a traditional document into a shared cloud document within Outlook. Previously, Outlook users could only attach cloud-based documents to an email, but this new feature makes it easier to send large files and to collaborate on those files with ease.

Users can upload files into their own OneDrive or a document library as part of an Office 365 group and then designate sharing permissions for the email recipients. The new feature is currently available in Outlook on the web as well as Outlook on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers.

Mobile notifications for changes to shared documents

With this new update, users will be notified when any cloud documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint are being shared or edited. These notifications let you know when changes are being made, even if you are away from a particular document, so you’re always connected and know when you have to act. This feature can be integrated with the activity feed on Windows desktops, and help businesses improve user collaboration. Koenigsbauer says that Microsoft will continue working on the notification feature “to provide more detail and transparency around shared document activity in the future.” Sharing and editing notifications are available for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users on Android and Windows Mobile for Office Insiders. This feature will be available for commercial users in all Office mobile applications in the coming months.

Find, open, and save documents in a Shared with Me and Recent Folders tab

Microsoft’s “Shared with Me” tab in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint makes it easier for enterprise users to find and open shared documents without having to leave the app you’re working in. At the moment, the Shared with Me tab is available on Windows desktops and Macs for all Office 365 subscribers, iOS and Android devices included. And soon, it will be available on Windows Mobile. And the “Recent Folders” tab — used to help quickly locate files as well — is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program.

Technology has become an integral part of modern businesses, and investing in the right IT resources is needed in order to achieve success. With the latest additions to Microsoft Office 365, small- and medium-sized businesses will enjoy enhanced staff collaboration, increased corporate productivity, and an overall competitive advantage.

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The functionality of Microsoft Office has yet to be beaten. And while it is known for its straightforward productivity, there are quite a few add-ins for your favorite Office application that just might improve your experience further. Whether you want to add a cool infographic to an Excel spreadsheet or need to set an Uber reminder from Outlook, here are four add-ins that can help change the way you use Office.

You probably use Microsoft Office on a daily basis but, if you aren’t utilizing plug-ins, you are missing out on a world of cool features that can improve your favorite applications. Microsoft calls them Office Add-ins, and they can be found in the Office Store. Log into your Microsoft account and download the Office Add-ins you want. After that, open the Office application the add-in is meant for. Once open, go to Insert > My Add-ins, and then pick the one you want. That’s it.

Of course, knowing how to do it is just the first step of the equation. You also have to know which add-ins are worth installing. If you are using Office 2013 or later, here are some of the add-ins you might want to check out.

People Graph

For: Excel
Price: Free
Excel is a great way to share numbers and vital data. However, your traditional spreadsheet can look a bit boring, and in particular it can fall short if you need certain figures to stand out. Apart from making them bold or larger, there aren’t a ton of options at your disposal. This is where People Graph comes in. This add-in lets you take those simple numbers and transform them into an engaging infographic that lets the data really stand out.

DocuSign

For: Word
Price: Free Trial (subscription required after trial)
If you need to sign a lot of documents, the process can be a complicated one. DocuSign removes all the hassles by letting you drag and drop your eSignature right there in Word. No longer will you have to print out a document, sign it, and then scan it back onto the computer. DocuSign also meets all legal standards when it comes to eSignatures, so security or validity won’t be an issue.

Uber Ride Reminder

For: Outlook
Price: Free
Raise your hand if you’ve scheduled an Uber ride, only to then forget about it. Chances are there are a lot of hands in the air, ours included. With the Uber Ride Reminder add-in, you won’t have to worry about that happening again. When you schedule a ride, you can place it in your Outlook calendar, and also have the option to setup a mobile reminder from the add-in. New users of the add-in might even be eligible for a free ride, too!

Translator

For: Word
Price: Free
If you work with bilingual clients, or simply want to quickly translate some text into another language, it normally involves a lot of copying and pasting from Word to an internet browser and back again. The Translator add-in cuts out the middle man, and lets you perform translations in over 40 languages right there in Word. While we can’t always vouch for the accuracy of the translations, it can at least help you get the gist of the message.

Believe it or not, there are tons of tools, tips and tricks out there that will let you and your employees get more out of Microsoft Office. Let our expert team show you how your company can get the most out of them and other Office features.

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