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Myth-Busting Monday: Office 365 is not just Office “Online”

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Office 365Even with the growing adoption, many still see Microsoft Office 365 as “Office in the Cloud”.

In fact, Office 365 is an entirely different suite of services.  Yes, Office 365 Business Premium and Enterprise licenses include the MS Office apps we know and use — Outlook, Work, Excel, Powerpoint, and more.  But Office 365 is not just a suite of productivity tools.

Microsoft Office 365 is a business communication, collaboration, and information management ecosystem.

Office 365 licenses can include:

  • OneNote – Multimedia note taking from any platform
  • SharePoint – Collaboration platform for file sharing, intranets, document management, workflows, and information management
  • OneDrive – Personal and shared file storage
  • Skype for Business – Voice, secure IM, video meetings, and presence management
  • Yammer – Social collaboration for business
  • Power BI – Wizard driven business analytics
  • Sway – Web 2.0 publishing to tell your story
  • Planner – Project and task management

As important as the suite of tools, Office 365 can change the way your team works together.  With your data secure and in the cloud, you share information rather than attaching files to endless chains of emails. Your team has the ability to work anytime, from anywhere, from nearly any device. Your people are connected because the data and information they use is connected.

So if you haven’t moved into the cloud, stop thinking of Office 365 as hosted email and some apps. Start thinking about how you want to improve your business. Then use Office 365 to make it happen.

Already on Office 365 and feel like you’re not using it to its fullest potential? Ask us about our adoption and engagement programs.

This is the first of a multi-part series designed to help companies better assess the opportunity and value of cloud-based solutions.  Contact Us for more information or a free Cloud Advisor session.

 

Users Ask; Gmail Delivers New Features

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GmailOne of the benefits of Cloud Computing, is that user-requested features can be developed and released quickly and efficiently.  Over the past few weeks, Google has done just that with the Gmail component of Google Apps for Business, Government, and Education.

Full Screen Compose

For those of us who like a  bit more room when organizing our thoughts, the Gmail compose box/window can now be made full screen by clicking the “maximize” or “pop-out” button.   From within a compose box/window, you can also make full screen compose your default setting via the drop down arrow at the bottom right of the box/window.

Quick Action RSVP

One of the aspects of Google Apps that we love, is the integration between Gmail and Calendar.  The Quick Action RSVP shows up to the right of the email subject line for calendar invites.  Click on the button and you get an event card with RSVP options.

More than allowing you to RSVP to meeting requests from within the invitation (without going to your calendar screen), now you can RSVP from the inbox without opening the invitation.

One More Reason

And, of course, these types of integration snippets are some of the reasons we strongly encourage use of the web interface to Google Apps, rather than Outlook or Thunderbird.

Google Apps Helpful Hint: Delegation in MS Outlook

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If you delegate your email and calendar in Google Apps (Premier or Education editions), the person to whom you delegate, can handle messages and calendar events on your behalf from the Outlook client if you are using the Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook tool.

When you grant access to your account in Gmail, and share your primary Calendar, those messages and events are synced to the Outlook client. The person to whom you delegate can then receive and answer email on your behalf, as well as create and respond to calendar invitations on your behalf.

Click here to learn how to delegate access

Improvements for Google Apps Users Running MS Outlook

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Many Google Apps users continue to use MS Outlook as their email/calendar software of choice.  The Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook makes this easy, and has recently improved.

  • New Calendars: If you create a new calendar in MS Outlook, the new calendar will be created in Google Apps and will Sync.
  • Multiple Calendars: You can now sync multiple calendars from Google Apps to Outlook.  The sync will include all calendars for which you have write permissions and that are not hidden in your Google Calendar list.
  • Free/Busy with Dual Delivery: We often configure dual delivery — where email goes to Google Apps and Exchange at the same time — so that we can migrate users  in groups and phases.  When running in dual delivery and other Google Apps/Exchange mixed environments, you can now query free/busy information from the Exchange server.  To do so requires installing a free connector and a registry key on each client,  a service that is included in our unlimited support package.

Click here to learn more about these new features.

Click here to learn more about our services.