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Office 365 supports your business to work remote

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In these ever-changing times, the ability for an organisation to adapt and change is what will allow you to stand out from competitors, continue to serve customers, and ensure you maintain momentum. With the current COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing more and more businesses prepare for social distancing by setting up their systems to allow for remote work and collaboration. At eStorm, we’ve been supporting our customers to ensure they are set-up and using Office 365 to its full potential.

Whether working on a PC, Mac or mobile device from home or in the office, Office 365 is providing workplaces with the tools to continue driving efficiency and productivity. Here are just a few ways Office 365 can support your business in working remotely:

Real-time collaboration

For businesses to continue operating and supporting customers, collaboration on projects and tasks needs to continue. Office 365 provides multiple tools to ensure collaboration doesn’t stop when teams are working remotely. The Microsoft Office suite most of you are used to gives you the ability to have more than one person working on a Word document or Excel file at the same time, and be able to see each other’s work — great for collaboration.

To take it to the next level, there are also a number of newer tools such as SharePoint, Skype for Business and Teams — all designed to help your organisation achieve its goals and provide greater opportunities for workplaces when working remotely.

Teams

Teams is a Microsoft Office 365 tool that allows you to keep your teams communicating, collaborating and working together no matter what location they’re in! The Teams tool is used by businesses to support teams of all sizes, from small teams of 2-5, to large teams of 20-30, even to bigger groups of 100+. No matter the size of your team, Teams provides a great option for organising projects and getting the right people together to have conversations and meetings.

Teams also works as a way of recording and tracking conversations, and offers an easy format for online meetings and chat sessions. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen more and more businesses take advantage of Teams to ensure they are delivering projects, communicating in a timely manner and continuing to achieve their organisation’s goals.

Microsoft is currently offering a free version of Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic — learn more about the free version and speak to us about how we can support you to set-up Teams today.

A simple tip for your employees when using Teams to facilitate group chats while working remote — if you’re somewhere with a distracting background, there is a handy little ‘background blur’ tool to help reduce distraction and keep teammates focused.

Secure Cloud file storage

Office 365 also allows your team to access files from anywhere, in a secure and safe manner. The cloud-based storage, OneDrive, provides global accessibility and real-time collaboration to support your business in working both in-house and remote as needed. It allows for full visibility, control and collaboration for internal and external stakeholders, as you can easily share documents and control who can view and edit each file. 

Microsoft Office 365 also offers enterprise solutions when it comes to ensuring your business’s documents and work stays secure. Its collection of threat-protection technologies helps protect against spam, malware, viruses, phishing attempts, malicious links, and other cyber threats to your business.

Continuation of business

The huge benefit of Office 365 to businesses is that it offers an easy way to continue ‘business as usual’ no matter what challenges may come your way. The tools are there to help your teams collaborate, plan workflows and tasks, and manage projects. With Office 365, your business can continue to meet its goals and deliver services/products to your customers. 

Need help to get your business working remote using Office 365?

At eStorm, we offer Office 365 support and troubleshooting, as well as deliver general IT Managed Services. What does that mean exactly? With a wide range of plans, deployment options and services, our IT experts can get your business set up and working efficiently in no-time. With access to the latest information and deals on offer, our team is here to support you during the COVID-19 pandemic and into the future.

The Ultimate Guide to Office 365 Migration

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Roughly 80% of Fortune 500 companies have moved their business data to Office 365. But it’s not just the big players who are taking advantage of Microsoft’s powerful suite.

A growing number of start-ups, small and medium sized businesses are following suit—and finding great benefit.

In all fields and industries, organisations of all sizes are moving the needle, driving growth and pushing their industry forward. Yet most businesses continue to use the same outdated technology, underpinning their entire work, even though new solutions have significantly advanced these legacy tools.

Why would businesses continue to limp forward, hamstrung by their own outdated tools? Many site reasons like staff being used to the way they work, or their current tools are good enough even though they’re rough around the edges and a little clunky.

But one of the biggest reasons for failure to upgrade is data migration. Most businesses believe they have too much data to migrate, or it’s too much of a hassle to migrate all their data to a new platform.

Nowadays, that just simply isn’t true. In reality, the risk of continuing to use legacy platforms means significantly reduced support over time. Eventually certain tools and platforms stop receiving vital updates and other related support, which leaves you vulnerable.

Not to mention that when tools are slow or fail to integrate with new or existing solutions, overall productivity takes a nosedive. This creates a serious potential risk for money to be left on the table in terms of failure to optimise staff time and collaborative power, as well as even costing the business money.

One study revealed that for every $13,291 worth of salary, disengaged employees account for a $4,520 cost to their employer.

Why migrate to Office 365

Productivity Gains

Microsoft’s Office 365 is the total package. A state of the art enterprise IT environment that is single handedly altering how organisations of all size do business.

One way Office 365 is improving workplace productivity is through cross-platform support. This allows employees and users to access their documents on all devices (PCs, Macs, iOS and Android). Likewise, users can access their work from anywhere at any time.

Another significant driver of productivity with Office 365 is the collaborative power. Users can share documents and collaborate in real time with the ability to track changes to specific users. This reduces the number of files being created and keeps everyone working on the same page—and not accidentally on old or outdated documents.

Flexibility

One particular benefit of Office 365 that entices people is the flexibility it offers users. Some organisations have driven costs down significantly by allowing bring-your-own-device initiatives as Office 365 lets users sign into accounts from multiple devices.

Business director and co-founder of Imagination Yoga, Jessica McClintic, was drawn to Office 365 for the suite’s flexible per-user pricing structure. After many years, with the addition of a number of franchisees and licensees, the business now uses Office 365 to share and distribute documents—even using the suite’s video conferencing tool to conduct yoga training.

“I have teams in Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania, so if they have questions when I give them information about a new posture or pose, we can hold a video conference,” McClintic Says. “It’s nice to have everyone rolled into one tool.”

Likewise, Office 365 offers a number of flexible deployment options, depending on the organisation’s migration timeline and security needs. Office 365 can be deployed on-premise, via cloud or as a hybrid deployment.

Significant Cost Savings

While many businesses cite time savings, whether through improvements to productivity and collaboration, as an important element that drove them to migrating to the cloud—cost is still one of the most significant drivers.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado had recently merged all of their individual councils into one, with five offices. The new arrangement required cross-site collaboration, during which time they found themselves paying inflated bills for a 3rd party web conferencing solution and phone calls.

After migrating to the cloud with Office 365, the organisation was able to address several issues in one go:

  • The need for 3rd party solutions were eliminated, as employees were able to call and conference through Office 365
  • The number of servers the organisation required dropped from 10 to 5—two physical servers and 3 virtual servers
  • The Office 365 software suite came with collaborative tools that enabled employees to work together through instant messaging, remote desktop connections and file sharing—all without the need for a costly VPN

The migration came at a time when the organisation’s infrastructure costs were rapidly increasing, due to servers coming to the end of their lifetime.

The organisation explained that, had they not migrated, they were going to have to purchase, build and maintain several servers, which can be very costly.

Always Up-to-date

Regardless of deployment type, Office 365 subscribers enjoy automatic updates and the latest version of Office suite products.

Users gain access to all enhancements upon release as Microsoft handles all the updates in a way that doesn’t inhibit availability.

Predictable Costs

The Office 365 suite gives organisations the freedom and flexibility of scaling up or down as and when you need it.

Previously, organisations purchased Office products as they hired new employees. If that person left, or the business scaled down, Microsoft doesn’t let you return that software.

Office 365 scales with your business by allowing you to pay for what you need when you need it. When your organisation grows you can take on additional services and data storage, or reduce those services if needed.

A Simplified Experience

Office 365 allows you to pick the tools you need (Microsoft also has some great business apps—some of which are free!) and access them all in the one place.

Where technology and business are heading, Office 365 is the future of workplace productivity and collaboration. The question isn’t if an organisation should make the switch, but rather when. Increase productivity and manage costs by contacting us today.

You can learn more about how you can use Office 365 with eStorm.

If you’re interested in Office 365 and Office 365 migration services, eStorm is here to help. Contact us at any time to learn more, or to find out how we can help you. 07 3210 0640 – [email protected]

How to improve workplace collaboration with Microsoft Teams

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A few years ago now Microsoft were faced with the decision of either buying Slack or developing a new product of their own that would beat out the competition. However the idea that Slack could dethrone Office 365 is quickly dwindling as Microsoft have found their place in the corporate world.

Early this month, March 2018, Teams celebrated its first birthday and that more than 200,000 organisations are now utilising the software. This comes as no surprise as Microsoft are positioning Teams as your workplace hub for content, communication and even email.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a digital platform that combines conversations, workplace chat, meetings, notes, apps and attachments in one place. The service integrates with Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity suite, including Microsoft Office and Skype, as well as featuring extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products, to create collaborative communities.

Teams provides a number of benefits for its users including security, cloud-scale, and a strong set of applications.

The unique aspect of teams, and where it shines through the competition, is the combination of email, messaging, document sharing, collaboration and organisation in a single app.

For example, one of the major reasons for utilising Teams over email for communication when onboarding a new user, is that they gain instant access to the entire history of the communication channel. You no longer need to forward a million emails and hope that the new employee can fit the pieces back together and make sense of the puzzle. By adding them to a team they have access to the entire thread in chronological order, which makes it significantly easier to bring a new employee up to speed.

Having access to the entire feed is a huge leap forward in the organisation of how and why decisions are made, while also providing an easily discoverable area to work backward through when issues arise.

Teams is rapidly becoming the hub of Microsoft’s productivity centre and represents a new way of working within the Office 365 ecosystem.

Get the most out of Microsoft Teams by integrating with the powerful Office 365 and Skype. Learn more about the benefits of Microsoft Office 365 and the benefits of Skype for business and enterprise level unified communications.

At eStorm we work closely with you to determine how your business can benefit from Microsoft Office 365 solutions, as well as help you to choose the right plan that makes sense for you and your needs. If you are not currently an Office 365 user, you’re considering making the switch to Office 365, or you simply don’t know where to start – please feel free to call us on (07) 3120 0640 or email us at [email protected]

What is SharePoint and why do you need it?

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What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is an industry leading platform, used by 78% of Fortune 500 companies to grow their online and offline capabilities. SharePoint provides impressive yet simple content management and team collaboration capabilities from any location across any device.

Now all of that sounds great, but what exactly does SharePoint do?

SharePoint features:

  • Simple and powerful file sharing
  • Facility to create ‘team sites’, useful for project management and keeping shareholders informed
  • Stay up to date with company news and information with an intelligent intranet function
  • Security, privacy and compliance features
  • Innovation, with ongoing upgrades and enhancements.

Simple and powerful file sharing

SharePoint really does make it easy for you to create, share, develop and manage documents – regardless of where you are working from and on what device.  Collaboration is simple, you have the option to co-author, compare files and interact online – fostering clear communication between your colleagues and clients.

Accessibility, wherever you are working

If you are working as part of a team on a project, or simply a document that needs input from other stakeholders – SharePoint creates a place that encourages individuals to come together and share data.

A team site, just for you

If you are about to embark on a project and want to bring a number of people together to work in partnership, SharePoint offers you the technology to create your own team site, with responsive pages that are mobile friendly and easy to share.

Intelligent intranet

Build your own company-wide intranet to ensure personnel keep up to date with news and events and have easy access to download important documents and imagery.

Security, privacy and compliance

SharePoint has always had a commitment to ensuring your security, privacy and compliance. It also goes one step further than this  – evaluating the level of security required, based on the user, content, device and location. Automated maintenance of the servers ensures you are always up to date with the latest security features. Its capabilities are designed to ensure sensitive information remains protected, with ongoing investments in data loss prevention. If your organisation requires a more detailed understanding of the security and privacy settings you are operating within, SharePoint can give you insightful reporting for compliance purposes.

This video is a simplified break down of how to use SharePoint and what it can do for your business.

 

Why eStorm

eStorm Australia can design a customised SharePoint environment to suit your needs and budget. We have helped a number of businesses on their SharePoint journey from creating fully managed SharePoint environments to simple SharePoint frameworks that allow clients to manage and update internally. Learn more about what Microsoft SharePoint can do for your business.

For over 15 years eStorm Australia has been partnering with businesses, education and government to help them leverage the benefits of technology. Our goal is to make your IT work for you so you can focus on more valuable and inspiring initiatives. With our team of IT experts, we work with you to find the right solution for your problem. If you require additional Managed IT Services, eStorm specialise in Managed Cloud Services, IT Support Services, Managed Network Services, Business Telephony, Hardware and Software Procurement and Education Services. Contact us any time on (07) 3120 0640 or email [email protected] today for a no obligation consultation to learn how your business can benefit from partnering with eStorm Australia.

If you are located outside of Brisbane, eStorm can still help you.
Sydney: (02) 9188 5148
Melbourne: (03) 9088 6431

 

Microsoft SharePoint Brisbane

Headquartered in Brisbane, we provide a tailored SharePoint solution to suit your specific requirements and environment. We give you the ability to own your online collaboration tools and communicate in real time with full SharePoint integration.

 

What is SharePoint? Microsoft SharePoint users eStorm Australia managed cloud services Brisbane

Its Never Been A Better Time To Join The Microsoft Ecosystem

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As team collaboration tools and services become ever more important in facilitating teamwork and communication within organisations of all sizes, recent reports claim that Microsoft could be adding a free tier to their Microsoft Teams service.

Microsoft Teams is a digital platform that combines conversations, workplace chat, meetings, notes, apps and attachments in one place. The service integrates with Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity suite, including Microsoft Office and Skype, as well as featuring extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products, to create collaborative communities.

Microsoft_Teams_banner

According to recent reports, the latest developer preview version of Teams has several references to a ‘freemium tier’, which would see a free offering of the service to those who aren’t Office 365 subscribers. While the free version of Teams will have certain limitations, there has never been a better time to see if Office 365 is the right fit for you or your organisation’s needs. This is particularly important if you are a sole user of Skype for Business – now is a great time to make the switch as Microsoft are beginning to take action with the aim of making Teams a one-stop-shop for all your meeting needs within Office 365, including rolling Skype for Business into Teams.

At eStorm we work closely with you to determine how your business can benefit from Microsoft Office 365 solutions, as well as help you to choose the right plan that makes sense for you and your needs. If you are not currently an Office 365 user, you’re considering making the switch to Office 365, or you simply don’t know where to start – please feel free to call us on (07) 3120 0640 or email us at [email protected]

Office 365 client update channel releases

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Office 365 client update channel releases

Excel: Feature updates

This channel release contains the following feature updates:

  • Pen customization: Choose a personal set of pens and highlighters for inking. Your customized set is available on all your Windows PCs.
  • Insert online pictures: New landing page for selecting images and attribution information is automatically inserted with the image.
  • Azure Data Lake Store connector: Users can now import data from Azure Data Lake Store.
  • “Add column from examples” enhancements: Supports suggestions, more Date/Time operations, and additional transformations.

Outlook: Feature updates

This channel release contains the following feature updates:

  • New account configuration: Set up new accounts with a new wizard that requires fewer manual steps.

PowerPoint: Feature updates

This channel release contains the following feature updates:

  • Pen customization: Choose a personal set of pens and highlighters for inking. Your customized set is available on all your Windows PCs.
  • Insert online pictures: New landing page for selecting images and attribution information is automatically inserted with the image.

Project: Non-security updates

This channel release contains the following non-security updates:

  • Fix an issue where timephased Baseline values don’t match the initial values when you save a project to the XML file format.
  • Fix an issue where the Project client won’t open a project since it thinks the project is checked out when it really isn’t.
  • Fix an issue so that opening Project files from a file server with high latency open faster.

Skype for Business: Non-security updates

This channel release contains the following non-security updates:

  • Increase the prominence of High Importance messages in chat.
  • Add Office and Skype for Business file extension types to allowable file transfer blocklists.
  • Localization corrections in Outlook meeting invitations for meeting footer text set in non-English.
  • Fix an issue where sender names can be switched in conversations of multiple users.
  • Fix an issue where the blank conversation window fails to appear until a meeting is joined successfully.
  • Fix an issue where the department field information in a contact card is empty in search results if the title field is empty.
  • Fix sign-in failures for users migrated from on-premises to online due to firewall rules.

Word: Feature updates

This channel release contains the following feature updates:

  • Pen customization: Choose a personal set of pens and highlighters for inking. Your customized set is available on all your Windows PCs.
  • Insert online pictures: New landing page for selecting images and attribution information is automatically inserted with the image.

Microsoft Office 2016 has arrived!

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Microsoft have globally released Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows and Mac, as well as several new and enhanced Office 365 services today.

Office 2016 will bring new versions of desktop apps, including the popular programs Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Access.

Microsoft is recommending the new update particularly to enterprise customers, as the Office 2016 includes a range of security features; including support for data loss prevention across the Office 2016 apps, multi-factor authentication and “other mission critical control capabilities”, according to a blog by general manager of Office 365 technical product management, Julia White.

Microsoft launched its Windows 10 update in July, designed to work across laptops, desktop and smartphones and Office 2016 has been designed to work smoothly with the operating system update.

The new Office 2016 apps are available in 40 languages and require Windows 7 or later versions. Microsoft also said starting Tuesday, Office 365 subscribers can choose to download the new Office 2016 apps as part of their subscription.

What’s new in Office 2016:

Word

In the Word app there are finger-friendly cursor controls for easy text selection, copying and pasting, plus tapping on a spelling mistake brings up a touch menu of possible replacement words. There’s also a new Bing-powered feature for Word called Insights, and this looks up background information, websites and news stories for selected words. Track changes, comments and co-editing are available too, as mentioned below.

Excel

Excel has benefited from a substantial makeover, and additions including snap functions and smart scrolling which make tapping in your spreadsheet data an easier process. It has the same touch-friendly interface, but it’s not as stripped down as with Word, and it has a status bar that lets you switch between sheets in your workbook and view the results of common formulas for selected cells.

Design

Office 2016 includes colourful new themes that match closely with the Windows 10 themes, and the latest office releases for Mac, iOS and Android apps. The colourful range of options appear on application ribbons and include blue for Word, green for Excel and red for PowerPoint. Ribbons also are redesigned slightly to make room for the ever-present “Tell Me” search field, detailed below.

“Tell Me”

Perhaps one of the most helpful inclusions of Office 2016, the Tell Me box has been incorporated to help users be more productive in Office 2016. Microsoft has added the Tell Me box that sits in the centre top of the program title bars for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Embedded in the title bar’s ribbon just to the right of a lightbulb is the search field with “Tell me what you want to do…”

If users need help trying to figure out how to add an image to a Word document, create a formula in Excel or add an animation to their Powerpoint project, simply ask the Tell Me box. Just start typing in questions using natural language query, and Microsoft will narrow the answer down the best it can.

office 2016 goes with you

Bring it all together with OneDrive cloud storage
Easily save to your cloud storage and switch from one device to the next without missing a beat. Office apps pick up right where you left off, regardless of the device you were using.

Move over Powerpoint…Sway is here

Sway is the new, ‘cooler’ way to create a presentation. Sway allows you to drag and drop photos, videos and files from YouTube, a computer, Facebook, Twitter or OneDrive onto a web browser, smartphone or tablet app. Sway lets you organise content in an engaging way to help communicate in a nonlinear (PowerPoint) manner.

Sway, in preview since October, will be available in Office 2016 and to business and education subscribers in Office 365 later this year.

Real-time co-editing In Word

Another extremely useful feature Microsoft has added to Office 2016 is a feature that Google Doc users have been enjoying for years now – real-time co-editing in Office documents. Real-time co-editing makes it easier for teams working on the same document not to double up or change information without the other team members knowing.

Real-time presence in Word

Part of co-editing in Word is actually seeing what the other person is doing – as they are doing it. To achieve that, Microsoft has added a Real Time Presence feature that allows a user to see where in a document teammates are editing.

Attachments to emails made easier

Outlook also got an update in Office 2016. When a user adds an attachment to an email, the Attach File menu option now includes Recent Items, which includes any Office documents that have recently been closed. This will save you the trouble of searching through all of your files to find what you are looking for.

office 2016 working together

Work groups Via Outlook

Outlook 2016’s other new feature involves creating work groups. Microsoft believes teams are collaborating more via email, video, IM, and in physical and virtual meetings. To help facilitate this cooperation and collaboration, Microsoft have added the ability to keep tabs on group activity, access conversation history, and manage files and group notes stored on OneDrive.

Upping security in Office 2016

This update is particularly beneficial for business customers. Microsoft have upped the security in Office 2016 with tools to prevent data leakage and manage file permissions. Administrators now can enable and set Data Loss Prevention policies for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

From the management point of view, policies can fight data leakage by allowing administrators to restrict what files can be sent to whom, and prevent data from being copied and pasted outside of Office 2016 applications.

IT administrators can place restrictions ranging from “notification” of a violation, allowing users to “override” rules with a justification, to finally “block” dissemination of content. In addition, Microsoft adds file-level encryption of Outlook, Word, Excel and other content. One also can choose to store data in a Customer Lockbox to control whether Microsoft can access sensitive information.

Better security: Word

The Data Loss Prevention features are extended to Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Users will be alerted when inside an app if they try to save a file containing confidential information in a directory, folder or service where it might not be secure.

Skype embedded into Word, Excel And PowerPoint

Microsoft has integrated Skype into Office 2016. Users can now initiate Skype voice and video calls, and text-based chats directly from within an Office document.

Overall, Microsoft have included a lot of new and updated features in Office 2016.

For information on pricing, or how to upgrade your service, please contact the eStorm office on 1300 378 676 or [email protected]