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Groups, Yammer, and Teams: When should you use them?While most Microsoft 365 apps serve a particular purpose, tools like Outlook Groups, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams can all be used for office communication and collaboration. However, there are a few small differences. Read on to learn more. Outlook Groups With Outlook Groups, every member gets a shared inbox, calendar, project planner, notebook, and document […]

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04 Sep, 2020 / by Complete Technology Resources / in 2020september04office_b, cloud, collaboration, groups, microsoft 365, microsoft teams, Office, Office 365, outlook groups, yammer category
Groups, Yammer, and Teams: When should you use them?

While most Microsoft 365 apps serve a particular purpose, tools like Outlook Groups, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams can all be used for office communication and collaboration. However, there are a few small differences. Read on to learn more.

Outlook Groups

With Outlook Groups, every member gets a shared inbox, calendar, project planner, notebook, and document library. You can also connect to third-party apps such as Twitter, Trello, and Mailchimp, so notifications are sent directly to your shared inbox.

This means all relevant messages and information are sent to one place, so if most of your conversations are done via email, Outlook Groups is ideal. What’s more, HR and sales departments that communicate with external parties will also find plenty of uses for its email features.

A big downside of Outlook Groups, however, is email overload. Because all messages and notifications are sent to one inbox, users may become overwhelmed by the number of emails they have to sort through every day.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, a chat-based collaboration platform similar to Slack, works with Skype for Business so you can text, call, video chat, and share files with colleagues. Thanks to its seamless integrations with other Microsoft 365 programs, you can even work on shared files without leaving the app.

Unlike Groups, Microsoft Teams is designed for more advanced collaboration, making it great for completing projects with tight deadlines or other tasks requiring immediate feedback.

Yammer

Much like Groups and Teams, Yammer works well with other Microsoft 365 tools like Outlook and OneDrive. However, Yammer is a professional social media app designed to foster open communication and break down barriers between teams.

With Yammer, important files and announcements can be shared with the entire company like an office bulletin board. Users can also see the most popular post on their feeds, follow it, and even comment.

Yammer also takes design elements and features from social media apps like Facebook, making it a popular choice for companies with millennials in their workforce.

Although we’ve discussed the fundamental differences between Groups, Teams, and Yammer, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what each app can do. To figure out which apps you need, you must understand how your employees work, how they prefer to collaborate, and what you want to achieve from such collaborations.

But there’s another way to find the right app for your business: ask the experts. Contact us today for an IT assessment!

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Microsoft Office 365 is now Microsoft 365 BusinessChange can be difficult in business, but it can also usher in a new era of productivity and profitability. Microsoft is shooting for better ways to improve productivity and elevate data integrity with its new Microsoft 365 product. Name change Microsoft has time and again shown that they are willing to make drastic changes to […]

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19 Jun, 2020 / by Complete Technology Resources / in 2020june19office_a, intune, microsoft, microsoft 365, o365, Office, Office 365, Productivity, w10, Windows, windows 10, windows defender category
Microsoft Office 365 is now Microsoft 365 Business

Change can be difficult in business, but it can also usher in a new era of productivity and profitability. Microsoft is shooting for better ways to improve productivity and elevate data integrity with its new Microsoft 365 product.

Name change

Microsoft has time and again shown that they are willing to make drastic changes to their products and services in the name of development. Their Windows 10 operating system (OS), for instance, is a far cry from its predecessor Windows 8. Microsoft made the jump from what they thought would be a revolutionary tile-based design in Windows 8 to a classic, ergonomically designed Windows 10.

The tech giant has once again made drastic changes, this time to their award-winning line of productivity apps Microsoft Office 365. O365, as it was lovingly referred to for nearly a decade, is now the sleeker, more powerful, Microsoft 365 Business.

Microsoft 365 Business is available to small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) on three different subscription plans: Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium.

Available plans

Microsoft 365 Business Basic

Microsoft 365 Business Basic comes with many standard features, including web and mobile app access, full email and calendaring tools, secure file storage, collaboration tools, and support. Rest easy knowing that you have a powerful enterprise-grade software for a fraction of the cost such as:

  • Web and mobile app versions of Office apps
  • Real-time coauthoring
  • Email hosting with 50 GB capacity
  • 1 TB of OneDrive storage
  • Automatic syncs regardless of work platform choice (between OneDrive and SharePoint).
  • Teleconferencing and unified communications via Microsoft Teams for up to 250 users
  • Automatic threat defense via Exchange Online Protection
  • A complete array of cybersecurity tools and protocols, such as automated password policy tools

Microsoft 365 Business Standard

With the Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan, you’ll get everything Business Basic offers plus:

  • Desktop versions of Office apps for up to five PCs or Macs per user
  • Easy and smart appointments management with Microsoft Bookings
  • Real-time mileage tracking and reporting with MileIQ

Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Microsoft 365 Business Premium is the brand’s flagship plan, a great tool for businesses ready to take their operations to the next level. It comes with everything Business Standard offers plus:

  • Advanced security tools to protect from zero-day threats and ransomware, via Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
  • Remote wiping tools for stolen or lost devices, via Selective Wipe from Intune
  • Restricted copying or saving options for unauthorized apps and locations
  • Complete control of company data, via Information Rights Management
  • Pre-breach threat resistance policy options, via Windows Defender Exploit Guard
  • Malware protection, via Windows Defender
  • Unlimited cloud archiving of emails, via Exchange Online Archiving
  • Setup wizards for Windows 10, iOS, and Android
  • Total security policy deployment — even for mobile apps — via Mobile Device Management from Intune

Microsoft 365 Business will change the way your staff powers your business. Contact us today to discuss how you can avail of a subscription.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Microsoft 365: New Office 365 features for the same priceOn April 21, Microsoft rebranded its Office 365 (O365) Home and Personal plans asMicrosoft 365 (M365) Personal and Family subscriptions. The company’s officials describe the new bundles as "the subscription for your life to help you make the most of your time, connect, and protect the ones you love, and to develop and grow." But […]

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11 May, 2020 / by Complete Technology Resources / in 2020may11office_b, excel, microsoft, microsoft 365, Office, Office 365, outlook, powerpoint, teams, word category
Microsoft 365: New Office 365 features for the same price

On April 21, Microsoft rebranded its Office 365 (O365) Home and Personal plans asMicrosoft 365 (M365) Personal and Family subscriptions. The company’s officials describe the new bundles as "the subscription for your life to help you make the most of your time, connect, and protect the ones you love, and to develop and grow." But Microsoft isn’t just changing its marketing, it’s also boosting its apps with new capabilities. Here’s what you can expect.

#1 Microsoft Editor

Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), this new editing feature helps you write better by providing advanced grammar and style refinements. It will alert you if you’re using a word too often or constructing overly complex or unclear sentences. It can also make language and style suggestions, rephrase full sentences, and check for plagiarism.

Microsoft Editor is now available in 20 languages in Word and as a browser extension in Outlook. Soon, you can also install it as a Microsoft Edge and Chrome plug-in so you can always submit great writing anywhere on the web.

#2 Presentation Coach and updated Designer

Create better presentations using the AI-driven Presentation Coach feature that helps you avoid filler words, grammar mistakes in your speech, and a monotone pitch that may put your audience to sleep.

What’s more, the enhanced PowerPoint Designer gives you access to over 8,000 images and 175 looping videos, 300 new fonts, and 2,800 new icons. It also has the capability to convert text into a timeline and suggest potential slide layouts whenever you add an image.

#3 Money in Excel

If you use Excel to manage your personal or family budget, then you’ll love the upcoming new feature called Money in Excel that lets you link your bank and credit card accounts and import your data into your spreadsheets. You can also track your transactions line by line, categorize your expenses, and create a monthly spending chart so you can analyze your habits.

#4 Integrated personal and work calendars

Outlook now allows you to look at just one interface for both your personal and work calendars. This prevents your coworkers from setting meetings with you during your blocked personal events. You can also import your child’s school calendars so you’ll be alerted of their conferences, plays, and other academic events.

#5 Teams for consumers

Microsoft Teams will soon have new consumer-centric features that let you connect and collaborate with your friends and family. So if you already use Teams for work, you will be able to connect it with your Teams personal account and easily switch between those two accounts, just like in Outlook.

#6 Family Safety app

Aside from adding new features to their existing apps, Microsoft will also roll out its new Family Safety app for iOS and Android later this year. Similar to Apple’s Screen Time, the app is made to keep your family safe in both the digital and physical worlds.

It lets you see what your children are doing on their Windows PCs, Xboxes, and Android and iPhone devices, and give you an analysis of their time spent on each device, so you can manage their screen time. You can use it to set limits for apps and content filters by age and even block specific websites and games on Xbox. The Family Safety app will also provide you with location sharing and driving reports.

Despite all these new features and upcoming new app, the M365 consumer bundles are still priced identically with its O365 counterparts: M365 Personal at $6.99/month or $69.99/year for one user, and M365 Family at $9.99/month or $99.99/year for up to six users.

To stay updated with the latest Microsoft news and see how these changes can help improve your business, get in touch with our IT experts today!

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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Single sign-on: The key to user managementFrom complexity requirements to minimum lengths, creating a password for a new online account can be bothersome. If your business is constantly experiencing this issue, single sign-on (SSO) can help. This technology is secure, easy to manage, and eliminates the need to remember a long list of usernames and passwords. What is SSO? Single sign-on […]

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09 Mar, 2020 / by Complete Technology Resources / in Office 365, Security category
Single sign-on: The key to user management

From complexity requirements to minimum lengths, creating a password for a new online account can be bothersome. If your business is constantly experiencing this issue, single sign-on (SSO) can help. This technology is secure, easy to manage, and eliminates the need to remember a long list of usernames and passwords.

What is SSO?

Single sign-on allows you to create one username and one password that thousands of websites will recognize. If you’ve ever clicked “Continue with Google” on a non-Google website, you’ve already enjoyed the benefits of SSO. It’s faster, simpler, and more secure. Now, small businesses can accomplish the same level of efficiency between their employees and cloud platforms.

Instead of requiring everyone in the office to track separate accounts for Office 365, Slack, Trello, and other cloud apps your company uses, you can give them a single set of credentials and manage what they have access to remotely. Employees come to work, enter their designated username and password, and they’re all set for the day.

Why is SSO more secure?

There are a number of ways to set up a small business SSO solution, but most of them focus on removing login information from your servers. Usually, you’ll provide your employees’ logins to an SSO provider (sometimes referred to as an Identity-as-a-Service provider) and each employee will receive a single login paired with a secondary authentication — like a fingerprint or an SMS code to a personal device.

Every time one of your employees visits a cloud platform, such as Office 365 or Google Apps, the SSO provider will verify the user’s identity and the connection’s security. If anything goes wrong, your IT provider will be notified.

Should your network or any of its devices be compromised, hackers would find nothing but logins to your SSO accounts, which are meaningless without fingerprints or mobile devices.

How to get started with SSO

The first step is making sure you have a healthy and responsive IT support system. You need a team that’s constantly available to review suspicious alerts and troubleshoot employee issues. If you don’t currently have that capacity, contact us today and we’ll help you out!

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

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