Posts from the ‘Office 365 Implementation’ Category

New Office 365 2013 Preview: New Features

New features in Office 2013 are mostly tablet oriented as well as arranged around the new simplified ribbon menu style. One of the key features is the simpler look allows the user to flip through pages of a Microsoft Office Document on a touch-screen in a realistic manner, much as one would flip through the pages of a book.

Other features related to this Office 2013 Metro interface are a recurring theme on the Metro Windows 8 Phone and Windows 8 user interface, which are also metro.

While it seems exciting to technical types, I have experienced lack of enthusiasm and resistance to change in offices when dealing with the Metro theme, Windows 8, and Office 2013. Much of this resistance can and will be worn down over time, and new consensus will be hard-fought and won in the world of interfaces.

Some of the advantages to Metro style  features include the new start screen. Rather than loath it, consider that you have a whole screen and even more to pin all your favorite applications and documents. You can alter tile size and information content. For the developer, the tile is a valuable tool, able to convey information in the form of instant updates to applications, increasing their notoriety.

Closing Windows 8 style full-screen apps. There is no manual that comes with Windows 8 to tell you how to do this, so an old tech geek trick of closing the application by clicking <alt><f4>. You can switch between apps very quickly without closing them using <alt> <tab>. This option is very useful because it opens up a window showing all foreground applications so that you can select the one you want immediately.

On the right, the mouse will open the Windows 8 Charm Bar. This bar has a search feature at the top which is very powerful. Not only can you search your own local machine but any shared network resources as well.

Rebuilding Windows is much easier, faster, and cheaper than it was with Windows 7 or previous versions of Windows.  With Windows 8 you can re-install Windows with Windows running and without losing any documents, apps, or settings. This results in much less time spent re-building PC’s and much less user resistance because documents, settings, and apps remain the same after repair.

The Windows Mail and Social features built-in to Windows 8 are great for home users, but applications such as Mail should be turned off for business users, as business users are generally using Microsoft Outlook.

With so many decisions to make about training people for Windows 8, leaving them with Windows 7, it is good to have a company who knows the details that can help you make tough decisions. Our engineers at the Web and I are ready to speak to you today at  646-853-0573.

New Office 365 2013 Preview: Account Administration

Account Administration is the area that the Global Administrator or Global Administrators will use in order to add and remove users, reset passwords, and fill in the basic parts of user profiles. Further filling in of user profiles should be encouraged with training material.

From the administration screen, click the link under users & groups entitled Add users, reset passwords, and more.

Click Here to Administer Users

The first task that the global administrator(s) need to accomplish is adding users.

For an example we will add our test subject. Click the plus sign under users to add users or groups:

Click Here to add users or groups

What you will see is an add user screen as illustrated below:

The Add User Screen

Here is a sample test user for which the basic fields have been filled out.

Click on Additional Details for More Information

Here are the additional details fields:

The User Additional Details Fields

Here are the field values as we set them up for our test user. The test user will be important in future articles as we illustrate security role testing in Office 365.

Sample Additional Information

Once all of the information has been added, click the blue Next  button at the bottom of the screen:

Click Next to continue

The screen that appears after that is the Assign Permissions Screen as illustrated below:

Assign Permissions Screen

With the Assigned Permissions screen, there are two decisions. The first is if you are assigning the user administrator privileges, and in this case we are not. The second decision is the country of service. This is important because there are service restrictions of the offerings of Microsoft Cloud Services based on where the product is licensed. Once you have it licensed somewhere like the United States and most countries that are not subject to United Nations sanctions, the actual location where you may have to use the service will not matter.

Once these choices have been made, click next to continue:

Click next to add user

Then the third screen will appear, the Assign Licenses screen:

Assign Licenses

On the next screen you will have the opportunity to add an E-Mail address where a notification of adding the user will be sent to. Then click create:

Option to Send Results by Email

The next screen is the results screen. Use another computer or browser to sign in with this user and create a permanent password. Then click the option to create more users or click finish:

Add User Results Screen

When you click finish, you get back to the users and groups screen, which now has two users:

Users and Groups with New User Added

For any additional advice, the best place  to start is by calling the professionals at the Web and I, Inc. Reach out to us at any time at 646-853-0573.

A High-Level Overview of Microsoft Office 365 Implementation

When one goes into the car dealership to buy a new car, buying the car is not as simple as knowing the model, year, and color. There are other decisions about options such as air conditioning (you may not need it in Alaska, for instance) automatic transmission, sunroof, audio, and more. You also have to make sure you have a license and get insured and registered. The same process is true when planning an Office 365 implementation. First you have to consider your computing environment and its’ ability to support Microsoft Office 365. Windows XP SP3 or later, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 are all supported operating systems. The internet connection is used heavily and must be both fast and reliable. If any equipment or the connection does not measure up, you must have a plan to address those problems before starting the implementation process. The next step is to decide if you are going to have any employees acting as administrators. If you have existing IT staff it is a good idea to have at least one Global Administrator within your organization. Small professional offices such as medical practices might want their consultant to be the only Global Administrator in order to increase their compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act and other regulations. License features are also very important. We feel that The Enterprise E3 Plan at $20 per user per month is the best bargain for most organizations. This subscription includes the desktop edition of the Microsoft Office Suite and Lync. The desktop version of Office offers the complete range of features and is far superior to Office Web Apps. The addition of Lync offers Enterprise Instant Messaging, Presence Information Monitoring (If people stop typing for a minute their light turns from green to yellow, if they leave it becomes red), and simultaneous document editing by more than one person on more than one computer. Having a subscription to the desktop version means always having the latest version and good integration with Office 365.

Once your organization has verified that the computing environment will work, it is important to address:

• How your users will use SharePoint.
• Do you need Dynamics CRM?
• What is the Exchange migration strategy?
• How will you address customization?
• How will you address change management?
• How will you address education and training?

SharePoint has a number of options to store documents and provide private datasets for departments with the protection of Office 365. SharePoint can replace your network server or shared hard drive with a replacement that maintains versions and tracks changes and is searchable. Being able to use the built-in search engine to search through all of your documents takes care of any occasion when you know what is in a document but you do not remember the name.

Most organizations that deal with customer information and attempt any kind of marketing can benefit from Microsoft Dynamics CRM which is now a part of Office 365. Dynamics CRM can be customized to suit the unique needs of your business. Fax Cover Sheets, Invoices, and Reports are available at the touch of a button, so that employees waste no time in document creation, they merely learn to be meticulous record-keepers, and the document creation for all common documents are immediately complete and available. Information can be visible to all who need it including full customer case histories, agreements, billings, and communications. There is the $44 per user per month license fee that makes Dynamics CRM a real commitment for organizations.

A migration to Office 365 Exchange can be challenging. There are a lot of decisions your organization needs to make. Some of the decisions, like the choice of whether to use only Office 365 or to use  a hybrid deployment are important. Use of the Global Address List features, calendaring, access delegation and sharing, and compliant archiving, are all important considerations that have to be defined before you proceed. We have written an article on Exchange Migration to Office 365 here.

Customization is driven by what an organization’s employees want with functionality suitable to their goals weighted against the policies and budget of the organization. Ideally, the most important work people do can be standardized so that the information can be easily found by other employees when needed. Consultants should be able to work with you to help you decide how much customization will streamline your business and if your organization can handle the change.

Change in technology and methods will always create groups of employees who are resistant. What a good consultant has to help the organization do is to embrace the resistance and try to address all of the objections. There may be issues that were forgotten during even the most careful planning stages that can be brought to light. Others can be rationally responded to. Users must be made to feel that their issues will be dealt with and they will have better power over their data and more efficient processes. Further reinforcement comes in the confidence that employees get with education and training.

In Microsoft Office 365, there are a lot of places to look for help where users can find out about almost all of the features. Time should be made for individual and group training for all employees so that they can be productive. Further education is available in  user forums which employees should be taught to explore. Organizations who have successful implementations have addressed serious training to make sure no employees are left behind in a migration. There are some lessons that have to be taught to all employees about legacy systems and duplicate data silos outside of the enterprise software. The most important lesson is that everything must go in the enterprise software so that it can be useful. The second is that they can do everything within the Enterprise software losing no functionality. The rest of the training must be functional in nature. It is important that the legacy systems are no longer online for accepting new data. Education  and adoption requires the old systems to be unavailable, or your users will keep working on the old system.

Office 365 Exchange Deployment Options

One of the decisions that an organization implementing Microsoft Office 365 has to contend with is whether they will be completely cloud or if they will have a hybrid approach with their own servers running Exchange and SharePoint and connecting to the same data source as in Office 365. This method is expensive and unnecessary, despite the persistence of hybrid environments. There may be rare instances, such as in hospitals, that they may have greater compliance needs that require parallel servers running on-site.

For most businesses it is a better investment of their time and money to understand their cloud services enough to take full advantage of the features. There are few options not available on the Microsoft Office 365 Cloud, and it is reliable enough to count on.

For businesses that are going to use a hybrid solution, we will publish ways to handle both Exchange and SharePoint. The following is the proper way to handle the configuration of hybrid Exchange with Office 365.

1. The first step is to make sure that your Active Directory is compliant with the Office 365 Active Directory Structure according to their published standards.
2. Run the online utility known as the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant.
3. Follow the instructions specific to your circumstances.
4. If you have any difficulties, do not hesitate to call Microsoft, because the customer service is outstanding.

Other options to consider is your E-Mail migration. Migration options exist for many types of mailboxes, but it is usually a better idea to show each user new ways to work with Office 365 rather than trying to put old fixes on top of new software in Office 365.

Manual configuration of mailboxes in Office 365 is also necessary because one feature that is only in Office 365 is the option for turning on the legally compliant E-Mail Archive. This serves a variety of compliance functions including the maintenance of comprehensive business records for legal compliance and informational use. Another use is that Employees will be more careful to conform to your organization’s E-Mail conduct standards because they cannot erase every record of what they sent out. This is an effective tool for helping to avoid lawsuits and controlling employee use of the tool.

For Exchange users, it is worthwhile to perform a migration, because the options will be mostly the same as what is available in Office 365.

For Exchange users not using a migration tool but wishing to include a Global Address List with data from the original. There is a way to import Exchange Global Address List using Windows PowerShell, however we were never able to see it work perfectly. To create a new Global Address List manually takes time in data entry, but it allows the resulting work to be designed for Office 365 and are worth the effort.

For assistance in configuring Exchange for Microsoft Office 365, your best solution is to call on qualified Microsoft Partners who specialize in the Cloud like we do. Call us today at 646-853-0573 for a free consultation and find out more about Microsoft Cloud Solutions for Business.