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Posts tagged ‘Installing Computers’

Feb 6

Cloud Security
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New Office 365 2013 Preview: Security Recommendations

GLEN COVE, NEW YORK

Premier Microsoft Office 365 cloud services consultant, the Web and I, is releasing our latest security recommendations for your Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and related products soon to be released. Soon to be released will be Microsoft Project Server, Microsoft Dynamics GP Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

From our experiences in professional installations and the security considerations we have had as well as our experiences with the new Office 365 to be released to the public on February 27 (or here from us at the Web and I today!).

There are several types of administrators for Office 365 and related products, and it is clear to see their intended roles. Whoever manages the credit or debit card associated with payment, probably the owner or the accountant will be assigned the Billing Administrator position. The implementation I.T. consultant will have the Global Administrator role The Global Administrator can make changes to the Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint servers.. The Service Administrator is someone who has the permission to go and check the status of the cloud service health on a dashboard provided by Microsoft Office 365. The User Management Administrator can add and remove users and re-set passwords. The company HR person or IT person who works with the HR department are the natural choices for User Management Administrator. Since User Management Administrators are not always from a technical background it is vital to explain to them the importance of not duplicating users and stressing the permanence of deleting users.

Permission Billing administrator Global administrator Password administrator Service administrator User management administrator
View company and user information Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Manage support tickets Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Reset user passwords No Yes Yes No Yes; with limitations. He or she cannot reset passwords for billing, global, and service administrators.
Perform billing and purchasing operations Yes Yes No No No
Create and manage user views No Yes No No Yes
Create, edit, and delete users and groups, and manage user licenses No Yes No No Yes; with limitations. He or she cannot delete a global administrator or create other administrators.
Manage domains No Yes No No No
Manage company information No Yes No No No
Delegate administrative roles to others No Yes No No No
Use directory synchronization No Yes No No No

Security in SharePoint

SharePoint has its own set of security roles which can be user defined, and access can vary from site to site, from site collection to site collection. Companies can store all of their information on SharePoint and selectively share it with employees, clients, and consultants to any extent needed. Security in Enterprise-grade SharePoint such as in the S2, E1, and E3 plans have 256 bit encryption and it makes as safe and compliant an area for intranets and extranets as those used by online banking.

Security in E-Mail, Exchange, and Outlook

The Global Administrator can load the global address book or change user E-mails. Users with the Global Administrator status can also turn on and off features like mailbox archive and litigation hold. Nobody but the Global administrator can touch Exchange settings which serves to protect the E-Mail of the company by putting the responsibility squarely in the hands of Global Administrators only.
E-Mail is scanned for viruses as it arrives, and this helps prevent costly infections and having corporate information compromised.
We at the Web and I are ready to help you with your Office 365 Security plans. Please call us for an informal discussion at any time at 646-853-0573.

Feb 2

New Office 365
5 Comments

New Office 365 2013 Preview: Installing and Configuring Office 2013

At this point you will have successfully signed up for Office 365. If not please visit here to start. For a table of contents of the New Office 365 series, please visit here.

After signing up, the first thing that you will be asked when you sign in again is to enter your mobile number, capable of receiving text messages. It is a vital to link your account to a stable mobile account if it is for production and not testing purposes. This is used for easy password recovery.

Add Your Mobile Number For Account Recovery

Add Your Mobile Number For Account Recovery

Afterwards, the next most important process is filling out your profile, creating your users, and filling  out their profiles. The user name  you created when you signed up for your account is a global administrator. It is a bad idea to use an administrative account for daily use in a private setting, and if you own a business that is a C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC, or PLLC, your business and your conduct are subject to the Sarbanes Oxley Act, which requires among other things a separate technical and functional administration team for your enterprise software, as well as a disaster management and recovery plan. Microsoft has in place the technical team and the disaster management and recovery plan. The Sarbanes Oxley Act states that the end users can not be on your technical or functional teams. members of the technical team cannot be on the functional team as well. For small businesses adopting Office 365, a functional team is either a hired cloud consultancy such as the Web and I, or an internal computer specialist who has no end-user duties and is purely an I.T. employee. The head of the functional team is the proper user of the administrative account, referred to as the global administrator account by Microsoft. Again if this is just a test account, these details are not important. For licensing, the global administrator account only needs a SharePoint account in order to program and customize your SharePoint sites. If possible, however, allow a full license or at least an E1 license for your administrator, for $8 per month.

The first place to go to start filling in the profile information is by clicking the Settings Button in the upper right hand corner and clicking the link that pops up underneath, Office 365 Preview settings below.

Click Settings To Begin

Click Settings To Begin

Then you will be taken to the Office 365 Preview settings screen, where you should make sure to have a valid mobile number, an address, and then click save.

Office 365 Preview Settings

Office 365 Preview Settings

After filling this information out, be sure to click “Save” before taking the next step.

The next step is to click on your name at the top and then click “About Me” from the drop-down menu. This is where your profile is edited.

The first step is to mouse over the icon image and select the link for changing your image. Follow the directions as follows. This image will prove useful by creating avatars used in other areas of Microsoft Office 365.

Here is the way to edit the basic profile screen:

Edit Profile Details

Edit Profile Details

After editing and saving basic profile details, it is important for your SharePoint settings to edit the language and time zone settings. Click the dots at the end of the menu as shown below to access these settings:

Click Language and Region

Click Language and Region

here is what the screen looks like for Language and Region Settings:

Language and Region

Language and Region

The time zone and the language should match and these should also match the time zone settings in your computer for proper operation.

After saving these settings, click Admin in the upper right hand corner to get back to the main administration screen to download software. To download software click here:

Click on Software to download software

Click on Software to download software

On the install software page, it is important to select the 32 bit software (already selected by default) for the greatest functionality with SharePoint and Lync.

Click to install

Click to install

Then click on Desktop Setup to configure Microsoft Office 2013 to work with Microsoft Office 365 2013.

Click Desktop Setup

Click Desktop Setup

For desktop setup, click set up and then click Run on the pop-up screen that follows:

Set Up Desktop

Set Up Desktop

Then sign-in to Microsoft Office 365 on the screen that follows:

Sign In for Desktop Setup

Sign In for Desktop Setup

After signing in, leave all options selected and click continue to install.

Click Continue and Leave All Options Checked

Click Continue and Leave All Options Checked

Then your system will generally require a reboot, and then a success message will be shown. You will need to configure Outlook and Lync separately.

Admittedly this is a tedious and complex process. When you need help, we are there with the answers and you can call us at 646-853-0573.

Jan 21

New Office 365
4 Comments

New Office 365 2013 Preview: Installation and Implementation

GLEN COVE, NEW YORK

Introduction

Office 365 2013 is the most exciting development in the world of IT business today, eclipsing Windows 8 and all other cloud and on-site server products combined for a reason. It’s unique combination of capability, reliability, low-cost, and return on investment (ROI) set it apart from the crowd. Its’ dominance is assured because Microsoft Office has been the business standard productivity software worldwide for over 20 years now. There is so much to explore, and you can preview these features today to see if they are applicable for your company. This process starts with an assessment of your hardware, to make sure you have a PC compatible for the process. This installation will cover PC installation, but the same account can then be used for a Mac. A Mac-only process will be documented in future after all aspects of Office 365 2013 have been covered on this site.

Hardware Assessment

Standard system requirements for Office 2013

                Component                                   Office 2013 Requirements
Computer and processor 1 gigahertz (Ghz) or faster x86- or x64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set
Memory (RAM) 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32 bit); 2 gigabytes (GB) RAM (64 bit)
Hard Disk 3.0 gigabytes (GB) available
Display Graphics hardware acceleration requires a DirectX10 graphics card and 1024 x 576 resolution
Operating System Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, MAC OS X
Browser Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; Apple Safari 5; or Google Chrome 17.x.
.NET version 3.5, 4.0, or 4.5
Multi-touch A touch-enabled device is required to use any multi-touch functionality. However, all features and functionality are always available by using a keyboard, mouse, or other standard or accessible input device. Note that new touch features are optimized for use with Windows 8.
Additional requirements and considerations Some functionality may vary, based on the system configuration. Some features may require additional or advanced hardware or server connectivity.

Sign Up: Business Edition

For Business Use, the Office 365 2013 trial offers a total of 10 user licenses which can each be installed on up to five devices including PC’s, MACs, tablets and notebooks using those operating systems as well. Please note that if you have any kind of business, you need the added capability and security of Office 365 Business Edition. Government Edition and Education Edition are beyond the scope of this article series.

The first place to go to sign up for office 365 is the Sign-Up page. You should visit this page in Internet Explorer preferably on the PC, and with Safari on the Mac.

https://portal.microsoftonline.com/Signup/MainSignup15.aspx?OfferId=7E5CC333-4683-4035-923F-349032114AF3&dl=LITEPACK_P2_B_PILOT&pc=O365-Preview-2012&ali=1&Country=US

Make sure that you go to your Internet options are set to trust https://portal.microsoftonline.com

Trust portal.onmicrosoft.com

Trust portal.onmicrosoft.com

Then the page will operate correctly.

Enter in all of the information to sign up:

Sign Up for Office 365 2013 Business

Sign Up for Office 365 2013 Business

After filling in the information, you will have to get a verification code through your mobile device via text message. Make sure you take note of your new user name and password.

On the following screen, you will be asked again for your mobile information, this time for account recovery purposes.

Add Your Mobile Number For Account Recovery

Add Your Mobile Number For Account Recovery

Then you will be directed to the Office 365 Sign-In Screen to log in for the first time.

Office 365 Sign in Screen

Office 365 Sign in Screen

After this you will transition to the Administration page and you can start to explore the new Office 365.

Office 365 Admin Screen on First Log In

Office 365 Admin Screen on First Log In

 

Sign Up: Home Edition

For home use, the Home Edition will provide a device-independent set of cloud services and storage that you can install on up to five devices including PC’s, MACs, as well as notebooks and tablets that use Windows or Mac OS.

The first place to go online to sign up for and begin the process of the Consumer Preview of Office 365 2013 is to go to Microsoft’s Consumer Preview Site at:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

Office 365 Sign-Up Page

Office 365 Sign-Up Page

On the page that follows, you will have to fill out some information to sign up including creating a Microsoft ID, the user E-Mail  and Password formerly known as Windows Live ID is now your Microsoft ID. As this is test software, you will want to select the option to Sign Up Now, to create a new Microsoft ID. You will wish to save any important business Microsoft ID you have strictly for business use and not to be linked to accounts of a trial nature except through careful planning in consultation with your Microsoft Partner who can issue you trials that come with offers leading to permanent accounts with no disruption of service or data loss.

Click Sign Up Now

Click Sign Up Now

After that, follow the instructions to create an account. Setting up administrative functions and testing the abilities of the Home Edition are beyond the scope of this series, which is intended primarily for business users.

For help with Office 365 and other Microsoft productivity software, give the licensed Microsoft Partners at the Web and I a call at 646-853-0573.

Sep 22

Cloud Computing
1 Comment

Factors that Contribute to a Successful Software Implementation

Today offices everywhere are engaging in implementations of software such as E-Mail such as Microsoft Exchange / Outlook, Office Productivity software such as Microsoft Office, Accounting, Enterprise IM, and Customer Relationship Management. Each software product companies choose starts out with so much promise and optimism. Companies are not choosing vendors and implementation staff lightly, and they enter a project with high expectations for both. When you understand a software implementation from a proper viewpoint, it makes more sense and works better. First of all, the solution to problems are not just about technology, the technology is only a tool. The implementation is  about the successful training of staff and adoption of the full feature set planned. Understanding that the implementation is about the people more than it is about the technology also changes the role of project leadership to the company management and not to Information Technology departments or consultants. Your staff has to feel comfortable about the software in advance of the installation, understand how they will do work with the new system, and be optimistic that the system will reduce unnecessary repetitive effort they put in now and empower them with a better handle on their own data. Pitfalls  at this point abound, but with good planning, they can be avoided and your company can have a successful implementation.

The promise of good enterprise systems is powerful: keeping all of the data and documents in one secure place and managing all aspects of customer care.  Reduced IT costs and new capabilities are also part of the promise of a cloud implementation.

What should managing officers in a company do to succeed? First, they have to make sure to win over their employees, the final users, and keep them enthusiastic, engaged, and involved every step of the way. When the employees feel empowered and included, they are a powerful force for technology adoption. They have to be convinced that not only policy, but actual advantages in the way they do work, will keep them adopting and using the new systems for all work going forward. Legacy systems should be given a turn-off date, so that users expect to clearly be aware that they will not be able to use the old system beyond a specific date and time.

Another thing that managing officers and owners should consider is controlling the expectations, both theirs and their employees’. Everyone needs to see that the successful implementation is about people and not just technology. Also employees and officers need to understand that data migration, programming customizations, and writing custom help files is a considerable effort, and time will vary based on criteria that is sometimes more predictable than others. Sometimes a good implementation will require some dates to be changed from earlier to later, but it is better to change the plans a company has made than to rush an implementation to be complete before its’ time.

At the Web and I we have a lot of experience with implementations large and small. We have seen and surpassed all of the common pitfalls, and we know what your organization needs for its’ implementation to succeed. For help with implementation, and with choosing software to implement, please call us at 646-853-0573.

Mar 15

1 Comment

A New, Powerful Computer: Possibly the Best Employee Incentive

Every day I read reports about how the Desktop is dead and that people are moving to laptops and tablets. However, in the Workplace, people get the most done with their Desktop PC’s because it is the most efficient way to work. A desktop has more power to run large applications. Even today’s Office programs can slow down a tablet, and productivity suffers when you are paying your employees to wait for their computers because they are slow. Desktops also have larger screen area than other more mobile forms of computing, and they allow workers to see a full-page of a document while editing. The most important feature of the desktop is that it has the best human-computer interface of all computing devices. A full-sized keyboard makes the fastest typing speeds possible. Having a separate hand-held mouse rather than a mousepad as is available on laptops also increases productivity, making opening and closing and moving of programs and windows much faster.

While we are all familiar with desktop features, it is not yet common knowledge that the computer you buy for yourself or your employee is only a fast computer for the first three years. After that, the technology becomes obsolete. You may have been using the same operating system for ten years: Windows XP. But during that time, every week or two new updates were installed by Windows Update. When Windows Updates are added, operating systems become larger and more complex. After three years, your computer will not be as quick, and a tipping point is reached where employees with computers older than three years are losing productivity waiting for their computers. It is also a subtle source of frustration, and can send the wrong message to Employees. A new computer solves more than one problem.

Employers looking for ways to boost morale and productivity need look no further than timely computer upgrades. Not only does productivity increase because of decreased waiting for slow computers, but employees are much happier working with a fast computer. It can cause people to lose their concentration when they have to wait for a system response. New computers also tell employees that productivity is important to the employer and that the employer is savvy enough to know the value of providing the best tools.

Overall, the most important facts are that it is cheaper to get new computers than to pay idle employees: new computers will pay for themselves when you replace them every three years. Multiple reasons for productivity increases is the other important factor that should affect your decision.

Your local computer consultant can provide you the best advice about purchasing and installing multiple computers, and they have resources that can help. Call us today at 646-853-0573 for a free consultation.

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