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Posts tagged ‘Microsoft Office 365’

Dec 15

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
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University of California, Merced Selects Office 365

Merced, California

The University of California, Merced selected Microsoft Office 365 for their business productivity and E-Mail needs. The full complement of 8500 faculty, students and staff will be migrated in 2013.  According to implementor CloudBearing, “After evaluating Office 365 for education versus Google Apps, the UC Merced team indicated in a report that it preferred Office 365 for email, calendaring and collaboration. The campus will be rolling out 25 GB mailboxes for everyone; a modern calendaring system that directly integrates with mobiles devices, Outlook and the Web; SharePoint for document management and file sharing; and Lync which provide enterprise-grade instant messaging, audio/video conferencing and whiteboard capabilities.”

The fact is that businesses and educational institutions are familiar with and trained in Outlook and the Microsoft Office suite, and any perceived gains from embracing alternative platforms is lost when you have no user acceptance of the new platform you have worked so hard for and paid so much to implement. People like the familiar, and managing change is already going to have to involve both technical guidance of how to work collaboratively as well as business process analysis and re-engineering.

Many companies, educational institutions, NGO’s, foundations, businesses and government agencies are worried about compliance.The fact is that legal compliance for businesses including SEC regulations, Sarbanes Oxley are covered. Government agencies in the United States will be pleased to know that the GSA has specified that Office 365 and related Microsoft Cloud products are legally compliant for government agencies. Healthcare organizations and medical research foundations enjoy the benefits of built-in HIPAA compliance. ISO 9000 compliance for up-time rounds off the list with 99.97% up-time guaranteed by a financially backed Service Level Agreement (SLA) which refunds customers in the event of an outage. Microsoft Office 365 is continually backed-up, but the Web and I can assist you with additional backup methods on-site including hybrid on-site off-site co-existence.

When you tell your Information Technology people that you are ready to go to the Cloud, their reaction is one of terror. They are interested in working by waiting around for malfunctions, not providing new usability and change management. The fact is that the maintenance of servers, the licensing of the software, and the technical assistance provided by Microsoft to solve any and all problems can make most of an organization’s IT staffing costs disappear. The cloud solutions typically cost less than the ancillary services. Any IT staff that is needed are functional problem solvers, teachers, advocates, and business engineers. The Functional Engineers must have large project completed with a management-level role before taking on your project. Your project is not the place for your engineer to learn, you need seasoned veterans.

Today, responsible implementation involves Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, which specify the best proven ways to make your implementation work as it should. Accepted project management techniques, metrics, software testing, usability testing, and employee training all serve to make sure the best use is made of your new system. We at the Web and I take care of keeping up with the latest not only in technology but also in the best practices for our industry. We know how to make Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics CRM and related technologies work for your institution. Call us at (646) 853-0573 for a complementary consultation with a knowledgeable professional.

Nov 25

Business Contact Manager or Solutions
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Project Management for Information Technology Projects

People may wonder what it takes to run a project which has well-defined goals, accountability, transparency, and good management. These features are neither a matter of luck nor of management style rather of understanding and adhering to a set of academically proven best practices known collectively as project management. New initiatives as well as the management of organizational change can be run using the principles of project management. Information technology adds new levels of best practices related to compliance advice, documentation, software testing, quality assessment/quality improvement plans, technical and functional specifications, and more.

There are a great number of skills to be learned and master, from scheduling to anticipating the needs of different events and making sure that they are met as well as the art of managing change within an organization.

Project management as a discipline recognizes seven distinct phases of a project. Each phase has its’ unique goals and requirements.

  • Project strategy and business case.
  • Preparation.
  • Design.
  • Development and testing.
  • Training and change management.
  • Support and benefits realization.
  • Project close.

Project Management

Project strategy and business case.

It is up to every organization and each stakeholder in a project to help think through the project strategy and business case and to thereby define the reason that the project is taking place, some rational and achievable goals, a risk analysis, and any other method specific to the industry of the organization to analyze performance. A methodology for the project should be defined at this time. Often when preparing a prospectus for a client, an information technology or other consultant might spend a lot of unpaid time putting together these parts of the project in question. This phase often ends up including the signing of any initial contracts and retainers, NDA agreements, and other formalities needed for project initiation. After the terms and methodology and the goals are well-defined and understood, it is time to prepare for project initiation.

Preparation.

  • Work Breakdown
    • Project personnel needs must be defined by goals and resources. The budgets for personnel and materiel are part of those resources.
  • Project Milestones Defined
    • These expected events are agreed upon by key stakeholders as to being hallmark events in the proposed project as it runs its’ course successfully.
  • Personnel
    • Personnel needs defined earlier during the work breakdown are then identified and named during this sub-phase. Employment search criteria and budgets for personnel are agreed upon.
  • Produce Project Initiation Document and Kickoff
    • The project initiation document defines the goals, the budgets, the resources, and the general timeline. Key stakeholders and key personnel are involved in a project kickoff event. During this event, project leadership should take the time to share project initiation documents and explain the project timeline and goals.
  • Selection of third-party contractors or other staff.
    • Existing staff and other contractors need to be hired and named after being chosen according to the standards defined for the project.
  • Secure Key Resources
    • Funding for budgets, personnel hours for internal staff, rooms, and equipment all are resources which have to be secured before the project can take place.

Design.

The project design sometimes is completed from the beginning, which is actually not appropriate for anything but the most groundbreaking projects. Most projects have a project type and an identifiable set of best practices which define the design of the type of project in question. During this phase of the project it is very important to take all of the previously created documentation into account while preparing a master project plan. The milestones you have created earlier will be further defined with deliverables along the way between milestones which ultimately roll-up into goals. Different aspects of the project may run concurrently and require multiple Gantt charts to coordinate scheduling. Every deliverable, every task, has a timeline and responsible staff. The project manager will track these events in a pre-defined sequence and will report on project risks and progress with the progress reports designed during this phase. A business process analysis and business process re-engineering analysis will be run. In a good plan, the original business process most likely looks quite scrambled when presented visually, showing many cases of duplicated efforts and unnecessary loops. The result looks like boxes connected with spaghetti. A good information technology project results in a re-engineered business process that when presented as a diagram has removed the duplications of effort and made the approval and processing parts much less convoluted. The business is all working with the same fresh set of data, and there is organizational transparency in the final result.

Development and testing.

During this phase, the solution is developed and tested. The method for this is determined by the best practices of the industry of the organization in question. In the field of information technology, software is unit tested, then data is extracted, transformed, and loaded into the new solution. Functional testing of the existing data and of procedures to add new data and report on that data are then designed and executed. Finally, user acceptance testing is conducted with key stakeholders to make sure that the solution meets needs and expectations. Functional personnel are also developing the methods that the solution will use to execute the needs of the business processes, and these methods are refined as a result of a proper functional testing process. The best testing involves looking for the zero error, learning each possible error and obtaining a solution before the final solution is even seen by the end users.

Training and business readiness (Change management).

With a new system, there is a great deal of excitement from some staff, resistance from others, but there is very little indifference. Everyone has an opinion on the feasibility of using the new solution, and it is important to take special advantage of the resistance. The resistance, while often containing the vestiges of recalcitrant bureaucracy, often has staff that is concerned with important parts of the business process which might have been overlooked. These points of resistance should be tracked during user acceptance testing, and important changes that are identified can be made and discussed with the staff who raised the issues. This helps to gain support for the project by taking people’s objections seriously while also improving the quality of the project by taking into account all available information. Other recalcitrant resistance can be overcome through standard morale boosting efforts combined with strict policy enforcement for use of the new solution. A cut-off date should be made for the old solution so that two sets of data are not created. Training of staff during user acceptance testing may or may not have to be accompanied by classroom or lecture setting, depending on the amount of change from existing procedures.

Support and benefits realization.

During this phase, the project is wrapping up, final changes are made as well as maintenance plans to ensure that the new solution stays healthy and usable. Ongoing tasks are tracked and budgets and methods are agreed upon. Great post-implementation support is what sets great information technology professionals and firms apart from the rest. There will always be new issues, and support should be unobtrusive but immediately available at any time. The attitude for proper support must be maintained so that no implemented project is truly closed, all support needs get the greatest consideration.

Project close

When all parts of the project have been completed, all personnel trained, maintenance and service plans agreed to, the project wrap-up may begin. A post-implementation review of the project should summarize the success of the project. Plans should be made to reassign existing personnel back to their old stations or on to new ones with the new business process as needed.

The Processes

Throughout the above phases the following processes are always running to support the project. It is important that control of these processes are assigned to specific team members for each project phase.

  • Phase management.
  • Planning.
  • Control.
  • Team management.
  • Communication.
  • Procurement.
  • Integration.

Here are more details concerning the processes.

Phase Management

Deliverables and sign-of methods having been previously defined, phase management involves following the project plan to ensure that tasks add up to deliverables and milestones, and that each sub phase and phase are signed-off on by key stakeholders. The person responsible for the phase management is known as the project manager, and a successful project manager will be able to manage teams and expectations of all parties so that cooperation is engendered, supporting the success of the project.

Planning

Planning and oversight by key stakeholders is needed at all times to ensure quality and to oversee the philosophy of the project to ensure that it maintains the goals of the project and the organization as a whole.

Control

Scope, costs, issues, risks, and benefits need to be reported on and observed continually to provide supporting information to key decision-makers so that the project is managed on an ong0ing basis.

Team Management

The team personnel needs to be managed by the same people whether employees or contractors. The management for the project generally consists of one functional manager from the organization’s staff and a technical manager from the primary information technology firm. In larger organizations, both technical and functional managers may be selected from the staff of the original organization. We have experience with all sizes of projects and are capable of managing projects based on the scale of the organization and project. This avoids using project management features that are more appropriate for larger projects but cumbersome on small projects interfere. There are different dynamics to each sized project, independent of the commonalities to all projects which originate in organizational dynamics of communications and politics.

Communication

Generally the project manager is responsible for all communication to project staff, project stakeholders, and project beneficiaries. Information will not be the same at all levels. Decision making information is important for key stakeholders and project management. Project staff need to be apprised of project changes and project initiatives and changes. Project beneficiaries, the staff who will be using the solution who are not part of the project team, need to receive encouraging progress notices along with benefits and adjustments they will have to make. Taking the uncertainty out of change is key to building consensus. Make sure that all project beneficiaries get some feeling that their issues have been heard, and that the information gained from their input has been considered in the project design as a whole.

Procurement

Procurement of equipment, staff, and supplies is an exciting but exacting part of project management. People who are good at purchasing have had a lot of experience allowing them to be seasoned veterans of the procurement process. Knowing how to select the best group of consultants to work together, not only for their skills but also avoiding potentially difficult personalities is vital. Also vital is the ability to purchase with power and skill. Purchasing is not just about getting the best bargain on the initial purchase of equipment or supplies. When choosing a supplier, it is important to make sure that there is a secure supply chain in place and that backup plans exist for all possible contingencies. With equipment purchases, the price is one concern while the other is ongoing maintenance costs and feasibility, compatibility, and disaster management and recovery plans exist.

Integration

Very often, a new technology solution has to coexist with many existing processes in the organization. For instance if financial data is handled, a specific method needs to be put into place to control where and how the data is shared with accounting. There may be data in accounting that should be shared back with the solution again. Very often interfaces can be made from one software system to another. If not, processes which are manual can be used. For the success of the project, the integration of the project phases with existing business processes needed by the organization must be integrated with all change.

Oct 12

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
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Migrating Users from Lotus Notes to Office 365: Lessons Learned from the University of Nebraska Implementation

Recently, University of Nebraska, an institute with over 50,000 students and 18,000 faculty and staff using Lotus Notes, elected to change their mail and productivity software to the cloud-based Office 365 suite. Normally, Office 365 migrations are done manually within Office 365, on a user-by-user basis. However with this large installation, completion time was a key factor, and these thousands of users had to be migrated as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to the users. Having many new contractors on campus completing migrations is neither convenient or cost-effective, and the University’s IT contractors and staff had to come up with another solution.

Fortunately there are a number of tools for bulk migration of Office 365 accounts from various other platforms. Fortunately,  Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange and other tools were available that  fit the bill. After starting, the University of Nebraska was able to complete the entire migration within the allotted one-month time span. University users reported no down time, and their work was seamless, and their departments did not need to experience an interruption in their business processes. Not all of the mailboxes were migrated, many of the users did start from scratch with their Office 365 mailboxes, but the ones they did convert. There were a few specialized needs that any larger organization had that they were able to meet including optimizing network usage so that no users lost performance during the migration, and having multiple consoles on which the migrations could be performed, along with central monitoring.

The University had some concerns of business continuity and the maintenance of community that made them choose such a rapid deployment timeline. This rapid timeline is even more important for small businesses.

Some organizations have a rich and extensive E-Mail history, and they can be assured that with modern tools and contractors like the Web and I, Inc., they can get their many gigabytes per user of E-Mail migrated to Office 365 without any headaches. That is the focus that we bring to your implementation: letting your organization get on with business without worry about loss of performance or capability.  Call us for a seamless implementation no matter how  large your organization is by calling us at 646-853-0573 today.

Oct 6

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
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Toyota Motor Corporation Choses Microsoft Office 365 for its Productivity and Collaborartion Software

REDMOND, WA — October 1, 2012 — Microsoft Corporation announced that Toyota Motor Corporation has selected Microsoft Office 365 to use as their official productivity and collaboration software suite. The company, an automotive industry leader, has purchased 200,000 licenses for their employees, and is receiving implementation assistance directly from Microsoft. As they are a larger company, they are going to use a hybrid approach, running SharePoint, Lync, and Exchange Servers on-site to work with, embrace and extend the powers of the Microsoft Cloud licenses.

The goals for Toyota for this implementation include increased use of mobile devices and better communication between employees in disparate locations. “We continually strive to make our business stronger by improving Toyota’s organizational health, and today’s announcement to upgrade our communications is another step toward that goal,” said Shigeki Tomoyama, managing officer at Toyota. “We strongly believe that Microsoft has the most capable platform that delivers ease, excellence and efficiency required to provide the communication experience our employees expect.”

Clearly Toyota is as impressed with Office 365 as we are. The potential for the platform for both businesses and consumers is great. Using the cloud keeps your licenses up to date and provides you with an invaluable set of services you can access from different devices and not just on your computer. Documents too can be stored in Office 365′s SharePoint server, so that they can be securely accessed from anywhere. With Office 365 and SharePoint and Lync, multiple parties at multiple locations can simultaneously edit the same document in real-time while video-teleconferencing in a virtual meeting. These capabilities and many more are experienced by Office 365 users every day. We hear from clients all the time how they could now not imagine running their office with Microsoft Office 365.

“Toyota’s decision to deploy Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Windows Server to its 200,000 employees worldwide is further evidence of the enterprise-class quality and scalability of the world’s most popular productivity platform, as well as another key milestone in our growing alliance together,” said Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. “By seamlessly integrating both cloud and on-premises environments, Toyota will enable its employees to effortlessly collaborate and communicate with each other, whether they are within the same four walls or in locations around the world.”

That smooth integration of cloud and on-premises environments is not just a benefit for top corporations like Toyota, your company can also experience the same new capabilities and extreme reliability that has attracted clients like Toyota, the Red Cross, and many other large organizations of all kinds. We specialize in the implementation of clients switching to new Microsoft Office 365 environments. We might not have gotten the chance to implement Office 365 at Toyota, but that means that we are available to be there for you when you decide to move to the Cloud. Call us today to get started at 646-853-0573.

Oct 5

Microsoft Dynamics CRM
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office 365: Perfect Together

Microsoft Office 365 is turning into a true business standard software like no other. Microsoft Office has been the business productivity software of choice, and with companies trying to lower information technology costs and increasing capabilities, more businesses large and small are turning to Microsoft Office 365. What is unusual is that businesses are not only turning to the Office 365 cloud for the increased capabilities: business find that the cost of Office 365 is the same as buying Microsoft Office on a disk version and upgrading with each new version. That means that offices are really getting SharePoint Server, Exchanges Server, and Lync Server and the technical management of the services are all included at no cost at all. SharePoint provides document storage and collaboration for offices large and small. Lync offers video and audio teleconferencing as well as enterprise IM, over secure channels. Lync also has presence enabled so you can track your employees and know who is working, who is idle, and who is not there at all. Exchange Server with legally compliant archiving gives your users a professional mailbox of massive size and perfect reliability, while protecting your company with a legally compliant archive, which saves everything that gets deleted. Other sophisticated uses for Exchange and Outlook abound, including mobile use. Microsoft Office desktop software by subscription always ensures that your users have proper licenses and the best and most current version of Microsoft Office at all times. Unlike the disk version of Microsoft Office, which now lets you install to only one device, the Microsoft Office 365 Desktop Version of Microsoft Office allows your users to have Office on up to five devices, leaving them no excuse for not taking home unfinished work!

What most people do not realize about Microsoft Office 365 is that it is designed as core functionality for users, but that all of the other great server programs like Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Microsoft Project Server, among others, have been developed in a cloud form with facilities to interface to the capabilities of Office 365. This provides the benefits of a single sign-on with the actual integration of server applications. The first enterprise server software to be integrated with Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers services that dovetail with the capabilities of all of the Office 365 software. Dynamics CRM shows you who in your business is signed in and working at the time by showing a green light next to their name, a yellow light if they are idle for some minutes, and a red light if they are gone. This capability of presence comes from Lync. It is even available in reports that can be seen and printed from CRM. Enterprises and small companies can see what is happening in real-time. Dynamics CRM also integrates with Exchange server and Desktop Outlook. CRM uses Outlook and Exchange to send and receive messages, which are then recorded into the CRM records of the appropriate contacts and accounts. CRM helps clean and maintain a single standardized list of contacts and companies, which is then shared in Outlook and in CRM with all employees. Dynamics CRM uses SharePoint server as a document and data repository, and has integrations to utilize and maintain connection transparently. Users can even upload and download documents from within CRM as if it was the native application. The flexibility for how the linkage of CRM entities to SharePoint is great, allowing for companies that want to use their own folder structures or even different sub-sites for clients and projects.

The video included in this article shows you more visually how smoothly Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office 365 work together. For a free trial or for any questions please call us at any time at 646-853-053.

Sep 25

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
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New Microsoft Office 365 for Home Premium

The subscription model for Microsoft Office, which users once bought either with their computers or on disk, is now switching to a subscription model. The boxed editions will still be available, but they will be great advantages in going with the boxed set. The boxed set was once possible to use on a new computer after removing it from the previous computer. A copy could also be on a laptop. The boxed set will support installation on one machine. If you need to retire your computer and install Office on another computer, it may be difficult if not impossible to use it on the new computer. With Office 365, there are five device licenses for each Office license. With 5 devices, one Home and Students license is good enough for an entire household. Any devices that need to be retired or replaced can be done so with no special procedure or fanfare. If you have used all five licenses, installing on the new device will present you with a list of your computers, where you can select the old computer and remove it from the list, allowing you to install on the new computer.

Office 365 offers cloud storage in the form of SkyDrive, and the storage offered is $100.  This is very important because sharing files between machines and giving families  a safe place for drop-off is key to  not losing their files. SkyDrive is easy to use. When you install SkyDrive, there will be a folder on your computer that is created. The files you put in that folder will be kept synchronized with the cloud.

SkyDrive

Another great feature that will be included with Office 365 will be Skype. Microsoft has bought Skype, and they are improving it.  For Skype use, Office is including 60 minutes of talk time free per month, which is usable for international long-distance calling.

You may think that $99 a year is a great expense for Office 365 at first glance, but that covers all of the Office needs in your home, gives you cloud storage and backup, and allows you to call internationally. Users will also never need to pay for a new upgrade, as every time there is a new version of Office, you will always be the first to get that new version at no additional charge.

Even better is the fact that you can sign up and try this today, at no cost. For a limited time until it rolls out into production, you can enjoy Office 2013 Home Premium edition for free.

The preview is available directly from Microsoft at:

Office Home Preview

Sep 19

1 Comment

Coming Upgrades to Office 365

UPDATE: New information on the new version!

 

The subscription model, with its inclusion of both desktop software and servers for businesses have provided great ROI for early adopters of Office 365.  Soon, that value will be even greater, with new functionality and tools that will allow each business to completely customize their computing experience to serve their individual business processes and policies.

With the new Office 365, creation of content will be easier than ever. The user interface in the new edition has been simplified and streamlined to help you get things done. Whether you have Windows 7 or 8, this edition of Office 365 has been designed to work for you. With previous versions, documents followed the user wherever they went, but with this version, users will also be able to take their settings and preferences with them on every device.  A lot of  the visual features users have come to expect from in Office are gone, replaced with a flat, borderless two-color interface that makes it easier to find the commands you need and get things done. Contacts and social networks will be easier to integrate into your overall Office experience. Coming soon to Office 365 is Skype, which will open up voice and video options to connect across the Globe. The new Site Mailbox will allow teams or facilities to share project-related documents and E-Mails in one place.  Security has been increased with new Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools for Exchanges. The DLP policies that can be set for your organization can help you prevent users from purposely or inadvertently sending or sharing your data. They can also help maintain compliance with HIPAA and other standards where data sharing must be limited.

New Exchange Features

Compliant archiving is still a feature with the Enterprise plans we recommend for our clients. With compliant archiving, nothing is truly released, and businesses maintain their standards for document retention.

Sharepoint also has new features for increasing employee communication using user-friendly methods such as tagging and social networking, all secure on your company’s own SharePoint server on Office 365.

New SharePoint features

New usable reporting and dashboard features in SharePoint will provide business insights in real-time. Customizable dashboards that can be modified with programming in code will also be possible with the new technology.

New tools in Lync will help your office get more out of your meeting with each other and with clients.

New Features in Lync

All told some very exciting new features are coming together to help cement Microsoft Office 365 as the productivity, E-Mail and storage solution for businesses of all sizes.

Sep 16

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
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Santa Clara California Adopts Office 365 for their E-Mail and Office Productivity Needs

Santa Clara County is the government entity and geographic location of what the rest of the World refers to as Silicon Valley. Cradle to many of the worlds computing mega-companies including Google, Santa Clara County was faced with a decision shared by many state and local governments which need to save money, maintain government software compliance standards, and increase efficiency: the decision to go to the Cloud. Cloud computing has meant increased efficiency, savings, features, and security for companies since June of 2011, but early in 2012, Office 365 was approved for government use, and an increasing number of municipalities have elected to move their existing E-Mail and productivity software off of their servers and on to the Microsoft Cloud.

What is interesting about the choice by Santa Clara County is that Google is based there, and Google has a program that they present as an alternative to Microsoft Office 356, Google Docs. The problem with Google Docs is it is simply a ramped-up version of Gmail, without features that set Office 365 apart like SharePoint and Lync and Unified Messaging. One can assume that Santa Clara County, of all of the counties in the Country, is certainly in a position to make an informed technology decision, and their selection of Microsoft over companies in their back yard like Google, speaks to the nature of Microsoft and their Office 365 product: when it comes to E-Mail and productivity software from the Cloud, there is no comparison.  According to Jeffrey V. Smith, county executive, “Our midmanagers and frontline employees are in a unique position to help the county find workable solutions to challenges. By standardizing the way we approach technology and procurement, we will be able to enhance efficiencies throughout the organization and finance them within existing resources.” The County of Santa Clara, because of their location, has always been viewed as a technology leader not only by municipalities but also by businesses. Here are some of the compelling reasons that helped Santa Clara County and many organizations and municipalities to make their choice:

  • Exchange Hosted E-Mail
    Users in business and government worldwide are familiar with Exchange and the desktop face of it, Outlook.  Office 365 gives you the robust Exchange Hosted E-Mail without the need for a server or software costing thousands of dollars.
  • Microsoft Office Desktop Software
    Everyone is familiar with and most offices use and pay for Microsoft Office desktop software. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Access are all familiar document types to anyone who has worked in an office in the last 20 years. With Office 365, licensing expenses for the latest version of Office for all of your users are automatically included.
  • Microsoft SharePoint Server
    Not everyone is familiar with SharePoint server but they should be. SharePoint is a great replacement for your traditional office file server that has new ways to organize, share, and protect your documents.
  • Microsoft Lync
    Not everyone is familiar with Lync, which is a service and a desktop application for corporate IM, video chats, and webinars. Lync has been the backbone of the Office Communication Server features many once new, packaged with new features and a new name.

How do you get started with Office 365? The best way is to contact your Microsoft Office 365 Partner the Web and I at (646) 853-0573.

Sep 14

3 Comments

Users of Quickbooks Can Interface their Accounting Software with Microsoft

The Web and I, a New York Microsoft Business Software Consultancy, has been working with developers at Intuit / Quickbooks, in the testing and refinement of their new app Quickbooks Dashboard for CRM. This product is designed to interface Quickbooks with Microsoft Dynamics CRM in both directions. This means that the Quickbooks Accounting Software can share data with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can share data with Quickbooks.

The kinds of data that can be exchanged include customers, invoices, vendors, and receivables aging.

There are a number of reasons for a business to use this. Quickbooks can be hosted on a server, but it typically resides on a single computer. On a single computer, only one person in the office has a computer that can issue invoices, pay vendors, track customers, or see receivables and use them for collections. Typically this results in billing which is behind schedule and slower, and other staff who could participate and assist in the billing process are stuck on the sidelines, waiting for the invoices to get issued from that one single computer and user. Another thing that happens is the data gap. If an address is updated in either Quickbooks or CRM, nobody ever finds out about it in the other system, because the two systems are not able to talk to each other. In these cases, incorrect work and / or correspondence will occur, and there will be a need to duplicate work, entering the new information in both systems. That is what the Quickbooks Dashboard for CRM. Businesses employing such systems can save labor, sometimes even eliminating extra positions and more than paying for any software and implementation expenses.

Right now it is already possible to use Quickbooks to synchronize the customers and products and services successfully, and you can also see the balance due and receivables in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In a few more weeks, the synchronization of the actual invoices in both directions will be a reality.

The Web and I already has a client using this cutting-edge technology, and we have successfully been synchronizing the records. The effect for this firm is great, for they have Quickbooks on a single computer, and they can now issue invoices in the more-convenient Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We are not going to give up on the capabilities of Quickbooks either, rather we will extend them with the use of online banking, vendor management, reports, and the full range of Quickbooks functionality.

When you’re ready to link your accounting to your customer systems, or if you need brand new systems to replace mostly manual office procedures, the Web and I are Microsoft Partners with references of businesses like yours who have been helped. Call us at 646-853-0573 for a no-obligation consultation today.

Aug 12

Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint 2010
3 Comments

Office 365: The Mobile Multi-Platform Solution: iPhone Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone

Here at the Web and I we work with Microsoft cloud products including Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise, Dynamics CRM Online, and Windows Azure on a daily basis, but we are always surprised with all of the great new features, and functionalities.

Most recently we are seeing a big upswing in people using mobile devices who need to access their enterprise:

  • Document Libraries
  • E-mail
  • Faxing
  • SharePoint
  • Lync Video Teleconferencing
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Corporate Contacts
  • Enterprise Instant Messaging.
  • Remote Secure Windows Azure Desktop
  • And more…

The surprising thing is that, sooner than expected, we are seeing Microsoft Office 365 and CRM on mobile platforms including but not limited to:

  • iPhone
  • Android
  • iOS
  • BlackBerry
  • Windows Phone

In fact, Microsoft Office 365 Universal Messaging services include voice-mail and switchover to Mobile and many other features, completely replacing PBX services. With the Web and I’s Fax Integration for Microsoft Office 365, you can experience faxing from your mobile phones, both incoming and outgoing. this gives you the ability to access any document, form, or report on your telephone, edit it if necessary, and print the document to any fax machine you are near, anywhere in the World.

Despite being on the cutting edge of technology, the reliability of service reaches the hard-to-attain ISO 9000 standard. Standards for security of this access transcend the security limitations of the individual mobile platforms by delivering everything over secure https 256 bit encrypted technology, implemented to a higher security standard than your online banking has today (we invite these banks to call us when they are ready for our cloud solutions from Microsoft). With security and features in mind, it is vital to select Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise, rather than the Small Business editions. We have experience implementing both, but when you consider there are no more licensing expenses for desktop editions of Microsoft Office. Both PC and Mac versions are available, and each user has a license to install on their five favorite computers regardless of platform.

Small businesses will certainly benefit from this new mobile access. When running a small business, everyone working in your office will be expected to fulfill multiple roles, and often will have to be available while out of the office not only to speak to over the phone, but to be able to edit a document, collaborate on a  project, interact with a client in a video teleconference or via corporate IM, or retrieve and print documents in another office or in a hotel or airport. Of all three standard business sizes, small businesses between 0 and 99 employees stand to gain the most functionality and save the most money, gaining functionality impossible to them before Microsoft Cloud Services were available.

Medium sized businesses are doing their best to remain relevant and competitive, and that means adopting the latest enterprise-grade technology. Technology that integrated, useful, and secure used to be prohibitively expensive  to businesses between 100 and 499 employees. Cloud computing is essential not only to cut previous IT costs to a fraction of what they were before the Microsoft Cloud, but also to change the financial outlay to a monthly model. Of all three standard sizes of businesses, Medium-Sized businesses are the ones that can get the greatest benefit of improving cash flow and seeing an immediate positive influence on the Balance Sheet.

Large businesses with more than 500 employees already have to provide Outlook, Exchange, Microsoft Office Desktop Edition, Windows Enterprise, CRM, Fax, Enterprise IM, Enterprise Security, Project Management and more. Executives know that Office 365 with Windows Intune and Microsoft Dynamics CRM will cover all of these needs and more. Entrenched IT departments focused on waiting for servers to fail and react rather than being focused on providing new capabilities no longer seem worth the expense to the Shareholders and the Board. Everything spent on corporate IT can be a combination of a one-time implementation expense with infrequent upgrades and an on-going subscription to three simple software products at one license per employee. IT staff can be maintained at a skeleton crew level of one junior-level technician per 100 employees to assist in configuring new user devices and solving problems with the help of the highly capable engineers at Microsoft Technical Support.

All sized businesses may soon find a need for a Windows Azure Virtual Machine Desktop. Windows will always be a consistent and secure experience, and you can access it from any web browser on any device, anywhere. This virtual desktop (or server!) can be integrated with Microsoft Cloud Services.

To get started with Microsoft Cloud Services, call the Web and I, authorized Microsoft Partner and Microsoft Reseller for the best service possible at 646-853-0573.

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