Posts tagged ‘Microsoft’

Feb 15

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Polaris Update

One of the best things about using Microsoft Online products, besides their unprecedented reliability and functionality, is the fact that they are always innovating. Microsoft has big plans for Microsoft Dynamics CRM this year, and they are going to wow us with a great many new features and functionality. This is not only to enable greater productivity through the features directly, but the idea is to expand the interest for users as well as the number of devices they can use to work with CRM. Consider this the first in a series of many updates of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and new capabilities.

Starting at the end of January and continuing today, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is implementing a new update that will affect all users. Microsoft reporters had stated that users would be given a choice of when and how these updates are applied, but these updates are actually applied behind the scenes, with users experiencing features one way on one day, and then the next day they return to improved features. Microsoft is very smart about how they apply the updates, because changes and their functionality tend to be intuitive to the end users, requiring no formal explanation.

Part of the rollout that is the most exciting is the addition of support for new browsers. Now users can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox including on the Mac. Before, Microsoft Dynamics CRM was not usable on the Mac, and this update is very major because of the sheer number of choices that are now available for using this application.

As a result of this update, users will be able to run Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online on their I-Pads. This is a major plus because of the strong adoption of the I-Pad.

Another significant feature that was added was support for Skype and Lync. With these applications, enterprises can have click-to-call capability, which I wrote about in my article yesterday.

Other updates for CRM were designed to provided added capability to deal with the new features in Microsoft Office 2013.

Many know that Microsoft purchased the enterprise social network Yammer, and many wonder how that would integrate with other applications on desktops or servers. Microsoft has with this update integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Yammer. This will help larger organizations have internal social networking and collaboration in a manner in which users tend to like to work.

Microsoft is not stopping there either. Microsoft is working on new updates that will be available for mid 2013 that include:

A native Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Windows 8 application.
A native Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Windows Phone 8 application.

Eventually we will see newer and more exciting features, and some of these are already known to this author. I will write more this week about the exciting things that users can expect in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

In the meanwhile, if you want to talk about any of these great new features or about anything else Microsoft related, give us a call for an informal conversation at 646-853-0573.

Dec 15

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Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager CRM

A little-known built-in feature of Microsoft Office as it is installed from a disk rather than with Office 365 is that there is a free included light CRM (Customer Relationship Management) feature known as Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager CRM. Although we push people to the cloud and recommend Office 365 with Dynamics CRM to our clients, some already have Microsoft Office 2010 installed from a disk. They wish to benefit from CRM and some of the collaborative features to increase productivity. Here is some information about that little-known product.

Business Contact Manager Training

Starting to use Business Contact Manager 2010 for Outlook / Exchange is not merely installing a new piece of familiar software for users: it is an enterprise product that has the potential to transform business by enriching the data collected on contacts, refining your marketing efforts, and allowing your sales and marketing team members to collaborate as a team on the same shared set of data. Business Contact Manager 2010 is a form of Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM. CRM Software is enterprise grade collaborative software, and proper use requires a brief re-training of staff as well as a re-engineered business process.

Since the early 1990’s, information workers in sales and marketing have become used to working alone, each with their own set of leads. Sometimes the leads even overlapped between salespeople, because of inclusion in multiple lists as duplicates. Sales leaders contact many people, and they collected a great deal of information about the businesses in question. Once the campaign is closed, this business information is lost. Other employees who receive a call from well-documented prospects would not have any information collected nor would they know which persons’ lead they had received a call from. Sales staff would not get proper credit, and information collected was not in place across the organization to impress the client. Clients do not wish to provide their information more than once. If they have to, it tends to make them less confident about your business. Customer Relationship Management software like Business Contact Manager keeps this information shared, allowing you to respond quickly to clients needs and to use your sales efforts to enrich your contact database with the best available information. Some information may be collected by cold calling. Other information may come into inside sales about the same contact through a different employee. Both sets of information get recorded about the same company and person, and everyone in the organization can see the complete results of all information collected as well as their communication record and all sales and marketing activities involved.

Training is the most effective way to get started. Your employees will not just learn the basics of learning a new type of software, rather the business process will be adapted to a new way of thinking and doing business: a collaborative and more efficient way.

Here are some of the important topics I can cover in two days of training for your staff. Much of the content and guidance below has been provided by Microsoft.

Find Business Contact Manager in Outlook

This is how you can get started by opening the program in Outlook:

In the Navigation Pane, under Business Contact Manager. (Click the Business Contact Manager folder to display the Business Contact Manager Dashboard.)

-or-

In the Navigation Pane, click the Business Contact Manager or Solutions button.

Here, Business Records is visible beneath the Business Contact Manager folder, as well as the Welcome Center, Contact Management, Sales, Marketing, Project Management, and Deleted Items folders.

Additional features and options are found in the Backstage view, on the Business Contact Manager tab.

Business Contact Manager folders

The folders beneath Business Contact Manager provide alternative representations of your data.

If you haven’t already added your own business data, try using the sample business database. Click the File tab.

Click the Business Contact Manager tab. Click Manage Databases, and then click Switch to Sample Business.

	Click	See
	Business Contact Manager	The Business Contact Manager Dashboard. View up-to-the-minute information about your business in the gadgets. Gadgets graphically display information from the various records of Business Contact Manager for your analysis. For information about the Dashboard, see Track important business details on the Dashboard later in this article.
	Welcome Center	An overview of Business Contact Manager for Outlook features and introductory videos. For more information about the Welcome Center, see Learn about Business Contact Manager in the Welcome Center later in this article.
	Contact Management	The Contact Management workspace to give you quick access to Account, Business Contact, and Lead records, and gadgets that display the information you want to see.
	Sales	The Sales workspace which gives you quick access to your Opportunity and Lead records. Use the records to review your potential sales and customers. The gadgets display up-to-the-minute sales information.
	Marketing	The Marketing workspace to plan and view the marketing activities that promote your business. The gadgets display information about your marketing activities.
	Project Management	The Project Management workspace. Keep up with your Business Projects and their related tasks.
	Deleted Items	The Deleted Items folder holds records deleted from Business Contact Manager for Outlook, and can only be emptied by the owner of the Business Contact Manager database.
	Search Folders	Folders, such as Business Leads, that list the records that match the criteria that you specify. Search Folders are automatically updated.

The Business Records folder

To open the Business Records folder, in the Navigation Pane, click the Business Contact Manager or Solutions button, and then click Business Records.

The Business Records folder contains folders that display a list of each type of record: Accounts; Business Contacts; Opportunities; Marketing Activities; Business Projects and Project Tasks; and Communication History items.

Note Leads are included in the Business Contacts folder because they are a type of Business Contact.

	Click	See
	Business Records	The Accounts, Business Contacts, Opportunities, Marketing Activities, Business Projects, and Projects Tasks, and Communication History folders that display lists of the records of the selected type. Note Lead records are included in the Business Contacts folder because they are a type of Business Contact.
	Accounts	A list of all Accounts, and any records that are based on the Account record type.View, edit, or add new Accounts and Account record types to this list.
	Business Contacts	A list of all Business Contacts, Leads, and any records that are based on the Business Contact record type.View, edit, or add new Business Contacts, and Business Contact record types to this list.
	Opportunities	A list of all Opportunities.View, edit, or add new Opportunities to this complete list.
	Marketing Activities	A list of all marketing activities such as call lists and mass e-mail campaigns.Create, view, or edit any marketing activity.
	Business Projects	Create, view, or edit a Business Project.Click the Project Tasks folder to view the related tasks.
	Project Tasks	Create and link Project Tasks to Business Projects, and view or edit Project Tasks.
	Communication History	A list of all communication history items, such as Opportunities, Business Projects, e-mail messages, appointments, and meetings.
	Deleted Items	The Deleted Items folder holds records deleted from Business Contact Manager for Outlook, and can only be emptied by the owner of the Business Contact Manager database.

The Welcome Center

Once you complete the Startup Wizard, the Welcome Center opens. Use it to find a wealth of introductory information about Business Contact Manager for Outlook. Click a category on the wheel to see a brief description about that area. Watch a short video for an overview of how you can use Business Contact Manager for Outlook to help you keep track of your business information.

Or, click one of the Getting Started cards in the lower half of the Welcome Center for more details, videos, and links to articles about the features that interest you. Use the arrows to scroll through the cards.

You can return to the Welcome Center any time you like. Just click the Welcome Center folder in the Navigation Pane under Business Contact Manager.

Track important business details on the Dashboard

With just a glance at the gadgets on the Dashboard in Business Contact Manager for Outlook, you can see your business’s earnings potential, the current and future workload on staff, and which marketing activities are producing results for your business. The Dashboard can display up to 20 gadgets charting the sales, marketing activities, projects, and tasks of your business.

Use the Ribbon to add the gadgets that you want to see on the Dashboard. Drag the gadgets to rearrange them, or click the View tab on the Ribbon to add or remove columns from the Dashboard. It’s your view to customize.

Use the Business Contact Manager workspaces

Each Business Contact Manager for Outlook workspace includes a gadgets area and section for tabs. The commands are slightly different for each of the workspaces. Generally, they each include commands that enable you to create new records, edit them, and set up some kind of communication, such as send an e-mail message.

Display a workspace

In the Navigation Pane, under Business Contact Manager, click one of the following folders to display the workspace:

Contact Management.
Sales.
Marketing.
Project Management.

In the gadgets area, display key business metrics in charts and graphs to get a quick view of the state of your business. You can show or hide the gadgets area as well as add or remove gadgets.
In the tabs area, you can manage, review, and analyze your business data. Each tab is comprised of a list of records, and a Reading or Preview Pane. The Reading Pane displays information from sections in a selected record.
The tabs list the records that you want to see, such as the Opportunities or Leads records shown. You can add a tab for any record type to any workspace by clicking the Create New Tab button.
In the Reading or Preview Pane, you can view selected sections from an individual record. To change the sections that are included, click Select Sections.

Change Business Contact Manager settings and options or get help

To change settings for some features, or perform tasks such as sharing or backing up your database, importing or exporting data, or get Help from newsgroups or other users, go to the Backstage view.

Click the File tab.

Click the Business Contact Manager tab.
Do the following:
- To perform a task. such as sharing the database, that affects all of Business Contact Manager, click one of the buttons.
- To get help from Microsoft or from the Business Contact Manager community, under Getting Help, click one of the options.

For more information about the options in the Backstage view, see Set options and use features in the Backstage view.

More features

We’ve come a long way from the Rolodex®. Today, your business records contain a rich set of searchable data that can be of immense help in running your business. Plus, the tools in Business Contact Manager for Outlook go even farther because you can use them to visualize your data in gadgets, reports, and charts, and take the data with you to help you be more productive when you’re out of the office.

Search your business records

Searching your business records is a quick way to find a single record or group of records. Your 10 most recent search strings are automatically saved for easy re-use.

Filter your records

Applying a filter to a set of data or records allows you to display only information that meets a specified criteria. Filters make it easy to retrieve a single record or a set of records that have common characteristics. Filtering a list or report is a great way to produce a lists for a marketing activity, sales calls, or other business activity.

Use gadgets

In Business Contact Manager for Outlook, gadgets display key business metrics and information on your Dashboard or the Contact Management, Sales, Marketing, and Project Management workspaces.

Create reports and charts

A report is an excellent tool for gaining insight into your Accounts, Business Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Business Projects, and marketing activities. You can open more than 60 standard reports in Business Contact Manager for Outlook, and can also modify, save, update, and reuse an almost unlimited number of additional reports.

Export your business records

You can export your business records and use them in other programs, such as Microsoft Excel. For example, you may want to export a copy of the data in a single report to Excel for deeper analysis.

Go mobile

You can take your business data with you when you leave the office: on your laptop, or on your phone. You can also access Business Contacts by signing in to Outlook Web Access if you have turned on the Business Contact Synchronization feature. For information about taking your business data with on your laptop, see Work offline using Business Contact Manager.

Dec 15

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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.

Sep 25

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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.

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:

Sep 4

Microsoft Changes and Simplified their Logo

This August, Microsoft has announced their first logo change in over 20 years. Much simpler to the eye, parts appear to be hand-colored.

We welcome the change and we love the logo.

May 13

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Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 has been here now since June 18, 2011. Users are finding training needs minimal as they are used to the Microsoft Office Ribbon, even when they are using sophisticated add-on applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM! Desktop and online and server services in the future will be combined, but you will need a proper consultant in order to implement and make full use of the sophisticated features while maintaining a prudent and compliant information technology policy.

Microsoft Office 365 is a full suite of business productivity servers ready to run all of the computing needs of your business regardless of size. The product handles your corporate E-Mail, document storage, project management, scheduling, video teleconferencing, audio teleconferencing, PBX, enterprise voicemail, blackberry services, and integration with Microsoft Office, the licenses of which are also included with the plans we recommend. Soon you will be able to add-on accounting and project management as well. With the Web and I we are already implementing our first integrated accounting solution for one of our clients.. You may need only some of these services, and Office 365 has a plan to suit every user. However we recommend the E3 and E1 plans because they include the latest version of Microsoft Office for your desktop. With Dynamics CRM you will have integrated customer relationship management including Sales Management, Marketing Management, Order Management, and Invoice Management.

For information about the new 2013 version of Microsoft Office 365 2013 Edition Click Here

The Servers (and Services) Available with Office 365

Microsoft Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online is an email, calendar and contacts solution delivered as a cloud service, hosted by Microsoft. The service is based on Microsoft Exchange server and offers 25 GB of email storage per user. In addition, Exchange online offers users personalized calendars and contacts with sharing capability and 99.9% reliability in online secure back-up. Exchange ActiveSync provides mobile connectivity to Exchange services and mobile email applications. With added E-Fax service your users can each have their own fax number and they can even send and receive faxes from their mobile devices or laptops.

Microsoft SharePoint Online

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a collaboration, sharing, and document editing service using internal and external sites. SharePoint is a great center for your corporate Intranet, and you can store and organize your documents, lists, and databases. Databases of increasing complexity are available with Office 365 including integration with Microsoft’s flagship accounting software, Microsoft Dynamics. One of our clients, First United Services, uses Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software to handle client communications, document storage, information collaboration, sales management, order management, invoice management and interface with their soon-to-be-implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP Server solution.

Articles Written by the Web and I about SharePoint

Microsoft Lync Online

Microsoft Lync Online provides communications features including presence information, instant messaging, PC-to-PC audio/video calling and online meetings that can include PC audio, video and web conferencing with application sharing, whiteboards, and other collaboration tools. Lync Online is accessed through the Lync client. Lync Online also supports presence information and click-to-communicate features inside Microsoft Office applications. Currently the Lync components of Office 365 exclude Lync’s Enterprise Voice feature set.
Office Professional Plus

Microsoft Office Professional Plus in Office 365 provides the same client software as the Office Professional Plus product available through Microsoft Volume Licensing.

An Article Written by the Web and I about Microsoft Lync:

Overcoming Login Problems with Microsoft Lync Server Where Login Problems Exist Due to Domain Registration Anomalies

Microsoft Office 365: Under the Hood

Office Professional Plus in Office 365 has month-to-month, per-user licensing. It is an “Always On” service that has 99.98% reliability and can protect your data better and more cheaply than your staff can. Most very small businesses can afford no IT staff or servers at all. Office 365 provides server services that were once the exclusive domain of the Fortune 500 companies, who have been using enterprise class software since the turn of the millennium. If you were to purchase the servers, get a full-time IT person, and buy the licenses from Microsoft to do the same thing for a company of ten employees, you would spend $250,000 for the first year alone, and at least $75,000 each additional year. Now take that cost and compare it to the $3000 – $25,000 for the first year and $3000 – $15,000 for each additional year of service for a company of ten. For a sole proprietor like some of our customers are, you will spend between $300 – $10,000 for the first year and $300 – $1500 per year for additional years. These costs assume all of the installation, implementation, and customization costs. The lowest numbers are for the Microsoft Office 365 E3 plan alone.

Office Web Apps are browser-based versions of Microsoft Excel, Word, Access and PowerPoint that enable viewing and lightweight editing of Office documents in Web browsers while preserving the formatting of the original documents. When you have legacy computers or do not wish to tax the speed of the computer you are using, Microsoft Web apps are a great way to access your documents and databases.

For your E-Mail you will be using Web Outlook or your desktop outlook you already enjoy. For those not familiar with Web Outlook, it is Outlook that can be accessed from any modern web browser with all of the features of Desktop outlook and connected to the same information, so you are never away from home as long as an Internet connection is available.

Enterprise users always have access to the desktop edition, but it can be handy. An example would be when you are without your computer at the client’s office. They ask for a brochure that you do not have with you but is on the corporate shared drive for your department. Your client only has Mac computers, and they do not run Office at all. How do you save the day and impress your client? You can either go on their Mac, log in to Office 365 on the Mac Safari browser, navigate to your corporate shared drive, then open the brochure and print the one you need. For our E-Fax users, this can be even easier, they can retrieve any document in their corporate servers on their Blackberry or Windows 7 Mango phones and send it to any fax machine in the world in seconds. Paper records in the home office can be scanned into the Multi-Function Printer and have it sent directly to Office 365 and into the hands of your employees on the road immediately.

Video teleconferencing was always a very expensive but very desirable feature for remote communication with clients as well as staff on the road or in their homes. With Office 365 each employee or client can be connected with a $20 webcam with integrated microphone. Video and audio teleconferencing is a great way to help the environment and your budget by avoiding travel and still meeting. With Office 365, multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously in multiple locations while on video teleconference.

As an added option, Blackberry services will be available, so that you can run Exchange on Blackberry for secure corporate messaging. Remote access to what you need is a big part of Office 365.

Backups are included in Office 365 for Small Businesses, and the Office 365 for Enterprises comes with ISO compliant archiving features, and both editions come with the ability for people in separate locations to simultaneously have open and work on the same document with a picture in picture video conference. All of this securely on your bonded and trustworthy Microsoft-hosted extranet.

With the high costs of IT personnel needed to baby sit servers, as well as the down time and expensive licensing, cloud hosted server services from Microsoft make sense. These are tools of unprecedented power, offering true ERP solutions for small businesses.

Office 365 is the successor to Office Live, which is our specialty. We are part of an exclusive list of Office Live consultants with Microsoft Bizspark Startup grants who can start you out on Office Live today and upgrade you to Office 365 as soon as it becomes available! Take advantage of most of the features of Office 365 by calling us for Office Live now! Call 646-853-0573 and visit thewebandi.com.

For information about the new 2013 version of Microsoft Office 365 2013 Edition Click Here

New Articles Written by the Web and I about Office 365

Here are more videos about Office 365

Collaboration and Communication Available With Enterprise: Communicate and collaborate with any device and monitor your employees from anywhere in the world.

SharePoint and Office 365, and how you can collaborate as well as track employee productivity.

Lync and Communication including video teleconferencing. Work from anywhere and always contact your employees.

Enterprise Exchange Online and mobile office working. Your employees can help you from anywhere, no more excuses.

The Best Ideas for Websites, Software, and Cloud Computing in Long Island, New York