Discovery Communications embraces Office 365 to foster creative culture of innovation
Change is a constant in today’s business and media landscape, but that does not make it any easier, especially when it comes to technology. However, having a company and workforce hungry for the best new solutions brings great opportunity. Our leadership and employees understand that embracing new technology can, and should, result in greater productivity, flexibility and, ultimately, a happier, more successful culture. At Discovery Communications, our teams produce content for some of the most recognizable and beloved brands, have made crab fisherman icons with “Deadliest Catch,” and have established one of the most beloved (yet unofficial) U.S. holidays, “Shark Week.”
Our 7,000 employees around the world have high expectations of their technology tools. At the same time, our Global Technology and Operations team works tirelessly to deliver innovations that support employee creativity and the company’s open, collaborative work environment—without exposing us to risk. By enabling employees to securely share ideas and work closely together, we not only sharpen the company’s focus on bringing compelling content to the screen but also increase operational efficiency.
A few years ago, Discovery moved from on-premises systems to Microsoft Office 365. With our eyes on flexible solutions that would grow with our global business, we wanted to stop supporting non-differentiated services that involve a lot of heavy lifting for our team. More importantly, shifting to cloud-based services makes it possible to give employees capabilities that are always available and that include the latest features and enhancements. Office 365 puts a lot of the power into employees’ hands to control their own environment. We looked at several offerings, but the Office suite provides a universal language for business around the globe, and it made sense to stay in a world where our employees were already productive.
We have had remarkable success in migrating to Microsoft Exchange Online, moving our intranet to Microsoft SharePoint Online and adding Yammer as our enterprise social network. At the same time, we have taken full advantage of built-in features like Exchange Online Protection and archiving capabilities. So it was only natural to be interested in adopting the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Suite and the latest Office 365 offering—the E5 suite.
Honestly, if I look at the decision to move to Office 365 E5 licenses from a strictly financial standpoint, it’s worth it just for Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and Advanced eDiscovery alone. Anyone who has to deal with today’s sophisticated information security threats understands that ATP is a must-have. We have to make sure we protect our programming content, employees and production partners, so the enhanced security components in E5 were a key factor in our decision to move forward.
In order to best serve our Legal team, Discovery is implementing Advanced eDiscovery for litigation and data requests—allowing them to search more effectively across mail and content repositories, to see results in a more dynamic way and to better manage their daily work. Advanced eDiscovery has a much more natural search language and a more approachable interface for our attorneys and the ability to see search results in a more dynamic way. Using it will save a lot of time and help to produce more accurate, relevant and comprehensive results.
Gaining Microsoft Power BI played a major role in our decision, as well. With Power BI, we will be able to further democratize business intelligence and analytics for all our employees. While storytelling and compelling content are at the center of what we do, our business is grounded in understanding our audiences through research and data. We now have a powerful cloud offering that plugs into the familiar Office suite. A cloud-based platform like Power BI allows us to share key data insights more effectively than passing spreadsheets or sending PDFs, while also facilitating the organization, analysis and visualization of data however it is most meaningful to each employee.
Telephony represents another area where the E5 licenses will help us achieve both efficiencies and cost savings. We currently have an on-premises Skype for Business environment, configured as a hybrid with the cloud, and we plan to move entirely to the cloud in the next few years. We’re running pilot tests of Skype for Business Cloud PBX, and we love how we’re able to mix and match Cloud PBX hybrid configurations with PSTN Calling plans. We have offices in dozens of countries—in some markets, it makes sense for us to use a local carrier, while in others it’s more cost-effective to pay per user. With the advanced Skype for Business features, we gain the flexibility to tap into both models and give employees high-quality communications services in a way that’s fiscally smart.
Even before we adopted the E5 suite, we knew using Office 365 helped us transform how we do business. We’ve brought colleagues closer together and made it easier to collaborate with our numerous outside production partners. We’ve exceeded employee expectations of a mobile, modern technology environment. And we’re looking forward to using E5 functionality to continue to build on our foundation of real-time communications and team collaboration increasing our global workforce’s ability to capture audiences with breakthrough content.
Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.
We specialize in providing full managed services to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
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Trustworthy Cloud Logistics For First Responders – Resgrid
Developer by day, volunteer firefighter by night . . . Shawn Jackson likes making a difference in the world. Now, as founder of BizSpark startup Resgrid, he is helping speed up disaster emergency responses in a bid to keep people safer around the globe.
When a call crackles across a fire emergency response system, first responders rush to their station, grab their gear and get to the scene as quickly as possible. As they drive, though, it’s tough for everyone to know who else is responding or what their own role will be.
“It’s hard to put together the best crew for the situation without knowing who is responding from where and what level each person can operate at,” says Jackson. “Am I going to be the guy kicking in the door or driving the truck?”
The developer side of Jackson’s brain started swirling with ideas to resolve the communications issue. He came up with the concept of Resgrid, a cloud/app combination that first responders can use from their mobile devices to coordinate logistics and resource management. Smartphones and tablets, he reasoned, were owned by nearly every first responder – why not create a universal product for mobile networks that can receive text messages?
He enlisted help from another developer he knew well – Jason Jarret – and, together, they chose to build out the idea using Microsoft technologies – particularly Microsoft Azure – as the foundation. The Microsoft BizSpark program gave them free access to lots of Microsoft software, including Azure.
“Every country has first responder needs and at varying levels of sophistication,” says Jackson. “With Azure we can coordinate all the information we need to help any first responder – anywhere – track operations and even obtain turn-by-turn directions to get to the emergency scene.”
Resgrid uses the cloud platform to deploy its entire product, from the company website to its backend API and everything in between, says Jarret, in large part because it seamlessly connects with any open source software (OSS) package Resgrid uses.
“Our system was designed to work with Azure from the onset,” says Jarrett, co-founder, “because it allows us to leverage all the capabilities of the platform. For example, we use Cloud Services for both Web and Worker roles to help us identify patterns and reoccurrences. Our backend is Azure SQL Database. That gives us SQL as a service that we do not have to manage or failover.”
Azure SQL Database uses a special version of Microsoft SQL Server as its backend. It provides high availability by managing many databases, storing multiple copies of databases, elastic scale and rapid provisioning.
Resgrid’s use of OSS packages in conjunction with Azure is substantial. MongoDB, for example, lets Resgrid integrate real-time analytics into its Azure operational databases. The startup also uses TeamCity CI – a Java-based platform – as a build server and runs it on an Azure virtual machine. AngularJS and Bootstrap, open source web application frameworks, are being used with Azure Websites (a fully-managed Platform as a Service) for the startup’s web site. StackExchange.Redis lets Resgrid connect to the Azure Redis Cache through a .NET API, allowing the startup to create and configure a cache, add or remove objects from it and configure cache clients.
Other, smaller OSS packages include Moment.js, which lets Resgrid display times and dates on its Azure-based dashboard, and jQuery, a cross-browser JavaScript library that simplifies client-side scripting of HTML. For instance, coding with jQuery lets Resgrid quickly add special effects to its web site and pull data from a server-side database.
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OneNote July Roundup
This month the OneNote team is pleased to release new capabilities to enhance inking, clipping content from the web and working with others. We have a lot of great things to share with you, so let’s dive right in.
Inking with OneNote
Ink effects—Sometimes a simple color isn’t enough to get your idea across. Now you can jazz up your notes and drawings with new ink effects like rainbow, galaxy, gold and silver to make anything you write more unique and even more fun. We were inspired to create these new ink effects in response to requests we heard from students when we visited their classrooms. During beta testing, we were pleased to see the smiles brought to everyone’s faces—young and old alike. Ink effects are now available for Office 365 subscribers in OneNote on Windows 10.
Inking in OneNote for Mac—Today, we’re launching ink in OneNote for Mac for the first time, bringing to life one of our top user requests. Now you can write, draw and highlight with tools on the new Draw tab using your mouse or trackpad. You can also use your third-party drawing tablet or display that uses a pen or stylus to write, draw and erase –just like pen and paper. And we’ve added lined pages and grids as a background option to help keep your new handwriting and drawings neat and tidy. If you’re a big fan of drawing and writing with ink, OneNote works great with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil as well. These new tools for Mac let you express yourself in a whole new way, as you think with ink. Get OneNote for Mac in the Mac app store today.
OneNote Web Clipper
Our OneNote Web Clipper is better than ever. We have a number of new features on our Web Clipper for Chrome, Safari, and IE to give you more control over your screen clippings before you send it into OneNote.
Preview—Ever wonder exactly what was about to show up in OneNote once you clipped? Problem solved! Now all clipping modes—full page, region, article, recipe and product—provide a preview so what you see is what you get.
YouTube and Vimeo support—You can now clip videos from YouTube and Vimeo pages into OneNote.
Highlight text—When you clip an article, product or recipe you can highlight sections of text, and those highlights will be saved to OneNote.
Clip multiple regions in one go—Clip multiple regions of a webpage and save them all in a single OneNote page.
Use your own title—Change the title of your page in the preview window before sending it to OneNote.
Articles your way—Change the font size and type in your article to improve readability before you even clip it to OneNote.
Update to the latest version to see all the new features or download the extension at www.onenote.com/clipper.
Sharing Notifications Email service
Never miss an important notebook edit again. For consumers using a Microsoft account, our newly improved sharing notifications means you’ll receive an email letting you know that someone has made a change to your shared OneNote notebook—helping you stay on the same page.
Users now will receive a maximum of five emails a day from the Sharing Notification Email service. Each email includes changes from all of your notebooks. The cadence of emails may change as we continue to improve our services. To manage your notification settings, visit www.onenote.com/sharenotificationsettings.
It’s been a big month here at OneNote, thanks for taking the time to read up on everything new you can do. One last thing, in the next few weeks, we’ll launch our new OneNote importer tool for Mac to help even more people import with confidence.
If you dread updating your resume, you’re not alone. Over 30 percent of people surveyed* consider writing or updating their resume their least favorite part of the job search. Our career expert sponsor Maxie McCoy joined us to share top tips and tools for creating a resume that expertly combines your professional know-how with the design flair that will get you noticed.
Nail your cover letter
A stellar resume starts with a strong cover letter. The key? Showing how your talent and experience will solve a problem or drive results for your future employer. For example, if you say you’re collaborative, discuss how you used that skill at your last internship, and then connect it to what you aim to accomplish for the new company. Never underestimate your worth; Maxie tells us, “Even if you’re new to the industry, it’s all in the language you use to describe what you’ve done. If you speak to the value you provided rather than the expertise you have, you’ll navigate this nicely.”
Know your audience
If you’re going for an accounting job at a big firm, keep it simple and classy, not flashy. For an ad agency position, take a creative plunge with design and format. Speaking the company’s language is important too. Look at the company website and job postings, speak with current employees and mirror that tone and voice in your resume.“ If you’re unsure of who will be looking at your resume,” Maxie says, “it’s best to err on the side of simplicity and elegance.”
Write a resume you would read
Remember, recruiters are human—and they can see right through the fluff. Avoid sounding stuffy or using resume jargon like “team player” or “hard worker.” Make summaries short and your experience descriptions results-driven and to the point.
Name drop
“Name and company dropping in your resume is often a good thing; it gives your interviewer a frame of reference,” says Maxie. Who have you worked with, assisted, learned from? Think partnerships, clients, projects, etc. It all helps.
Show your value with data
According to Maxie, “Candidates often don’t show enough with numbers, statistics and quantitative descriptions of their work.” So use data and specifics to make your past responsibilities and projects more tangible for the recruiter. For example, rather than saying you managed the university newspaper, explain that you led an editorial staff of 20 at the university newspaper, which reaches a student body of over 350,000.
Do something, anything, to stand out
“Employers are looking for wildly passionate people. And passionate people do crazy things, like go the extra mile,” says Maxie. A professional resume is important, but in today’s job market, it’s often not enough on its own. Supplement your resume with a digital portfolio; pen a blog post about your passion for the industry, trends you’re seeing or a past project you’ve learned from. Or, create a brief video that shows off your communication skills and passion for the company you’re applying for. “Whatever you’re doing must come full circle and point other directions, telling a clear story of yourself,” Maxie notes. “People need to be able to show who they are online as much as in person.”
Use the right tools
Writing your resume, creating a portfolio or writing a blog post is tough enough, but formatting or coding it can be even harder. Maxie’s recommendation? “Don’t reinvent the wheel—use templates and tools that make it easy.”
To help, we’ve tapped the design expertise of digital print and design company MOO to create all-new resume and cover letter templates in Microsoft Word.** One in four people we surveyed think having a “plain resume” could hinder their job search, and we think these customizable templates will strike just the right balance to get noticed.
We also created online resume, portfolio and blog post templates in our digital storytelling app, Sway. The free app makes it easy to create a digital representation of your work even if you don’t have professional design or coding skills. Once you’re finished, you can easily share it with a link. Pro tip: Sway has high-resolution images from sources like PickIt, Flicker and Bing right within the app. Just click the Insert tab to start browsing.
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