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CEO's Gather for First-Ever Mixed Reality Experience
CEO's from San Diego Magazine’s Fastest Growing Companies Winners List Gather for Bleeding-Edge, Immersive, Holographic Experience
“Experiencing mixed-reality is truly mind-blowing and I can’t wait to see the looks on the faces of these area execs as they complete their holographic mission.” -Jackie Wiener, VP Marketing & Customer Engagement, Managed Solution
San Diego, CA –Managed Solution, San Diego’s fastest growing full-service technology firm, plans to unveil its newly created app for Microsoft’s HoloLens, Thursday, August 11th, 2016, at San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewery. This C-Level engagement is set to introduce their innovative app and the latest in holographic technology to the area’s best and brightest CEO’s.
Combining mixed and augmented reality, Microsoft Hololens takes Pokemon Go to the next level and beyond. Microsoft's HoloLens creates a real life, holographic mixed reality experience that you've only seen in SciFi Movies.
Managed Solution’s take on the technology includes an immersive, holographic app designed by female developer & award-winner, Jackie Wiener, VP of Marketing & Customer Engagement. Wiener put in her bid to be part of the external development group more than a year ago, recently gaining acceptance into the tightly restricted program. HoloLens is not yet publically available, making this experience even more rare.
“We are hosting this Invite-only event geared at exciting Southern California’s top CEO's to envision how mixed reality technology can amplify business, said Wiener.” “Experiencing mixed-reality is truly mind-blowing and I can’t wait to see the looks on the faces of these area execs as they complete their holographic mission.”
This one-of-a-kind event includes a C-level Contest where CEO's compete in a timed, augmented reality mission. Each CEO will sport the untethered, holographic enabled headset and will be tested on the execution, retention, and speed of the information received.
Events are being scheduled in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Phoenix.
Microsoft’s HoloLens is a holographic application built inside a sleek, flashy headset with transparent lenses. The outside world is still visible but suddenly your world can be transformed -- with 3D objects floating in midair, virtual screens on the wall and the surrounding area covered in virtual characters.
To request an invitation to this invite-only event contact Liliana Ciurlino @ lciurlino@managedsolution.com or call (858) 429-3025
About Managed Solution:
Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers businesses by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Regional Partners with Microsoft & Microsoft's United States SMB Champions Club West Region Marketer of the Year 2016, Managed Solution provides software migration, hardware, project implementation and managed services for small to enterprise size clients.
Managed Solution was founded in 2002 and was quickly recognized as one of San Diego’s 40 fastest growing companies and the 27th fastest growing IT company in Southern California. With corporate headquarters in San Diego, Managed Solution provides IT services nationwide and was recently recognized as one of the top 10 National Cloud Service Providers.
For more information or media inquiries please email Liliana Ciurlino @ lciurlino@managedsolution.com or call (858) 429-3025
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Word 2016 Quick Start Guide
New to Word 2016 or upgrading from a previous version? Use this guide to learn the basics. Helpful tips and tricks including:
1. Creating documents
2. Discovering contextual tools
3. Format styling
4. Reviewing and tracking changes
5. Sharing your work with others
And more!
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IM on it—why instant messaging is collaboration’s secret weapon
Implementing an instant messaging platform is important for productivity for teams of all sizes. Enabling a system for quick, informal, easy-to-reference and mobile chats keeps teams connected for nimble collaborations—resulting in a major value-add to your business.
How much value, exactly? Businesses that have embraced instant messaging practice have seen remarkable improvements in productivity and streamlined communication. According to a survey of employees using chat services conducted by SoftwareAdvice.com, 75 percent saw decreased call and email volume, and 66 percent noticed quick resolution for simple questions. When it comes to productivity, 21 percent noted either moderate or significant increase.
As company-wide IM benefits become clear, more and more businesses are getting on board. If you’re interested in these benefits but are wary to ensure proper implementation and use throughout your company, provide best practices for your employees to reference to increase productivity and reduce frustrating growing pains.
Don’t shoot the messenger
The following five best practices help ensure successful adoption and usage of IM in your organization:
1.Provide a company-wide solution—Don’t require employees to use personal accounts; implement a company-provided instant messaging offering. This will streamline features and allow all your employees to find each other to chat.
2.Choose a secure solution with robust features—Compliance standards (like HIPPA, DPAS and FISMA, FERPA and banking) apply to more than just email and other secure information sources. Ensure that all your business communication tools align with common compliance standards.
3.Integrate with other collaboration tools—Standalone instant messengers can leave employees with cumbersome roadblocks. Ensure your solution integrates seamlessly with other tools like business email, phone and video conferencing. Encourage employees to start conversations within project-specific documentation, so that the goal of the conversation remains clear and important information can be easily referenced.
4.Empower employees to set and respect boundaries—Being reachable 24/7 is unrealistic and sets up your employees for burnout. Encourage colleagues to mute their instant messaging tool for periods of private productivity and focus, then remind co-workers to respect that virtual space.
5.Don’t replace email completely—Instant messaging is a great option to communicate with even the most inbox-overwhelmed colleagues. But, instant messaging should not replace email or other collaboration tools that are core to keeping record of memorialized conversations. Set standards and show examples of the types of content best handled via IM, email or other project management tools. A general rule is length, if the message will contain more than a few words or sentences, email remains the best option.
A valuable tool for company-wide collaboration, instant messengers should be used to keep employees productive—not distracted or stressed. By implementing and encouraging best practices and sticking with a solution that includes everything you need to implement these practice at the outset, you can see skyrocketing productivity and results.
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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.
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PowerPoint 2016 Quick Start Guide
New to PowerPoint 2016 or upgrading from a previous version? Use this guide to learn the basics. Helpful tips and tricks including:
1. Creating blank or pre-set presentations
2. Setting preferences
3. Changing layouts
4. Staying connected
5. Formatting shapes
And more!
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View and edit your profile in Office Delve
The profile page in Delve makes it easy for you to update your profile information, and for others to find and connect with you. With the new profile page in Delve, you can also quickly get back to documents you've worked on recently, or go to other people's profile pages to see what they're up to.
This article describes how you can edit your profile information.
View and edit your profile
Note: You may not be able to change all information in your profile. Some information, such as your name or title, may be collected from other systems that your IT or human resources department control. If you want to update those details, contact them or your admin.
1.To go to your profile page, select your picture in the Office 365 header, and then select About me.
If you're already in Delve, you can go to your profile page by selecting Me from the left-hand menu.
2.To change your information, choose Edit profile.
3.Update your profile information as desired. For example, click Upload picture on the Basic Information page to change your profile picture.
4.Choose Contact information and Details to see different pages of your profile. Choose the ellipsis … to see additional profile pages.
5.Choose Save all and close.
How do I keep certain profile details private?
Your profile contains information about you that people in your organization see when they visit your profile page. Some of this information is fixed by your organization and always shared with everyone, such as your name, title, department and manager.
For some details, you can choose to keep the information private by selecting 'Only Me' under 'Who can see this?'
What are the guidelines for adding a profile picture?
You can upload a photo in one of these image formats: .bmp, .jpeg, or .png. An optimal picture size is 96 x 96 pixels.
How can I change the cover photo?
Your cover photo is the large image at the top of your profile. Choose one you like from the photos provided. For now, you can't upload your own photo here.
On your page, click Change cover photo in the top right corner, and then choose a photo from the list.
How do I follow someone?
There's no option to follow someone from their profile in Delve.
For information about how to follow someone in Newsfeed or Yammer, see Follow people to keep track of their activities.
Why can't I see if someone is online?
The online presence feature will be available in a future release.
Where can I find my Newsfeed?
If your company enables Newsfeed, you can access your Newsfeed by clicking the Newsfeed tile in the Office 365 suite navigation. If your company is using Yammer for Enterprise Social Collaboration, a Yammer tile will appear in the Office 365 suite navigation.
Where can I find my links?
Custom links are no longer supported.
How do I view or add apps?
You can view or add apps by clicking the OneDrive tile in the Office 365 suite navigation, then clicking on Settings > Add an app.
How do I view or add subsites?
You can view or add subsites by clicking the OneDrive tile in the Office 365 suite navigation, then clicking on Settings > Site contents.
Why does my profile look different than you describe?
Some of the functionality on the profile pages is currently only available if your organization has opted in to the First release program.
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Recommended Practices for your Hybrid Identity Admin accounts
By Sander Berkouwer as written on dirteam.com
I’ve been involved in quite some Microsoft Hybrid Identity implementations: Big and small implementations, with and without AD FS next to Azure AD Connect, with Azure AD Connect and 3rd party tooling.
One thing though, all these implementations had in common was the admin account(s) they needed done right.
You can dial a lot of knobs when implementing Hybrid Identity. One of the more important knobs is the one that turns on federated single sign-on to your organization’s on-premises Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) implementation. This particular setting is changed using the Azure Active Directory PowerShell Module.
Many early adopters of Microsoft Hybrid Identity using AD FS have already experienced a common pitfall: when you’ve converted a DNS Domain in Azure Active Directory to federated, you need AD FS to authenticate. Even to change the setting from federated back to standard.
Note: The main reason to convert from federated to standard is because there’s something wrong with the AD FS implementation…
So, how do you cope with this challenge?
Global admins and/or on-premises admins
One of the first things, prospect admins learn during training is to use separate accounts for admin purposes and day-to-day usage, like e-mail and browsing. This is based on the principle of least (administrative) privilege. The same holds true for Azure Admins:
You don’t want to assign Global Admin rights in Azure Active Directory to your day-to-day account.
In most on-premises environments, admin accounts are prefixed with adm in their username or postfixed with a number. The latter number strategy allows for a quick overview of the impact of an account; when 1 represents print admin or account operator rights and 9 represents both on-premises Enterprise Admin and Azure Global Admin, the number quickly indicates how much impact deleting the account might have or what account to use for a specific task.
However, there is a dark side to this practice: a person with malicious intent, might quickly target accounts of the most interest.
Admin roles in Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory offers the following administrator roles
These roles can be the basis for number postfixing your Azure Active Directory admins.
Note: For Azure Resource Management (ARM)-based resources, you can additionally add your own Roles-based Access Control (RBAC) for finer-grained access management. While the users and groups would live in Azure Active Directory, none of the Azure Active Directory resources, themselves, are ARM-based, momentarily.
Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management
Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management (PIM) allows for non-permanent and more granular just-in-time admin roles. Auditing and reporting allows for insights on the actual usage of administrative privilege and accounts that no longer need administrative privileges. By acting on these insights, the attack surface of privileged accounts is minimalized
Multi-factor Authentication
Authentication is the process of confirming the truth of an attribute of an entity – in short, confirming its identity. The most common attribute checked to confirm the identity of the person signing in with a user account (object) in networking environments is the password attribute. The password attribute is a value that the person sets. It is something the person (can prove he/she) knows. To make authentication more reliable and, thus, confirm the identity without a doubt, multiple authentication factors may be combined. For instance, something the person (can prove he/she) has in physical possession and/or something the person (can prove he/she) is are authentication factors that can be used for Multi-Factor Authentication beyond mere password validation.
Microsoft offers free Multi-Factor Authentication for Global Admins in Azure Active Directory. This solution offers reliable authentication for these accounts.
Note: Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Admins is only free, when Azure Active Directory has not yet been configured with a consumption-based license (pey-per-authentication) for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication.
It is highly recommended to enable multi-factor authentication on each account that has the Global Administrator role assigned in Azure Active Directory. If your organization, utilizes other admin roles (either the pre-defined roles, Azure AD PIM roles and/or Azure ARM RBAC) MFA could be applied according to the combination of (some sort of) classification of the administrative privilege(s) and day-to-day burden.
For instance, you may decide not to enforce MFA for logins for User management administrators, as their privileges are not as high-impact as other privileges and these people may need to use their privileges often.
From a technical perspective, the tooling used, needs to support modern authentication. If you want to use multi-factor authentication for admin purposes, you will need to use at least the following versions of the admin tools:
Version 8362.1 of the Azure Active Directory PowerShell Module (released January 19, 2015)
Version 1.1.105.0 of Azure AD Connect (released February 2016)
The curse of the Microsoft Account
With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Account. This account, formerly known as a Windows Live ID, can be used to log onto Windows devices ever since or provide single sign-on to consumer-based Microsoft services when logged on with a domain account (Windows Store, Cortana, etc.). The functionality is called the Connected Accounts feature. This was Microsoft’s solution to bridging the work-life divide. However, Microsoft accounts are not company-owned, but personally-owned.
Microsoft Accounts can also be used in Azure Active Directory. They can even be assigned admin roles (although some limitations apply).
You should really need to decide whether you want to assign roles to accounts your organization does not own and/or manage.
I feel strongly, that admin accounts with e-mail addresses like bigmomma50@live.com are not that professional. When hiring a consultant, this kind of administrative practices might lead to some raised eyebrows.
To add to injury, several display and sign-in problems occur when admins use Microsoft Accounts with the same domain part (everything after the @-sign) as your organization does.
There are two ways to create an Azure Active Directory directory:
1.The Azure route
2.The Office365 route
Azure tenant names, created by default, when the Azure tenant is created from a Microsoft account might raise the same eyebrows: For the joshaarbos@outlook.com Microsoft account you’ll end up with the joshaarbosoutlook.onmicrosoft.com tenant name. Again, think of when the person of the named account leaves, the tenant name will leave a permanent mark on the organization.
Note: When you take the Office365 route to create the Azure Active Directory tenant, the tenant name for Azure Active Directory is the same as the tenant name for Office365. This name is defined when you create the Office365 tenant.
To sync or not to sync admin accounts
In line with the principle of least administrative effort, you might not even want to assign Azure admin privileges to on-premises admin accounts, that are synchronized to Azure Active Directory.
Although this might result in a situation where an admin person needs to use six accounts, instead of having the benefit of single sign-on, like everyone else, it does provide a separation of administrative privileges and fault domains…
How to name these accounts? AdminHansWorst6@joshaarbosoutlook.onmicrosoft.com might not look very sexy and might possibly cause RSI, it does the job for a privileged account that is assigned the Service Administrator role in Azure Active Directory. A separate (default) vanity UPN Suffix might become a requirement when the person to which the original Microsoft account belongs, leaves the organization.
Note: Don’t forget to add other Global Admins and remove the original Microsoft Account from the Global Administrator role and/or your Azure directory.
To federate or not to federate admin accounts
When synchronizing accounts. another big question remains: To federate admin accounts, or not.
In my opinion, federation offers benefits for everyone. However, I don’t feel that strongly for admin accounts. Password Synchronization using Azure AD Connect offers a solution that is equally beneficial for admins, yet provides an exit strategy for when the on-premises Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) implementation fails.
Since federation in Azure Active Directory is governed using DNS domains, a quick and dirty way of removing admin accounts from the scope of federation is by assigning a separate userPrincipalName (UPN) Suffix to admin accounts on-premises. For instance yourorganizationsadmins.com can be used for admins, while yourorganization.com is used for the day-to-day user accounts.
Converting child and parent domains
One of the reasons why I choose yourorganizationsadmins.com in the above example is because this introduces an entirely new DNS Domain, instead of a subdomain.
While you can use subdomains for your admin accounts, it is not recommended: When converting domains in Azure Active Directory (from standard to federated, and vice versa), by default, all subdomains will be converted too.
Note: The way around this, although unsupported, is to place the parent domain and the child domain in different Azure tenants.
Concluding
Use these recommended practices for Azure Admins in Hybrid Identity scenarios:
-
Separate admin privileges from day-to-day accounts
-
Deploy Multi-factor Authentication
-
Deploy Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
-
Use admin account and password synchronization for your convenience
-
Don’t use Microsoft Accounts
-
Don’t federate admin accounts
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Assign admin accounts a separate UPN Suffix on-premises and/or in Azure AD
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