Google is launching a new privacy tool for Google Apps Unlimited users today. The new Data Loss Prevention feature will make it easier for businesses to make sure that their employees don’t mistakenly (or not so mistakenly) email certain types of sensitive information to people outside of the company.
Businesses that subscribe to this plan for their employees now have the option to turn on this tool and select one of the new predefined rules that, for example, automatically reject or quarantine any email that contains a social security or credit card number. Businesses can choose from these predefined rules and also set up custom detectors (a confidential project keyword, for example). Google says its working on adding more predefined rules, too.
Google created a set of pre-defined rules for data like social security numbers in the U.S., Canada and France, driver’s license and National Health Service numbers in the U.K., as well as for all credit card numbers, bank routing numbers and Swift codes for bank account numbers.
It’s worth noting that Google will scan both the email body and attachments for potential matches.
Rules can be applied to incoming and outgoing messages. Admins are also able to apply these rules to specific departments and employees. For internal messages, they are also able to add a line like “[Internal Only]” to emails that contain information that would have been rejected if the sender had tried to send this email to an external recipient.
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With the long winters, dark nights, and extra time spent indoors, get more done with Office 365. Sign up for a free trial.
Office 365 now includes the all-new Office 2016 apps!
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Microsoft has recently renamed DVLUP as Microsoft TechRewards. Microsoft TechRewards is a rewards and recognition program that works to help developers and IT Pros become better professionals and achieve more.
TechRewards inherited all the best from DVLUP and has much more to offer, including:
• A refreshed user interface to make it easier to find resources such as content, training, sample codes and other programs.
• Microsoft Account integration, so you can move seamlessly between MSDN sites and TechRewards.
• New features and enhancements that will help you engage in new challenges and earn more rewards.
• Users now have a consolidated place to manage benefits and rewards across Microsoft experiences as well as access to exclusive Challenges and Rewards. From the new site users can track all their Pts, XP and Badge history as well as participate in new challenges.
Microsoft starts rolling out Cortana for iOS
Recently, Microsoft unveiled Cortana for iOS. The company asked users in the United States to sign-up for Cortana for iOS beta, and as it seems like, Microsft has finally started rolling out Cortana for iOS to beta testers. The company is rolling out Cortana for iOS via Apple’s TestFlight. Cortana on iOS looks just like it does on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile and Android. The personal assistant is able to tell you the weather, keep you updated with the latest news based on your interests, track your packages, flights, keep you updated with sports scores and do some other basic tasks.
Cortana Analytics Gallery - a scalable community site built on Azure DocumentDB
By Andrew Hoh Program Manager, Azure DocumentDB as written on azure.microsoft.com . Co-authored with Elena Apreutesei, Principal Software Engineer, Azure Machine Learning.
The Cortana Analytics Gallery is a community driven website used to discover, share, and learn about solutions built from the Cortana Analytics Suite. The Gallery hosts a wide range of solutions; everything from a Retail Forecasting experiment to the ever popular Face APIs used in the How old do I look? app. Machine Learning enthusiasts can share their own experiments using the Azure Machine Learning Studio, a private space focused on Machine Learning experimentation and model creation.
The Cortana Analytics Gallery follows a micro service architecture with single purpose components working together to deliver reliable and durable functionality. This post focuses on the Gallery Catalog API, which is used as the data master within the Gallery user experience.
Gallery Catalog API
Every Gallery entity has a JSON metadata document stored in Azure DocumentDB and all CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) operations are against DocumentDB. As a micro service, the Gallery Catalog API provides REST APIs and supports OData; both of which were built through the ASP.NET library WebApi. Generally, the Catalog API pushes the query filters provided through ODATA directly down to the DocumentDB LINQ provider as an ExpressionTree, where it gets executed at the database.
The Gallery Catalog service exposes GET / POST / PATCH / DELETE operations on standard WebAPI routes, such as the generic route /entities/{entityId} and the specialized routes /experiments/{entityId}, /collections/{entityId}, /tutorials/{entityId}, etc.
The JSON objects in the REST API payload are simply the serialized form of the Catalog entity data contracts, derived from a common class EntityBase which provides the flexibility to store other entities.
Wednesdays With Will: Improving The Service In Customer Service
Wednesdays With Will: Improving The Service In Customer Service
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
In our last few installments, we touched on how your marketing and sales teams can more easily acquire new business by leveraging a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). As a business owner, you know that client acquisition is only half the battle. Once they become your customer, that’s when the real work starts. Sadly, this is often an overlooked aspect for some businesses which can lead to frustration for both the client and your own employees in supporting them. Today we are going to cover how you can help setup your customer support and customer service teams for success.
During the sales process, your marketing and sales team have set the expectations as to what will be delivered when a prospective customer becomes a client. As we all know, a promise is only as good as how well you are able execute it into reality. Sadly, there is a common tale of the chasm between what was promised by Marketing/Sales and what is delivered by Services. Worse, it will sometimes lead to finger pointing as to who is at fault…Marketing/Sales for overpromising or Services for under delivering. What if there was a way to mitigate if not prevent this from happening by having everyone on the same page.
In the previous blogs, we discussed the benefits of increased transparency and collaboration between your marketing and sales teams as you bring the prospective customer through the sales cycle. What if you could take it a step further to provide a streamlined handoff to your Services team? By leveraging a platform like Microsoft Dynamics CRM it is now possible. Under a single pane of glass, you are able to collaborate more easily between disparate teams (Marketing, Sales, Services, etc.) while coordinating enterprise-level support services. It enhances ease of use not only for your internal teams but also from the customer perspective. Let’s discuss how.
As I mentioned, there is often a disconnect between Marketing/Sales and Services. One of the most powerful aspects of collaboration is enhanced communication. If your Marketing/Sales team has a better understanding of what Services are capable of delivering, there is less chance of overpromising. If your Services team has a clear understanding of what the client is entitled to, it makes it easier for them to deliver or prepare and make adjustments accordingly.
Dynamics CRM provides your Services team with the tools to successfully deliver. A service agent will be able to view pertinent information regarding the account such as service entitlements, case history, customer service scripts, and context-based information. The context based information is pretty interesting because it uses machine learning to recommend information that would be most useful based on similar past experiences. Great time saver! Besides the information that is provided some of the tools include a Service Level Agreement (SLA) timer, a guided resolution process flow, and resource management/dispatch. What I love about the resource management/dispatch function is the ability to easily find the person with the correct skillset that is closest to the service destination. Another great time saver and a way to improve customer satisfaction.
Speaking of customer satisfaction, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help make your customer your greatest advocate. As times change so have the ways customers prefer to interact with their chosen partner. Did you know the average customer uses 3 or more different channels of engagement with a company today? Dynamics CRM is able to provide a consistent customer experience whether your client chooses to communication through web, chat, social, email, or phone. Giving the client the option to interact the way they feel most comfortable promotes a stronger dialogue.
Social media has given businesses a new level of insight as to how they are doing as an organization and how they are perceived. This is important because it allows you to rectify an error before it becomes “big news” and pinpoint areas of improvement. On the flipside, it also lets you know what you are doing great and why your clients appreciate you.
One of the most popular methods of customer support today is self-service. It makes complete sense as to why it has become the trend. With the increased popularity and use of internet search engines over the past 20 years, most people are more comfortable searching for an answer themselves vs asking for assistance. Microsoft has recognized this trend and recently incorporated a solution into Dynamics CRM. Clients now have access to the answers they are seeking regarding your product or service through a company branded online portal. Once again, it leverages machine learning so it provides recommended context based topics to assist as you type in your query. If you are unable to find the answer to your questions, you can easily create a new case in the same portal. It will then be answered, saved, and available for future use for others with the same question.
The last topic I would like to touch on is engagement experience and brand loyalty. A platform like Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help streamline how your internal teams work together and hopefully improve employee satisfaction and retention but that’s only half the story when it comes to Services. Having the ability to effectively assist your clients and for them to easily be assisted is the beginning of the story around brand loyalty. The more they enjoy interacting with your organization, the greater chance there is of them becoming not only a loyalist but an evangelist for your brand. This will often lead to new leads, opportunities, and sales generated by your clients!
There is much more to discuss when it comes to the Services portion of Dynamics CRM but I like to keep these articles short and to the point. As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
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Office 365 provides customers with a continuous stream of innovative features that provide significant productivity improvements while keeping information highly secure. We are working on resources and tools to help you leverage Office 365 information security features and controls, so you can manage security in your Office 365 tenant. The Office 365 Service Trust Portal (STP), launched earlier this year, is an example of a feature that provides deep insights into how Office 365 services are operated and independently audited.
Now we are pleased to present the customer security considerations (CSC) workbook that can be used to facilitate a quick review and implementation of the security controls available in Office 365. The CSC workbook is designed to provide you with information on key security and compliance features to consider when adopting, deploying and managing Office 365.
The CSC workbook, which currently is implemented as a Microsoft Excel workbook, is in preview. Your feedback will allow us to improve the CSC workbook for your business needs, and we hope to receive your feedback. Over time, the number of pivots will increase and additional compliance scenarios will be incorporated.
The CSC workbook contains two security-based pivots on the same set of features and information. One pivot is the Office 365 Customer Control Considerations section. Information in this section is organized into five scenarios listing the features that can be used to manage information security risks:
•Data Resiliency—Considerations for protecting and recovering information from potential data corruption.
•Access Control—Things to consider around managing identity and access control using Office 365 and Azure features.
•Data Leakage—Considerations around using encryption and controlling forwarding.
•Security and Compliance Investigations—Considerations for conducting compliance searches and forensics investigations, as well as logging and hold actions in Office 365.
•Incident Response and Recovery—Things to consider around security incident response and recovery.
In addition to these five scenarios, an all-up list of considerations is provided.
The second pivot is the Office 365 Risk Assessment Scenarios section. Information in this section is organized by risks/threats and how you will implement various controls to manage these risks:
•Malicious Customer Administrator
•Former Employee
•Credential Theft
•Malware
•Trusted Device Compromised
•Attacker Foothold
•Microsoft Operator
We hope that the CSC workbook provides you with quick information on how to help secure your Office 365 service with features/configurations that you manage. Based on the usage of this tool and your valuable feedback, we hope to expand the scope of considerations as appropriate and make it even more user friendly in the future.
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We enjoyed #collaborating with everyone today at the Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) in Arizona!
The Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) is a hands-on introduction to Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools. A true-to-life user experience, CIE takes you through everyday business situations, such as working remotely, analyzing sales data and collaborating with coworkers, and lets you see how Microsoft products make it all easy, convenient and secure.
This workshop will have you experience firsthand how you could utilize productivity tools to solve your biggest business challenges in a real-world setting.
Upcoming CIE Workshops
12/17 Orange County: Microsoft Technology Center3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600, Irvine CA
12/17 San Diego: Managed Solution Headquarters 9655 Granite Ridge Drive, Suite 550 San Diego, CA
Contact us Today!
Chat with an expert about your business’s technology needs.
Businesses that subscribe to this plan for their employees now have the option to turn on this tool and select one of the new predefined rules that, for example, automatically reject or quarantine any email that contains a social security or credit card number. Businesses can choose from these predefined rules and also set up custom detectors (a confidential project keyword, for example). Google says its working on adding more predefined rules, too.
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