Introducing SharePoint content services

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Introducing SharePoint content services

By Chris McNulty as written on 
Our pivot to content services began at Ignite 2016 in Atlanta, where we presented a breakout session on SharePoint ECM. You can watch the entire session below:

Shaping and controlling content from creation to final disposition means many different things. We think it’s important to define our terms. Enterprise content management needs to adopt a holistic approach to managing the entire lifecycle of document creation, sharing, consumption, reuse, knowledge and records management, archiving and disposal.
That’s why we believe it’s time to reflect the changes in how content is created, shared, sustained and reused. Content services reflect a more focused suite of empowered capabilities than traditional ECM, and represent the next wave in ECM.
Content services is people-centric, allowing for personal management (copy, move, hashtag) and organizational management (knowledge management, record retention, information lifecycle management). Policy and security protects content at all phases of its life. It’s a core tenet that content should supply business value throughout, instead of after-the-fact management of dormant assets.
What happens when all that content comes into SharePoint? A common, incorrect impression of SharePoint has been that it’s a great tool to manage team content, but you need an “old-fashioned ECM system for scalability” or “true records management.” Neither of those are true today, with SharePoint having incredible scalability of up to 30-trillion documents and up to 12.5 EB in a single SharePoint Online tenant. OneDrive and SharePoint also inherit our Office 365 capabilities to create record and retention policy tags that can be applied to any content (interactively or by matching a known set of content fingerprints).

Principles of content services—create, coordinate, protect and harvest

Content services is as much about document creation as consumption. In many cases, content has become less about static images and reports, and more about dynamic documents that are created and edited many times in their lifespans. This trend is something we call content velocity, where the content picks up velocity as it is created, edited and reused, becoming more valuable, instead of becoming a dormant archive of little value, as was traditionally the case. We view this as an evergreen cycle of authoring, collaboration, control and reuse.

Create

Content velocity means documents need to be “born” managed. Newer SharePoint and OneDrive capabilities are designed to support this:
OneDrive for Business is the best place to store and manage your documents, giving you the “My Documents” concept on any device. As you share and collaborate with others, content evolves and picks up velocity. When final, you can easily bring it to SharePoint for publishing and permanent storage.

Coordinate

Content in SharePoint is maintained in modern document libraries, making it easy to structure graphically rich, dynamic views of content and metadata. SharePoint’s managed metadata service provides a centralized way to tag and classify information. Tagging and customizing the view can all be accomplished from the library home screen, eliminating multiple clicks to open a property editing screen.
Documents in libraries can be easily shared to Office 365 Groups, and reused in other collaborative apps like Microsoft Teams. In addition, Microsoft Flow can be used to automate common actions, like collecting attachments from email or distributing documents for team review.

Protect

SharePoint already builds on a long tradition of capabilities supporting information lifecycle governance, records management and eDiscovery. Newer capabilities, developed as part of our ongoing engagement with the entire Office 365 suite, include:
Learn more about our approach to content security in SharePoint and OneDrive by downloading the white paper “File Security in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business.”

Harvest

Content shouldn’t be saved and stored and managed just to fill up storage space. Traditional ECM often concludes with document disposal or retention. We believe that modern content services are cyclical. Content exists to support a future business purpose, such as providing information on a related decision, explaining a historic context or seeding the next cycle of content creation.

Summary

We recognize that effective adoption of SharePoint content services takes some time. At Ignite, we also presented a section on best practices for traditional ECM and modern content services. Please see today’s blog post on the Microsoft Tech Community for more details.
We appreciate the consideration given to our tools by analysts—like Forrester—and are honored that many enterprises are choosing SharePoint as the foundation for content services and digital workplace transformation. We’re already at work planning our next generation of SharePoint content services solutions, and can’t wait to share more with you later this year at our SharePoint Virtual Summit in May 2017 and at Ignite 2017.
SharePoint has long been a strategic platform for collecting and servicing all sorts of content across the enterprise. As part of our ongoing reinvention of SharePoint started in 2016, we’ve begun rolling out enhancements to optimize use and management of content throughout the entire information lifecycle.
We’ll have many more exciting innovations throughout 2017.

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Skype for Business drives digital transformation

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Skype for Business drives digital transformation

By Ron Markezich as written on blogs.office.com
Office 365 is a universal toolkit for collaboration with more than 85 million monthly active users, designed to address the unique workstyle of every group. Through integration with Outlook for email, SharePoint for intelligent content management, Yammer for networking across the organization, and Microsoft Teams for high-velocity, chat-based teamwork—Skype for Business is the backbone for enterprise voice and video meetings in Office 365.
As communication and collaboration become increasingly vital to the way work gets done, customers are turning to Skype for Business in Office 365 for all of their conferencing and calling needs. People around the globe conduct over one billion meetings per year on the Skype network, and usage of Skype for Business Online has doubled in the last year.
Today, as the annual unified communications industry conference Enterprise Connect kicks off in Orlando, we’re pleased to announce several new enhancements and partner solutions for Skype for Business in Office 365, which advance our goal of putting communication at the heart of productivity with Skype:
“Skype for Business Online is becoming part of our DNA.”
—Menakshi Sehwani, regional IT business partner for J. Walter Thompson Europe

A complete, enterprise-grade communications solution

This week, we’re releasing Auto Attendant and Call Queues, two new advanced calling features in Skype for Business Cloud PBX. Auto Attendant provides an automated system to answer and route inbound calls using dial pad inputs and speech recognition. Call Queues enable incoming calls to be routed to the next available live attendant in the order they are received.
This continues the rapid innovation over the past six months we have released into the service including:
With Skype for Business, companies can replace their legacy meeting and phone systems, and enable their employees to join meetings, as well as to make, receive and manage calls right within Office 365—all on any device. Skype for Business Cloud PBX also provides central management within the Office 365 admin console, making it seamless for IT admins to manage communications alongside email, content and collaboration.

Simplified manageability and control for IT

Today, we are also announcing a preview of Skype for Business Online Call Analytics—a new dashboard in the Office 365 admin console that gives IT admins greater visibility to identify and address user call issues, such as network issues or headset problems. Customers tell us some of the greatest benefits of moving their communications to the cloud are the ability to consolidate all their meeting and calling systems into a single solution and streamline provisioning and administration. Customers have also asked for more visibility into calling data to help address user support inquiries. Call Analytics provides rich telemetry data in real-time to help IT admins troubleshoot issues and improve the user experience.
In addition to investing in IT management capabilities like the Call Analytics dashboard, we also released new authentication capabilities to enhance security in Skype for Business Online, including multi-factor authentication for PowerShell, certificate-based authentication, and custom policies for client conferencing and mobility.
“We want IT at Henkel to be an enabler for the digital world of the future,
and with features like Cloud PBX in Skype for Business, we live up to that role.”
—Markus Petrak, corporate director of Integrated Business Solutions for Henkel

Making meeting rooms more effective

For meetings to be as effective and engaging as possible for all participants—no matter their location—groups need web and video conferencing with features like screen sharing, IM and whiteboarding. At the same time, organizations want to take advantage of the full Skype for Business experience while leveraging their existing conferencing assets. Today, Polycom announced their RealConnect for Office 365 video interoperability cloud service will be generally available in North America in April. The RealConnect service enables customers to connect existing videoconferencing (VTC) devices to Skype for Business Online, at a low cost of ownership, and with ease of provisioning for IT and simplicity for users.
“Polycom RealConnect for Office 365 simplifies the video world by connecting Skype for Business online users with those using other video systems,” said Mary McDowell, Polycom CEO. “This cloud service protects customers’ investments in existing video systems as it allows these users to join a Skype for Business meeting with a single click.”
In addition, this week Crestron is introducing its SR for Skype Rooms Systems solution. As a next-generation Skype Room System, the Crestron SR will deliver a full native Skype for Business experience and has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate with the Crestron control and AV systems. These Skype Rooms System solutions transform conference rooms of all sizes by providing rich audio and HD video and content sharing in the room. Remote participants have quick and easy join-meeting functionality and the ability to make phone calls. Customers are already seeing benefits from the Logitech SmartDock that was shipped in October of 2016.
“User adoption is critical for our IT success, and Logitech SmartDock with
Skype Room Systems makes it easy to collaborate over video.
The fact that it is highly affordable enables us to light up multiple rooms
for the price of a single traditional video conference room.”
—Franzuha Byrd, director of IT for Morgan Franklin Consulting

Business solutions on Skype for Business

Just as Skype for Business powers communication across Office 365, our partners and customers are taking advantage of Skype for Business APIs and SDKs to develop custom apps that bring real-time communications capabilities into line of business applications and enterprise solutions.
At HIMSS, we announced the availability of the Skype for Business App SDK and Office 365 Virtual Health Templates.Today, we’re pleased to announce that Enghouse has released its TouchPoint Attendant, one of the first attendant consoles tailored for Skype for Business Online.
From Enghouse, which is using Skype for Business to more efficiently route inbound customer calls with its new attendant console, to Smartsheet, which has incorporated Skype for Business into their collaborative work management platform, companies are making Skype for Business the backbone of custom communications scenarios.

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Hendrick Motorsports drives collaboration to the finish line with Microsoft Teams

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Hendrick Motorsports drives collaboration to the finish line with Microsoft Teams

By Matthew Cochoran as written on blogs.office.com
At Hendrick Motorsports, we look at IT as a competitive advantage. And it’s my job to support the company’s goals with the right technology. When Mr. Hendrick says he wants everyone—pit crews, engineers, accountants, mechanics—to work together to win NASCAR championships, we use Microsoft Teams to achieve that goal.
Most fans watching a race think it’s all about the car and the driver. But behind that combination is a ton of data, and the real question becomes how quickly we can consume and act on information to make race-winning decisions that give us a competitive edge. At the track, there’s not only adrenaline, but there’s a lot of noise, power issues and radio interference—so a lot of this collaboration has to be text driven. The persistent chat-based workspaces we get with Microsoft Teams are perfect on pit road.
In Talladega, Alabama, we have to make race strategy decisions for two of our cars. If we have a long green flag stint, when do we stop each car and take on gas and tires? The people on top of the pit box for both car crews use laptops running Windows 10 and Microsoft Teams to communicate so we don’t lose time due to a single car drag coefficient. And we can do that all without breaking radio silence, so we are not giving away secrets to the other competitors. Unlike most organizations that are separated from their competition across the city or the country, our competition is within feet of us, week in, week out. Microsoft Teams is based on the security features built into Office 365 and Windows 10, and that’s critical to keeping our competitive advantage.
Nowadays we have live radar on top of the pit box, and if we see a rainstorm coming, we get that information into Teams and chat about stopping before the race is halfway over. The reason being if the rain holds off until the race goes beyond the halfway mark, then it’s an official race, and we want to run it as if it’s not going to be canceled. Before Teams, we would send runners back and forth to a central radar location.
The communication that goes on during a race extends from the pit box to the people sitting in our transporters in the garage area to our complex in Concord, North Carolina. We have race engineers and crew chiefs devoted to individual car teams along pit road collaborating in Teams workspaces and making decisions that are relayed directly into the ears of the driver.
Then you have the crew members entering data into Teams, such as tire wear information, miles per gallon and how much fuel got added to a car. Race engineers and team managers back in the transporters watch the event, monitor communication and relay that information via Teams, straight to our personnel.
Back in Concord, there are people in the shop or conference rooms all signed in to Teams workspaces. They monitor the race to record events that the people at the track might miss in the moment. We use this to compile valuable historical data that we review later to make decisions for future races.
Everywhere you look, Hendrick Motorsports is using Microsoft Teams to fulfill Mr. Hendrick’s vision. We’re bringing the company together to help produce winning results.

Working Abroad: Keeping Track of Time with Office 365

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Working Abroad

Keeping Track of Time with Office 365

By Kelly Cronin
Time flies when you're having fun. Time also flies when you're studying abroad, when you're taking seven classes, when you're visiting five cities in seven days, and when you have a thousand tasks to catch up on. Staying on top of everything you need to do can be a challenge no matter where you are.  With so many constant activities (and distractions), keeping track of time while you work abroad can seem almost impossible.  Working with productivity tools from Office 365 can make time management a whole lot easier.

Outlook Calendar

The Outlook calendar can be accessed online, on your desktop, and on your Outlook mobile app. So there is never really an excuse to not keep up with it.  I even checked my calendar to see what day St. Patrick's Day falls on while hiking the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland! One of the most difficult parts of working in a different country is managing the time differences.  The Outlook calendar automatically switches the time to whatever timezone you are in. If you want to contact your co-workers, you can view their calendar and see exactly when they are having meetings, without having to try and add or subtract however many hours ahead or behind you are.  Now you can avoid all those time-difference errors that are both embarrassing and stressful.

 

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Teams

One of my best motivations to staying on track with tasks is knowing how much I'm helping out my team.  Microsoft Teams promotes collaboration through easy-to-use productivity tools.  If I don't want to e-mail my boss at 2am, I can post in our Teams page so she can see it whenever she has time.  That way our messages aren't getting lost in the vortex of unread emails. Teams also separates conversations into different categories, so I can easily see exactly which topic I am discussing. More organization? Yes please!

 

 

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On Teams, you can also have individual conversations with your co-workers. Use the "Chat" feature to talk one-on-one with team members. You can also save certain conversations so they show up in a list of your saved conversations, favorite different teams, and view both your own recent activity and Team activity. Plus Microsoft Teams is available on your mobile device, making it available anywhere! Collaboration from a different continent is what we like to hear.

Want to see what other Microsoft Solutions can help your workplace boost productivity from anywhere? Click Here

Collaborate on Files From Anywhere

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Collaborate on Files From Anywhere

As written on products.office.com

Store, sync, and share files simply

Always have the latest version of files

Having your files stored online makes it easy to store, organize, and share them, so you can work on documents with teammates, share reports with business partners, or connect with customers. Your files are always up to date, so everyone has access to the latest version.

Get room for all your files

With 1 TB of personal document storage, you can store all your files online and access them anywhere from your PC/Mac or your iOS, Android™, or Windows device.

Share with anyone you choose

You can share files inside and outside your company. You always control access.

 

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Share internally and externally

You control access to files

In our networked world, file sharing isn’t restricted to inside the office. But inside or out, you control who sees and edits each file. And you can create, edit, and review with others to avoid back-and-forth hassles and save time in the process.

Work together on the same file

No more emailing documents around and losing track of the latest version. Easily add, respond to, and track comments and status updates on one version of the document.

The power of social networking

Social networking enhances collaboration and sparks innovation. Get updates on documents and sites delivered automatically.

 

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Keep your projects coordinated

Help teams stay in sync

Keep everyone up to date and working together as a team. Office 365 gives you many different ways to help ensure that everyone can find exactly the files they need fast and that all team members are moving forward together.

Build a team library

Keep project emails and shared documents together in one place with a project-specific mailbox only team members can access, so no time is wasted searching for what you need.

Create a team site

You control access to your team site. And with automatic policies, rights protection, and archiving, you can safeguard your team assets.

Introducing guest access for Office 365 Groups

Introducing guest access for Office 365 Groups

By Christophe Fiessinger as written on blogs.office.com
Sometimes you need to work closely with customers, partners, suppliers or consultants outside of your organization, and you need collaboration tools to make this possible. Today, we are pleased to announce the new guest access feature for Office 365 Groups—the group membership service that provides a single identity for teams in Office 365. The new guest access feature gives you the ability to include people outside of your company in an Office 365 group.
We are rolling out guest access functionality in phases. Starting today, group owners can add guests to a group in Outlook on the web. Once added, guests receive a welcome email, are granted access to group files in SharePoint Online, begin receiving email messages and calendar invites sent to the group, and can send messages to the group. They also have automatic access to cloud-based file attachments. Guests have the option to leave the group at any time and visual indicators remind all members of guest participation in the group across all Outlook experiences.

Office Groups GIF

Guest access works for any email accounts including corporate and consumer domains (such as Outlook.com or Gmail.com). If the guest email identity is associated with a Microsoft account (such as Office 365 or Outlook.com accounts, for instance), the user is directed to a sign-in page to identify themselves. If the guest doesn’t have a Microsoft account, they will be directed to a sign-up page to create an account.

6 Reasons Team Collaboration Should Be at the Top of Your 2017 To-Do List

 

6 Reasons Team Collaboration Should Be at the Top of Your 2017 To-Do List

 

By Anita Campbell as written on enterprise.microsoft.com
According to a recent informal poll on Twitter, 41% of business owners think that team collaboration is the top benefit of the cloud.
Anita_2017
While it may be an informal poll, it helps demonstrate the importance other business owners place on team collaboration.
But what’s behind that belief?  Lots of good reasons.
Here are six reasons you should make team collaboration a major priority.

Drive More Efficiency

Team collaboration can help your business achieve more in less time by working from anywhere allowing you to be mobile while still having access to important tools and files. For example, say you’re at the airport on your way to an important meeting.
Without the proper tools, catching up with that extra work you had back at the office is out of the question and sitting around at the airport is just wasted time.
But what if you could access all those important files and work on them from your smartphone or tablet? They’re not sitting on your office computer. They’re in the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere.
Or say you’re filling in for a co-worker who’s out on vacation. You’re helping a few of her clients and without the cloud might not have access to their files. But with cloud technology those files are all available to anyone in your company, which makes jumping in a breeze.

Manage Employees

Hiring remote workers can help your business find the best employees because you’re not bound by geography. It also gives team members a level of flexibility many employees are looking for in a workplace today.
But if you’re not in the same office as someone on a day-to-day basis, managing and working together can be difficult.
Cloud collaboration tools can be absolutely vital with distributed teams — or even for people who work down the hall.
With team collaboration tools in the cloud like Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace for Office 365 and others, you can work on projects together, communicate back and forth, assign different tasks and check on your team’s progress.

Increase Profit for the Business

Team collaboration also allows you to potentially increase your business’s profits. Think about it – if you’re able to cut down on inefficiencies around your office and allow each of your team members to focus on what they do best, your business is likely to get more done. And when you’re not spending all that extra time on those tasks, you can focus on things that actually move your business forward.
For example, David Smith, Microsoft’s VP of worldwide SMB sales shared a case study about Holwick Constructors in a recent Twitter chat. According to Smith, the company was spending about 12 unnecessary hours on IT each week. But when it began utilizing the cloud for team collaboration, all that recouped time led to an estimated $2 million in additional business.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

When you’re able to increase efficiency among your employees, it can also lead to an improved experience for your customers. For example, if you have just a few employees who are in charge of customer service, they might not be able to dedicate as much time as they’d like to each customer or situation. However, if you have a team collaboration system in place like Outlook Customer Manager, it can streamline your team’s communication and spread out some of the tasks necessary in order to provide great service to every customer.
In fact, many businesses have already found that technology like cloud-based collaboration tools have helped them improve customer satisfaction. According to another tweet from Smith, 44 percent of small business owners surveyed said that cloud and mobile technology has led to increased satisfaction among their customers.

Streamline Your Communications

With a team collaboration system in place, your team members never have to wonder about how they should go about contacting you or another member of the team. In other cases, an employee with a question or idea might have to consider whether they should email you, set up an appointment or share their concerns in another way.
But if you have a system like Skype for Business in place, where everyone on your team can work together and stay in contact, it can make sharing ideas or concerns a lot easier for everyone. This can save everyone on your team time, both when they have questions or concerns and when they have to answer questions or concerns from others.

Make Employees More Satisfied

When your employees are able to work together seamlessly and do work that is well suited to their particular set of skills, it can make the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. And that can lead to increased job satisfaction throughout your team.
There are many tangible benefits to having happier employees. Those who are satisfied with their jobs are likely to be more productive and engaged at work. And they’re also likely to stick around for longer periods of time, meaning you can potentially even reduce employee turnover and save on HR costs. It’s a win-win!

NGA Human Resources builds a more engaging employee experience with move to Office 365

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NGA Human Resources builds a more engaging employee experience with move to Office 365

By Russell Sheldon, chief information officer, senior vice president for HR consulting, application services and global technology, as written on blogs.office.com.
At NGA Human Resources (NGA HR), the way we engage with our employees—and what we believe it takes to be a great employer—centers around building a positive employee experience. This is what we do on a daily basis for our customers, and it’s equally true for our internal operations.
When new employees join the business, regardless of location or job function, it is vital that they feel part of our global organization. (We operate in more than 35 countries, serving customers in more than 145 countries in 25 languages.) All employees need to be connected, engaging in the company culture that drives our success as a business.
In the digital economy, technology, location and time zones should not be a barrier to productivity. Given our global presence, using technology that promotes worldwide collaboration is critical. In turn, collaboration and the sharing of ideas are paramount to fostering talent. We enact our belief that employees everywhere should feel connected to their organization and that they should be able to work as easily together as they do individually.
Our corporate objective is to make HR work better for businesses. To do this, we have to make the workplace a great place for people to work. For example, we rely on the same HR and payroll platform internally that we use to empower millions of our customers’ employees around the world.
As a business and a services provider, NGA HR has a policy of investing in innovative technologies that drive business efficiencies and improve the employee experience, while continuing to adhere to the strictest compliance requirements.
That is why, when our G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) contract came up for renewal, we took the time to evaluate what we require as a global organization. We reviewed the market for cloud-based business tools that would help us achieve the scope of global collaboration and individual productivity that we want for our employees, yet still maintain the highest level of data security.
We selected Microsoft Office 365 and migrated our back-office applications and internal collaboration platform from Google to Office 365. We believe that Office 365 presents more aligned business services that will make it easier for us to grow, develop, and most importantly, retain our talent. Employees want to work for an organization that uses technology to improve their work experience so they can collaborate and innovate more effectively to contribute to its growth. This is the inherent value of effective business productivity tools.
A perfect example comes from our chief executive officer, Adel Al-Saleh. Today, he uses Skype for Business Online to host video calls with our 300 global leaders, something that was not possible before. Now the leadership team meets more frequently, using interactive virtual discussions to speed decision making on a global scale. I run a team of approximately 2,000 people around the world. I use Skype for Business Online to connect in real time with 30 of my senior managers, dramatically reducing the time and cost of business travel and freeing up my time and budget for allocation to more strategic requirements. Also, now that we can rely on the de facto industry standard for office collaboration, our commercial teams are responding to RFPs and collaborating on documents more efficiently than ever.
Because Microsoft includes intuitive collaborative capabilities throughout Office 365, it’s easy to be productive. You can kick off a Skype for Business Online call from your inbox and access all Office documents from any device. Now mobile employees stay in touch with work using minimal effort.
The fact that we had more than 8,000 employees regularly active on our Yammer enterprise social network just four weeks after we went live demonstrates that Google was not addressing the need we had for companywide collaboration. Today, we have listened to our employees, and we are providing them with the same ease of communication and access to data that they are used to at home.
Also, with Office 365, we can maintain a hybrid environment. This is hugely advantageous to us when working with customers whose data cannot leave their geographic borders. NGA HR manages the payroll data of millions of employees around the world every year, so we take data security very seriously. We can assure all customers that Office 365 meets our internal compliance mandate and European data privacy standards. It adheres to the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (A29WP) opinion on cloud computing around basic principles of transparency, purpose limitation, data retention, access and disclosure restriction. We also took into consideration the positive opinion of A29WP on the Microsoft Cloud business solution, in line with European data transfer and protection clauses.
Our relationship with Microsoft got off to an incredible start with the highly successful implementation of Office 365. Thanks to the close collaboration among NGA HR, the Microsoft FastTrack team and Microsoft partner Content and Code, we migrated 8,000 employees across the globe, with all their data, in just 12 weeks.
The deployment and change management expertise of the FastTrack team helped us meet our strict deadline, imposed by the expiration of the Google contract, with comfortable breathing space. With a minimal learning curve, everyone in the organization is more mobile, connected and agile. The feedback from employees is positive, and we are already seeing great results. Today, NGA HR is looking forward to even greater collaboration and localization of our global business.