Microsoft Flow is open for business around the world!
With your help and input during preview, Microsoft Flow is now ready to support business automation around the world in 42 languages and six regions.
Microsoft Flow will now be available in both free and paid service plans. As a special thank you, preview customers will receive a six-month free trial of our highest tier plan, Microsoft Flow Plan 2. If you’re an Office 365 or Dynamics 365 customer, Microsoft Flow comes with your license. Learn more about Microsoft Flow general availability (GA).
The release also includes new environment and connectivity features. Register for the Flow GA webinar to get a tour of what’s new and ask the Microsoft Flow team questions. Here are some feature highlights:
Manage your organization’s flows with enterprise-grade control using environments.
Use Environments to store your flows by geography or team.
Establish data-loss prevention policies to control the flow of data and the use of services within your organization.
Microsoft Flow offers more connectivity than ever—to Microsoft and third-party services.
Connect to 15 new services, including Basecamp 3, Bitly, Cognitive Services Text Analytics, Instapaper, and Pinterest.
Use Premium services like Salesforce and the Microsoft Common Data Service, which are exclusive to paid Microsoft Flow plans.
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 Microsoft solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
4 Reasons Windows 10 is the Right Classroom Technology for Your School
What's the point of implementing classroom technology? Is it to make the curriculum more fun and exciting, maybe it's to make teaching less tedious? While these two examples might be a true bi-product I don't think these were the main factors taken into consideration when a school board or CIO creates their technology strategy.
From my time writing about the K-12 IT environment I've realized that deploying classroom technology is about three main points:
Offering teachers, administrators and students tools to increase efficiency, transparency and organization
Creating a more interactive and more personalized learning environment
Preparing students to be responsible digital citizens ready for a technology driven society
From software to hardware there are new ed tech tools becoming available almost everyday and it's critical that school IT leaders keep up with what's available and potentially valuable for their schools.
Recently Microsoft released its next big operating system in Windows 10 and it’s a huge overhaul from Windows 8. The start button is back for starters, which is a clear indication that Microsoft is finally taking user feedback into consideration.
The biggest thing to note however is how some of the new Windows 10 features are perfectly suited for education, empowering both teachers and students to become better organized, more interactive and just flat out more productive.
To give you a better idea how Windows 10 can help position your school to take on new developments in digital learning, we’ve listed 4 reasons why Windows 10 is the right classroom technology for your school.
1. Better presentations with note sharing
The new Windows OS comes with a brand spanking new browser called Edge, which is faster and less resource-heavy.
Educators can also take advantage of the new Web Note feature that will allow them to scribble notes directly on the web page using a stylus or fingers. The pages can be shared easily with the class for more efficient presentations.
“Obviously this works best on a touchscreen Windows device like a Surface, but it works with a mouse too, and will be perfect for interactive whiteboards,” writes educator Jonathan Wylie.
Edge manages your reading list as well, so when using the app on a small tablet it becomes your eBook reader.
2. Augmented Reality in classrooms
Augmented Reality has been around for a while but not quite in classrooms. With Windows 10, students can have completely immersive experience through Hololens (Holograms).
There are enormous learning possibilities with AR. For one , students can model designs before construction. They can also take trips to virtually anywhere in the world and it would be like they’re right there.
AR combines the physical with the digital world and this in itself makes Windows 10 an invaluable tool that can inspire your students and teachers.
3. Every student’s new research assistant
Cortana is Microsoft's new personal digital assistant and with Windows 10 she has now come to desktops and notebooks. Students can call her up for different program features including helping with research projects and assignments.
Cortana will also make sure that students keep up with their daily tasks.
“Beyond reminding you of appointments, due dates, and traffic concerns Cortana really supports the execution of required academic tasks in the day. This is essential for students who need support in their executive functioning,” writes Martha Jez, the director of professional development programs at Fair Chance Learning.
Cortana is in the early stages of development, which means we will see more personalized learning opportunities for students in the future. Reports did mention that WindowsPhone integration is already available and Android and IOS compatibility will come soon.
4. Facial recognition for logins
When conducting online classes, it always takes a while to log everybody in and it can be very time consuming. Windows 10 takes care of that with Windows Hello.
Hello uses a 3D camera to authenticate users through facial recognition, shaving off a huge chunk of logging time.
However, you need RealSense 3D cameras installed for this special feature and at the moment the cameras are only available in a few configurations, including the HP Sprout.
In any case, you can opt to use a fingerprint scanner for log-ins without using a password.
This may be a “nice to have” feature right now but with how new technologies are popping up here and there, it wouldn’t surprise me if manually keying in passwords will be obsolete in the near future.
Productivity and inclusion—Office 365 accessibility update
By John Jendrezak as written on blogs.office.com
Over the past year, hundreds of engineers from the Office 365 team have been working hard to make progress towards the plans outlined in our 2016 accessibility roadmap. Key enhancements releasing this quarter bring us closer to two goals:
People with disabilities can communicate, consume and create content on any device.,/li>
Everyone can easily create content that is accessible for all people.
As we make Office 365 accessible by design and make it easy for everyone to create accessible content, we hope that people of all abilities will feel empowered to achieve more with our productivity technologies, have equal access to digital information and have fulfilling interactions with each other.
Here are some of the key accessibility improvements releasing this quarter:
Screen reader usability improvements in Word, Outlook and SharePoint
Narrator—our built-in screen reader—received several key updates as part of the recent Windows 10 anniversary update. These included new voices that can speak up to 800 words per minute, six levels of verbosity, so you can get varying indications of text properties and control over how much punctuation you hear, and verbal hints when automatic suggestions are available.
The Office 365 team continues to work closely with the Narrator team to enhance productivity experiences for screen reader users. While using the latest version of Word for the PC and Windows Store apps with Narrator, you might have already noticed improvements in documents with tables, lists, images and hyperlinks. With the latest version of Outlook for the PC, you will now find it easier to manage your calendar, use the Scheduling Assistant to set up a meeting with others, search for an email and set up signatures for your account. Learn more about accessibility enhancements in Outlook for PCs in this article and review this support article to get started with Narrator.
In SharePoint Online, you will notice improved screen reader experiences as the most used features have been made accessible by design. The new SharePoint home page in Office 365 includes headings for easy navigation across the major areas of the page, a new “search as you type” experience that alerts screen readers when there are matches found and improved navigation of sites by either table commands if using JAWS or arrow keys for all other screen readers.
Document Libraries now includes headings for easy navigation across the major areas of the page, keyboard shortcuts for all major functions that can be viewed in the app by pressing ? and the ability to navigate lists of files and folders using arrow keys similar to Windows Explorer. Screen reader users can now hear announcements when uploads are in progress and confirmations for actions within Document Libraries. Similar enhancements are coming in SharePoint Lists as well.
High Contrast mode allows people with vision impairments to see data more clearly
In May, I shared details about work underway to make Office 365 more usable with High Contrast themes on PCs, which is critical to ensure that the people with vision impairments, such as cataracts, can interact with data and commands in our applications with less eye strain. Since then, if you have been working in Excel Online on a PC with High Contrast enabled, you’ll notice that tables, active cell and cells-selection outlines are more visible, hyperlinks in sheets are respecting High Contrast theme colors and Sparkline, slicers, shapes and charts are rendered using High Contrast theme colors.
Proofing and Learning Tools enable people with dyslexia to read and write more effectively
Recently, we announced Editor, a cloud-based advanced proofing and editing service. People with dyslexia who have tried spell-checking with Editor have observed significant improvements, including the ability to find spelling corrections even when the misspelled word is very different from the intended word. More Editor enhancements are coming in the next few months for Word on PCs—all inspired by the needs of people with dyslexia and beneficial for everybody. In particular, Editor will make it easier to choose between suggested spellings for a misspelled word. Synonyms or definitions will be shown alongside suggestions and it will be possible to have both read aloud.
Recently, we also made Learning Tools for OneNote generally available. Learning Tools now gives you the ability to dictate text in Spanish, French, German and Italian and have text read back to you in multiple languages. Download Learning Tools for free and see if it transforms your reading experience as it did for these students with dyslexia.
Accessibility Checker available in Office for Mac and more
We know that some of you prefer to check and fix the accessibility of your content after you finish authoring it and find tools, such as the Accessibility Checker for Office on PCs, helpful to identify areas in your files with images or videos that are missing alternative text. You now have the ability to run the Accessibility Checker from more places including, Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Mac and Sway web and Windows Store apps. We are working to offer this capability for Word, Excel and PowerPoint Online apps and Outlook for PCs and Macs next. In apps where Accessibility Checker has been available for many years such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint for PCs, we are making it easier to discover and use.
Export as tagged PDF from Word for Mac and more
This month, we also made available a highly requested ask from the Microsoft Accessibility Forum: Word applications for Mac now give you the ability to export documents as tagged PDFs and will soon be in conformance with the PDF/UA standard. We are working to offer this capability for Excel and PowerPoint apps for Mac next.
Ways for you to get more information
Eager to learn more about Accessibility Enhancements in Office 365 in person? Join us at the Microsoft Ignite conference next month in Atlanta for these sessions on Office 365 Accessibility Enhancements, SharePoint Online Accessibility and Strategies for an Inclusive Workplace. (Sessions will also be recorded and available to stream online.)
Responsible for ensuring that the products your organization develops or purchases meet accessibility requirements? You can now get conformance statements that demonstrate how Office 365 applications such as Delve, OneDrive, Outlook, Publisher, SharePoint, Sway and Yammer conform to the accessibility criteria of modern accessibility standards via our new pages for WCAG 2.0 AA reports and EN 301 549 reports. Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates continue to be published at the existing page for US Section 508 VPATs. Reports for more Office 365 applications will be added to these pages in the coming months as we make progress towards our publicly committed plans to meet the requirements of modern accessibility standards across the suite by the end of 2016.
Interested in getting help with accessibility issues? Visit the new Office Accessibility Center to find support articles on creating accessible content with Office 365 applications on various platforms or on using Office 365 applications with specific assistive technologies. If you require further assistance, reach out to an accessibility specialist via the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk or Consumer Disability Answer Desk.
How you can get these enhancements
You can start leveraging the capabilities described in this post to make you digital environment more accessible and inclusive by getting Office 365. Many more accessibility enhancements are coming to Office 365 apps by the end of the year and you can be the first to get access to these by signing up for Office Insider or First Release options with Office 365.
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 Microsoft solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
Since last March, we have helped Windows users import 71 million Evernote pages to OneNote. Following the great feedback we received, we want to help even more people make the move. Today, we are launching the OneNote Importer tool for Mac. You may feel hesitant about moving all your notes from a place you know to a new online home. Don’t worry, the Importer tool makes moving day easy.
OneNote lets you work the way you want. You can get your ideas down in a range of ways that include typing, inking, embedding videos, recording audio or clipping web content. If you prefer to use paper and pen, you can even scan that content with OneNote to make it digital, searchable and available from your phone to your laptop. We’ve heard that many Evernote users rely heavily on their clipper. OneNote has a great clipper for all major browsers, available for free at OneNote.com/clipper. We upgrade it all the time, and you can read the OneNote July roundup for the latest updates.
OneNote lets you sync all your notes across all your devices—for free. It is part of the Office family and works seamlessly with Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint to help you stay organized, collaborate and get more done. Following Evernote’s recent price changes—their Premium offer ($69.99/year) is now the same price as Office 365 Personal ($69.99/year). Office 365 gives you OneNote, plus all the Office apps you know and love that are always up to date, and 1 TB of cloud storage.
How to migrate your notes from Evernote
To get started migrating your Evernote notes to OneNote, you will need:
A Mac with OS X 10.11+ (El Capitan). Once your Evernote notes are imported, they’ll sync across all your devices, including PC, iOS and Android, as well as web browsers—for free.
To speed up the migration process, it is recommended you have Evernote for Mac installed from the Evernote website. Sign in to Evernote for Mac with your Evernote account and make sure your latest notes are synced before importing.
Watch this short video to see how easy it is to use the OneNote Importer tool:
Download the OneNote Importer tool and visit our Support page for more information and step-by-step instructions. And don’t forget to send us feedback and ask questions at OneNote UserVoice or tweet us at @msonenote. The OneNote team wants to do everything possible to help you feel confident about choosing to try OneNote.
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Carvajal switches to Office 365 for faster business, reduced cost
Keep business information both accessible and safe—a challenge in any scenario, but especially difficult when you operate myriad business divisions in 15 countries. That’s what we face at Carvajal, where our divisions produce everything from office furniture and educational software to commercial printing and packaging. We also strive to make our large, diverse company operate as a cohesive organization. It can be tough to coordinate meetings and collaborate among 20,000 employees in so many different divisions dispersed throughout South and North America.
A few years ago, we decided to standardize our technology environment to make it easier to reach across geographic and divisional borders and unite our workforce. For example, we needed to consolidate all the different communications systems we’d been supporting and establish a more stable email infrastructure that would help us reduce hardware and administration costs. So we moved from our range of on-premises software to Google Apps.
But we soon found that employees had to take extra steps to accomplish their work. This was due to the lack of integration between our Google solutions and our Microsoft systems, particularly Microsoft Office, which employees depend on for daily productivity. For example, employees encountered issues when they tried to publish documents because their formatting didn’t stay consistent, and they struggled to find ways to collaborate efficiently. We knew we needed to make a change, and in 2015, we chose to migrate to Microsoft Office 365 and completed our migration successfully with help from Microsoft Services Premier Support.
Switching from Google Apps to Office 365 has been a savvy move for Carvajal. We saw right away how much easier it is now for employees everywhere to share information and work together using any device. We’re implementing workflow processes in Microsoft SharePoint Online and taking advantage of Office 365 Groups to help us streamline our operations even further. And it doesn’t matter whether employees are working from an office or hotel, a smartphone or a traditional computer—they stay productive no matter what. Plus, our employees are happy to be back using Microsoft Outlook, which is where they’re most comfortable working. The best part is that everything interoperates in a way that supports connected teamwork.
There are plenty of reasons why we’re pleased that we adopted Office 365, most of which relate to companywide collaboration and efficiency. We appreciate that now we’re able to extend the number of attendees on our video calls using Skype for Business, because greater employee input gives us the opportunity to make more informed decisions. We also plan to expand use of our Yammer corporate social network to make it simple for all our business divisions to share best practices, comment on projects and tap into the company’s full knowledge base for fast answers to problems.
Our IT staff members are as happy with Office 365 as their colleagues. For example, they spend far less time now on hardware and software administration, focusing instead on new projects that support the business. The company also benefits from having more secure data in an environment that complies with important international standards. That’s significant to us because we operate in so many industries in which it’s critical to adhere to regulations, and we count on Microsoft to help keep us protected and compliant.
We’re making it easier for employees to communicate with each other and collaborate on a huge array of projects. Ultimately, that helps us develop products quicker and be more responsive to our customers and their needs. That’s smart business.
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.
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Stay connected wherever work takes you
As written on blogs.office.com
If you ever travel for business or work remotely, like 23 percent of U.S. employees do, you rely on communication tools to stay in touch with your partners and clients whether you’re inside or outside the office. You need the most up-to-date technology to ensure your work isn’t limited by location or circumstance, but what should you look for in your communication tools?
Here’s our list of five non-negotiable features:
You’re easy to get ahold of—Want to make it easier for people to connect with you no matter where you are? Use your email signature to let others contact you directly, be it cellphone, a remote office number or an online number. With Office 365, you can make your Outlook signature phone number link directly to your Skype for Business address. Your information will be linked automatically, so others can instantly communicate with you in real-time. Read this TechNet article to find out how to create a TEL:// or SIP:// link in your signature.
Take calls from the device that is easiest for you—While constantly on the go, collaboration isn’t limited to your office. You may need to start a call or presentation in your office before transferring to your cellphone to wrap it up on the road. Skype for Business allows you to do so without disrupting your workflow. If you’re on a call or presenting from your computer but have to leave the office, Skype for Business enables you to seamlessly transition your conversation across devices. You can either change the device connected to the PC or transfer to mobile.
Run presentations and share your applications with ease—Running a meeting with remote participants can be tricky, especially when you’re giving a presentation. You shouldn’t have to compromise a quality voice connection for a simple screen share—nor should you feel the need to run a meeting across multiple platforms. Skype for Business makes the process as simple as possible by letting you share PowerPoint slide shows directly in a meeting. No need to worry about sharing files and emailing links, you can just focus on your presentation.
Record meetings—Not sure about some of those key points that were mentioned during your call? Or was a colleague or partner not present? Multimedia recording features should always be included with business-class communication tools. With Office and Skype for Business, you can record and replay presentations and video, so any of those details that might have been missed are always a click away.
Communicate with those outside your organization—It’s unlikely everyone you talk to outside your company will use the same communication tools as you, so it’s important to look for a tool that offers ease of use for guests. Fortunately, connecting with non-Skype for Business users is not a problem. Accessing the conference or meeting as a guest is simple, and the security and robust features the host relies on remain standard.
Several barriers to communication and collaboration can arise when you’re working outside the office. Fortunately, Skype for Business can help. It’s more than just a video chat option; it has the features to keep you connected and make work as accessible as possible.
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Turning business process into business advantage for organizations everywhere
Today, we are taking the first step to bring our customers new, modern, enterprise-ready intelligent business apps with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource.
Technology is transforming our personal lives with apps and services that are simple and intuitive, and deliver helpful assistance to improve our lives.
In contrast the apps and services we use to drive business process are often difficult to use, try and deploy. Some even make you pay extra for capabilities like visualization, workflow automation and predictive insights.
We imagine a better world for business users everywhere. One where you can track leads, automate field service, drive sales and improve operations using modern, mobile, enterprise-ready intelligent business apps from the cloud that are as easy to use as the consumer apps that help us all get rides, book rooms, listen to music and take actions to improve our health.
Helping customers transform with a new approach to business process
Available this fall, Microsoft Dynamics 365 evolves our current CRM and ERP cloud solutions into one cloud service with new purpose-built apps to help manage specific business functions, including: Financials, Field Service, Sales, Operations, Marketing, Project Service Automation and Customer Service.
Dynamics 365 apps are designed so they can be easily and independently deployed. That means you can start small and pay only for what you need. Yet they work together seamlessly so, as your business demands, you can grow into additional capabilities with ease. They include built-in insights, predictive intelligence and workflow optimization, all of which will be delivered through simple, easy-to-use, mobile experiences with offline capabilities.
Power BI and Cortana Intelligence will be natively embedded to help customers achieve their business goals with predictive insights, prescriptive advice and actionable next steps.
For example, Cortana Intelligence will enable cross-sell recommendations to help sales reps predict which products and services a customer will need. Access to IoT data inside Dynamics 365 for Field Service will enable preemptive action from field service agents by connecting asset monitoring and anomaly detection so they can take action before failures occur, avoiding costly customer service issues.
Deep integration between Dynamics 365 and Office 365 will connect the structured workflow of business apps with the unstructured work of collaboration and productivity.
For example, a sales person receives an email, and can respond directly in Office with a quote that is created based on information from both Finance and Sales apps, stored back to the right app, with right pricing, discounting, etc. All without the user having to leave Outlook.
Adapt and innovate in real-time with a common data model and extensible business application platform. Dynamics 365 apps will:
Use a common data model, shared with Office 365, to simplify data management and integration across apps and business processes.
Offer tech-savvy business customers/analysts, aka “citizen developers,” (using PowerApps, Power BI and Microsoft Flow) and professional developers (using Azure platforms services) a consistent business platform they can use to compose new apps and easily extend and modify existing ones.
Come with connectors that let you integrate with applications and services from Microsoft and our partners – including custom APIs and on-premises systems.
A place to find new apps and better ways to get things done
We are also introducing Microsoft AppSource – Microsoft’s new destination for business users to find and try out line-of-business SaaS apps from Microsoft and our partners. At launch AppSource contains more than 200 business SaaS apps, add-ins and content packs, including exclusive new industry-specific business apps from:
AFS™ “Retail Execution” – An end-to-end solution for CPG organizations to use as they engage with their customers in the field, covering visit and merchandising, sales, asset management and audit as well as a full suite of BI and analytics.
AvePoint “Citizen Services” – Government organizations can automate incident reporting, response and resolution, so employees can solve issues faster and serve citizens better.
Veripark “Next Best Action” – Financial institutions can maximize the lifetime value of each customer and deliver a first-class customer-centric experience by making the right offer, at the right time, via the right channel.
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 Microsoft Solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
Microsoft Flow is open for business around the world! 
Keep business information both accessible and safe—a challenge in any scenario, but especially difficult when you operate myriad business divisions in 15 countries. That’s what we face at Carvajal, where our divisions produce everything from office furniture and educational software to commercial printing and packaging. We also strive to make our large, diverse company operate as a cohesive organization. It can be tough to coordinate meetings and collaborate among 20,000 employees in so many different divisions dispersed throughout South and North America.
