5 Things to Learn in Office 365 for Back to School
Whether you’re an eager student, a busy teacher, or an on-the-go parent, Office 365 has tools that can help make the transition back to school easier. Many children and adults have already begun their school years, but it’s still beneficial to take a few moments to brush up on some of these skills. Read on for tips with time management, presentation creation, and more.
Download and install the full versions of Office 2013 apps
If your version of Office 365 comes with full 2013 installation, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of it. Some plans come with up to five installs so you can use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and more across all your devices. While using Office Online is sufficient for many students, being able to use the familiar and full-featured 2013 versions of the Office suite applications can be beneficial.
Create to do lists in OneNote to manage your work
Creating checklists is a built-in capability of OneNote that you can use for all sorts of different things. Perhaps the most obvious use is a to do list, and in fact, the checkbox is actually called a To Do tag in OneNote. You can use this tag throughout a OneNote page; it doesn’t have to be used only in a line-by-line list format. For example, you may take lecture notes and use the To Do tag to flag and track pieces of information to follow up on.
Master the art of the PowerPoint
It can be challenging and intimidating to create a PowerPoint presentation that is informative, effective, and attractive. But you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create beautiful PowerPoint slides as long as you keep in mind a few key tips. You’re sure to encounter a situation where you need to create an effective presentation as the school year kicks into gear. Click the link above to visit our post containing a plethora of PPT pointers.
Get comfortable with Word collaboration
One of the most significant components of the evolution of the Microsoft Office Suite in recent history is the inclusion of collaboration and co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (Online versions, specifically). Working together in these programs is a large part of many academic projects. Check out the video above and the linked post for more on collaborating in Word Online for essays, lab reports, and more.
Back up your files in OneDrive for Business
If you’re using Office 365, you should be syncing your files with OneDrive for Business. Not only does it allow you to access and work on documents from anywhere, it’s also a backup method. Most of your files will be synced manually once the ODfB sync client is installed, but you can check out the video above to learn how to perform a manual sync if necessary, and navigate to find your OneDrive for Business files on a PC.
Office 365 incentives are back - with a new core benefit via SHI
Details of the next round of incentives for Office 365 (O365) adoption have been released, and there’s one big change for customers.
Microsoft has unveiled the Fiscal Year 2016 incentives, which will kick in for customers who purchase new licenses after Sept. 1 of this year, in order to spur O365 adoption and deployment. For customers who purchase O365 licenses from July 1 through Aug. 31, a bridge period with similar benefits is available as well.
Here is what you need to know about this year’s FastTrack offer, and why you should prepare your IT environment before you contact Microsoft.
Remember those incentives?
This isn’t the first go-round of O365 incentives. They’re very similar to benefits Microsoft offered last year, with a few tweaks.
Historically, because the previous fiscal year’s FastTrack offering expired on June 30 and the next incentive round didn’t begin until September, customers that purchased O365 licenses in July and August found themselves in limbo. To remedy that problem, Microsoft developed an “early bird” incentive, and has set aside money to help organizations offset the cost of their deployment.
In essence, customers that purchase at least 150 eligible O365 licenses, and in that two-month window, can work with a Certified Microsoft Partner to manage their deployment of O365 workloads, and in doing so can offset the total cost of moving to an O365 environment. Once the customer and partner complete the due diligence of the deployment, the partner will submit a funding claim to Microsoft to partially offset the costs of the organization’s O365 adoption – a process that could save organizations five figures off the total expense, for example.
After this round of “early bird” funding, FastTrack Adoption Offer benefits launch Sept. 1, and customers who purchase a minimum of 150 licenses between Sept. 1, 2015 and March 30, 2016 are eligible. Once a customer activates its tenant, Microsoft will contact eligible customers within 30 days of the O365 license purchases to discuss the FastTrack onboarding options, which help activate core workloads such as Office Pro Plus, SharePoint, and Skype (to name a few) into the cloud. Like last year, Microsoft will offer offsetting funds to reduce the total cost of deployment to qualified customers.
Finally, a marriage of FastTrack and Mail Migration
A key change in this year’s incentive program is that Mail Migration is now a core service offering as part of an O365 FastTrack deployment; Microsoft’s engineering teams will migrate mail accounts and data to the cloud for qualified customers, in addition to onboarding key workloads such as Office Pro Plus and SharePoint.
But take note: Customers need to do their own preparation for the mail migration, which may include a cleanup of Active Directory, streamlining on-premises and cloud mail services, or remediation of other third-party applications. Microsoft will migrate a qualified organization’s mail to the cloud, but organizations are responsible for completing certain checks and processes before the migration can begin.
Moderna Therapeutics is a biotech company working to create new medicines through its revolutionary messenger RNA (mRNA) Therapeutics platform. It uses Microsoft Office 365 business productivity tools to build an agile, flexible, and collaborative ecosystem of Moderna teams and partners to accelerate innovation in mRNA research and development.
Founded in 2010, Moderna Therapeutics began as a company with a vision: create a new in vivo medicine using messenger RNA (mRNA) to teach human cells to create proteins that target diseased tissue. Placing eighth on the CNBC 2014 Disruptor 50 list, Moderna is poised to deliver a radical treatment modality that’s fast, scalable, and inexpensive.
“The beauty of using mRNA as a drug is the speed at which we can design a new mRNA therapeutic for a targeted protein,” says Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer at Moderna. “By replicating our basic methodology, we can scale quickly to target new diseases. Traditional drug development for pharmaceutical companies takes 10 years or more. And because the mRNA Therapeutic modality teaches the body how to make its own medicine, it’s inherently cost-effective.”
The Race to Save Lives
Fueled by the potential to unlock a new dimension of medical treatment for patients living with serious diseases, everything that happens at Moderna happens at “Moderna speed.” When the company chooses IT solutions, it looks for technology that enables the fast, agile, and collaborative scenarios that drive innovation and contribute to growth. That’s why Moderna uses Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based business productivity tools. “We’re innovating in the biotech space and we need to partner with innovators in the productivity space, which led us to Microsoft,” says Steven Frederick, Head of Enterprise IT at Moderna.
“We chose Office 365 because it supports what our fast-moving company needs to accomplish,” adds John Reynders, Chief Information Officer at Moderna. “We operate in a highly regulated environment and Microsoft has thought through privacy concerns and data security. Office 365 offers the right balance between flexibility and elasticity that allows us to scale quickly and collaborate globally, while giving us control of sensitive data around the world.”
Since it subscribed to Office 365 Enterprise E3 in 2013, Moderna has grown by a factor of four; opened two new facilities; forged partnerships with AstraZeneca and Alexion to develop new medicines in the areas of cardiology, oncology, and rare diseases, and founded its oncology-focused drug development subsidiary, Onkaido Therapeutics. Now it’s easy to add someone to the Moderna ecosystem using Office 365 ProPlus and Click-to-Run installation technology, enabling access to the latest version of Office on up to five PCs, Macs, and mobile devices per employee. “If we didn’t have a cloud-based approach powered by Office 365, we could never have moved this fast,” says Reynders.
Flexible Work Environments Improve Productivity
Everyone at Moderna uses Office 365 to improve their productivity and increase their contribution to the company, no matter where they are working or what device they are using. All employees are “heavy users” of Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, and they expect to access to their files anytime, anywhere.
“We do heavy-duty simulation and modeling in Excel, and we’d bottom-out the capabilities of other online solutions in less than a day,” says Reynders. “Using Office 365 ProPlus and OneDrive for Business generates mobility and productivity that’s light years ahead of working with Office files that are stuck on your office computer. Instead, we create documents on our laptops, iPads, or smartphones, and store them online so it’s easy to share critical insights. At Moderna, we can’t imagine working any other way.”
Scientists also use Microsoft Office Online for browser-based access to files stored in the cloud so they can edit documents simultaneously. “Office Online puts the flex in flexible!” says Reynders. “You don’t even need your computer. Using a browser, we share PowerPoint presentations, schedule meetings, and update documents. That level of agility helps us to work at Moderna speed.”
According to Bancel, collaboration is essential for innovation. Because working on the leading edge of science is fraught with unknowns, collaborating with many partners offsets the risk of traveling down the wrong path of inquiry.
“We have to make decisions about our product years before launch, without knowing what the regulatory, manufacturing, or competitive landscape will look like,” says Bancel. “So we are using Microsoft cloud tools to achieve that level of collaboration to optimize our products and beat the odds: In the drug development world, 90 percent of drugs fail.”
Moderna is building an ecosystem of strategic global partnerships using Office 365 to establish highly secure online collaboration with academic and business partners in less than a day. “We use SharePoint Online and integrate with Microsoft Azure to enable multifactor authentication,” says Reynders. “We can capitalize on a business opportunity with a new partner by setting up a secure SharePoint collaboration platform in just a few clicks. That’s not just collaboration, that’s a competitive advantage.”
Reliability Enables the Science
Office 365 functions as a reliable backdrop at Moderna that “enables the science” by allowing people to focus on their work. Scientists in the United States exchange ideas with colleagues in Europe and Asia through instant messages, or by escalating a phone call to an interactive video conference to share desktops and drawings. Instead of wasting time figuring out how to connect with colleagues, Moderna scientists spend their energy on exchanging ideas to come up with innovative new concepts.
”It doesn’t matter what you are doing, if communication and collaboration is not reliable, all the gears grind to a halt,” concludes Reynders. “Since moving to Office 365, we’re not worrying about the technology. Instead, we are focusing on enabling our vision to pioneer a new way to treat serious illness and make a difference in the world.”
Managed Solution is the premier provider of IT support services and technology recommendations in the biotechnology and life science industries.
Many users know that Office 2013 is part of some Office 365 plans and also a standalone product in its own.
But many users are still wondering: what does Office 365 have that Office 2013 doesn’t?
Office 365 is a services brand. So in this post, we’re highlighting the features of Office 365 that go above and beyond what you’ll experience with only Office 2013.
Cloud features
Microsoft touts its modern initiatives as “mobile-first and cloud-first,” and it’s nowhere more apparent than with Office 365. If you have multiple devices, as many of us do, you can install Office 365 on all of them, sign in using the same account, and have a seamless work experience. O365 generally offers five installs per business account.
Gone are the days of installing cumbersome updates; with O365, end users won’t even notice when their software is updated. Office 2013 programs are kept automatically up-to-date when part of an Office 365 subscription.
OneDrive for Business is also a key component of Office 365, and one that many of us now take for granted. But it wasn’t long ago when our Office usage was limited by the storage on our local machine, or maybe a server that quickly filled up with coworkers’ files. Cloud storage is crucial.
(Don’t forget to sign up for our OneDrive for Business webinar for a chance to win a Surface 3!)
Additional tools and functionality
How about Delve, Sway, Yammer, and all the other cool new features and tools that the Office teams are introducing on a regular basis? Well, many of them are browser-based and solely a part of Office 365. While new features are still being added to the desktop applications (like real-time co-authoring in Office 2016), many of the “bells and whistles” will be found in browser-based features–yet another component that Office 365 offers that you won’t find with standalone Office 2013.
Of course, the administrator controls in Office 365 are a big upgrade from past Microsoft offerings, and allow IT admins to have more control over their tenants than ever.
While Office 2013 is still an incredibly valuable part of the Office suite, and there are some business cases that might call for using it without Office 365, we’re sure that more and more O365-only features will be developed as Office 365 continues to evolve.
Managed Solution is hosting Roadshow events to demo the new features in Windows 10 and show customers the latest products that connect your people, processes, devices, and data securely across your company enabling you to stay ahead in today’s mobile world.
At the forefront of these business profitability products is Windows 10, organizations will use the end-user-enhancements in Windows 10 across Office 365 & Skype for Business to drive revenue.
Considering the extremely quick pace of development from the release of the Insider Preview to GA (General Availability), there are some considerations to keep in mind when making the migration to Windows 10.
We have been busy testing Windows 10 and one thing we have found is that while it's pretty awesome (you’ll love the new features!) not all applications we work with day to day are ready for the new software.
We are getting to know the behavior of Windows 10 so we could make the transition smooth for our customers and reduce day-to-day troubleshooting.
We can help out with the cost too! Microsoft is offering dollars to jump start businesses into Office 365 and we can use those funds to Upgrade you to Windows 10 at the same time. (If you're already running Office 365 ask us about our cloud incentive dollars)!
We have been busy testing Windows 10 and one thing we have found is that while it's pretty awesome (you’ll love the new features!) not all applications we work with day to day are ready for the new software.
So we’ve been helping our clients upgrade without disruption and we would love to help you too.
We can help out with the cost too! Microsoft is offering dollars to jump start businesses into Office 365 and we can use those funds to help upgrade you to Windows 10 at the same time. (If you're already running Office 365 ask us about our cloud incentive dollars.)
Jump Start Incentive Options.
10-20% per user discount off Office 365
$1,000 - $15,000 dollars toward your Office 365 deployment
Complimentary Windows 10 upgrade and deployment for up to 250 seats when packaged with managed services
Windows 10: Upgrade now to take advantage of Microsoft Jump Start Incentives
For more information call us at 800-320-4361.
Rendering the final verdict on which cloud storage provider is superior is no less than a Herculean task. Although the storage industry has witnessed just a few winters, the competition among the leading cloud storage providers appears to be quite intense. Over the last few years, users have seen commendable improvements and innovations in the storage industry, and who can forget about the famous price war?
Much has been said and discussed about the features and functionalities of two leading cloud storage programs, namely, Box and OneDrive. So we have come up with an unbiased comparison of these two leading products that can render an insight to users to cast their vote in favor of the one that best suits their requirements.
Box
Unveiling its cloud storage and sharing platform back in 2005, Box has become highly popular among businesses. Embellished with robust security provisions and lavish and business-oriented features, it is one of the top choices among businesses to store and share files and folders.
OneDrive
With several constant improvisations such as the January 2015 update of iOS for business integration, OneDrive has become an attractive service for both individuals and business-purpose users.
Let’s look at how they stand against each other on the following parameters.
Security
With the ever-escalating cases of phishing scams, data security is one of the prime concerns of Internet users. Whether it’s personal or business data, it is vitally important to maintain privacy and security.
Box
Box has 256-bit AES encryption for all the files uploaded to it. With Box, you have the ability to decide who can access or view your specific files or folders, and simultaneously, it also allows you the freedom to edit and upload the files. If you like to safeguard your files even further, you can protect them by creating passwords. Box is HIPAA compliant and certified for EU and Swiss Safe Harbor frameworks for the use of personal data from European member countries.
OneDrive
The transferring data is SSL encrypted. It scans all the files for “objectionable content” that sometimes may lead to deletion of your account or data. OneDrive offers two-step verification that further protects the log-in via text message or One Time Code app.
Additionally, it features e-discovery and data preservation, audit reporting capabilities, and compliance with high-level industry standards such as HIPAA, FISMA, BAA, and EU model clauses. With OneDrive for business, you can set the custom permission level for users in your company and add it to existing lists available while OneDrive personal allows you only to edit or read.
Usability
The user-friendliness of a product or service matters a lot, and the lack of it can repulse customers. So, which is more user-friendly – Box or OneDrive?
Box
In Box, anyone can create an account free of cost. The interface is pretty simple, and the “Make available” option is a great feature to store your data offline.
However, if you have multiple accounts, you cannot switch from one platform to another unless you log out and log in again. Also, the sharing and privacy features are built very much along business and IT lines and are a bit confusing.
Last year, it introduced a new mobile web interface that helps users take advantage of the same interface and navigation that Box mobile apps offer without the need to install the app on your mobile. It also added an HTML5 document-previewing feature that makes sharing your content effortless, even on the go.
OneDrive
The interface is quite simple, and the learning curve is almost zero. Something that may annoy customers is that once you sign in, you find yourself forced to use other Microsoft features such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote Online, Office Online, and Outlook, among others. But when it comes to sharing, OneDrive renders an easy and enriched user experience. You can conveniently share the files and folders either via email or the links generated for that purpose. Administering OneDrive for business is easy, especially if you are an Office 365 user, as it can be done from the admin portal itself. You can access it from anywhere, manage users and settings, control your storage, and most importantly, you can easily mix OneDrive for business with your on-premise solutions in the cloud. This clearly reflects Microsoft’s competitive positioning over other storage competitors, that is, serving the needs of companies that want to move to cloud storage for file storage and sharing but still would like to keep their on-premise infrastructure untouched.
Pricing
Although customers look for elegant and lavish features, price remains one of the chief concerns. Here, which service is more competitive in terms of pricing, Box or OneDrive?
Box
Box offers 10 GB of free space with a limit of 250 MB file size. The limited file size appears to be forcibly pushing the customer to the “Personal Pro” service at $10 per month, which provides 100 GB space with file size going up to 5 GB. However, the file size of 5 GB appears to be quite meager compared to the other providers. Box for business comes at a price of $17 per user per month, which allows content collaboration and user management for up to three users with a file size limit of 5GB. However, for large-scale user deployments, it offers customized pricing that comes under the Enterprise storage plan.
OneDrive
You get 15 GB free space with OneDrive. Office 365 users get 1TB of storage space that comes at a price of $6.99/month. There is a referral policy in place as well, which can help you get an extra 5GB free space if you refer upto 10 friends. Earlier, it had a 2 GB file size limit for sharing, which has been increased to 10GB size file support limit. OneDrive for business comes at a price of $5 per user per month with 1TB of storage space. It includes Office Online, which comes with a free trial, so you can always test it out first to see if it fits your bill. Last year, Microsoft announced it would offer unlimited storage space for Office 365 users starting sometime in 2015, which will keep them well ahead of Box.
Box for office 365
Several months ago BOX has released the new BOX for Office. Box goal was to make it as simple as possible for everyone to open, edit, save and share any file from BOX. That release enabled to save attachments from incoming mail to a folder in BOX, to insert links to files already stored on BOX, and to automatically turn attachments into BOX shared links. Two days ago, Box have announced it is joining the Microsoft Cloud Storage Partner Program. Box now will support native integrations with with Office for iPad, iPhone and online. This extends Box reach of existing integration with office. Box is taking an important step toward a more open future. This will be updated soon with also making office 365 on the web available later this year.
Managed Solution is hosting Roadshow events to demo the new features in Windows 10 and show customers the latest products that connect your people, processes, devices, and data securely across your company enabling you to stay ahead in today’s mobile world.
At the forefront of these business profitability products is Windows 10, organizations will use the end-user-enhancements in Windows 10 across Office 365 & Skype for Business to drive revenue.
