Staying on task is hard in the office, but it can be even harder when you are trying to work remotely or while you're traveling. When you're out and about, usually the last thing you want to do is sit inside and work. I've found a lot of things can get me to stay productive, regardless of where I am. Follow these four tips to staying productive when you're adventuring:
1. Manage Your Time Wisely
If you're working from another country, like I am, chances are there is a pretty significant time difference. Take advantage of this! I usually spend my days exploring the city or getting errands done, so when I have all my free time in the evenings, I'm excited to sit down and get some work done. I always know I am saving a lot of money by staying in and working on projects instead of meeting up with friends at bars and other spots. Save those nights for the weekends! When I get work done at night, it's also easier for my boss to answer my emails, so any questions I have I can save for evenings and then work on those projects immediately instead of waiting until the next day.
2. Don't forget to take in the views
When you're working abroad, scenic views are not hard to find. Finding a place to work with a scenic backdrop makes responding to emails seem less like work and more like a vacation. When it's warm out, I like to sit on my balcony and take in the views of the Calanques while I work. Instead of being sucked into my computer inside, I take breaks to enjoy the view and remember where I am.
3. Keep Track of Your Tasks and Projects
Using Office 365 apps like Planner can be a productivity lifesaver. When you're on different timezones, it can be confusing to keep track of emails and notes for things you have to get done - and when they need to be done by. Planner organizes your tasks so you see all the tasks you need to do. With Planner, you can also keep tasks in different categories and groups. For example, I have individual tasks I need to get done in my "Projects" folder, but I also have projects in the "Marketing" group. You can still view all your tasks at once, no matter what group or category they belong to. Set due dates and add comments to help you manage your time and priorities. Finished a task? Simply check off that you've completed it, and the entire group will get an email letting them know you've completed it. Plus there is nothing more satisfying than checking off something you needed to get done!
4. Never Stop Exploring
There are always a million things to get done, but the best way to increase your productivity is to stay inspired! What better way to find some inspiration then to spend time exploring new places? Take your lunch break at a restaurant in a different part of town you haven't seen yet. Be sure to walk around and explore the area. Follow France's lead and take a two-hour lunch break if you can. Getting out and exploring can lead to new business ideas, creative concepts to introduce, and overall better work performance. Plus with Office 365 mobile apps, you can always take your work on-the-go. No more boring bus rides into the city!
6 signs your company has outgrown its free email solution
A free email solution is great when your organization is first starting out. But how do you know when you have grown beyond the capabilities of your free email service and you need a more sophisticated solution? The business emailrequirements of a growing company are much different than those of a small startup. Whether you’re using Outlook.com or another provider, there are signs that indicate your business has outgrown free email.
The following list identifies six important capabilities you need now (or in the future) to ensure your email solution doesn’t hold you back. Needing any one of these capabilities is an indication that it’s time to consider moving from a free to a paid email solution:
Security—If you’ve experienced a security breach—or are even worried about it happening—you need a more sophisticated solution that offers increased, enterprise-class security capabilities.
Storage—You’ve reached your storage max: a very simple reason to upgrade. Storage space should never cause you to delete or change how you use your email, especially when paid solutions offer large stores of data.
Tools—Free email tools don’t typically provide robust inbox- and user-management tools. Paid email solutions offer a range of features for managing users as well as extensive rules for managing your inbox—enabling you to spend less time managing your inbox and more time managing your business.
Domain names—Using a custom domain for your business email is a vital way to ensure your business appears professional. For example, “yourname@yourcompany.com” has a lot more credibility than “yourcompany@domain.com.” While free custom email addresses are available, they often leave you open to security threats, because the company you host through will likely have access to your data and other information.
Data—If you’ve ever felt the need to own and manage your email data, it’s time to move to a paid solution. Often, when you agree to free email terms, you’re granting the email provider permission to mine your data and send you ads—which is how their companies remain profitable while offering free services. Not only can this distract from your work, it also puts your company’s data at risk.
File sharing—Need to share files and collaborate securely with your team? Paid email solutions enable team-based collaboration and sharing without putting confidential company information at risk.
Graduate to an email solution that offers your growing business increased security, enhanced customization and a variety of features and capabilities to improve collaboration. Not only will this keep your company running smoothly and increase teamwork—your IT team will no longer spend time on common free email service-level issues.
Microsoft is pleased to announce the preview availability of a new security analytics service called the Office 365 Secure Score. The Secure Score is a security analytics tool that will help you understand what you have done to reduce the risk to your data in Office 365, and show you what you can do to further reduce that risk. We think of it as a credit score for security. Our approach to this experience was very simple. First, we created a full inventory of all the security configurations and behaviors that our customers can do to mitigate risks to their data in Office 365 (there are about 77 total things that we identified). Then, we evaluated the extent to which each of those controls mitigated a specific set of risks and awarded the control some points. More points means a more effective control for that risk. Lastly, we measure the extent to which your service has adopted the recommended controls, add up your points, and present it as a single score.
The core idea is that it is useful to rationalize and contextualize all of your cloud security configuration and behavioral options into one simple, analytical framework, and to make it very easy for you to take incremental action to improve your score over time. Rather than constructing a model with findings slotted into critical, moderate, or low severity, we wanted to give you a non-reactive way to evaluate your risk and make incremental changes over time that add up to a very effective risk mitigation plan.
The Office 365 Secure Score is a preview experience, so you may find issues, and you will note that not all of the controls are being measured. Please share any issues on the Office Network Group for Security. You can access the Secure Score at https://securescore.office.com.
The Secure Score does not express an absolute measure of how likely you are to get breached. It expresses the extent to which you have adopted controls which can offset the risk of being breached. No service can guarantee that you will not be breached, and the Secure Score should not be interpreted as a guarantee in any way.
Your Secure Score Summary
The first, most important piece of the Secure Score experience is the Score Summary. This panel gives you your current Secure Score, and the total number of points that are available to you, given your subscription level, the date that your score was measured, as well as a simple pie chart of your score. The denominator of your score is not intended to be a goal number to achieve. The full set of controls includes several that are very aggressive and will potentially have an adverse impact on your users’ productivity. Your goal should be to optimize your action to take every possible risk mitigating action while preserving your users’ productivity.
Risk Assessment
While the Secure Score is framed as a ‘gamification’ of your security, it is important to recognize that every action you take will mitigate a real world threat. This panel shows you the top threats for your tenancy, given your particular configuration and behaviors. Make sure you read about and understand the risks you are mitigating every time you take an action.
Compare Your Score
The Office 365 Average Secure Score is calculated from every Office 365 customer’s Secure Score. You can use this panel to get a better sense of how your score stacks up against the average. The specific controls that are passed by any given customer are not exposed in the average, and your Secure Score is private. Note that the Average Secure Score only includes the numerator of the score, not the denominator. So, the average points may be higher than you can achieve because there are points in controls associated with services that you have not purchased.
Take Action
Helping you figure out which actions to take to improve your score is the purpose of the Secure Score. There are three basic parts to the experience:
First, there is the modeler. Use the slider to figure out how many actions you want to review. Sliding to the left will reduce the number of actions in your list below, sliding to the right will increase the number. Each tick of the slider will add one control to the list. The target score shows you how much your score will increase if you take all the actions in the queue.
Second is the action pane. When you open this, you will see a description of the control, explaining why we think it is an effective mitigation, and what we observed about your configuration. We’ll also show you some details about the control such as the category (account, device, data), what the user impact of the action is (low or moderate) as well as your measured score. Clicking Learn More will open a fly-out pane that will walk you through taking the desired action.
Thirdly, you will see a remediation pane fly-out that explains exactly what you are about to change, and how it will affect your users. Eventually, the Launch Now link (which takes you to a separate security center now) will allow you to make the desired change right from the Secure Score experience.
Score Analyzer
Since the Secure Score experience is restricted to users that have been designated a Global Tenant Administrator, we wanted to make it easy for admins to analyze and report to their executives and stakeholders their progress on risk mitigation over time. The Score Analyzer experience allows you to review a line graph of your score over time, to export the audit of your control measurements for the selected day to either a PDF or a CSV, and to review what controls you have earned points for, and which ones you could take action on.
What’s Next
As mentioned, the Office 365 Secure Score is in a preview release. Over the coming months you will see us continue to add new controls, new measurements, and improvements to the remediation experiences. If you like what you see, please share with your network. If you see something we can improve, please share it with us on the Office Network Group for Security. We’re looking forward to seeing your scores go up, and making the Secure Score experience as useful, simple, and easy as it can be.
Taking Office 365 to the College Campus
By Kelly Cronin
Before Office 365, I was using a $5 planner from Target, some Word documents, some Google Docs, a million Notes in my iPhone, and Five-Star Notebooks to take notes in class, stay "organized", and keep both my personal life and grades afloat. Although plenty of people had told me about cool note-taking tools, I was a stubborn college student that thought whatever I was doing was good enough. When I first started my internship with Managed Solution, I was taught how to use almost all of the Office 365 apps, which I never thought I would be using in my personal life. The more used to the apps I got, the more I realized how much they could help me outside of work too. Here's how Office 365 can be used for any college student looking to stay organized and productive:
Let's start with OneNote.
My boss was not exaggerating when she told me OneNote is life. I first used OneNote for school by keeping all my syllabi in one place. Before, I had to constantly re-download the syllabus for each class just to look at the class schedule, rules about assignments, and how to contact the professor. With OneNote, I keep all of this information in one place, both on my computer and my phone, so no matter where I am I can instantly check out the syllabus for any of my classes. OneNote lets you drag and drop files into a document, so you can click on the document, or you can choose to have the document uploaded as text, so you'll see exactly what comes from that document in your OneNote as text. I prefer to have both:
My study guides have gotten a major makeover thanks to OneNote. I re-type all my notes from class and any added points from lecture slides into OneNote to create the ultimate study guide, where I can easily bold, highlight, make tables, lists, and even add images into any of my notes. Since I can keep these in the same section as my other class notes and info, I don't have to keep track of a gazillion documents like with Google Drive. OneNote also has "tags" that can let me mark things as important, set up as a reminder, or create a check-box for a to-do list. The best part is while I'm walking over to my exam, I can pull up my study guide on my OneNote mobile app and do some last minute cramming.
Did I already mention you can take OneNote anywhere? When you need to print something, having a copy of your document wherever you go is pretty much every college student's life saver. For starters, almost none of us have an actual working printer (there are currently three broken printers sitting in my house), which I now consider a mythical creature at this point. This means we have to constantly send ourselves documents to print at the library right before class. When you already have a million things to do that week and you were up cramming all night for three exams, forgetting to send yourself your study guide is basically a given. Office 365 finally came up with the best solution to make sure your grades don't suffer from your brain overloads. OneNote can be accessed online with your Microsoft account. OneNote Online will automatically have all the notebooks and pages you have in your OneNote so you can access your notes and documents from any device. Instead of worrying about whether or not my file will open from my email, I have peace of mind knowing as long as I put something in my OneNote, I can access it from anywhere with OneNote Online.
Planner - Time to get organized.
Every college student knows the secrets to procrastination - pretend you're actually being productive even while putting off all of your assignments. One of the best is making lists of things you have to do (and then not actually do them until tomorrow). Planner in Office 365 gives you a simplified, satisfying way to keep up with all of your tasks. As the end of the semester gets busier and busier, I've been completely reliant on adding tasks into my Planner to make sure I keep track of absolutely every thing I have to do. To start, I set up different groups that organize what needs to be done:
As I create a new task, I can add notes about what needs to be done, set a date for when it needs to be done by, and make comments as I work on it. Adding details about all my tasks helps me look in one place and one place only for all I need to know about what to get done. For mass amounts of paperwork to fill out, I can add a checklist for each item, so I need what I've done already and how much more is left to do.
Ace presentations with Sway.
No matter what your major is, every semester you will create at least one presentation, typically with a group, to present to the class. Google slides are often the top choice for group projects, as just about everyone has a Gmail account to use and collaborate on the project with. But Google slides editing features are extremely limited. Minimal slide themes, limited font formatting options, and few visualization selections make each presentation seem almost, if not exactly, the same. Sway in Office 365 is an easy fix to sprucing up a presentation, and it is just as easy to use as Google slides or PowerPoint.
One of the best parts about Sway is it's complete customization. You can add different cards: Headers, Text, Image sliders, Image galleries (in multiple varieties), Videos, Tweets, Audio, and more. You can even embed a Sway within a Sway (yes that's Sway-ception). These can be grouped together by heading, so instead of having seven separate slides all relating to one topic, Sway can keep them all grouped together.
If you need a more eye catching color theme, or want to change the font and feel of the text throughout the presentation, use the Design feature:
Sway offers tutorials and guides on how to do just about anything the application has to offer. And since Sway can be used in Office 365 online, your presentation is automatically saved and can be accessed anywhere. Still not convinced? Check out one of my latest, interactive Sways:
Start getting professional on Word.
College isn't just about taking classes and passing exams (and beer pong). Starting your career often begins in college. With helpful professional templates on word, building a solid resume can be completely simplified. Choose from a variety of templates, from crisp and clean to creative and captivating. Inputting your information into the template is quick and easy, so you can worry more about what goes into your resume than how you need to format it.
If you're like me, you've probably applied to hundreds of part-time jobs and internships when you should be doing schoolwork. Needless to say, you need your resume on pretty much any device, whether it's to update your website link or to print from your friend's computer. When you use Word Online with Office 365, your work automatically saves as you make changes. This makes sure your documents don't get lost between sending yourself a million email attachments every time you switch devices. You can access your word files from anywhere, and make changes as needed. Update resumes and cover letters alike, without worrying about whether or not you've saved the latest version.
Making the most of Office 365.
Nobody says college will be easy, but Office 365 is here to help. When you start working on new classes, learn how to do your own laundry, and lose your voice at every Saturday football game, college can seem like a complete whirlwind. Use the Office 365 tools for education to keep track of everything going on in your life. Not only will you learn how to use tools for the modern workplace, Office 365 can help you stay on track to make sure college is the best four years of your life.
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Get your message across with Pickit add-in for Microsoft Office
Pickit makes it easy for Microsoft Office users to tell impactful stories by leveraging specially curated photos. Today, they announced their new image collection, “Talk Like a Rosling,” which features inspired content from statistician and presenter Hans Rosling and the latest project from his team at Gapminder—Dollar Street.
Learn more about the partnership and how you can use Pickit and their new collection at betterwith.office.com.
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Flex—delivering supply chain innovation on a global scale with Office 365
Global enterprises often struggle to maintain the kind of fast-moving culture of innovation that smaller companies appear to employ effortlessly. But this is a time of change in business, and thanks to technology advancements, global companies can communicate almost as quickly as a team working side by side. Now, companies like Flex can reach across geographical boundaries to serve global customers even more effectively than ever before. At Flex, our approximately 200,000 employees handle prototyping, design, manufacturing and logistics for customers worldwide. We’re operating as a single, cohesive company focused on innovation. It’s not just that we can communicate and collaborate efficiently among our more than 100 factories or between headquarters and our various business centers. We’re taking our focus on reinvention a step further by empowering all employees to share their ideas and experience to make Flex even more nimble.
The notion of continuous improvement is well established, but we wanted to make sure we’re capturing opportunities to enhance operations across every facet of our business—from the IT department to the factory floor. We’re supporting that effort with Microsoft Office 365, using the integrated apps not just for cross-company teamwork, but also as the basis for applications that foster innovation and process improvements. For example, we’ve built an ideation portal on Microsoft SharePoint Online where we can crowdsource ideas. Employees submit and vote on ideas, and we see which ideas gain momentum and buy-in. We’ve even included some gamification around the winning ideas to encourage our whole workforce to participate.
Giving employees the opportunity to see their ideas come to life is rewarding and empowering. It also benefits the operational efficiency of our business and enhances our level of service for customers. Supporting bottom-up communication is paramount to our ability to improve, because our employees see how things work every day and think about new ways to deliver improved results. And most important, employees can make an impact on a global level when their ideas are implemented as part of a workflow used by other colleagues.
We’ve also created interactive SharePoint Online communities for our project managers and salespeople, who can use Yammer directly from within the SharePoint Online sites or on their smartphones with the Office 365 mobile apps. Employees can freely engage with each other across geographic and hierarchical boundaries, communicating and cooperating throughout the company. Whether it’s for customer onboarding, production-line setup, materials distribution or new IT projects, select employees are using Office 365 to help us share expertise and foster better teamwork across Flex.
Our customers count on us to deliver the best solutions for their success. Showcasing the ways in which we’re tapping into our own knowledge base to become a stronger company makes us a better business partner and a smarter employer. The kinds of unified, open communication and support for innovation that we’re providing through Office 365 help us meet those goals in the modern workplace.
Visio has been a trusted tool in diagramming for more than a decade. And we know its visual communication in the form of diagrams will become more powerful when anyone in the company can consume—regardless of their location or device. So, today we’re excited to announce Visio Viewer for iPad and Visio Online Preview, enabling users to share or access diagrams from nearly anywhere, gain operational insights and explore real-world diagrams easily.
Back to the basics—ubiquitous sharing and access with Visio Online and iPad app
As one of the most widely adopted process mapping tools, Visio helps thousands of organizations blueprint the business processes that drive their desired transformation. Using Visio Online Preview and Visio Viewer for iPad, you can securely store your diagrams in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online and easily share them with anyone as a link—allowing your colleagues to view and interact with diagrams effortlessly across devices.
Visio Online Preview—gain operational insights from anywhere
The Visio desktop has always been a powerful tool for creating network maps, organizational charts, business processes and more. Visio Online Preview amplifies the power of visual communication by helping teams glean real-time information from diagrams with just a browser—turning your data-linked diagrams into an operational dashboard that more employees can access.
Picture a network map that the IT department uses to manage the company’s global datacenters. As a static diagram, the map is perfect for understanding how different servers interact and show the location of those servers. Now, pairing that map with real-time data, IT admins can see things like server outages as they happen. You can use hyperlinks to bring in additional documentation, such as policy guidance created in Word. Or, moving from the network dashboard to the rack dashboard for a specific server performance, IT admins are able to drill down to the root cause of the outages and take the appropriate actions to keep the business up and running.
Visio Viewer for iPad—explore real-world diagrams in high-fidelity on the go
Visio diagrams often comprise details that customers could miss on smaller screens. Built for iPad Retina display, Visio Viewer for iPad brings high-fidelity viewing of real-world processes and plans on the go. With the new exploration experience, plant managers can zoom in to production line issues from remote facilities, financial advisors can examine detailed workflows of a loan approval process while visiting clients around the world, retail district managers can conduct store management trainings with associates using detailed CAD-based store layouts and much more.
Using the Find pane, you can pinpoint all occurrences of a shape name, text or data—eliminating the need to sift through countless shapes. After you locate the shape with your desired metadata, smoothly navigate through your diagrams and zoom in and out with intuitive Pan and Zoom features. You can even reveal different visualizations of the same diagram by adjusting the visibility of certain layers. For example, an architect can share the same building layout with Facilities and HR, who can then visualize the respective layers which contain only the electrical map or personnel location for their own functional need. Operations managers can add an inventory visualization layer on top of a production line with throughput information to understand the root cause of a station breakdown.
You can download Visio Viewer for iPad today. We’ll bring Visio to the iPhone in the coming months.
Two days ago, we announced Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace in Office 365. It is a new experience that brings together people, conversations, content and the tools they need—all in one place and integrated with familiar Office applications.
As Satya says, “Every individual is different, and so is the case with every team.” We see great opportunity in helping them achieve more together—and Microsoft Teams is the open, digital environment we created to make that happen.
Watch Satya unveil Microsoft Teams in this video.
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