Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft Teams Turns One!

Arby News and Events , , , , , , , , ,
Microsoft Teams Turns One!

On March 12, 2018, Microsoft Teams celebrated its one year anniversary and what and eventful first year it was!  According to Microsoft, around 200,000 organizations in 181 markets (in 39 languages) are using teams to date and we can expect it to rise throughout the year with Microsoft’s additional features and updates to Teams this coming year.

Teams for Intelligent Communications and Collaboration

Being part of Office 365, Teams has been able to take advantage of many of its strength by being able to integrate with many other Office 365 applications while also tapping its 120 million user base.  Teams uniquely delivers on its many features, such as chat-based collaboration, meetings, calling (and soon, full enterprise voice features), at scale with enterprise-grade security and compliance standards to make sure that you are within global standards.  However, to improve on their vision for Intelligent Communications within organizations, Microsoft has announced that they will be implementing the following features within this year:

Cloud recording—Will provide one-click meeting recordings with automatic transcription and timecoding, enabling all team members the ability to read captions, search within the conversation, and playback all or part of the meeting. In the future, it will also include facial recognition, so remarks can be attributed to specific meeting attendees.

Inline message translation—People who speak different languages will be able to fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat.

Cortana voice interactions for Teams-enabled devices—Will enable you to easily make a call, join a meeting, or add other people to a meeting in Teams using spoken, natural language. This functionality will extend to IP phones and conference room devices.

Background blur on video—The ability to blur your background during video calls will allow other meeting attendees to focus on you, not what’s behind you.

Proximity detection for Teams Meetings—This feature will make it easy for you to discover and add a nearby and available Skype Room System to any meeting.

Mobile sharing in meetings—Meeting attendees will be able to share a live video stream, photos, or the screen from their mobile device.

In addition to this, Microsoft will be adding new enterprise-grade calling features in Teams which will include consultative transfer and call delegation and federation.  Another feature that will be introduced is Direct Routing which will allow you to use your existing telephony infrastructure with Teams for calling.  To learn more about this you may read the original article here or you can contact us at 893-9515 to ask us directly!

Microsoft Teams: Improving an already good Collaboration tool

Arby News and Events , , , , , , ,
Microsoft Teams: Improving an already good Collaboration tool

It’s been close to 10 months since Microsoft has introduced Teams in an effort to help their customers improve their collaboration within the workspace.  Through these months, Microsoft has been slowly improving Teams through their observations and user feedback.  One example of this was the integration of third party applications such as Trello and SurveyMonkey.  Even now they are still updating Teams, recently they have released a new update in which they have integrated exciting new features which will surely help your company’s collaboration efforts!

New ways to utilize your apps in Teams

Include information from an app in a conversation

Be able to discuss content from a different app directly in Teams with the latest update.  Just like putting an emoji or GIF in the chat, you’ll be able to search and post integrated app information into chat and channels.  Be able search for a specific task in Trello, a work item in Wrike, or even a weather forcast, and even integrate them it into an interactive card.

Access a personal view of your apps

With the update, you can now easily access apps you frequently use and even see all items on those apps such as tasks in planner, issues in Jira Cloud and even conveniently find items you recently used such notebooks from OneNote.  This is made possible due to the addition of the personal apps space.  In addition, you can also find a new app in this space called Who, a new app powered by Microsoft Graph, which enables you to search for people in your organization by name or topic.

Find apps for Teams in the new Store

To make discovering and finding apps simpler in Teams by allowing users to search for apps by name, category, and integration type (like bots, tabs, connectors) in their new store.

Command apps, take quick actions, and search—all from the command box

Command apps from the command box

In the latest patch, Microsoft has added the function to query or command an app from the command box.   You are now able to search information in an app and easily place the results into a chat or channel in Teams.  More functions will be added overtime, one function they are working on is to create a task in your project management app over the Teams command box.

Take quick actions with slash commands

A convenient new function added to Teams would be the addition of slash commands to help you execute shortcuts quickly.

Contact us at 893-9515 to learn more about Microsoft Teams and how it can help you collaborate better with your own Team!

CT Link Systems, Inc. Adopts Microsoft Teams!

Arby News and Events , , , , , , , ,
CT Link Systems, Inc. Adopts Microsoft Teams!

Office collaboration is becoming key to success in businesses right now.  Business mobility and workforce communication have become so important that it can lead to you losing a big sale to your competitors.  CT Link Systems, Inc. in an effort to improve their collaboration has decided to adopt Microsoft Teams.  Below are a few functions of Microsoft Teams that we are enjoying and helping us collaborate easier:

Chat

Chatting using Microsoft Teams is an improved experience if you are coming from other Microsoft Instant messengers like Skype for business.  One big difference is that unlike Skype you have an archive for your chat history.  You don’t have to worry that your chat between you and your superiors will disappear, you can always go back and check what was noted and even favorite a message for faster identification.  Files are not immediately deleted as well once your chat is finished, it saves itself on your OneDrive and you will have a tab where all your files from that particular contact will be saved to make it easier for you to find your files!  One feature missing from Teams so far is the capability to do video calls, however Microsoft has stated that they are working on it!

Teams

This is the main feature of Microsoft teams in which you can create a group, which serves as something similar to group chat but with more functions.  Within each group, there are different tabs which have different functions, the default would be the wiki and files.  The wiki tab would be the page where you can place your glossary for the group so that everyone has a reference area during conversations.  The files tab is where you can view all the files shared in the group and even real time edit the file such as word and excel.  You may also place more tabs per group if needed, any app available in Office 365 can be placed on it such as planner (a favorite in our office) to help remember deadlines and keep yourself on track.

These are just examples of ways teams helped our organization, however teams is still constantly being improved for better user experience so keep a watch out for it!  If you’d like to learn more, please visit our Microsoft page or contact us at 893-9515!

Office 2007 Support has officially ended

Arby News and Events , , , ,
Office 2007 Support has officially ended

Office 2007’s support officially ended last October 10, 2017.  This doesn’t mean that you will lose all your Office 2007 apps, nor will you lose any of your data associated with Office 2007.  Then what exactly does this mean then?  One big issue from discontinued support would be security; with no support, you could be exposing yourself to huge security risks.  Below are what you will be losing with the end of support:

  • You’ll no longer receive Office 2007 software updates from Microsoft Update.
  • You’ll no longer receive security updates. Security updates are what help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.
  • You’ll no longer receive phone or chat technical support.
  • No further updates to support content will be provided. In fact, most online help content will be retired.
  • You’ll no longer be able to download Office 2007 from the Microsoft web site.

Even though Office 2007 is still usable, you may want to consider upgrading to a newer version in lieu with the above benefits that you will be losing.  Below are the upgrades you can consider:

  1. Upgrading to Office 365 – the subscription version of Office that comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps, depending on the plan you choose. With Office 365, the apps are available on your computer for up to 5 users and via browser; one subscription enables you to use them on both your PC and Mac.
  2. Upgrading to Office 2016 – Office 2016 is a one-time purchase (not a subscription) for installation on one computer only.

Microsoft Azure a top contender in the “Cloud Wars”

Arby News and Events , , , , , , , , ,
Microsoft Azure a top contender in the “Cloud Wars”

With the worldwide public cloud services market projected to grow by 18% this 2017, to a total of $246.8 billion according to Gartner, it’s no wonder that many vendors are upping their services to get a larger portion of the market.  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are both projected to grow by about 36.8% and 20.1% respectively this 2017.   While Amazon Web Services is still the predominant market leader for this segment, this may not be true in the following years as Azure has been working on toppling them with success in Europe as the predominant IaaS provider with 43.7% market share against AWS’ 32%.

Forbes came out recently with an article as well on their take on the “Cloud Wars” and to the surprise of many, put Azure in first while AWS was placed as second.  Their basis was the fact that Microsoft has more to offer to their corporate customers in terms of cloud innovation to the different aspects of their business.  Below are a few of the main points in which Forbes’ analyst Bob Evans brought up in which Azure was ahead of AWS:

Revenue – First quarter of 2017, AWS reported $14 billion against Azure’s $15.2 billion

Completeness of cloud offerings – While AWS is strong on the IaaS segment, it is still lacking compared to Azure in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) and SaaS market.

Future Vision – Microsoft has placed major importance to going end-to-end on the cloud across its enormous range of products and services.

Scalability for world’s largest computing workloads – Microsoft’s used Maersk as its example of this in which they have slowly moved towards the cloud and now use Azure to help gain business insights using Dynamics 365.

Adopting advanced technologies to help customers drive digital transformation – while others still have no general strategy nor product and technologies for IoT, Microsoft has been making strides in this aspect.

Appeal to and ability to perform across a wide range of industries – Microsoft has been pushing its vast and fully integrated cloud capabilities to run the workloads of many of the biggest corporations in the world.

Microsoft To-Do now available in Preview!

Arby News and Events , , , ,
Microsoft To-Do now available in Preview!

Microsoft introduces a new intelligent task management app (available in Preview) named Microsoft To-Do to help plan and manage your day-to-day activities.  Coming from the team behind the Wunderlist app, To-Do delivers a smarter and more personal and intuitive way to keep you organized while helping you get the most out of each day!  Powered by Office 365 integration and its intelligent algorithm, it is Microsoft’s first step into helping its customers simplify their task management to help them achieve more.

All your to-dos in one place

With To-Do, you can create lists for anything, be it for work, home projects or just your own groceries!  Be able to track deadlines by adding reminders, due dates and notes while being able to personalize each list with different themes.  Accessibility will not be a problem as the To-Do app is available for the iPhone, Android phone, Windows 10 devices and even on the web!

Plan your day with Intelligent Suggestions

Admittedly, there are times that managing your to-do list can take as much effort as completing them. To-Do helps you focus and plan your day by starting with a clean state when you first open your app, allowing you to be more intentional on what you want to get done.  Another feature, Intelligent Suggestion, can help you get an idea on which tasks should be prioritized by showing you your to-dos the day before, showing you your task dues or upcoming tasks and other helpful suggestions based on the smart algorithm.

Integration with Microsoft Office

With To-Do being built on Office 365, it will, in the coming months, enable the product to become even more useful to its users.  One integration is with Outlook, which will allow users to sync their Tasks with To-Do to allow them to stay on top of their Outlook Tasks from anywhere, managed across devices.  As the only task management app built on enterprise cloud, To-Do offers advanced security that Office 365 customers expect.

Get Microsoft To-Do Preview for iPhone, Android, Windows and the web today!

Microsoft Teams Now Available in Office 365

Arby News and Events , , , ,
Microsoft Teams Now Available in Office 365

On March 14, 2017, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Teams, its collaboration app as its answer to Slack, would now be available in their productivity suite, Office 365.  Being available in 181 markets and in 19 different languages, Microsoft Teams is already being adopted in major companies such as Accenture, Alaska Airlines and Walter Thompson in their operations.

With over 85 million active users, Office 365 empowers the individual or the groups in your organization with its broad set of tools for collaboration.  Designed to meet the unique workstyle of every group in different organizations — Outlook for its enterprise-grade email; SharePoint for intelligent content management; Yammer for networking across the organization; Skype for Business as the backbone for enterprise voice and video; and now, Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workspace in Office 365.

Chat for today’s teams

Providing modern conversation experience, Microsoft Teams will keep everyone engaged with its threaded and persistent chat.  New communication features such as audio calling from mobile devices and video call on android, soon to be released on iOS and Windows phones as well, were added to improve on collaboration.  Microsoft Teams has also added the ability to email a channel, include attachments, send messages with markdown-based formatting and receive notifications about all posts in a channel.

Hub for Teamwork

With Office 365, applications and services such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and SharePoint are readily provided to Microsoft Teams users to be sure that they will have the tools and information needed to collaborate better.  To improve user experience, Microsoft Teams has recently added support for open, public teams within your organization and enhanced user meeting experience by adding scheduling capabilities, integrating calendar availability(free/busy) and more.

Customizable for every team

Knowing every team is unique, Microsoft Teams has made it easy to customize your workspace with Tabs, Connectors and Bots.  With over 150 integrations available and more coming soon such as bots from hipmunk, SAP SuccessFactors to help employees and managers track goals and performance and Trello to help empower teams to easily get projects done with boards, lists and cards.

 

To learn more about Microsoft Teams and Office 365, contact us at 893 9515.

Is Your Business Automatically Backing Up the Data in Your PCs and Laptops?

ECA News and Events , , ,

Studies show that 70% of corporate data resides on the PCs or laptops of end-users and most of these files are unstructured data in the form of Excel spreadsheets or Word documents.  Furthermore, studies also show that in most businesses, employees are casually told to make a backup of their own files. Management cannot even be sure if the backups are up-to-date or done at all.  The primary reason for such case is usually the lack of a centralized storage, which is expensive to set up, to store the data backups.

This leniency in doing data backup has become more and more risky these days with increasing threats from malwares like Ransomware.

What is Ransomware?

In a nutshell, Ransomware is a new type of malware that “kidnaps” files and prevents users from accessing the files until “ransom” is given.

Most users think that it’s just malware, and that their anti-virus software will be able to catch it.  However, not all anti-virus software are effective against ransomware.  The real best defense against Ransomware today is, simply and ironically, for one to be always ensured with a data backup that can be successfully restored when needed.

Cloud-Based Backup

A good backup strategy in protecting against Ransomware is cloud-based data backup.

  • Cloud-based backup provides plenty of storage at a low cost.
  • Cloud-based backup allows customers to pay only for the actual backup storage being used instead of buying a lot of storage in advance.
  • Cloud-based backup works even if laptop users are outside the corporate network.
  • Cloud-based backup gives an added level of protection against Ransomware since affected files usually take days or even weeks before getting into the cloud.

Be enabled. Deploy and secure endpoint data protection strategy at your own pace.

We offer simple and reliable cloud-integrated backup as a service, reliably powered by Microsoft Azure.

Let CT Link Systems be your backup partner.

Workplaces Redefined – A Workshop by Microsoft and CT Link Systems

ECA News and Events , , , , ,
Workplaces Redefined – A Workshop by Microsoft and CT Link Systems

Enterprise Social ProgramFacebook is the top Social Networking site. But Facebook may not be the appropriate place to share corporate information. There are also many instant messaging tools such as Viber, WhatsApp, Line or Yahoo Messenger available but an organization does not have oversight nor control over the communications going thru these channels.

Microsoft’s vision for Enterprise Social is driven by a product roadmap including Yammer, Office 365, SharePoint Online, Dynamics CRM and Skype for Business. These tools are designed with Security, Integration and Collaboration in mind.

The Enterprise Social space is both hot and fragmented. Over the next 12-18 months, most Enterprises will define their strategy for Enterprise-Social solutions, whether focused more broadly on team collaboration, or more specific to areas such as accelerating innovation, engaging employees, etc.

In this workshop, Microsoft and CT Link Systems would like to share the trends in Enterprise Social Networking and will demonstrate how these tools can help increase productivity and enhance collaboration in work places. Join us to experience how Yammer and Skype for Business can transform your work space.

Register here.

About Office 365

Office 365 is a cloud-based subscription service offered by Microsoft that provides a suite of productivity tools to help individuals and businesses streamline their work processes. The service includes a range of familiar applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, as well as other tools such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.

One of the key benefits of Office 365 is its cloud-based nature, which means that users can access their documents and files from anywhere, at any time, using any device that has an internet connection. This flexibility makes it easy for users to collaborate with others, whether they are in the same office or working remotely from different locations.

Office 365 also offers a range of features designed to make collaboration more seamless, such as real-time co-authoring, which allows multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, and version history, which enables users to see and revert to earlier versions of a document if needed.

In addition, Office 365 provides users with a range of tools for communication and collaboration, such as Microsoft Teams, which allows users to chat, share files, and collaborate on projects in real-time. SharePoint and OneDrive also provide users with a secure and reliable platform for storing and sharing documents and files.

Another key advantage of Office 365 is its subscription model, which provides users with access to regular updates and new features without the need for manual installation or upgrades. This ensures that users always have access to the latest tools and functionality, without the hassle of manual updates.

Data Protection

Product 0 Comment Solutions , , , , , , , , ,

Data has become the centerpiece of any organization.  It is the driving force in which they base major decisions and even day to day operations.  This is why safeguarding such important information has become key in a successful business.  However, securing data and protecting data are two different agendas.  Data protection is focused more on safeguarding your data from compromise, corruption or loss rather than focusing on outside threats.  CT Link Systems, Inc. specializes in the following data protection solutions: Clustering and Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR).

With clustering, CT Link can help you minimize the downtime and service interruptions of your production infrastructure.  We are able to accomplish this by implementing a high availability clustering solution which uses two servers to act as an active one while the other as a passive server.  The passive server is a clone of the active server and will automatically be used upon the failure of the active server.

Through Business Continuity, CT Link can guide you through the steps in which you can take to ensure your data is well archived and retain-able using the right backup solution.  We are able to provide you with two types of backup solutions, either on-premise or on the cloud.  With this flexibility, we are able to help tailor fit your solution to better fit the need and budget of your business.  In disaster recovery, we can help  your business by setting up an offsite backup of all your essential data and configurations which can be used in restoring your system upon an unforeseen data loss to your on-premise infrastructure.