by Felicien | Jan 13, 2021 | Education
What Are the Key Differences Between IT Services and Consulting?
When business leaders create annual budgets, IT typically ranks among the top investments. More than $4 trillion was spent globally in 2019, and the average company funneled 8.2 percent of its total revenue into IT. The primary focus for too many companies was IT services, without consulting support. Putting all of your eggs in the IT services basket could lead to work stoppages and problems that could otherwise be avoided. By understanding the key differences between services and consulting, informed decisions can be made about an organization’s IT health.
What Are IT Services?
There are plenty of technical explanations that define “IT services.” But a direct way to understand this term is from the customer’s perspective. You invest in IT services to help accomplish tasks and goals. Company leaders typically broker a deal with an experienced IT services firm to ensure things run smoothly. In other words, you hire someone to keep everyone on your team working at a high level and minimize disruptions. These generally include the following:
Technical & Help Desk Support
Backup & Recovery Services
Software Management Services
Cybersecurity Monitoring & Threat Response
Cloud Migration & Maintenance
Internet-Based Communications Services
The underlying premise of IT services is that a third party is generally under contract to help you maximize productivity and solve routine issues. Companies don’t usually invest in technology for technology’s sake. It’s a necessary tool that requires an expert to maintain.
What Makes IT Consulting Different?
The million-dollar question is that if you already have IT services in place, why invest in a consultant? That’s a fair question from the consumer’s point of view. Your email works, computer restarts are at a minimal level, and Cloud-based systems enable your outfit to connect with remote workers and business partners in real-time. If it’s not broken, why fix it?
The primary reason to invest in IT consulting is that it is proactive by nature. A consultant reviews your critical operations and makes an analysis of the next steps and long-term technology planning. An IT consultant may be only minimally interested in the software and services your organization uses to complete tasks and further goals today. Instead, they consider solutions for the future that deliver the following benefits:
Bring an Objective Perspective: Your IT service provider and staff members have a way of conducting operations every day. While their methods may work at a high level, an outside perspective can help companies take advantage of emerging technologies.
Proactive vs. Reactive: It’s essential to understand that IT services are crucial. They can react to technical problems and resolve them quickly. By contrast, IT consulting focuses on future disruptions and innovations and advises business leaders about preventative measures.
Increase Leadership Focus: When management teams get bogged down with technical problems, they cannot devote the focus necessary to maximize an organization’s potential. An IT consulting firm brings a wealth of knowledge to the table that allows leaders to make high-level decisions about the state of their technology.
As an industry thought leader, perhaps the best way to understand the differences between IT services and consulting is that they are different cogs in a machine that makes your company go. One without the other limits your potential to achieve goals and compete. Technology changes quickly, and companies require IT services to maintain operational integrity and consulting experts to get you ready for critical next steps.
by Felicien | Dec 31, 2020 | Education
Microsoft Makes Anti-Spam Changes
The year 2020 is not the only thing that is coming to an end. Microsoft is slowly rolling out changes meant to deter spam. This is causing some features to come to an end and changing the way a few Microsoft products, most notably email, is used. As a business owner, it is important to stay on top of changes with the software and programs that your business utilizes. Here is a little bit more information about the anti-spam changes and what those changes can mean for your business.
Why Is Microsoft Making Anti-Spam Changes?
Microsoft recently released an add-on: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2. Many of the anti-spam changes were made when this add-on released, and a few more are expected to roll out at the end of January 2021. The primary reason for these changes is to better protect your business against phishing attacks, spoofing attacks, and to limit the number of spam emails that are sent. Some of these changes affect all Microsoft products as a whole, while others are geared toward specific products, such as email.
Why Should Your Business Be Aware of These Changes?
Your business needs to be aware of these changes because they can alter the way your business operates. You may need to update software or you may need to retrain your staff on how to use products. As these changes roll out, many IT professionals are already receiving phone calls from those that they serve letting them know that they can no longer use certain features and asking for a workaround. Releasing an email to your staff or providing them training as a group can help prevent mass emails or phone calls to your IT professional.
What Types of Changes Is Microsoft Making?
One of the biggest changes that Microsoft has made so far is disabling automatic e-mail forwarding. This has changed the way that your office may forward emails to other employees in the business and clients outside of the business. One of the major changes that is expected to happen at the end of January 2021 involves no longer allowing the “allow list” or “block list” from the SPAM policy setting in Exchange Office to function. Instead, you will need to add your allow or block list elsewhere. Finally, Microsoft is making subtle changes to all license-level software to increase protection and decrease phishing and spoofing risk. While you may not necessarily see these changes, you may find that you need to update your software if it does not automatically self-update.
Microsoft is making anti-spam changes to decrease spam and to help prevent phishing and spoofing attacks when using Microsoft Office 365. If you own a business, you need to be aware of these changes, as it can impact these products. Your IT professional can help advise your office on the changes that are being made and update your software to ensure you are using the latest Microsoft Office products.
by Felicien | Dec 12, 2020 | Education
Top 15 Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks
Microsoft Teams is one of the most popular and influential digital team-building solutions available for startups and business teams of any size. Using Microsoft Teams as your company’s preferred collaboration tool provides access to myriad features, from private messaging and group chats to file and document-sharing. With a few tips and tricks, optimize your time and productivity whenever you and your team put Microsoft Teams to use.
How Can I Get Better Organized with Microsoft Teams?
In order to use Microsoft Teams as efficiently as possible, getting organized with the system is a must.
1. Bookmark Important Messages and Content
Whenever you receive a noteworthy message or content from another member of your team, select the bookmark icon next to the message. You can search for bookmarks by browsing for content within the message you are trying to find via your search bar or by typing the command “/saved” into the bar when searching for a list of your saved bookmarks.
2. Use Drag-and-Drop Features to Stay Organized
Use Microsoft Teams drag-and-drop features to organize messages, teams, files, as well as calendar events and important dates.
3. Create Groups for Users
Grouping members of your team or users who have joined you on Microsoft Teams is a way to keep better track of those you communicate with throughout each day. Create a new tag for specific groups to communicate with more team members in less time.
4. Select Favorites
You can also choose favorite channels and teams when using Microsoft Teams to gain quick access to those you use most. Favoriting or bookmarking channels and teams will keep them at the top of your list.
How Can I Increase Team Engagement?
5. Add Subject Lines
Adding subject lines throughout conversations and group messages can help to keep communications more organized and clutter-free. The icon for creating subject lines is located in the bottom left corner of the messaging section of Microsoft Teams.
6. Use Animated Graphics (GIFs) and Other Visual Media
Using visual media is a great way to break up conversations, make a point, and send a message without a wall of text. Use GIFs as well as other relevant imagery or visual media during conversations to keep track of the overall theme and direction of the conversation.
7. Use Urgent Messages and Notifications When Necessary
If you are looking to get in touch with a member of your team immediately, send an “Urgent” message from the messaging tab of Microsoft Teams.
8. Use Polls to Increase Engagement
Increase the engagement of your team members by implementing a question or a poll with the messages you send out en masse.
9. Use Eye-Catching Headlines and Titles
Use appealing and eye-catching headlines and titles when communicating with your team to keep them focused and interested in the content of your conversation or meeting.
Improve Meetings Altogether With Microsoft Teams
10. Putting Together Mode to Use
Use Together Mode from Microsoft Teams to emulate a full conference room of participants.
11. Instantly Call a Team Member Within a Chat
If you are in need of more one-on-one communication, instantly call a team member from directly within a private conversation.
12. Record Your Meetings
Record your meetings from the main control panel in your Microsoft Teams account. It is also possible to use this section to transcribe each of your meetings for future use and reference.
13. Use Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes
Using Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes section is another way to keep track of conversations, topics that are covered, and tasks for teams and individuals alike.
14. Blur Out Your Current Background at Home or at the Office
Whether you are working remotely permanently or want to minimize and limit distractions during team meetings, you can blur your background from the main settings area of your Microsoft Teams bar.
15. Title and Log Meetings Appropriately
In order to maximize overall productivity, be sure to title and log all of your meetings and conversations in Microsoft Teams appropriately for future searches and use.
Using Microsoft Teams for your business, startup, or brand is a great way to effectively communicate with co-workers and team members remotely, regardless of your location and time zone. By taking the time to optimize Microsoft Teams for you, increase productivity and overall efficiency among all of your team members and employees.
Need a quick book on Microsoft Teams: Click here to check out one we recommend.
by Felicien | Dec 11, 2020 | Education
9 Meeting Tips for Using Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a simple, yet effective tool for hosting meetings. It has both audio and video capabilities as well as a chat feature. It can handle conference calls and one on one meetings, with members of your organization as well as guests. Plus, it has a convenient chat feature that can be used to share documents and spreadsheets. Here are a few tips for using Teams effectively in meetings.
Send Invites through E-mail: Anyone in your organization who has access to your company communications can be easily searched and added when you create a new meeting. But if you’d like to add someone from outside of the organization, all you have to do is enter their email when you create an event or add it later on. They will receive an invitation in their inbox that will allow them to enter the meeting when it starts.
Admit Guests from the Lobby: Members of your organization who are invited to the meeting will be able to join automatically when it starts. But those who are not must be admitted. When guests enter the meeting, they will be placed in the lobby to await your admittance. You will receive a notification and see them waiting in the lobby – all you have to do is click the checkmark next to their name and they will be able to enter the meeting.
Keep the Noise to a Minimum: Conference calls can get noisy. A loud air conditioner or nescient conversations in the background of one guest’s location can disrupt the entire call. Attendees can mute themselves while others are talking to reduce interference. Or if one particular guest is not complying with the request, as the host you can mute them.
Make Sure Guests Download Teams: To join a Teams meeting, guests must download the app or browser extension. It’s free to download and doesn’t require any fancy plugins. But guests may be confused if you don’t make them aware that the call is being conducted through an app.
Decide on an Audio or Video Call: Teams has video capabilities as well as audio. It may be awkward for some if they are not aware that they will be visible during the meeting if it’s a video call. So, to make things run smoothly decide beforehand whether a video call is necessary and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Share Documents in the Chat During a Call: The chat feature allows you to seamlessly share and view documents and text communications while on a call. If you have an important memo or chart you want everyone to see, simply drop it in the chat and participants can view it without leaving the call.
Join with Audio Conferencing: Teams is generally run through Wi-Fi, but if you or a guest is in an area with limited internet access, you can always join a call through audio conferencing. Audio conferencing allows members to dial in manually using their phone line. Those who have audio conferencing available will see dial-in instructions provided alongside the meeting info.
Record Your Teams Meetings: Teams has a recording function if you want a video of the meeting to reference or transcribe. All you have to do is select the “…” button in the meeting and press record. But keep in mind, you may want to make participants aware that they are being recorded, so no one feels uncomfortable.
Share Selected Applications: Teams allows you to share selected applications with meeting participants, rather than your entire desktop. So, if you want to show your browser, but not your email, you can do so with application sharing.
Teams is a powerful app and there are a variety of innovative yet simple features you can play around with. Employ these tips in your next meeting to increase your productivity and efficiency.
by Felicien | Dec 4, 2020 | Education
What’s New With Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms gives you a plethora of features to utilize to your advantage. It easily creates useful documentation for your business and is accessible to virtually everyone in your organization. Forms integrate well with many other Microsoft Office products, including Outlook, and it is completely free to use. Microsoft Forms makes it possible to organize documents, create tracking data, and support large-scale projects — and in today’s dynamic business environment, nothing is more important than data collected and analyzed. Microsoft Forms is an essential piece of software that transforms the way we work by connecting everyone into a collaborative environment.
With its many features, Microsoft Forms makes it easy to visualize real-time data and use an automated form of predictive analytics to capture rapid insight. Customization allows users to create forms that fit their own needs. Businesses use Microsoft Forms for more than just keeping track of data; they use it to implement customer research and manage their various social media presences. Sales teams can collect and organize all of their prospecting surveys and then store and analyze the results of their data collections to the cloud.
Businesses can use Microsoft Forms tools to survey employees, gather feedback, and even ask for advice on projects and other key decisions. Many businesses also use it to share interactive quizzes that allow them to create proprietary data stores, which they can then mine for insights.
Data Visualization
Another great benefit of the Microsoft Forms tool is visualized data. Once the form data has been collected, the online software converts it into graphs and charts that make your data more accessible and easy for others to interpret. Easy data visualization is at the core of Microsoft Forms, and what they have can be seen as an upgrade over other top survey tools.
There are also advanced analytics capabilities along with an impressively professional user interface. With all of these upgrades over other online survey alternatives, it becomes clear why Microsoft Survey has been gaining so much traction. Microsoft Forms allows for handling multiple surveys at a time. This not only makes it easier to gather data, but it also makes it a better tool to manage your surveys. Quizzes can handle complex functionalities, even when built from scratch, due to the modular user interface and extensible components that the software affords.
Microsoft Forms in the Classroom
Forms are set to become a vital, fundamental, and integral tool for ensuring that students are continually up to date with the world around them. Using Microsoft Forms, students can conduct transactions, undertake research, and apply real-time data to various tasks. In addition to taking advantage of all the Office Online tools and bringing with it the power of Office Web Apps, Forms sports new features that help with collecting surveys during specific time periods, retrieving input from third-party software, and integrating it with Microsoft Teams — another platform that is gaining an impressive following from the academic community.
One of the powers of Microsoft Forms lies in its ability to bridge student needs from both web, email, and text, facilitating communication along with the data that drives it. With Microsoft Forms, students can maintain private electronic environments — which comes in handy for classes run by the same institution. The software is slowly becoming the standard for student needs, and as such, it is imperative that students effectively utilize Microsoft Forms when interacting with external and unstructured data sources. By staying synced online in an isolated cloud environment, students can also use Microsoft Forms for composing collaborative survey documents, a practice that students have used as a vital tool for research purposes.
As Microsoft continues to fit their needs, a growing number of students will continue to get the most out of their academic careers by utilizing the platform’s features.
