Category: Office 365

Microsoft Office 365

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I am joining Green Beacon Solutions as Director of Customer Experience

Hello All,

I have joined Green Beacon Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Dynamics CRM partner, as Director of Customer Experience.

In my new role I will focus on the intertwined worlds of Green Beacon LogoCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM). And yes, there will be a heavy dose of business intelligence and mobility as they are an important part of an overall customer focused program.

I will continue to post content here on my personal blog and will provide additional content on our Green Beacon Blog.

See my first post on the Green Beacon Blog here: https://www.greenbeacon.com/insights/what-is-the-role-of-a-director-of-customer-experience-and-what-does-it-mean-for-our-customers/

An interesting factoid on “what is a green beacon”. Beacons, in the maritime world, are directional markers. You can think of them as “traffic signals” that guide operators safely along the waterways. They also identify dangerous areas and give directions and information.

I find that so appropriate to what we do; provide direction and help companies and people safely navigate through their CRM journeys. Pretty cool.

About Green Beacon

Since 2001, Green Beacon has been implementing and supporting business solutions built on leading customer relationship management platforms, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM. A Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner, Green Beacon specializes in large-scale CRM implementations that put clients’ strategies into operation.

By combining deep technical expertise with years of experience in a range of industries Green Beacon works closely with organizations to transform the way they do business. This highly collaborative approach has earned us an unmatched reputation for delivering ongoing return on investment.

The company is headquartered in Newton, MA, and has with offices throughout the United States. For additional information, visit: www.greenbeacon.com.

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Yammer Document Conversations Rolling Out

Yammer Document Conversations in Office 365, OneDrive and SharePoint

Yammer conversations is the next step in Yammer integration with Office 365, OneDrive and SharePoint. It brings in-context Yammer conversations along-side documents. And not just Office Online docs like Excel, PowerPoint or Word, but over 30+ file types like .mp4, .gif, and others.

Team collaboration very often focuses on documents. How often have you had to have multiple calls and conversations about document edits, updates and changes? Well, it is a whole lot easier to communicate about those documents outside of email and standard (sometimes confusing) document track changes features. Not only that, many document types don’t have any change tracking. Having conversations about documents from within the documents themselves, not only enhances communication, it also improves employee engagement.

This is a pretty sweet addition to improve collaboration. If you were at the recent SharePoint Conference you might have caught a demo of this. The feature is slowly being released to all Yammer & Office 365 customers so expect to live in your Office 365 and Yammer network soon.

With document conversations users can share their ideas and expertise from within the content they are editing or reviewing. I think this is awesome. I can work from SharePoint Online, OneDrive, or Yammer and have access to my content and all of my conversations.

Check out more details here at the Office Blog – I have included a short video on this new feature below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdL43ID0ccQ

Yammer Document Conversations

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Live Virtual Event, Office 365: Transform your workplace, enable innovation

A live webinar coming up on November 7, with industry thought leaders on “Office 365: Transform your workplace, enable innovation”. Speakers/presenters include:

Office 365 - Transform - Enable Your Workplace

 

  • Adam Pisoni – Co-founder of Yammer (a great speaker)
  • Luke Williams – Professor of Innovation at NYU Stern School of Business
  • John Case – Microsoft VP, Office

Learn how Microsoft Office 365 has helped companies harness employee ideas, embrace new workplace cultures and technologies, and spark innovation and spontaneous collaboration in the workplace to accelerate business: getting it done, anywhere.

If you haven’t heard Adam Pisoni speak or seen him present, I highly recommend it. Easy to see why Microsoft paid $1.2B for Yammer. this should be great event so check out it if you have time.

Details here: http://community.dynamics.com/partner/b/msuspartner/archive/2013/10/23/november-7-virtual-event-for-office-365-transform-your-workplace-enable-innovation.aspx

 

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Infinity Info Systems Presenting at CRM Users Group (CRMUG)

Infinity Info Systems Presenting at CRM Users Group (CRMUG) in Tampa!

CRMUG Summit 2013

 

Tampa, Florida is the place to be October 20 ? 24, 2013 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers, partners, and prospective customers.

Infinity Info Systems is once again contributing our time and talented people in sharing impactful information for increasing your CRM success. Bob Peskin and Mike Hammons will both be presenting some really great content.

  • CRM Reporting 201: C-Level Visibility with Dynamics CRM Dashboards
  • Managing Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Office 365 Environments
  • Techie Talk: Upgrading Complex Systems
  • Techie Talk: Reporting Panel
  • Techie Talk: Upgrading Complex Systems
  • User Adoption: Making Progress with Social CRM
  • User Adoption: Taking Advantage of the Outlook Client

REGISTER TODAY for CRMUG Summit!

Another great reason for attending this year, Microsoft will be providing the first public, comprehensive review of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013…including about thirty minutes of live demonstrations by Param Kahlon, Group Manager at Microsoft.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, formerly code named ‘Orion,’ will be featured in the CRM keynotes for both The Partner Connections Event and CRMUG Summit. You don?t want to miss this! The sessions that follow Param?s will dive deeper into new features and functionality that will blow Dynamics CRM customers away.

Keynote Times and Dates:

  • For CRMUG Summit, Tuesday, October 22nd from 8:00 am ? 9:30 am
  • For Partners – The Partner Connections Event, Sunday, October 20th from 1:00 ? 1:45 pm

A quick note for our Partner friends and colleagues. The Partner Connections Event is the premier opportunity for Microsoft Dynamics Partners to build sales, marketing, leadership, consultant, and developer/architect skills by networking and learning from each other and industry experts. We hope to see you there!

REGISTER TODAY for The Partner Connections Event!

This weekend (September 15) is your last chance to save $100 on Summit registrations – don’t wait any longer to sign up!

 

 

 

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Microsoft Details Office 365 Upgrade Options

Office 365 customers can more easily switch plans with new Office 365 Upgrade Options

“We’ve been listening to your feedback and today we are announcing the ability for customers to more easily switch between Office 365 business plans.”Microsoft Office 365 Logo

Well, really more like HALF listening.

Microsoft is finally updating its promised Office 365 switching capability, allowing users to upgrade to new plans more easily and quickly; which is a good thing. Customers SHOULD be able to decide what products and services they want to buy from a company. The problem is, and this is the half listening part, customers cannot back track to a less costly plan.

Customers are also saying, rightfully so, they want and should be able to easily downgrade to different plans, should their needs change.

But hey, it’s a step in the right direction. Caveat, only those with plans covering 300 users or fewer can use the automatic switching wizard at this time.

Before Microsoft introduced this swtiching capability, customers had to manually re-assign user licenses and call Office 365 support to cancel their old subscriptions. The new Switch plans wizard allows some plan changes to be done automatically and without calling support.

The chart below provides more details on the Office 365 upgrade options and switchable plans.

Available now ?
From To
Small Business P1 Small Business Premium P2
Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 2), SharePoint Online? (Plan 1) Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4
Enterprise E1, SharePoint Online? (Plan 2), Exchange Online (Plan 2) Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4
Education A1 Education A2, A3
Education A2 Education A3
Exchange Online Kiosk Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4, Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Exchange Online (Plan 2)

To get more details and read the FAQ, follow this link:

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/01/office-365-customers-can-more-easily-switch-plans.aspx

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Differences Between SkyDrive Pro and SkyDrive

Yes, SkyDrive Pro and SkyDrive are?confusing…thank you, Microsoft.?SkyDrive Logo

I’m not sure who is responsible for creating such exasperatingly confusing names, SKU’s and products within Microsoft. Please don’t get me started on the many different flavors of Office 365.?I sure wish they woud stop it. Until they do, I’ll try to shed a little light on the differences between SkyDrive Pro and SkyDrive.

Here is the most clear Microsoft article I have been able to find:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn167720.aspx

SkyDrive Pro – Requires SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2003.?A personal file storage and synchronization service for business use. You store, access, and synchronize your files in SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2013 with your workstation or laptop.

SkyDrive -?A personal file storage service linked with your Microsoft (Live) account. This is similar to Box, DropBox, iCloud, and related storage services. SkyDrive has no relationship to SharePoint Online/SharePoint Server 2013. If you install Office 2013 and then open Windows Explorer, you will see a?SkyDrive?folder in the Favorites section. This folder synchronizes with your?personal file storage, not your SkyDrive Pro storage. You can download and install the SkyDrive synchronization application to synchronize your SkyDrive (personal file storage) with the?SkyDrive?folder in Windows Explorer, without installing Office 2013.

And yes, it is possible to have BOTH on your laptop or desktop and both can sync files (to different areas).

SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro

The following table provides more information about the differences and how synchronization works.

SkyDrive Pro Synchronization (using the Windows Sync client) SkyDrive Pro document library SkyDrive
How do I access it? To use SkyDrive Pro Synchronization, the user must have:

In SharePoint Server 2013, a user clicks the Sync button in a document library to start the synchronization of files between the document library and the client workstation. On the client workstation, when the SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client runs, it is available from the notification area. The SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client creates shortcuts in Windows Explorer in Favorites.

 On a user’s My Site in SharePoint Server 2013, or on a My Site in SharePoint Online Go to the SkyDrive logon page.
Who uses this product? Business users Business users Consumers or individuals
Is this a document library? No, but the SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client performs synchronization with document libraries. Yes Yes
Is this installed with Office 2013? Yes, the SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client is installed.You may also download the stand-alone SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client, which can be used with earlier versions of Office (Office 2010, Office 2007, and so on). No, this is a document library on a user’s My Site in SharePoint Server 2013. Yes, the Microsoft SkyDrive client is installed, a shortcut named SkyDrive is created in Favorites in Windows Explorer, and an open and save location is created in the Backstage view in Office 2013.
Which folder used in Windows Explorer under Favorites? SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client synchronizes files in the following Windows folders:

  • SkyDrive @ Contoso, where Contoso is a SharePoint Online tenancy name
  • SkyDrive Pro
  • SharePoint
 SkyDrive Pro folder SkyDrive folder

Hope this helps.

This just in, found a PowerPoint deck on SkyDrive Pro and sharing it below.

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Power BI for Office 365

Power BI for Office 365

Here is a quick update from an announcement made at the Microsoft WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference). Power BI for Office 365 is a self-service business intelligence (BI) solution delivered through Excel and Office 365. Power BI users have data analysis and visualization capabilities to identify business insights from their on-premises and cloud data. One of the most exciting new features of Power BI is Q&A, a natural language based experience for interacting with data. Microsoft still has not really made clear exactly what Power BI is, e.g. is it a new product, a re-branding, a new service? From what I can tell it looks like a little bit of rebranding of Power Pivot with some new features thrown in. Hopefully soon Microsoft will provide more details on exactly what this is, what are the costs, how is it configured and all those other fun questions. In the meantime, a little more about the Q&A feature. Q&A builds upon allows the use of natural language to find, understand, and report on your data. Here are a few examples: ?Show London clients? Power BI - Show London Accounts In this example, an Excel workbook with data about customers and their locations has been saved to Office 365. Q&A is interpreting the search query and displaying corresponding information from the workbook to create a list of customers that are based in London. ?Show number of products? Power BI Show Product Counts Similarly, ?show number of products? is being interpreted to count the number of products found in the data source. ?Number of songs per year? Power BI Show Songs per Year Further, Q&A automatically chooses a suitable visualization based on what is requested. ?Total number of employees for finance, HR, marketing in Europe by employee country? Power Bi - Show Total Employees by Country In this example, Q&A automatically chose to display three maps, one for each division. It opted to display maps because the country column is marked as a geography data column. ?Show our sales pipeline with opportunity size greater than $20,000? v So what will you need to get Power BI Q&A to work with your organization?s dataset? An Excel spreadsheet with a Power Pivot model saved to a Power BI site in Office 365. So, if you are using Excel and Power Pivot today, you are on the right track to use Q&A over your own data once it is available. Microsoft will be posting more about the features included in Power BI so stay tuned here for more updates. In the meantime head over to http://www.powerbi.com and check out more details.

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Get started with Business Intelligence in the new Office

Business Intelligence in the new Office

Originally posted on Microsoft Office Blogs site. I’m loving the new and improved business intelligence capabilities in Office 365 and Office 2013. It’s finally getting close to the simple and easy BI that we have heard for so long.

New BI capabilities in Office 365
New BI capabilities in Office 365

Reliable business intelligence and insight are key to a thriving business. Excel, SharePoint and Office 365 make business intelligence (BI) in the new Office more accessible to everyone across an organization as part of their everyday work. New and enhanced features in familiar tools such as Excel empower everyone in a business to easily explore, model, analyze, and visualize data. With SharePoint, users of all levels can collaboratively develop and share insights through dashboards and scorecards, and this experience continues seamlessly in the cloud with Office 365.

Read on to learn how using Microsoft BI makes it possible for anyone in the organization to develop the insights that help drive new discoveries and make better, more informed decisions.

Read more here >>>

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Microsoft Convergence 2013 – Summary

 

Microsoft Convergence 2013 was held in wonderful New Orleans (NOLA), LA, March 18th-21st.

NOLA - New Orlease - Microsoft Convergence 2013 - Dynamics CRM

If you would like to see my tweets from New Orleans, go here: http://www.michaelhammons.com/convergence-2013/

The following are a few highlights from Convergence 2013:

  1. Let’s start with growth. Microsoft announced at Convergence 2013 the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM adoption numbers, with more than 3 million users and more than 39,000 customers.
  2. The opening had some great customer stories. I found it curious the vast majority were B2C customers. Just a coincidence? The posted case studies can be found on the Microsoft website here.
  3. The Marketing Pilot Announcement & Netbreeze AnnouncementAcquisitions.
  4. The new User Interface (UI) recently released with Polaris and the continued direction and new features for Orion. I will include some screenshots soon.
  5. The new cross browser and mobile experiences available across devices

There were a lot of good sessions. In fact it’s often hard to choose which session to go, there are so many good ones! There are a few below that cover the some of the highlights above. In addition you can see the changes coming in the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). You may need to register herebefore viewing these videos.

  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The New Era in CRM.
    • Includes Dynamics CRM vision, the changing role of CRM in the Era of the Customer and what that means for sales, marketing and customer care. Overview of new UI, Marketing Pilot and Netbreeze. Shows a couple of short product demonstrations. Link to video.
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Recap & Roadmap Primer.
    • Details of the roadmap, including mobile, for the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM over the next 6-24 months. Link to video.
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Reimagining the User Experience.
    • This session covered to see how users today work with CRM across different browsers, mobile devices and Microsoft Office. Previews the great new innovations in user experiences (UX) and design coming in future releases. Link to video.
  • Advanced Analytics for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
    • Covers reporting and analytics capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. New and updated analysis capabilities available in Microsoft Excel 2013, PowerPivot, PowerView, Office Apps and other tools with SQL Server 2012. Link to video.
  • The New Microsoft Office 365: Your New Office – Social Productivity at Work
    • Overview of the new Office and Microsoft’s vision for enterprise social. New updates for cloud, social, and mobile. Link to video.
    • I you aren’t familiar with Office 365, go now and check it out. The 2013 updates are amazing. I think a whole new level of productivity is available. Awesome stuff, really!
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Notes from WPC?Day 2

High energy at Air Canada Centre. Cloud topic #1.

Connected devices, continuous services. Cloud OS.

  • Windows Live
  • CRM Online
  • Xbox Live
  • Office 365
  • Bing
  • MSN

73% of businesses planning to use public/private clouds in next 3 years

37% say investing in modern apps a critical priority

In next 5 year number of smart devices to grow 3x

Azure and windows server 2012

  • Scalable & elastic
  • Always up, always on
  • Shared resources
  • Automated and self-service important

Azure Supports

  • 64 virtual processors per images
  • 1 TB of memory per vm
  • World leading performance
  • 1 million OPS per vm
  • New capabilities in azure and portal
  • Much easier user interface.  Finally!

Microsoft Business Services $ 1B run rate. 3k Dynamics partners attending WPC in Toronto.

Delivering vertical expertise is key to growth

Global ISV?s are joining MS Dynamics community.

Office 365 (O365) and CRM online together incredible platform.

  • Dynamic business vision.
  • Demo impressive.  (Ask us if you would like a personal demo of this.)

Tom Gruhler – Windows phone 8 GM

  • Flexible app distribution, enterprise app store
  • Enterprise device management.
  • Shared windows core , accelerates innovation
  • Easier to build and maintain Window?s solutions
  • Combined with 1.3 billion windows users and it’s unmatched.

I have to say the interface, usability and functionality of Windows Phone is quite impressive. I firmly believe it will be a contender. If you haven’t checked out a Windows Phone out lately, I highly recommend you do. http://www.windowsphone.com/

New Metro UI CRM Interface Coming!! In a word IMPRESSIVE!

UI/UX will be critical to creating successful apps and experiences using them. We have a UI/Design gap and should look for resource/partners to help in this area. A couple of screenshots below.

clip_image001

CRM-Metro-UI

Quick Note on R9 /  Q2-2012 Dynamics CRM Release

R9 was not where Microsoft wanted it to be. Preview and beta feedback not as high as it should have been. Quality is highest priority. New VP of Engineering has taken over and after seeing feedback and the desire to deliver compelling and quality releases, they decided to push delivery of cross-browser support and new mobility to Q4.

New Engineering head is still committed to the new release cadence and expects to improve it. Expected to have Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer releases.


The Day?s Big Announcements:

Windows Server / Azure: A new community technology preview (CTP) of new technologies that enable hosting service providers to use their Windows Server data centers to deliver the same great web site and virtual machine capabilities recently announced for Windows Azure.
Switch to Hyper-V Program: Microsoft announced a new program to help customers transition from VMware infrastructure to Microsoft. The ?Switch to Hyper-V? Program provides partners with guidance, training and software tools, including the Virtual Machine Migration Toolkit, to more seamlessly migrate virtual machines to Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.
Microsoft Dynamics: Several new global independent software vendors are choosing Microsoft Dynamics or extending their solutions across the Microsoft Dynamics platform, including: Campus Management Corp., Cenium, Inc., Cincom Systems, Inc., PROS Pricing and Technosoft.
Windows Phone: Showed off new hardware capabilities coming to Windows Phone 8 and some of the powerful features Windows Phone 8 will deliver through integration with Windows 8. They also showed off some of the most interesting new apps coming to Windows Phone, including: Words with Friends, Draw Something, Audible, Chase and PayPal, and games including Asphalt 7: Heat, N.O.V.A. 3: Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, and Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
What?s Your Cause Challenge: Microsoft wants to know: What?s your cause? Between July 10 and August 31, 2012 Microsoft Partners are challenged to nominate 500 eligible nonprofits serving youth in their communities to receive a software donation from Microsoft. Read here for more information!

Mike