Dakine, maker of accessories and apparel for action sports, needed new business technology that matched the expectations of its mobile workforce—and chose Microsoft Office 365. Today Dakine employees use the cloud-based communication and collaboration services to stay connected with the business, driving productivity while minimizing IT infrastructure costs. Here’s what Nic Richards, IT manager at Dakine, had to say: "As the global IT Manager, I need to be able to react quickly from wherever I am, be it on the slopes, the trails or the beach. Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based services give me that flexibility. We have reduced the average time to answer a customer query by 30 percent. Before Office 365, it could take one or two days to equip a new employee with email—now I’m done in just five minutes." Watch this video to learn more about how Dakine uses Office 365: It’s a crisp, clear day on the slopes of Mt. Hood Meadows and Nic Richards is "shredding pow." Snowboarding on powder may not sound like work, but in a way it is. For the IT Manager and many of his colleagues at Dakine, using the company’s gear and participating in the "Dakine lifestyle" is actively encouraged. The more that employees use the products that Dakine designs, manufactures and markets, the better. According to Richards, the company is getting back to its roots after it was sold by Billabong to Altamont Capital Partners in 2013. Moving from the bustling Hood River downtown area to a beautiful polished pine, glass and steel headquarters helped augment that transition. With panoramic views of the Columbia River and Mt. Hood’s iconic volcanic cone, it’s easy to see why Dakine staffers never really stop building brand allegiance: at work and at play. The last couple of years also provided an opportunity for Richards to redefine the company’s approach to business technology. "I wanted to find business productivity solutions that reflect our corporate culture: people are laid back here, but dedicated," says Richards. "We expect to work when and where we need to—on the slopes, the trails or the beach. We use Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based services to reinforce those values, underlying what makes Dakine’s culture unique." Mobile productivity Office 365 offers interoperable communication and collaboration services—email, file sharing, online collaboration, 1 terabyte of cloud storage, instant messaging (IM) and video conferencing. Enhanced mobility is good news for the one-third of Dakine’s employees who spend a lot of time out of the office. On any day, Dakine staffers can be found visiting any one of thousands of retailers around the world, filming a surf video on the beaches of Oahu, or reviewing production at a manufacturing plant in China—and they are all using Office 365 to stay in touch with colleagues, get work done and communicate with the head office. "We leverage the video and audio conferencing tools of Skype for Business to better collaborate and stay in real-time contact with our teams around the world. And virtual teams with members at headquarters and our office in Annecy-le-Vieux, France, use videoconferences to review SKUs and product ideas," says Richards. I like the anywhere access I get from OneDrive for Business too. If I get an email about a document that needs editing, I can download it from the online storage, make the edits, and send a link back to my colleague to check out the updated version, wherever I happen to be working." "In finance, we frequently IM with the various teams, especially sales. It’s a vital communication tool while working remotely and an integral part of daily life inside the offices as well," adds Lauren Simpson, vice president of Special Projects. As more employees take advantage of being able to download the latest, full versions of Office applications on up to five computing devices, mobile workplace scenarios will increase. Office 365 ProPlus includes a version for Macs and iPads, so even the folks who design on their Macs are covered. "I know finance staffers are installing Office at home to work in the evenings," says Richards. "It’s easy to save your work in the cloud and pick it up again when you get to the office the next morning." Simple IT As one of the only two members of the IT department at Dakine, Richards was keen to find a solution that would simplify his life managing the company’s technology. Working with KAMIND IT, a Microsoft Partner Network member, Richards planned the Office 365 deployment as a scalable, flexible and quick "exit strategy" from the Billabong on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server mail solution. And from the outset, he’s been happy with the cost-effective, time-saving benefits of a cloud-based solution. "We saved approximately (US) $100,000 by not having to purchase software and hardware for our own on-premises Exchange solution," Richards says. "And with the expert assistance of KAMIND IT, we achieved a pretty smooth inbox migration from Billabong’s servers to Exchange Online." For IT staff, the solution’s ease of use is a great time saver, especially as the company is growing quickly and adding new staff. "I love that the ongoing management of Office 365 and signing up users is super easy," says Richards. "Before Office 365, it could take one or two days to equip a new employee with email—now I’m done in just five minutes." Fast customer service Customer service staff are also experiencing timesaving benefits that translate into more responsive service. Today they no longer have to put callers on hold while they look for answers to product queries. That’s because they are using the presence and IM capabilities that come with Office 365 to quickly find a colleague who can help. "We have reduced the average time to answer a customer query by 30 percent," says Richards. Looking ahead, Dakine intends to use Microsoft SharePoint Online to build stronger relationships with its retailers. "We have a lot of products and a lot of marketing media available. It would be great to allow approved e-commerce vendors to visit a Dakine intranet site where they could search for product pictures and videos for their websites," says Richards. "I can already think of a few other areas Office 365 could help out too. The opportunities seem endless." Download the full case study The post Sports apparel designer gears up for mobile productivity with Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

August brought new Outlook partner add-ins, new wearable productivity apps, Sway for Windows 10, a new community GitHub project for Office IT Pro Deployment Scripts and a new Snack video showcase for developers. Plus, you can now preview the Skype for Business apps for iOS and Android and real-time coauthoring in OneDrive. There were lots of updates too, including: improvements in Excel 2016 for Mac that make working with external data easier, deeper integration between Office documents and Outlook for iOS, and easier access to OneNote Staff Notebooks for school administrators. Several posts this month give you a close look at the new business analytics features in Excel 2016 and show you what you can do with six new Excel 2016 charts. Leave us a comment to let us know what your favorite new feature is. If you missed last month’s updates, see What’s new: July 2015. Office 365 Personal, Office 365 Home and Office 365 University updates Learn how to use the new Waterfall chart in Excel 2016—The Waterfall chart is one of the most popular visualization tools used by businesses. When you use this new Excel chart, with just a few clicks you can show how you arrived at a net value by breaking down the cumulative effect of positive and negative contributions. This post shows you how to use a Waterfall chart to visualize a financial statement, use subtotals as a visual checkpoint in the chart, customize charts, and use the chart beyond financial analysis, for example, for navigating data about population, births and deaths. Sway now available worldwide and Sway for Windows 10 is here—Sway, the digital storytelling app, is moving from preview to general availability and is rolling out to eligible Office 365 for business and education customers worldwide. That means any individual with a free Microsoft account can now use Sway, and more businesses, schools and other organizations can use Sway to create and share interactive reports, presentations, assignments, lessons, projects and more. Sway for Windows 10 has arrived too, along with a new layout option and new publishing capabilities like using Docs.com to share your Sways. New apps to wear to help you stay productive—Wearables are hot and so are our new apps for them. Check out the new and updated wearable productivity apps. The all-new Outlook for Apple Watch lets you reply, schedule and archive right from your wrist, and the all-new Microsoft Translator for Apple Watch and Android Wear provides instant translation into 50 languages. Wunderlist for Apple Watch now has Quick Add magic, OneDrive for Android Wear got several improvements, and OneNote for Android Wear was redesigned to let you say, see and do more. Plus, Yammer for Apple Watch is coming soon. Break down hierarchical data with the new Treemap and Sunburst charts—In Excel 2016, regardless of the format of your hierarchical data, you can create a Treemap or Sunburst hierarchy chart to reveal insights into your data. This post describes what hierarchical data is and what it looks like, explains how to choose between a Treemap or Sunburst chart for your data, and gives you tips for creating beautiful, intuitive hierarchical charts. Try out both new chart types and create a look for your data unlike any other chart you’ve previously used in Office. New Outlook partner add-ins and expanded rollout of Outlook.com preview—New partnerships with Evernote, Yelp, IFTTT and Wunderlist and new add-ins are enhancing the Outlook experience for consumer and commercial users. The new add-ins—Uber, PayPal, Evernote and Boomerang—are rolling out now to help you get more done right from your inbox. The IFTTT, Yelp and Wunderlist add-ins are coming soon. Also, the preview of the new Outlook.com is being expanded to a broader audience. Read about the new add-ins and start using them now. Preview real-time coauthoring on OneDrive—Now when two or more users running the latest Office 2016 Preview release open the same Word document from OneDrive, they can coauthor with others in real time. Each sees the cursor location and text edits made by the others automatically appear as they happen. Try real-time coauthoring on OneDrive today. Visualize statistics with Histogram, Pareto and Box and Whisker charts—Take a close look at the new statistical chart types in Excel 2016 and find out how these new charts can help represent your statistical data in a way that works best for your needs. A Histogram chart shows the distribution of data, a Pareto chart automatically groups items and sorts columns from most common to least common, and a Box and Whisker chart characterizes the distribution of data and can be used to compare characteristics between different data sets. Read the post to find out more about how you can use these charts for your data. Working with external data in Excel 2016 for Mac—Working with external data across platforms is now easier than ever thanks to two improvements in Excel 2016 for Mac. Excel 2016 for Mac comes with a preinstalled and integrated SQL Server ODBC driver, which was developed hand-in-hand with Simba Technologies. And it has a brand new Microsoft Query (MSQuery) and Connection Manager to make creating and managing all of your data connections easier and more consistent with Windows. Read the blog post to get the details. Office 365 for Business & Education updates* New features coming to Outlook on the web—A host of updates are on the way for the web version of Outlook in Office 365. Formerly known as the Outlook Web App (OWA), from now on the browser-based Outlook experience will be referred to as "Outlook on the web." The updates include a simplified UI to help you be more efficient, new tools to help you stay on top of your inbox, new features so you can craft more visually engaging emails, new features to help you better manage your calendar, and a better mobile experience. Sway now available worldwide and Sway for Windows 10 is here—Sway, the digital storytelling app, is moving from preview to general availability and is rolling out to eligible Office 365 for business and education customers worldwide. That means any individual with a free Microsoft account can now use Sway, and more businesses, schools and other organizations can use Sway to create and share interactive reports, presentations, assignments, lessons, projects and more. Sway for Windows 10 has arrived too, along with a new layout option and new publishing capabilities, like using Docs.com to share your Sways. New wearable apps to help you stay productive—Check out the new and updated productivity apps for your wearable devices. The all-new Outlook for Apple Watch lets you reply, schedule and archive right from your wrist, and the all-new Microsoft Translator for Apple Watch and Android Wear provides instant translation into 50 languages. Wunderlist for Apple Watch now has Quick Add magic, OneDrive for Android Wear got several improvements, and OneNote for Android Wear was redesigned to let you say, see and do more. Plus, Yammer for Apple Watch is coming soon. School administrators can now get a Staff Notebook at My Apps or OneNote.com/staffnotebookedu—School administrators can use OneNote Staff Notebook to cultivate and manage educator collaboration. Now Office 365 Education customers with E1 or E3 plans can easily access the OneNote Staff Notebook app on their My Apps page in the App Launcher or through a simple link with additional resources at onenote.com/staffnotebookedu. The app is also now available globally in 35 languages across 51 markets. Support for right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew is coming soon. Preview of Skype for Business apps for iOS and Android is here—Find out what’s new in the Skype for Business apps for iOS and Android. Skype simplicity is now present throughout the apps. The In-Call and In-Meeting experience was updated to make it easier to navigate calls and meetings on your mobile phone or tablet. There’s also a new dashboard for easy navigation of your contacts, calls and meetings. Learn more about the preview and sign up for it today! Optimizing Yammer for teams—Yammer groups empower team members to collaborate within the right context and with the right set of people. To encourage teams to make Yammer groups their go-to destination, the UI is being enhanced and the experience inside groups is being improved. The changes delivered on the web include the Discovery feed to surface group conversations, real-time group activity, immersive group experience and Next Group notification. Over the next months, the Yammer mobile apps are being reoriented around groups, too—including a Group Updates feed and much more—to meet the needs of fast-moving teams. Updates to Power Query for Excel—This month’s Power Query update includes four new or improved features, including the option to specify Join Type in the Merge Queries dialog. You can now extract the first, the last, or a range of characters from a Text column. You can also customize the Quote Style in Split Column by Delimiter dialog, and support was added for UPN credentials in the Exchange connector. Introducing the Office IT Pro Deployment Script project—Looking for advanced PowerShell scripts or thinking about how to streamline your Office client deployment process? Check out the new community GitHub project for Office IT Pro Deployment Scripts. Office 365 experts from around the world are contributing to a collection of PowerShell scripts designed to automate various procedures that would normally require manual intervention from an IT pro. Read this post to see some of the scripts already available, like Copy-OfficeGPOSettings, Check-DiskSpace and more. Deeper integration between Office documents and Outlook for iOS—It’s easier than ever to collaborate on and share Office documents on the go. Outlook for iOS now opens Office documents sent as attachments directly in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. The steps required to collaborate on files sent as attachments have also been streamlined. In addition, Word, Excel and PowerPoint now include a Send with Outlook option on the Share menu. These updates, combined with the Focused Inbox, calendar integration, customizable swipe gestures and predictive search in Outlook, help you get more done, even on the smallest screen. What’s new for business analytics in Excel 2016—Read about the new and improved business analytics features in Excel 2016, designed with the analyst’s journey in mind, from gathering to consuming data. The new capabilities you can take advantage of for your business include: faster and easier ways to get data, streamlined data analysis, new forecasting capabilities based on Exponential Smoothing (that is, FORECAST.ETS()…), new charts, and publishing and sharing your data analysis with your workgroup or clients through Power BI with just one button. You can try out the new features for yourself in the Office 2016 Preview for Windows. Matter Center for Office 365—Matter Center allows people to create or view legal matters right from Outlook; tie Word, Excel, OneNote and other files to those matters; and securely collaborate with other legal professionals inside or outside their organizations. Office 365 Developer updates Dev Digest for August—Read this month’s Dev Digest to keep up with all things new in Office 365 development. Find out about the recent strides made to get new developers started with Office 365 APIs and add-ins, the code samples added for the newly released Windows UWP projects, along with version 2 of the hero demo called "The Property Manager" and the new Snack showcase of short videos showing what you can do with the platform. As always, get the documentation for new and updated APIs and code samples, plus a list of podcasts, Office Dev Show episodes, patterns and practices samples, blogs posts and upcoming events. Office UI Fabric—Office UI Fabric is a responsive, mobile-first, front-end framework for developers, designed to make it simple to quickly create web experiences using the Office Design Language. With Office UI Fabric you can apply simple CSS styles to make your web applications look and feel like the rest of Office. The styling takes into account typography, color, icons, animations, responsive grid layouts and localization. Please note that some of the updates may take time to show up in your Office 365 account, because they’re being rolled out to customers worldwide. —Andy O’Donald @andyodonald ——————————————————————————- *Not all updates apply to every Office 365 plan; please check the individual post for specifics. The post What’s new: August 2015 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Tastea—an innovative beverage retailer based in Orange County, California—wanted to prepare for expansion while maintaining high levels of quality and service. The company decided that a key to creating a repeatable customer experience across stores was to standardize operations while opening up clearer lines of communication. The company now relies on Office 365 for everything from inventory management to customer service. Tastea believes that it will open more stores and have greater business success with Office 365. Here’s what Tastea co-founder, Ted Vu, had to say: "Our ability to quickly expand and open new franchises would not be possible without the turnkey capabilities enabled by Office 365. I keep learning more and more about what I can do with Office 365—it’s been like a shopping spree for me. I just wish I’d switched to Office 365 sooner!" Watch this video to learn more about how Tastea uses Office 365: A budding idea Ted Vu dreams in flavors, aromas and textures. As one of the founders of Tastea, he has brought to Orange County, California, a west-meets-east vision of what a tea bar ought to be. Established in 2001 after a successful trial run with a beverage delivery service, Tastea currently has three locations and is rapidly expanding to include more company-owned stores and open the doors to franchisees across the United States and beyond. Vu and his business partner, Scott Nguyen, have been meticulous in cultivating the right atmosphere, creative tea recipes and a high level of customer service. Combined, these deliver on the Tastea promise: a fun place where people can gather together to enjoy innovative new beverages. But ensuring that this carefully crafted customer experience is repeatable is no small feat. "There are only two of us running things, and we can’t be everywhere at once, especially as we grow," explains Vu. "We looked ahead and predicted some serious growing pains if we didn’t formalize our processes and create systems to help us with every facet of the business." Identifying the missing ingredients From the start, Tastea equipped its team members with recipe cards, photos of properly made drinks, training programs, and written operating procedures, but it was clear that it would need to do more as the business grew. "We wanted to help our store managers and team members be more self-reliant and give them insight into the company’s direction, including our research and development efforts, sales promotions and store updates," recalls Vu. "We also needed the infrastructure to be able to do things like track and manage our inventory more effectively." Technology to support expansion Tastea relied on technologies such as Dropbox and Google Docs to share information with its team members, but Vu recognized that Tastea needed to become more sophisticated and move beyond using such disparate tools to run the business. "Our brand matters to us—it’s important to have our own domain name. But we couldn’t open any document sent using Google Docs unless we also used Gmail. It was counterproductive to have to switch between email addresses, and also we had no control over who could download and print proprietary information," says Vu. "We wanted to streamline our processes, achieve a higher level of professionalism, enhance security and manage document access more tightly." Vu investigated other technology options and quickly settled on Microsoft Office 365. "The calendaring functionality in Microsoft Exchange Online grabbed my interest first, because using it would make it so much easier to keep team members in sync across store locations," says Vu. "Then after seeing the parade of tools that come with it, all integrated and centralized in a single service, I knew Office 365 would be perfect for our business." Everyone at Tastea is taking advantage of Office 365. For example, Vu, Nguyen and all the store managers use Skype for Business to hold monthly virtual meetings, saving them the hassles and hours of driving time that their former in-person meetings required. "Being able to meet online will become even more important as we expand geographically," says Vu. "We can hold effective meetings without our managers spending time commuting back and forth." The company also uses Microsoft SharePoint Online to securely share everything from recipes to human resources forms, and it also includes centralized calendar information about news, product launches and sales promotions. An ecosystem at the ready Tastea benefits from the rich variety of applications available in the Office 365 Marketplace. For instance, the company adopted SideKick 365 DCM from SkyLite Systems, a case-management application that Tastea uses to track and resolve equipment malfunctions, customer-service issues and team member questions. In addition, Vu is developing an inventory tracking and management workflow solution in SharePoint Online that automates many of the steps associated with placing weekly orders to the company’s 20 vendors. He is also creating a discussion forum within SharePoint Online so that managers can share best practices, exchange new recipes and discuss challenges privately. "Between its native functionality, the third-party apps from the marketplace, and the ability to develop integrated custom solutions, we have the ultimate in flexibility with Office 365," says Vu. The freedom to focus By switching to Office 365, Tastea and its founders are poised for successful growth. "In Office 365, we’ve got a suite of apps that bring it all together so that we can focus on the bigger business picture," says Vu. "Before, I had to spend so much time and effort ‘putting out fires’ that it felt like I was just surviving. But now I have the hours and energy to tackle our growth goals—adopting Office 365 freed me up to create, which is what I truly love to do." Since first moving to Office 365, Vu has turned his attention not only to adding apps and online ordering but also to creating a loyalty program, conducting additional research and development, and building a new Tastea store. Creating a turnkey business With an eye toward franchising, Tastea now has more pieces of the puzzle in place to create a business model that will be attractive to prospective franchisees. "We need everything to be working cohesively so that franchisees can be confident that they’re putting their investments in the right place," says Vu. "By offering them familiar technologies from a trusted provider like Microsoft, we make it more comfortable to get started because everything is easy and right at their fingertips. Our ability to quickly expand and open new franchises would not be possible without the turnkey capabilities enabled by Office 365." Happier, more efficient team members One of the unexpected benefits of the move to Office 365 has been the uptick in morale at Tastea. "Before, when we didn’t have so many ways to both reach out and to respond, things could be chaotic and team members often felt like they were left in the dark," says Vu. "Today, they’re more engaged and truly feel part of our success because we’re able to give them the tools and information they need using Office 365. We’re getting twice as much work done." Cost-effective tools for increased business value By choosing Office 365, Vu believes that he is giving Tastea enterprise tools at a small-business price. "The costs are astronomically low; I honestly can’t believe that Office 365 is so affordable," says Vu. "We are getting an exceptional return on our investment, and we’ll be able to pass along that value to our franchisees." And Vu isn’t finished. He plans to tap into Office 365 to follow through on more dreams for the business. First on the list is to empower team member and manager self-service by expanding the company’s use of SharePoint Online to add wiki functionality. "I keep learning about more and more that I can do with Office 365—it’s been like a shopping spree for me," says Vu. "I just wish I’d switched to Office 365 sooner!" Key links Download the full case study Tastea: drinking in the success with Office 365 The post Office 365 gives Tastea the freedom to focus appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today, in an effort to help globally launch and inspire "Genius Hour" in classrooms all over the world, Angela Maiers and Choose2Matter, Inc. in collaboration with Microsoft are providing teachers with the free, customizable and interactive eBook: "Liberating Genius: The First 20 Days." This free eBook, authored by Angela Maiers and Mark Moran, guides teachers through the introduction of Genius Hour.  "Since classrooms began adopting Genius Hour five years ago, I’ve had thousands of educators ask me for advice on the best way to do so. This book contains lesson plans for the first 20 days and also curates the best advice from the vibrant community of passionate educators at the forefront of this movement." —Angela Maiers, founder of Choose2Matter Sign up for the Choose2Matter newsletter today to download the free eBook in OneNote here: Choose2Matter.org/liberatinggenius. What is Genius Hour? Imagine a classroom where passion-driven genius work is not extracurricular, but is a part of the routine. Students would be invited and expected to collaborate to support each another’s genius; to experiment with ideas, discover new possibilities and make epic things happen. Genius Hour is more than a "program" where students do fun projects together. Genius Hour is a nearly unprecedented opportunity for teachers to guide students in how to be effective learners and citizens, by helping them connect what they do in school to the broader community. OneNote was chosen to launch "Liberating Genius: The First 20 Days," because it’s free and available on every device that matters to you. OneNote is perfect for organizing class curriculum, lesson plans, class notes, managing student work and collaboration with students. Teachers can easily bring all this into their own custom collaborative notebook with students with the power of the OneNote Class Notebook. If you already have a OneNote Class Notebook, consider your new "Liberating Genius" notebook as just another "book on your bookshelf" in OneNote—just like your Class Notebook. You can easily drag and drop content from one book to another—just follow these easy steps: Download the "Liberating Genius" eBook and then open it on the OneNote desktop (PC or Mac), iOS device or Android device. Move the desired pages or sections into the Class Notebook that you have open in OneNote already. Most teachers will prefer to put these in the Content Library so that students can only read or copy it into their personal section, not edit it though. Use the Genius Hour lesson plans with your students who all have access to the OneNote Class Notebook! The book also features instructions and examples of how students can share their own Genius Hour project utilizing the best of both OneNote and Sway. And later this fall, we’ll be launching a OneNote notebook just for students to begin their own "Genius Notebooks." The eBook can be downloaded for free by signing up at: Choose2Matter.org/liberatinggenius. Angela Maiers helped launch Genius Hour in schools in 2010. Since then, tens of thousands of teachers around the world have set aside some time in the school day for students to work on "passion projects." Liberating Genius in the Classroom is a day-by-day guide to the first 20 days of implementing the Genius Hour, guiding teachers through the essential habits and attitudes that students must develop to be active and informed citizens, and instructing them how to help students find and explore their passion. Microsoft is also proud to sponsor at Choose2Matter LIVE events this 2015-16 school year. Choose2Matter is creating a social innovation curriculum and intends to host eight to ten live events per year in venues throughout the world. Schools will also be invited to participate virtually via Skype. More details about Choose2Matter LIVE, including how schools can participate, will be announced soon. The post Get the free eBook for teachers: "Liberating Genius: The First 20 Days" by Angela Maiers appeared first on Office Blogs.

DeKalb Mechanical empowers employees with mobile access to the information they need to work more efficiently, thanks to Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based productivity services. Instead of waiting to receive information from the office, employees use tablets to retrieve mechanical specifications and equipment submittal data, which saves US $156,000 a year in lost productivity. Employees also use Office 365 online collaboration sites to automate project bids, saving $10,400 in annual printing and couriering costs. Here’s what Stephen Doonan, president of DeKalb Mechanical had to say: "By adopting a forward-looking cloud solution like Office 365, we’re able to compete more effectively in the marketplace. It’s like we invested in the future, and it’s already paying us back. After equipping 17 field crew members with tablets to access information from the cloud-based storage in Office 365 … we are avoiding approximately $3,000 a week, or $156,000 a year, in unproductive labor costs. We store the drawings and plans in secure online sites, and we control who has access to the information. Taking paper and courier costs out of the bidding process is saving us approximately $10,400 a year." Watch this video to learn more about how DeKalb uses Office 365: These days, it’s easy to spot DeKalb Mechanical technicians on a construction site—just look for the people carrying tablet PCs. They use the tablets and Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based communication and collaboration tools to access the data that they need to efficiently install the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) elements for a new building. Tablets are also an essential part of the toolkit that DeKalb Mechanical technicians carry to residential jobs, where they use the devices to quickly retrieve technical information and customer service histories. These scenarios describe DeKalb Mechanical technicians’ everyday work lives, because company owner Stephen Doonan saw the productivity-enhancing potential of Office 365 to boost his company’s competitive advantage. Doonan founded DeKalb Mechanical with a vision to partner with building owners and general contractors, providing fair, integrity-laden customer service that goes beyond the norm. "I believe in empowering employees to make the right decisions, at the right time, with the right information," says Doonan. "The more empowered an employee feels, the more engaged and insightful he or she becomes in finding ways to deliver great service. And every time our customer gets good service, our business benefits." Improved data access reduces costs Before moving to Office 365, Doonan was looking for a way to convey information to his employees who worked remotely. All of them had email, but it was impossible to digitally access the shop drawings, plans, specifications and material data that make up the information that everyone in the construction industry relies on to work productively. Employees ended up carrying around paper files, which were hard to keep dry in bad weather, calling the office to request that copies be made, and waiting for the information to be delivered. "Every minute that an employee waits is $1.80 wasted for me," says Doonan. "With labor being among the highest cost in my business, I want to do everything I can to reduce unproductive downtime." Doonan achieved that goal when Sundog, DeKalb Mechanical’s IT partner, suggested that employees use the cloud-based services within Microsoft Office 365—email, file sharing, online collaboration, 1TB of online storage, instant messaging and videoconferencing. "I’m sold on a good idea, and Office 365 and the cloud are definitely a good idea," says Doonan. "After equipping 17 field crew members with tablets to access information from the cloud-based storage in Office 365, we are saving at least three hours a week per employee. No one is waiting on a job site for information required to make decisions and get back to work. Today we are avoiding approximately $3,000 a week, or $156,000 a year, in unproductive labor costs." Streamlined bidding wins more work DeKalb Mechanical is also able to bid for more contracts—and winning more jobs—by streamlining its response to requests for proposals. The company is channeling all communications about bidding for contracts through Microsoft SharePoint Online, the collaboration platform within Office 365. For every bid, DeKalb Mechanical has to compile quotes from an average of 12 subcontractors. The company bids for four new jobs a week on average. Previously, this meant printing and mailing or couriering 48 sets of plans and specifications every week at a cost of US $12 per set—and then waiting for the subcontractors’ responses. Every bid is time-sensitive, and it was always a rush to review and choose the best quotes from subcontractors before DeKalb Mechanical could submit its bid. Today the entire project bid process happens digitally. "We store the drawings and plans in secure online sites, and we control who has access to the information," says Doonan. "Subcontractors instantly download the plans and specifications that they need to give us a quote. Taking paper and courier costs out of the bidding process is saving us approximately $10,400 a year." Virtual job coordination drives efficiency DeKalb Mechanical is saving money on travel costs and improving efficiency through productive online videoconferences with subcontractors and remote employees on job sites. Today the all-important coordination meetings that happen at the beginning of a job are handled remotely, using a Skype for Business online videoconference. "It is important to clarify responsibilities and schedules at the outset of a job," says Michael Sneed, the IT Director and coordination point person at DeKalb Mechanical. "But now that I run the coordination meetings from the office, we’re finalizing everything quickly so we can begin work faster. Recently we had a person join using a laptop and a projector at the job site trailer in Chicago, and we had someone link in from Florida, and we were able to coordinate the duct work, the pipe work and the electrical. We made changes to the drawings right on the screen, shared those changes and finalized everything in one efficient meeting, which saved me four hours of driving time." Improved productivity enhances customer service Now that DeKalb Mechanical service technicians are not waiting for information during service calls, they are completing jobs faster and increasing customer satisfaction. "If I have a technician who needs the specification for a furnace that he is working on in someone’s basement, and he has to wait for the office to get back to him before he can determine what needs repairing, he is also making the customer wait," says Doonan. "Now everything a tech needs—including a customer’s entire service history—is stored online, and we can get people’s furnaces up and running faster, which is a real benefit in the middle of winter in Illinois." Doonan describes his experience with Office 365 as a gratifying ratification of his personal belief in the power of business technology. "By adopting a forward-looking cloud solution like Office 365, we’re able to compete more effectively in the marketplace. It’s like we invested in the future, and it’s already paying us back." Download the full case study The post Firm improves service and reduces costs with Microsoft Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

As schools prepare for the start of another school year and teachers get their classrooms ready to welcome students, we are introducing additional features to meet the needs of schools, teachers and students. Today we are announcing changes to Office 365 Education that will make it easier for schools to meet their security and compliance needs at a time when teaching and learning are becoming increasingly collaborative and cloud-connected. With today’s update we simplified our education lineup, moving to a single, free plan for all academic institutions and added several new features to help schools meet their security and compliance requirements. In addition to the basic services—Office Online, 1TB of OneDrive storage, Exchange email and Skype—free Office 365 Education now includes advanced features such as: Legal hold and eDiscovery to help you find, preserve, analyze and package electronic content for a legal request or investigation. This capability spans across email, documents and instant messaging. Rights Management Services, which prevents file-level access without the right user credentials. Data Loss Prevention to help you identify, monitor and protect sensitive information in your organization. For a more complete list of features visit the Office 365 Education offer page. With these additional features, now included at no cost for Office 365 Education, schools can more easily maintain a safe, effective and compliant learning environment while providing world-class productivity tools for their teachers and students. If you already have Office 365 Education, there’s nothing for you to do. These new features will simply show up as they become available. School admins, if you’re not yet providing Office 365 Education to your entire school, sign up for free at office.com/education. Read the FAQ for more information. The post New school year brings new security features to Office 365 Education appeared first on Office Blogs.

Whether you operate a startup on a shoestring budget or have a successful small business, chances are good that you’re always looking for ways to save money, maximize your investments and get your clients, customers and your team excited about what you do. In order to do that, sometimes meeting face to face is necessary—but it can also be cost prohibitive. Between trains, flights and/or the cost of driving a car, plus the actual time you’ll spend traveling (which can be pretty unproductive even when you have the luxury of being able to work on the go), sometimes the benefits of seeing a client in-person just don’t add up. That’s where video conferencing comes in. It gives you the power to bring everyone together—without the cost of a plane ticket. That said, video conferencing can have its pitfalls and problems, but with a few quick tips you can avoid some of the bumps in the road and get even more from your system. Get comfortable with the camera—Looking good in front of the camera isn’t just a matter of putting on a suit and coiffing your hair, so take some time before your debut to practice your camera skills. For instance, learn to concentrate on the camera instead of the screen, slow down your movements, stop nervously picking at your nails, and learn to smile. After all, your clients will see everything that you’re doing, and you don’t want to distract them from your message. Work on your presentation voice—No one likes being shouted at or wants to struggle to hear what you’re saying. So before video conferencing with your clients, test out your mic and figure out how moving around a room changes what people hear. Try speaking softly, loudly and somewhere in between, and ask a co-worker, friend or family member to weigh in on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to sound. Check your settings—As you work on your on-camera mannerisms and presentation voice, don’t forget that you can improve both the way you look and sound by making a few quick adjustments to your webcam’s video settings. With the ability to tweak brightness, exposure, color, white balance and microphone volume, among other things, you can deliver a performance that’s as close to perfect as possible. Location, location, location—Even if you work in an environment that’s all about the hustle, you should seek out a quiet place where background movements won’t distract attendees from your message. As an added bonus, with less motion in the background, your video will also look smoother. Update your technology—With every new iteration of video conferencing technology that comes out, the quality of your experience will improve—either though ease of use, video quality or another factor. By simply updating the version of the technology you’re using, you can get a better conferencing experience. (The good news is that updates are usually included with your technology, so it’s just a matter of clicking a button.) Get wired—For smoother, more consistent audio and video, try to use a wired Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi. In a pinch Wi-Fi will do, but it often results in more lag time and interference, which can reduce the quality of your audio and video, frustrate guests and give you a somewhat less than professional look. Check your bandwidth—Depending on the type of video conferencing you want to do, you may need to increase your bandwidth to get the upload/download speeds you need for a quality experience. Although these numbers are subject to change and may depend on the video conferencing service you use, you can consider these numbers (shown as upload/download) the absolute minimums you should aim for: Video calling with screen sharing: 128kpbs / 128kpbs High-quality video calling: 400Kbps / 400Kbps HD video calling: 1.2Mbps / 1.2Mbps 3-person video calling: 512Kbps / 128Kbps 5-person video calling: 2Mbps / 128Kbps 7-person (or more) video calling: 4Mbps / 128Kbps Connect early—The importance of this cannot be overstated, especially if you’re conferencing with clients. After all, you don’t want to waste your client’s time and look like a novice by fumbling around with your technology in the process. Encourage interactivity—People are often hesitant to share what’s on their minds when they feel they’ve been put on the spot, but the point of video conferencing is to simulate an in-person meeting experience, which is typically full of questions, comments and asides—all of which can be important to building trust, understanding and creating lasting relationships. In order to encourage this type of banter, let everyone know that they’re free to ask questions at any time. Then, if there’s an opportunity to engage someone in the conversation naturally—just as you would if you were in a room together—do so. Record your meetings—The best way to improve your meeting skills is to see how they read from the other side of the camera. When possible, record both the audio and video of your meetings and evaluate them in the same way that a football team would go over their plays the day after a big game. Finally, don’t forget to send a follow-up email. Just as with any other meeting, don’t assume that clients will take notes or even fully grasp the information and concepts addressed in a meeting. In order to hedge your bets, it’s always best to err on the side of caution and provide them with a follow-up message containing the salient points of the discussion and an outline of any next steps, expectations or responsibilities. This way, everyone will have seen and heard the information, and participants have something concrete that they can refer back to. It’s a win-win that costs little in terms of time, and allows you to stay in front of your team and clients long after the meeting has ended. The post Video conferencing for startups and small businesses—10 hacks to maximize their value appeared first on Office Blogs.

Graham’s the Family Dairy is one of Scotland’s largest independent milk producers. For 75 years, Graham’s used hard work and a personal touch to expand their business. Today, employees use Microsoft Office 365 to continue that tradition, working in virtual teams and sharing everything from Excel files to photos of product displays. Better digital collaboration boosts agility and service, helping Graham’s compete with multinational competitors. Here’s what Robert Graham, managing director of Graham’s the Family Dairy had to say: "Sharing data brings Graham’s together as a team. That’s the lasting benefit of Office 365—as we grow, we’ll maintain the strength and close collaboration that we derive from being a small, family-run business. Everyone loves the anywhere, anytime, any communication that we have with Office 365. It’s a perfect match for the spontaneous, personal contact style that makes our family business work." Watch the video to learn more about how Graham uses Office 365: Business is discussed around the dinner table at Graham’s the Family Dairy, the same way it’s been done for 75 years. For three generations, the Graham family has grazed its dairy herds on the rich meadows of Stirlingshire in central Scotland. And today, it seems as if many Scottish households join the Grahams at dinner. That’s because there’s often at least one of the dairy’s products—milk, butter, ice cream or Scottish Cheddar cheese—somewhere on the table. "Family has always been a huge strength in our business," says Robert Graham, managing director of Graham’s the Family Dairy. "We believe in personal communications to build better relationships with coworkers, farmers and customers. After all, customers want to buy products from a company that they can relate to." When Robert Graham returned from university in 1992 and began getting up at four o’clock in the morning to milk the cows with his father, there were only 17 employees, and annual revenue hovered around £1 million (US $1.5 million). Today, the farm employs 500 people and generates almost £90 million (US $138 million) in annual sales. Hard work, successful marketing programs, a new organic product line and Jersey cows—the "golden girls" who produce extra creamy milk—all contribute to the company’s success. Judicious investments in technology also help. "Our IT partner, IA Cubed, knows what technology solutions will deliver real business value," says Graham. "When we wanted to improve how we communicate and collaborate across the business, IA Cubed introduced us to Microsoft Office 365." Extends the personal touch of a family business Graham’s uses the cloud-based business productivity services in Office 365, including the enterprise social network capabilities of Yammer, to connect its increasingly dispersed business. The company runs two processing facilities that receive 700,000 pints of milk daily from 90 farms. There are five distribution depots and offices in Bridge of Allan and Glasgow. Every day, 160 drivers make 6,000 deliveries, and six account managers visit 40 customers. "Everyone loves the anywhere, anytime, any communication that we have with Office 365. It’s a perfect match for the spontaneous, personal contact style that makes our family business work," says Graham. "Our sales manager uses presence and instant messaging to connect with account managers on the road, so he’s no longer frustrated by gaps in communications that could delay solving customer satisfaction issues. And I love that my mum is all over Yammer. When she sees a photo of a nice display of our products, she sends ‘Well done!’ messages to the reps. It adds to the feeling of being one big family." In April 2015, Graham’s is launching an extranet built on Microsoft SharePoint Online to enhance relationships with milk suppliers. "We’ll provide a portal for our farmers so they can review their financial statements and the lab results to the tests that we run on their milk," says Graham. "This service will increase the value of working with us and encourage long-term relationships with our suppliers." Enhances customer service Employees at the head office are providing faster service for customers who call with questions about Graham’s deliveries. Office staff are not always aware of potential delays caused by bad weather in the north, or a mechanical issue with a delivery van, but now they can quickly track information by sending an instant message to staff at the depots—even while the customer is on the phone. "It sure beats telling the customers to call back for an answer about their delivery," says Graham. "Providing personal service, one customer at a time, is how we differentiate ourselves from huge multinational dairies." Improves information sharing, boosts agility Staff in the outlying areas of the country had been frustrated with poor Internet bandwidth that slowed file uploads from the server at the office in Bridge of Allan. Most employees stored files on their hard drives or a USB memory stick, which led to versioning issues and risked data loss. "Today, employees use Microsoft OneDrive for Business to store and share Excel files, and I’m no longer worried about where our financial information is," says Graham. And it’s easy to access those files anywhere, on any device, because Graham’s the Family Dairy can download the latest full versions of Office desktop applications on up to five PCs, laptops and Macs, and also on up to five mobile devices, including Apple and Android tablets and smartphones. "Now that we can work anywhere and sync files on any device, the pace of business has picked up," says Graham. "Sales reps no longer physically deliver customer order information to sales managers. They use their Surface Pro tablets and Lumia phones, managed by Microsoft Intune, to work on the road, and they upload data to our intranet. The sales manager can see it and take immediate action if there’s something wrong with the numbers. Delivers better business intelligence Going forward, Graham is excited about sharing business intelligence by using Power BI for Office 365 to publish real-time data in a new Azure-based, enterprise-resource planning (ERP) solution that IA Cubed expects to launch in April 2015. "We can make the best decisions by using the latest information," says Graham. "Sharing data will bring Graham’s together as a team. That’s the lasting benefit of Office 365—as we grow, we’ll maintain the strength and close collaboration that we derive from being a small, family-run business." Download the full case study The post Scottish dairy strengthens family business values, customer service with Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Snipping is an everyday task for millions of Office users. They paste screenshots into emails, documents, presentations, notebooks, etc., and write text explaining the concept that the screen snips help illustrate. But imagine if you could dictate that story—in your own voice—and save it as part of the snip. Or you could explain an idea while white-boarding it with digital ink. Or take a photo with your webcam and paste it in an email or embed it on website without ever leaving the application you created it in. Snip makes all these things possible while keeping the basic task of snipping just as easy as it always was. But therein lies the challenge: a big part of designing Snip was getting people to see the possibilities of what they could create with it. Or as Snip’s tagline says, "Why just show when you can show and tell?" It was a tricky concept for people to wrap their heads around because it represents a new way of performing a familiar task and making the result of that task much more powerful and easier to share. But once people saw examples of media-rich snips, which you can see on the Snip website, they instantly got the concept. And they started to change the way they work. "Sometimes the simplest things are the most powerful. Snip is transforming the way people think about communicating their ideas and providing feedback on others’ ideas," explained Anoop Gupta, distinguished scientist and leader of the Snip team. "The team that built Snip is also the team that is responsible for Office Mix," added Aravind Bala, partner engineering manager for Snip. "We’ve learned that Office Mix users who leverage the ability to annotate content with voice and inking love it and use it all the time to communicate messages and ideas. So we developed Snip as a lightweight way of making use of these capabilities within a process that is performed daily by some users. Our job is to present snipping in a way that’s easy to use and compelling. Over time, people’s behavior will change." "Much of the inspiration for Snip came from our work with educators and students," said Jim Federico, principal product manager for Snip. "Snip is already being used by educators to deliver personalized feedback to students, and students are using Snip to share their creativity with teachers and their classmates. Since releasing this tool a short time ago, we’ve been impressed with the amount of usage by Windows users. We’ve also been humbled by the amount of feedback we’ve received from people who are helping to shape our vision for this tool." For now, download Snip, give it a try and send us your feedback. Who knows, the next new feature to make snipping even more powerful could start with you. The post Snip makes you even more productive using Microsoft Office appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake and Richard DiZerega talk to Dorrene Brown on the new File Handlers in Office 365. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP61_FileHandlers.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates Office UI FabricCreating Office add-ins with Yeoman by Andrew Connell Channel 9 Office Dev Show Episode 8 iPad Extensibility Matter Center OData Excel Office Add-in Mail add-in for Outlook using Office 365 APIs (ADAL.JS, ANGULARJS, WEBAPI, AZURE AD) by Matej Vodopivc Developers: SharePoint isn’t a Platform, SharePoint is a Service by Andrew Connell Episode 092 - Identity Convergence, App Registration Portal and AppModel v2 with Microsoft’s Stuart Kwan 8 Characteristics of an ideal SharePoint customization by Doug Ware Web add-ins: Using Office Open XML to extend the JavaScript APIs by Cindy Meister Setting properties via EWS on a Draft message is a compose Mail App by Glen Scales OWA Voting Button Compose App for Office365/Exchange 2016 by Glen Scales Using Azure Machine Learning with SharePoint by Matthias Einig Show notes File Handler add-ins now available Got questions or comments about the show? Join the O365 Dev Podcast on the Office 365 Technical Network. The podcast RSS is available iTunes or search for it on "Office 365 Developer Podcast" or add directly with the RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Office365DeveloperPodcast. About Dorrene Brown Dorrene is a program manager at Microsoft currently focused on Office 365 extensibility. Prior to her stint at Microsoft, she worked a variety of odd jobs spanning from art preservation to aerospace systems with a bunch of other stuff in between. You can find her speaking at various Microsoft conferences and/or yelling about the Internet @dorreneb.    About the hosts Jeremy is a technical product manager at Microsoft responsible for the Visual Studio Developer story for Office 365 development. Previously he worked at AvePoint Inc., a large ISV, as the chief architect shipping two apps to the Office Store. He has been heavily involved in the SharePoint community since 2006 and was awarded the SharePoint MVP award four years in a row before retiring the title to move to Microsoft. You can find Jeremy blogging at www.jeremythake.com and tweeting at @jthake.   Richard is a software engineer in Microsoft’s Developer Experience (DX) group, where he helps developers and software vendors maximize their use of Microsoft cloud services in Office 365 and Azure. Richard has spent a good portion of the last decade architecting Office-centric solutions, many that span Microsoft’s diverse technology portfolio. He is a passionate technology evangelist and frequent speaker are worldwide conferences, trainings and events. Richard is highly active in the Office 365 community, popular blogger at www.richdizz.com, and can be found on twitter at @richdizz. Richard is born, raised and based in Dallas, TX but works on a worldwide team based in Redmond. In his spare time, Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician, and lightning fast runner.   Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Blog Twitter Facebook StackOverflow http://aka.ms/AskSharePointDev http://aka.ms/AskOfficeDev http://aka.ms/AskOffice365Dev Yammer Office 365 Technical Network O365 Dev Podcast O365 Dev Apps Model O365 Dev Tools O365 Dev APIs O365 Dev Migration to App Model O365 Dev Links UserVoice The post Episode 061 on the Office 365 File Handlers—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.

Dogeared specializes in designing beautiful and meaningful jewelry. After starting a deployment of Google Apps, Dogeared switched to Microsoft Office 365 because it offered a better-integrated set of tools and was easier to use. Employees now can communicate seamlessly both internally and with customers, suppliers and distributors, and be more responsive from outside the office. Now that the company uses Office 365, it has unified capabilities that are helping it transition into a more connected, nimble business. Here’s what Chad Berryhill, IT director for Dogeared had to say: "By switching to Office 365, we’ve removed the headaches related to our old point solutions. With so many ways to … work with each other from anywhere, we can be more dynamic as a company. Most of our employees use Macs, so they appreciate that having Office ProPlus for Mac makes it possible to avoid compatibility issues and also have the same tools on every device." Inspiration through jewelry Meaningful messages can celebrate individuality, self-expression, love and friendship. That’s the idea behind Dogeared, a jewelry company that creates simple, modern and versatile jewelry paired with inspiring messages. Like its products, Dogeared lives by the philosophy that what goes around comes around; as such, the company is a certified B-Corporation dedicated to handcrafting everything locally, respecting the planet and partnering with non-profits that share their vision of a better world. The company continually meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. "We make products we are proud of, we work with people we admire, and everything is about team," says Marcia Maizel-Clarke, founder and owner at Dogeared. The California company had some adjusting to do as it began to achieve greater, more widespread success. "I learned the inevitable lesson that most artists-turned-business-owners face sooner or later: how to strike a balance between creativity and fulfilling the more practical needs of running a business," says Maizel-Clarke. Those practical needs included establishing an environment in which employees could work more closely with each other and with the company’s suppliers, distributors and customers to promote and keep pace with the company’s growth. To create that atmosphere, Dogeared hired an IT director with the enterprise experience to develop a technology vision for the company that would alleviate its growing pains. "Retail is a dynamic industry that moves quickly, so it’s tough to slow down enough to make long-term plans," says Chad Berryhill, IT director at Dogeared. "But the time had come for us to become more sophisticated in communication and collaboration capabilities if we wanted to support and further our growth." Dogeared needed a plan that could address issues faced by multiple groups within its workforce. For example, its sales representatives needed a more reliable way to communicate with retail customers than the company’s existing email systems, which were prone to outages. Sales staff also wanted better access to Dogeared’s internal network to find answers to questions more quickly, even as they traveled to trade shows and made sales calls. Other employees sought to work together more easily. "We had no unified calendaring capabilities, we had to wait for our service provider to create distribution lists, and we relied on a range of expensive, disparate products for document sharing and conferencing," says Berryhill. "Our teams needed an easier way to schedule meetings and conference rooms, to collaborate on marketing materials without worrying about version issues, and to access company assets." Because Dogeared had built its IT environment on an as-needed basis, it was difficult to expand the business. "Until recently, the company made one-off decisions, purchasing software box by box, rather than as a business," says Berryhill. "When I joined Dogeared in 2014, it was clear that we needed to stop and evaluate what technology tools were necessary to truly operate as a coordinated business at scale." Back in 2013, the company had purchased Google Apps under the assumption that it was taking the first step toward a more unified technology environment, but Berryhill quickly discovered that the product did not provide a long-term answer. "I had a clear vision of what our future IT environment looked like, and Google Apps just wasn’t part of it," says Berryhill. "Not only did we want to be able to integrate our communications tools with our Microsoft Dynamics NAV enterprise resources planning system, but we also wanted to give employees a streamlined experience, whether they were scheduling meetings, conducting videoconferences, or creating documents, and Google Apps couldn’t help us accomplish those goals." Pearls of wisdom Berryhill recognized that Microsoft Office 365—a suite of productivity, communications and collaboration cloud services—would provide Dogeared with the necessary functionality and long-term road map. "We needed a strong foundation," says Berryhill. "I saw that Office 365 was a more robust tool than Google Apps, and I knew that all our employees would be more comfortable working with its integrated components." Dogeared worked with CorpInfo, a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partner based in Los Angeles, California, to deploy Office 365. "I walked away from our initial meeting feeling like I’d found a partner who would help me get Dogeared where it needs to be, and the CorpInfo team’s hard work and insight have supported that feeling ever since. We signed the initial paperwork with Microsoft in April 2014, and by the end of May 2014, we were up and running with Office 365." As good as gold Today Dogeared employees take advantage of Microsoft Exchange Online for comprehensive messaging and calendaring, OneDrive for Business for document storage and Microsoft Skype for Business for presence, instant messaging and conferencing capabilities. "The quickest win after we went live with Office 365 was Skype for Business; employees adopted it immediately, and it helps them stay connected and facilitate valuable communication where physical distances and technology challenges made it difficult in the past." Employees also use Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus so that they have the latest version of Office on every device. "Most of our employees use Macs, so they appreciate that having Office ProPlus for Mac makes it possible to avoid compatibility issues and also have the same precision tools on every device," says Berryhill. It was frustrating and time-consuming for Dogeared employees when the data or appearance in their files did not stay the same from one device to the next. They now not only have file fidelity but also a consistent Microsoft Office experience no matter what device they or their colleagues choose to use. "We believe that the move to Office 365 offers the answer for companies with limited IT resources that still need innovative, enterprise-class tools," says Berryhill. "Our IT department relies heavily on its outsourced services, and it would have been challenging to provide the types of solutions we have through Office 365 so quickly and in such a cost-effective manner. I’m confident that Microsoft will continue to make valuable new capabilities available for me to quickly deliver to our workforce. For example, with the announcement of Office for iPad, our teams are now using more travel-friendly devices for business purposes despite being on a bring-your-own-device model." Enhanced employee productivity Within the first week, Dogeared employees felt more connected and efficient. For example, employees can rely on Microsoft Exchange Online for scheduling and have confidence that all calendars are in agreement. "We know that people are getting more done because they’re no longer roaming the halls, asking one another if there’s supposed to be a meeting at that time," adds Berryhill. "It sounds so basic, but we lacked the ability to trust what we saw on our calendars. Today, using Exchange Online, even our iPads and mobile phones show us accurate, up-to-date email and calendar information." The company’s sales force also now has access to the information they need from on the road, which is helpful when they are making sales calls. "By switching to Office 365, we’ve removed the headaches related to our old point solutions and enabled our talented, creative workforce to be more efficient," says Berryhill. "With so many ways to reach out and work with each other from anywhere, we can be more dynamic as a company." Improved responsiveness and greater corporate unity Dogeared employees appreciate the ability to stay in closer touch both with colleagues and with suppliers, distributers and customers. The company uses Skype for Business to see when colleagues are online and available to answer questions. "The owners of Dogeared often work from home, and by using Skype for Business, they stay more connected to the company and vice versa," says Berryhill. "Because the company’s owners indicate their presence online, employees reach out to them more confidently, knowing that they are truly willing to answer questions, even when they’re not in the office." The company also sees opportunities to use Skype for Business to give suppliers, distributers and even customers a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at Dogeared to help them feel a closer tie with the company. "I can envision conducting our seasonal product launches as a Skype for Business videoconference or webinar," says Berryhill. "Watching live demonstrations or videos of employees meticulously hand-stringing beads and hammering silver will convey our passion and commitment to our products far more powerfully than reading a product insert," says Berryhill. The company believes that Skype for Business and the Yammer social networking solution, which comes with Office 365 licenses, will bring employees closer together. "We have a talented workforce, and any time we can tap into the knowledge base that we already have here, we can grow as a company. We see Yammer as a valuable opportunity to break down walls and improve cross-company communication," says Berryhill. "And we’re already coming up with interesting ways to stay connected using Skype for Business. For example, one of our employees used the Skype for Business app on her mobile phone to check in with her team while she waited for jury duty at the courthouse." Cost savings Of course, as Dogeared evolves into a larger company, it must consider the financial ramifications of its purchasing decisions. Adopting Office 365 has been a cost-saver for Dogeared, and it believes that the value from its investment will only grow as it uses more of the solution’s functionality. As a start, employees are moving away from third-party document storage to OneDrive for Business, using it as their single accessible source for product photography, company policies and marketing campaign documents. "We no longer have to email bulky files back and forth for approval or pay for third-party cloud storage because we have OneDrive for Business," says Berryhill. "It’s hard to estimate our actual return on investment because we aren’t done eliminating third-party products, but we know that we are saving money with Office 365," says Berryhill. "We’ve seen so much reward from the move to Office 365 in just one week that it’s exciting to imagine the value we’ll receive when we expand our use of Skype for Business, start to use Microsoft SharePoint Online to automate workflow, and take fuller advantage of everything that Office 365 has to offer." Technical summary Dogeared uses a range of Microsoft Office 365 components to help unify the company. Employees take advantage of Exchange Online for comprehensive messaging and calendaring, and they use OneDrive for Business as a centralized source for online document storage. They tap into the greater Dogeared knowledge base through Skype for Business for presence, instant messaging and conferencing capabilities. In the future, Dogeared salespeople will place orders through Office 365 when they’re at trade shows because the company plans to integrate it with a customer relationship management system to create a mobile sales system. Key links Download the full case study Dogeared discovers a gold mine of capabilities with Office 365 The post Small jewelry company shines as a social business with Microsoft Office 365 appeared first on Office Blogs.

"The proof is in the pudding." How many times have you heard that? According to numerous sources, the original saying was "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." What it meant was that you had to sample food to know whether it was good. It’s the same with technology; the true test of its value is in how it works for users. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reported in late July that users are choosing Office 365 at unprecedented rates. Office 365 now has 15-million subscribers, with nearly a million more signing up monthly. Satya also confirmed that four out of five Fortune 500 corporations currently use Office 365, and 50,000 new small- and medium-sized businesses adopt the service every month. More recently, independent sources have determined that businesses favor Office 365 over other cloud services and that Office 365 now controls more than 25 percent of the enterprise market. User response to Office 365 reflects the strength of our ongoing work to continually improve the service with frequent updates, innovative features and new capabilities. Just yesterday, in fact, we announced that Microsoft has taken another big step toward its goal of reinventing productivity by agreeing to acquire VoloMetrix, a pioneer and leader in organizational analytics. VoloMetrix has done outstanding work using behavioral data and personalized feedback loops to transform individual and organizational productivity. Now, by combining VoloMetrix’s experience, technology and record of success with Office 365 and our previously announced Delve Organizational Analytics, Microsoft is providing tools that can help you objectively measure and prioritize your time at work, make better decisions, and be more productive. In addition, we recently released new and improved business analytics features for Excel 2016, so you can take full advantage of each capability as it applies to your unique business needs. In addition, this week we announced the general availability of Office UI Fabric, a responsive, mobile-first, front-end framework for developers, which is designed to make it simple to quickly create web experiences using the Office Design Language. Don’t take our word for it. The "proof" of Office 365 and its value to users is in your experience. Give it a try and see how it works for you. Below is a roundup of some key news items from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy! Office 365 gives Tastea the freedom to focus—Learn how the owners of this fast-growing beverage company are using Office 365 to keep their business in sync and on track. Sports apparel designer gears up for mobile productivity with Office 365—Find out how sports business Dakine uses Office 365 to support its far-flung mobile workforce. Enhancing global operations: Treasury Wine Estates moves to Office 365—Discover why this global wine company decided to migrate to Office 365. Okta customer research finds Office 365 most-used cloud service—Learn why Office 365 is the favorite cloud service of many businesses. How Office 365 changes the focus of technology service delivery—Find out how Office 365 allows customers and partners to focus on business outcomes instead of technology features. The post Office 365 news roundup appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Adrian Steel, global head of IT operations for International Airlines Group. How do you foster teamwork and collaboration across a workforce of 41,000 people when a large majority of your employees quite literally have their heads in the clouds most of the time? At British Airways, we’re using Yammer to encourage great ideas from employees on the ground and in the air. Within 21 months, we reached over one million Yammer posts, which represent a phenomenal amount of knowledge shared between British Airways employees from all corners of the organization. British Airways is pioneering the use of Microsoft Office 365 for our parent organization, International Airlines Group (IAG), which includes Iberia and Vueling Airlines. We’re using Office 365 to help achieve excellent levels of collaboration, operating synergies, punctuality and customer satisfaction. We introduced Yammer two years ago, and within just six months, more than 11,000 employees had joined the British Airways network. We’ve found that Yammer facilitates spontaneous conversations among employees—sparking innovative ideas that help us operate more efficiently and improve customer service. For example, when our employees got their first look at the new Airbus A380 airliner, Yammer buzzed with excitement. However, some cabin crew members noted that the galley layout could be improved. One employee even sketched and posted some recommended adjustments. The engineering team, based in Wales, was tracking this social conversation and quickly captured and incorporated the feedback—all in a matter of days. This connection and level of collaboration between different parts of our organization would have previously taken significantly longer to achieve. Yammer collaboration reduced the exchange to days and drove a highly effective solution that enhanced staff productivity and customer service on our new A380 flights. In another example, the team responsible for customer experience proposed some improvements to amenity kits that British Airways cabin crew give out to customers in our First cabins. Cabin crew started a thread talking about the amenity kits, discussing what customers thought about them and what products might be included in the future. Having real-time feedback from our colleagues at our fingertips ensures we can make changes that our customers will love, and our cabin crew colleagues know that their feedback is important. Yes, our employees could have conducted all these conversations over email, but email isn’t the best forum for group discussions. Yammer is a very efficient way for hundreds of people to exchange ideas quickly across many locations, time zones and teams. And speed is of enormous importance in the airline business. Just about every process, from loading planes to checking in passengers, is monitored and measured down to the second. Anything we can do to speed up a process by even one minute can have a huge impact on getting planes off the ground on time. We supplement these core processes with Yammer and Skype for Business online to encourage collaboration among many teams in real time to make the best possible decisions in each situation. With the ability to quickly solicit great ideas from our global workforce, on the ground and in the air, we are transforming our business and continuously improving customer service. This is what it’s all about. This is one of the areas that helps us distinguish our brand from the competition. The post Yammer posts top one million—British Airways inspires innovative teamwork appeared first on Office Blogs.

When Amber Borgomainerio started Breathe Hot Yoga in 2010 with her partner and husband, Ross Yearsley, they shared a vision for bringing authentic hot yoga to Seattle and establishing an accessible environment for people who wanted to enrich their lives. "But opening our doors took more than passion and inspiration," she says. "It took financial resources, organization and a huge leap of faith." The couple used a home equity line of credit to finance the construction of their yoga studio and took the plunge. Today they have three locations around the Seattle area, and they’re expanding their teacher training and offering more retreats. Along the way, they also learned a lot about creating and managing a successful business. Borgomainerio advises entrepreneurs to focus on their strongest skills, adapt as the market changes, and approach their business with realistic expectations: "Two of our biggest lessons have to do with delegation and adaptability. First, we decided to embrace our core competencies, which include everything that goes into creating a positive experience for our clients. We’re willing to learn other aspects of the business, but for us, it makes the most sense to spend our time on what we do best. Beyond that? We leave it to other professionals. We hired wonderful architects to help us build our spaces, we have a great accountant who keeps our finances in order, and we invest in cloud-based technology so we don’t have to worry about IT. Second, we’ve come to realize how quickly the market can change and new competitors can come into play. Just five years ago, the fitness industry was considerably different than it is today. Yoga was considered a realm unto itself. Then, unexpectedly, yoga got bucketed in with other mainstream fitness offerings. And when the landscape changes … we have to change along with it. That’s tough to do while staying true to who we are and the traditions we want to share with our clients. We now recognize how important it is to try to anticipate trends by analyzing our clients’ needs, developing relationships with other small businesses, and staying aware of new forms of fitness." To read the rest of Amber’s story and the stories of other small business owners like Amber, download our eBook, "What I wish I knew." The post Breathe Hot Yoga’s small business story—bravery, belief and balance appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today Apple announced the iPad Pro, iOS 9 and WatchOS 2. We’ve developed a number of new features for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Translator to take advantage of these enhancements. This post provides an overview of some of the most useful new features, including multitasking, inking, intelligent search, wireless keyboard support and updates to Outlook and Translator on Apple Watch. Multitasking on the iPad Slide Over and Split View on iOS 9 will help you get things done faster by allowing you to quickly switch between the Office apps. Here are a few examples: 1.  Quickly use a second app. Slide Over lets you open a second app without leaving the one you’re in. Jot down a reminder in OneNote while you’re catching up on email. Or reference your notes while you’re working on a PowerPoint presentation. 2.  Use two apps simultaneously. With Split View, you can have two apps open and active at the same time. Copy numbers from Excel into PowerPoint or rehearse a PowerPoint presentation while reviewing background information in Word. 3.  Run Outlook side-by-side with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Tap on a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file attached to an email message and Outlook will automatically launch the corresponding app with the file ready for editing, right next to Outlook. While you edit the Word document, you can still view the email message. After your edits are made, tap the back button in Word and the document will be attached to a new email message in Outlook, ready to be sent. 4.  Use OneNote and PowerPoint to present with confidence. While you’re projecting a PowerPoint presentation to an external display, Presenter View provides tools like a laser pointer, pens, highlighters and slide thumbnails. Use Split View and OneNote to scroll through your talking points while the audience sees only your slides on the big screen. Inking With the new iPad Pro, we’re adding inking to the Office apps and making it easier than ever to create documents and collaborate with others. The new tools include pens, highlighters, an easy-to-use thickness control and a new color wheel. Using Apple Pencil, you can mark up documents just like you would with pencil and paper—making the collaboration process natural and intuitive. And with inking-specific features like shape recognition in PowerPoint, the apps turn the pencil into a first-class content creation tool. Intelligent search When you search for something on your iPad or iPhone, the search results will now also include OneNote notes and Outlook email messages. The OneNote content can be typed, handwritten or scanned—and even Outlook messages with Rights Management protection appear in search results. Wireless keyboard support If you use a wireless keyboard with your iPad, keyboard shortcuts are often a big time-saver. But it’s not always easy to remember all shortcuts. Now, just tap the Command key to get an overview of all of them. In Outlook for example, you can start a new email with ⌘n. And move between Email, Calendar, Files, People and Settings with ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘3, ⌘4 and ⌘5 respectively. Enhancements to Microsoft Outlook and Translator on the Apple Watch Complications are important pieces of information you can see right on the face of an Apple Watch. With the new WatchOS 2, data from apps can be Complications, too. Now, Outlook will show you essential information about your next appointment and incoming email. With Time Travel, you can turn the Digital Crown of the watch to check your Outlook calendar appointments for later today and tomorrow. Microsoft Translator for iPhone and Apple Watch was introduced a month ago and is getting rave reviews in the App Store. With the upcoming update, a recent or pinned translation can be played back later through the watch speaker. When you’re abroad, the watch face will automatically show you common phrases like "good morning" and "goodbye" in the local language based on your location and the time of day. Using Time Travel, you can see phrases for a later time, like "good night." This makes it easier to communicate when traveling. Available when the new iPad Pro, iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 arrive We’re looking forward to releasing our updated apps when the new iPad Pro, iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 are available. Install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Translator today and you’ll get these great new features when we publish the updates to the App Store. Microsoft Word for iPad and iPhone Microsoft Excel for iPad and iPhone Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad and iPhone Microsoft OneNote for iPad and iPhone Microsoft Outlook for iPad and iPhone Microsoft Translator for iPhone The post Office updates for the iPad Pro, iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Julia White, general manager of Office 365 Technical Product Management. In March, we announced the Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview. Since then, we’ve been listening to your feedback and continuing to build, refine and improve Office 2016 for Windows. This is a seminal release for Office and one you won’t want to wait to deploy to your users, and thanks to the many new IT management enhancements, you don’t need to wait! You may have heard the rumors, but today I’m happy to confirm that Office 2016 will be broadly available starting on September 22nd. If you have a volume licensing agreement in place, you can download Office 2016 from the Volume Licensing Service Center starting October 1st. This post is your one-stop shop for the tools, guidance and resources needed to get ready for Office 2016. We’ve enhanced the upgrade and installation experience, and for Office 365 subscribers, we’ve made changes to how the 2016 apps are updated moving forward. We’re also delivering new tools and resources to help you prepare, deploy and manage Office. Improvements to the Office update model For customers who currently use Office 365 ProPlus, (the subscription version of Office apps for companies and organizations), you can continue to receive monthly feature and security updates just as you have been over the past few years. Moving forward, this always up-to-date approach is called Current Branch and means that you always have the most current Office apps and capabilities deployed. The next Current Branch will release on September 22nd and will have all of the new Office 2016 app updates included. Based on feedback from many organizations running Office 365 ProPlus, I am excited to announce that we are adding a new option for updating Office called Current Branch for Business. If your organization typically waits a few months prior to rolling out a new version of Office or needs more time to test Office 2016 and your customizations between feature updates, this will be welcomed news. Consistent with Windows 10 approach, the new Current Branch for Business update model delivers three cumulative feature updates per year, while continuing to offer monthly security updates. You’ll see the first Current Branch for Business build in February 2016—which is effectively the same feature set as the September 22nd release, but with four additional months of security updates also included. This tri-annual update model offers an additional way for Office 365 ProPlus to stay current moving forward. You can find out about the new servicing options on TechNet. Current Branch (CB) and Current Branch for Business (CBB) update model in Office 365 ProPlus. Note: For Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Home users, you can start installing 2016 apps on September 22nd from office.com, and automatic updates will begin rolling out in October—so this new tri-annual update model is purely for our organizational subscribers to Office 365 ProPlus. More IT capabilities in the new Office We’ve also addressed a number of the other top IT requests in Office 365 ProPlus, including deployment support for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to help control network traffic when deploying updates and new reports on Office activation and usage available in the Office 365 admin portal. Beyond the new deployment and management options, the new Office also adds support for Data Loss Prevention across the Office 2016 apps, Multi-factor Authentication and other mission critical control capabilities. Also, back in March we pledged our commitment to compatibility with your existing Office customization by not making changes to the extensibility model for macros or add-ins. If you’ve been evaluating the preview, you would have seen that most of the tools and processes for managing and deploying Office 365 ProPlus (15.x) versions are very consistent with Office 2016. In August, we published guidance for updating Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version and kicked off the Office IT Pro Deployment Script project. If you haven’t checked out the new Office capabilities, it’s time! Speaking of which, let’s talk about all of the ways to get ready for Office 2016… New events, tools and resources for admins In November, we’re kicking off a new IT and developer-focused event series—the Microsoft Cloud Roadshow—where we’ll provide free, two-day technical trainings in 12 cities around the world for topics spanning Office, Azure and Windows. These are free to attend, and we’ll be bringing top engineers from Microsoft to lead the training sessions. Registration is now open for the in-person events, and coming soon, we’ll publish the presentations for on-demand viewing along with hands-on labs and additional training resources. The Office 365 Community is also a great place to go if you have questions about Office 2016; the experts from Microsoft, our MVPs, and the broader community are all there to help. We’ll be promoting Office 2016 on the network in the coming weeks and will have a YamJam with the Office engineering team on September 24th to answer your questions following the September 22nd release. We’ll continue highlighting new capabilities in Office 2016 for tech enthusiasts via Office Mechanics shows and short demos from our engineers in the coming weeks. You can see highlights of what’s coming in Office 2016 for Windows on Office Mechanics now. Check back on September 22nd This captures a few of the highlights of what we’re working on to support admins with the upcoming Office 2016 release. You’ll see a lot more coming on September 22nd and beyond. Of course, you can still download the Office 2016 Preview now to experience what’s coming, and don’t forget to register for a Microsoft Cloud Roadshow near you to learn more. —Julia White The post Admins—get ready for Office 2016, rollout begins September 22! appeared first on Office Blogs.

Steve Doonan was working for an HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) company when the owners asked him to open a branch office in DeKalb, Illinois—a location where they could foresee a lot of growth. "The idea was for me to generate business in that area and eventually buy the branch from the owners, establishing my own company," Doonan says. That’s exactly what happened. Today Doonan is sole owner of the successful business he built, but he hasn’t stopped dreaming. "Ultimately, I’m working toward a company that I could run from a beach if I wanted to," Doonan says. "The key is to hire employees who are good at their jobs and who you have confidence in. I want employees who will make smart decisions for the business and support smooth operations without needing me to be there." Over time, Doonan has assembled a team of highly capable employees. As a result, he’s been able to delegate many day-to-day decisions and focus on the company’s future. "I read somewhere that if you’re working in your business, you don’t have time to work on your business," he says. "I believe that’s true—now that I don’t have to worry about daily decisions, I’m free to explore new avenues for opportunity." Doonan explains the importance of building strong relationships and taking a cautious approach to growth: "A critical part of my role is to constantly focus on building relationships. Having positive relationships with my team is critical and goes without saying, but cultivating close bonds with both suppliers and prospective customers pays huge dividends. We work hard to make ourselves indispensable, and our customers look to us to solve their problems. We’ve developed a sense of trust that’s not easy to come by." To read the rest of Steve’s story and the stories of other small business owners like Steve, download our eBook, "What I wish I knew." The post DeKalb Mechanical’s small business story—building business using the "golden rule" appeared first on Office Blogs.

Do you often import data into Excel? Do you ever need to shape your data before you analyze it and build your reports? We are excited to let you know that your get-data experience in Excel is about to change forever. In Excel 2016 we have integrated Power Query technology into the Data ribbon under the Get & Transform section. Power Query technology enhances the self-service business analytics experience in Excel by simplifying data discovery, access and collaboration. Prior to the release of Excel 2016, Microsoft Power Query for Excel functioned as an Excel add-in that was downloaded and installed on Excel 2010 and 2013. In Excel 2016 we integrated the Power Query technology and experience into Excel. Power Query is no longer an add-in but is a native Excel feature from the Data tab, under the Get & Transform section. In addition, most of the features in the Get & Transform section are now available for all users on all Office plans. If you are not familiar with Power Query, here is a short summary of what you can now achieve in Excel 2016 with this new technology. Data connectivity—Connect to many new data sources, such as Facebook and Salesforce, to import the data into Excel 2016. Data shaping—Extract a preview of the data and load it to the Query Editor to define transformation steps that will allow you to transform the data to the format that meets your needs, such as remove, group, pivot or unpivot columns, and filter rows. Data catalog—You can find the data you need by searching the Power BI Enterprise catalog (a Power BI license is required). Repeatable refresh—Simply click the Refresh All button on the Data ribbon to repeat the import and transformation of the data to your workbook. You can learn more about the new capabilities and how to use them here. If you are familiar with the Power Query add-in in Excel 2010 and 2013, you know there are several advantages of having the Power Query technology native in Excel 2016, including: It’s always there—No longer a separate downloadable add-in. The Power Query technology is now available as part of Excel 2016, so you can rely on everyone using Excel 2016 to have it and be able to consume your workbooks. No complex activation—The Get & Transform group is visible and active by default on the Data tab. Undo support—Refresh and Edit Query operations on queries can be undone. You can refresh your query and keep all your previous actions in the Undo stack as well. (In the image above we highlighted the Refresh Data and Edit Query Properties operations completed in the Workbook Queries task pane. Excel 2016 kept these operations in its Undo/Redo stack. In earlier versions, any Power Query operation deleted the Undo/Redo stack.) Object Model support—You can automate your queries with Object Model and develop your dream, an automated ETL Self-Service solution. With Macro Recording you can capture your query operations and generate VBA code that automates the query creation along with your report generation and customization on Excel. To learn more on Object Model support you can download this demo. More details on the Object Model interface is coming soon. You can learn more about Power Query technology, which is available in the Get & Transform group in the Data tab, here. Try the new capabilities out for yourself! Try these new capabilities now by downloading the Office 2016 Preview for Windows and then share your ideas for features and improvements in Excel. The post Integrating Power Query technology in Excel 2016 appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake and Richard DiZerega talk to Humberto about Office UI Fabric. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP62_OfficeUIFabric.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates LESS SharePoint Add-ins with Mixins by Sonya Madsen Index web property bag using JavaScript object model-AngularJS in SharePoint online by Vipul Kelkar Microsoft Cloud Show Episodes 093 Developers SharePoint is not a platform SharePoint is a service by Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson Architects: SharePoint is a Platform, Treating it as only a Service is a Mistake by Doug Ware IQParts Cloud App Compatible Web Parts using AngularJS and Bootstrap by Doug Ware Using the SharePoint Client Object Model in AngularJS apps by Doug Ware Working with the converged Azure AD v2 app model by Richard DiZerega Building Office 365 Applications with Node.js and the Azure AD v2 app model by Richard DiZerega Office Dev Show Episode 9—Getting Started with Cross-platform apps by Richard diZerega Using Office UI Fabric in SharePoint Add-ins by Chaks Open XML SDK Intro by Ryan McIntyre Microsoft Cloud Road show SPLive360 Nov 16-20 Show notes Office UI Fabric blog post announcement UserVoice Entry Got questions or comments about the show? Join the O365 Dev Podcast on the Office 365 Technical Network. The podcast RSS is available iTunes or search for it on "Office 365 Developer Podcast" or add directly with the RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Office365DeveloperPodcast. About Humberto Lezama Guadarrama Humberto is a senior program manager at Microsoft on the Office extensibility team where he oversees user experiences and security of Office Add-ins. Before Office, Humberto worked on Dynamics CRM and SharePoint developer experiences and before Microsoft he worked on a variety of IT stints ranging from designer, programmer, project manager and everything in between. On his personal time, Humberto enjoys hiking, building gadgets, watching lots of movies, traveling and doing all sorts of silly things with his wonderful kids and awesome wife. About the hosts Jeremy is a technical product manager at Microsoft responsible for the Visual Studio Developer story for Office 365 development. Previously he worked at AvePoint Inc., a large ISV, as the chief architect shipping two apps to the Office Store. He has been heavily involved in the SharePoint community since 2006 and was awarded the SharePoint MVP award four years in a row before retiring the title to move to Microsoft. You can find Jeremy blogging at www.jeremythake.com and tweeting at @jthake.   Richard is a software engineer in Microsoft’s Developer Experience (DX) group, where he helps developers and software vendors maximize their use of Microsoft cloud services in Office 365 and Azure. Richard has spent a good portion of the last decade architecting Office-centric solutions, many that span Microsoft’s diverse technology portfolio. He is a passionate technology evangelist and frequent speaker are worldwide conferences, trainings and events. Richard is highly active in the Office 365 community, popular blogger at www.richdizz.com, and can be found on twitter at @richdizz. Richard is born, raised and based in Dallas, TX but works on a worldwide team based in Redmond. In his spare time, Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician, and lightning fast runner. Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Blog Twitter Facebook StackOverflow http://aka.ms/AskSharePointDev http://aka.ms/AskOfficeDev http://aka.ms/AskOffice365Dev Yammer Office 365 Technical Network O365 Dev Podcast O365 Dev Apps Model O365 Dev Tools O365 Dev APIs O365 Dev Migration to App Model O365 Dev Links UserVoice The post Episode 062 on Office UI Fabric—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.

Natalie Loeb conceived the idea for her business after her children were born. Wanting to put her family first, she left a job she loved in human resources at a global law firm to work part-time closer to home. "But when my previous employer offered to bring me on in a more flexible consulting role to focus on training and development, I knew I’d found the right balance," she says. She started Loeb Consulting Group to take advantage of the new opportunity, but soon found that running her own business was much different than working in-house. She learned some hard lessons about being disciplined in how she uses her time, knowing when to say no, and the importance of setting reasonable boundaries and communicating them clearly. "If the scope of a client’s request puts me in a position of compromising my firm’s standards, I now know to walk away," Loeb says. "It’s not easy for an entrepreneur to turn away work, but sometimes it’s necessary." Loeb stresses the importance of effective time management, staying true to core values, and nurturing one’s passion for the business: "Gauging what is and isn’t a good fit for your business has to do with always keeping an eye on your values and what you stand for. Staying true to those values can help guide you, particularly during challenging times. For example, during the economic downturn, our business slowed considerably. Rather than giving up and returning to work as a full-time employee elsewhere, I used the time to invest in the business by earning an executive coaching certification, which opened up a whole world of business opportunity in the form of leadership coaching. Over the years, I’ve discovered that one of the most important parts of running a business is finding the time to take a step back to ensure you’re spending your hours in the most effective ways. It’s easy to want to follow all your great ideas, but you have to prioritize. The ability to delegate is also critical. You’ve got to let go and trust others to do their jobs—after all, why would you hire employees if you do all the work yourself?" To read the rest of Natalie’s story and the stories of other small business owners like Natalie, download our eBook, "What I wish I knew." The post Loeb Consulting Group’s small business story—believe in what you do appeared first on Office Blogs.

In September 2012, we announced availability of the Office Web Apps Server as a standalone on-premises server, which provided browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. In our journey to enable rich viewing and editing experiences through Office in the browser, we’re making available Office Online Server Preview (OOS)—the evolution of Office Web Apps. OOS brings the features and improvements you experience with cloud-based Office Online to your on-premises solutions. SharePoint 2016 and Exchange 2016 are both designed to work with OOS. Here is an overview of the updates and improvements: Improved co-authoring support Significant additions to authoring features Heavy investments in performance and stability But one thing that hasn’t changed is the setup and management story for OOS. We have worked hard to make the transition from Office Web Apps Server 2013 to OOS as simple as possible. Also, while you’ll need OOS for SharePoint 2016 and Exchange 2016, OOS is completely backwards compatible with SharePoint 2013. Get started with the OOS Preview Get started with OOS Preview today by downloading the .ISO from the Microsoft Download Center. The OOS Preview works with products and services that support WOPI, such as SharePoint Server 2016, Skype for Business and Exchange Server 2016. An OOS farm can provide services to multiple on-premises hosts, and you can scale out the farm as your organization’s needs grow. SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Management Pack In addition, we understand with new technology you need to be able to rationalize issues and respond quickly—to that end we’re also making available a new System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. The SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Management Pack is designed to be used for monitoring events, collecting SharePoint component-specific performance counters in a centralized location, and for raising alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts and automatically correlating critical events, the Management Pack helps indicate, correct and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems—allowing you to proactively manage SharePoint servers and identify issues before they become critical. The Management Pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation and health monitoring. The System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2016 monitors: SharePoint 2016-related services (Timer, Tracing and Search) SharePoint 2016-related events Internet Information Services-related events (only events emitted from SharePoint Application, not from IIS) Microsoft SQL Server database-related events (only events emitted from SharePoint Application, not from SQL Server) SharePoint 2016 server performance To run the Management Pack, you need the System Center Operation Manager 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 with Full-Text Search feature. Try it out and share your feedback You can download the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Management Pack via the Microsoft Download Center and share feedback directly with our engineering teams through the new SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview forum. We also welcome feature requests and feedback via the Systems Center Operations Manager suggestion box on UserVoice, @System_Center on Twitter and in the comments below. —Bill Baer, senior technical product manager for the SharePoint team The post Announcing availability of Office Online Server Preview and the new SCOM Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today we are excited to announce the availability of Project Server 2016 IT Preview. We have worked very hard over the past three years to bring you the latest and greatest innovations to Project Online and incorporate feedback from customers into Project Server 2016. Project Server 2016 IT Preview provides an initial view of what is to come. Evolution of resource management Based on your feedback we have invested heavily in Resource Engagements that facilitate coordination and commitments between project managers and resources managers. Resource Engagements help align project managers and resource managers on the amount of work and the time period associated with a project. More information can be found at this blog post. IT setup and infrastructure improvements While running Project Online, we have made many infrastructure improvements, which we have included in Project Server 2016 IT Preview. These changes include the removal of the Project database, with all of the data being migrated into the content database. All the performance and scale improvements that we have made to Project Online are now yours to deploy. More information can be found here. Project Server 2016 IT Preview installer is fully integrated into SharePoint 2016; there is no longer a separate installer that needs to be run on each server in the farm. Try it out and share your feedback You can download Project Server 2016 IT Preview (built into SharePoint 2016 IT Preview) today via the Microsoft Download Center and share feedback directly with our engineering teams through the new SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview forum. We would love to hear your feedback and will incorporate it to make the best Project Server 2016 ever! The post Project Server 2016 IT Preview is now available appeared first on Office Blogs.

The regulatory compliance and business risk landscape is continuously evolving. At Microsoft, we appreciate our customers’ need to understand the Office 365 architecture and compliance with regulations to help them evaluate moving to Office 365. We also know you need to understand how we keep your data secure on the service on an ongoing basis. To help with your assessment needs, we are announcing Office 365 Service Trust Portal (STP). STP is a service feature in Office 365 designed to provide deeper information on how Microsoft manages security, compliance and privacy. Insights from this portal help you evaluate how Office 365 maintains compliance with your regulatory requirements and how you can mitigate the risks with moving to Office 365. To continue as a leader in cloud service delivery, we know that transparency is key to gaining your trust. We believe that by being transparent with you on how we protect your data, how we ensure that it is always available, how we maintain compliance with various global standards, and how we adhere to strict privacy commitments, we will continue to have a trust-based partnership with you. Through the STP you can get direct access to a wide variety of compliance reports and trust resources, including: Office 365 SOC 1 / SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Independent Audit Reports Office 365 SOC 2 / AT 101 Independent Audit Report Office 365 ISO 27001 (including 27018 controls) Independent Audit Report Various compliance reports, such as Office 365 Information Security Management System (ISMS) Various GRC and Trust resources, such as white papers, FAQs, security assessment, risk assessment and other reports that will help you perform your own risk assessment Whether you are an existing Office 365 customer or evaluating Office 365, we hope that you will find the information on the STP valuable to your organization. To access STP, ask your Office 365 company administrator to log in at the Service Trust Portal. After an administrator has logged in, they can provide STP access to any other users in your organization, allowing you to directly access STP when you authenticate using your Office 365 credentials. If you are evaluating Office 365, you can use your Office 365 trial credentials to access STP. For a detailed onboarding guide to STP, please visit Office 365 Service Trust.  If you have a comment or question on this post or have any feedback on STP, email us at asko365stp@microsoft.com.  We look forward to seeing you soon! —Om Vaiti, senior program manager for the Office 365 Customer Trust and Advocacy Program, and Vikas Malhotra, senior solution architect for the Office 365 Customer Experience Program The post Announcing the Office 365 Service Trust Portal appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this post, we are announcing new updates to the Power Query add-in for Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. Read this blog for information about Power Query integration in Excel 2016. This month’s update includes the following new or improved features: Support for custom MDX/DAX queries when importing data from SSAS Navigator dialog improvements Query Editor improvements You can continue reading below for more details about each feature. Support for custom MDX/DAX queries when importing data from SSAS In this update, we have added the ability to provide a custom query in MDX or DAX when importing data from Analysis Services. This allows users to leverage their existing MDX or DAX queries from other tools, instead of having to build them from scratch in Power Query. Navigator dialog improvements We made a couple of improvements to the Navigator dialog in this update, including: Resizable Navigator dialog—Users can now resize the Navigator dialog, so that they can easily preview tables with lots of columns. Multi-select items in Navigator—Users can now use keyboard shortcuts to select multiple items more easily in the Navigator dialog, such as Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click. Query Editor improvements Query Group creation/deletion—The first set of Query Editor improvements is around making many of the Query Group operations easier. All these options are available in the Queries pane, via context menus for queries and query groups, including: Create New Group option, without having to send some queries to this new group Multi-select groups Delete a group Extract previous Query steps—Another improvement to the Query Editor is the ability to extract steps from a query. Users can now easily extract steps from a query into a "base" query. This is useful when you want to have multiple queries that have a common base set of steps. This option can be found as a right-click menu entry for any given step in a query. When clicked, users are asked to provide a name for the new "base" query. The result is a new query containing all steps prior to the one that was selected, with the original query containing a reference to the newly created one. Users can then create new queries that reference the "base" query. Query icons to reflect type of query—The last improvement this month is that the Workbook Queries pane and the Queries navigator, in the left side of the Query Editor dialog, have been improved to capture the type of each query. This is represented with different icons for each query in these two panes. That’s all for this month. We’re making lots of incremental improvements to Power Query, and we hope that you find it better with every new monthly update. Please continue sending us feedback using our "Send a Smile/Frown" feature or by voting for what you’d like to see next. —Miguel Llopis (@mllopis), program manager for the Power Query team ——————————————————————————- Power Query for Excel is available with an Office 365 ProPlus subscription, Office 2010 Professional Plus with Software Assurance, Office 2013 Professional Plus or Excel 2013 Standalone. Power Query for Excel is also available in all other Excel 2013 Desktop SKUs with reduced functionality. Check out the System Requirements section on this page for more details. Download the add-in and learn more about getting started. Learn about all the powerful analytics and visualization features in Excel and take your analysis further by sharing and collaborating on business insights with colleagues using Power BI. Learn more about Power Query See all analytics and visualization features in Excel Get your Office 365 subscription Try Power BI Follow us on Facebook and Twitter ——————————————————————————- *Not all updates apply to every Office 365 plan; please check the individual post for specifics. The post Power Query for Excel September 2015 update appeared first on Office Blogs.