Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice-president for Microsoft Office. Today, we are excited to announce the availability of several new Office 365 communications services designed to modernize voice, video, and meeting experiences, while saving companies substantial costs in their communication infrastructure. Organizations can now replace their legacy meeting and phone systems with innovative services built on the familiar Skype for Business experience, all naturally integrated within Office 365—the world’s most-used collaboration and productivity platform. We are also excited to announce significant new security and analytics capabilities aimed at dramatically improving our customers’ ability to protect their organizations and glean insights from data. Communication-powered productivity We believe that the heart of productivity is great teamwork, and the heart of great teams is great communication. Productivity today is centered on conversations—sometimes a quick instant message or call, and sometimes a meeting planned in advance including voice, video and content sharing. With many different avenues of communication, people need tools that allow them flexibility in how they connect. For years, consumers have embraced new ways of communicating, turning "Skype" into a verb synonymous with video calling. But corporate telephony, including PBX systems, and audio and video conferencing systems, has lagged behind—until now. Having Skype for Business as an integrated part of the work people are already doing in Office means greater continuity as they collaborate and communicate throughout their day. Built on the familiar Skype user interface, Skype for Business makes connecting with colleagues as easy and intuitive as connecting with friends and family on Skype. With the new services, Skype for Business gets even better, for organizations and their people: PSTN Conferencing provides the flexibility to dial in to a meeting from a traditional phone, in addition to the existing ability to join a meeting with a single click on your PC or mobile device. Skype Meeting Broadcast makes it easier than ever to produce large virtual meetings for up to 10,000 meeting attendees, who can join from virtually any browser or device (see it in action). Now Skype for Business truly is a single platform for every type of meeting. Cloud PBX enables companies to eliminate separate PBX systems and transition to the cloud with Office 365 as the central location to manage users for communication and With PSTN Calling, Office 365 customers can also subscribe to Microsoft managed calling plans and phone numbers, starting in the U.S. with more markets coming later. Watch this video to learn more about how the new Skype for Business capabilities can benefit your organization. Simplify your infrastructure, lower your costs and empower your people Microsoft is the only company that has built this combination of capabilities—a cloud business phone system including dial tone, and a complete meetings solution including audio, video, content sharing and messaging service—as a core part of a complete productivity and collaboration suite, available across mobile platforms and at a global scale. Today, over half of our business customers are currently paying for multiple conferencing solutions, and many are still using legacy PBX phone systems. Now they can simplify their infrastructure with one cloud platform for meetings and voice, ultimately reducing the cost, complexity and effort of maintaining legacy phone and conferencing systems. But it’s about more than saving money. People spend nearly a third of their time at work in meetings, yet only 18 percent of information workers actively use conferencing tools that enable rich experiences like video and content sharing. When you consider that nonverbal signals account for nearly 90 percent of the messages we receive during interpersonal communication, it’s clear that moving to modern communication tools can have a dramatic impact on productivity and collaboration. Desktop sharing during a Skype for Business meeting. A rich partner ecosystem As we release these new capabilities in Office 365, partners will play an integral role in extending the value of our new services. At the forefront are our global systems integrator partners, who have the highest level of experience in delivering communications solutions end-to-end. We also partner with telco operators who provide secure, high-quality network connectivity and managed services that help customers get the best experience with the new Skype for Business services. These partners include BT Global Services, Orange Business Services, SoftBank, TATA Communications and Telstra. Key partners like Polycom are delivering innovative new solutions for audio conferencing including the Polycom® RealPresence Trio™ for groups, and Polycom® VVX® desktop phones, which are the first phones qualified for the new Skype for Business services in Office 365. Application partners like Genesys are also building on our platform to deliver solutions like contact center applications that work with Skype for Business and Office 365. Deeper value from security and analytics In addition to the Skype for Business capabilities, we’re releasing new security and data analytics capabilities in Office 365, including: Delve Analytics—Empowers individuals through rich dashboards that provide insights on time and relationships, with the goal of helping individuals get time back and spend it effectively. Power BI—A business analytics service that enables information workers to visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency and understanding through live data dashboards, interactive reports and compelling visualizations. Customer Lockbox—Gives customers new approval rights, transparency and control over their data in the cloud. Advanced eDiscovery—Integrates Equivio machine learning, predictive coding and text analytics capabilities, to reduce the costs and challenges that come along with sorting through large quantities of data for eDiscovery purposes. Advanced Threat Protection—Protects against unknown malware and viruses by applying behavioral analysis. All of the new capabilities are now available and represent significant new value to enterprise customers. We’re excited to see the impact it can have on your organization! For a deeper look at the new capabilities and the scenarios enabled with Office 365, please visit Office.com/enterprise. —Kirk Koenigsbauer The post Office 365 brings significant new value to business customers worldwide appeared first on Office Blogs.

Most companies manage their telephone communications using a PBX (private branch exchange) system, which is essentially hardware that acts as a private telephone switchboard. Now, with Skype for Business Cloud PBX, you can eliminate separate PBX systems for users and move the functions of the PBX into the cloud, assign and manage phone numbers using Skype controls within your Office 365 admin console, and easily enable dial-in telephone numbers for your Skype meetings. We explain how this works and demonstrate everything in this week’s Microsoft Mechanics. You can get phone numbers directly from Microsoft or port existing phone numbers into Skype for Business and assign or re-assign them to your users as needed. If your organization has hundreds or thousands of users, all of this can be automated via PowerShell scripting. So all of the communication needs of a new user—from email and collaboration to meetings and phones—can be automated and delivered straight from Office 365. Additionally, with PSTN Conferencing, an administrator can easily enable phone numbers to be added to their users’ Skype meetings, so anyone who receives the meeting request can dial in via a landline or mobile phone. Cloud PBX also works with your existing carrier circuits with on-premises PSTN connectivity. In this configuration, you connect Skype for Business software to communicate between your existing PBX or PSTN Gateway and Cloud PBX in Office 365. This allows you to continue to use your carrier contract and circuit for phone calls while the users are hosted in Office 365. Ideally, the connection between anything on-premises and online would be done using Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365, but you can use a normal Internet connection as well. Cloud PBX and PSTN Conferencing are included in Office 365 E5 or can be purchased standalone. In the coming months, we’ll be expanding the number of countries where calling plans will be offered. And because this is a cloud service, you’ll see more and more features added to the service soon. If you’re evaluating Office 365 E5, we’ve released a number of Microsoft Mechanics demos and shows highlighting the new capabilities: Customer Lockbox in Office 365 Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery Advanced Threat Protection in Exchange Online Over the next week, Microsoft Mechanics will go deeper on the remaining Office 365 E5 features with an explanation of Delve Analytics and updates to Power BI. See you then, Jeremy Chapman The post A deeper view into Skype for Business Cloud PBX appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post about Office 365 was written by Andre Garcia, AVP for Global Infrastructure Services at ABM. ABM believes that the early adoption of technology gives the company a competitive advantage. Today, we are enabling mobility and anywhere, anytime productivity for our workforce with Office 365 and the new capabilities in Skype for Business. We are one of the largest facility solution providers in the United States, with more than 300 offices in the United States and international locations. So for our employees, the workplace can be underground in a boiler room or on the top floor of corporate headquarters. Technicians and field staff work onsite at universities, airports, hospitals and industrial sites, just to name a few. Traditionally, there’s been a large gap between people working in the field and people working in the office. Enhancing connections and communications among employees so they can connect and collaborate on a variety of devices is a key goal for us. We all know the Office user interface, and we all know the consumer version of Skype. So right off the bat, it was easy for our employees. We are introducing Skype for Business to all of our Office 365 users as they come on board, and they are really excited about it. Everyone loves the audio dial-in capabilities you get. There are so many ways to join a meeting—dialing in on a landline or a mobile phone, easily dragging people from the directory into a meeting, or calling from your computer—you can do it all using Skype Meetings with PSTN Conferencing. In addition, PSTN Calling lets me work in the most efficient manner possible. If I want to pick up a phone, I can. If I want to be reachable at a phone number away from my computer, that’s also simple. If I want to join calls using VOIP, I can do that too. This feature gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility, and it all works seamlessly. We provisioned our executives and shipped webcams to them, and they have been very impressed with the technology. When employees have a positive experience with the easy call-in, call-out capabilities and the rich meeting functionality, they start questioning, "Wait, why do I need other conferencing solutions?" They realize that they can use Skype for everything. So we can cancel all those other accounts and save money by consolidating vendors without worrying about losing any functionality: there’s a great collaboration experience available in one consolidated solution for voice and meeting—video, desktop sharing and co-authoring. And it’s so easy to manage users and voice services right in the Office 365 solution with Cloud BPX. With just a couple of clicks, we can provision users for PSTN Conferencing and PSTN Calling. You simply assign users phone numbers and from there it’s a walk in the park. There’s also potential cost savings with PTSN Calling. We are expecting more predictable pricing from Microsoft’s PSTN Calling flat rate plans. ABM is an international company with more than 100,000 employees, so we are naturally interested in Skype Meeting Broadcast. I think a lot of companies will want to empower their senior executives to use the broadcasting feature to distribute messages to employees with "watch them when you want" built-in video on demand flexibility. Skype for Business is the culmination of our journey to cloud-based communication services and transforming the workplace. We have been early adopters all along, but thanks to the flexibility that’s built into Microsoft technologies, we can undertake the journey at our own pace, working through hybrid scenarios. The ability to do audio and video calls between Skype Consumer Network and the new enterprise version means we can more easily communicate with our suppliers, customers and contractors, which streamlines communications across the organization. Collaboration and communication have been critical components of how employees get work done at ABM all along, but with Skype for Business we’ll be truly working like a network. The post ABM builds teamwork between field and offices to boost service and productivity appeared first on Office Blogs.

We are pleased to introduce a new Excel 2016 feature that improves the analyst’s workflow—smart rename support in the Power Pivot data model. Now in Excel 2016, when you rename a table, column or DAX measure in the data model, the rename is seamlessly propagated through the workbook and all the affected objects in the workbook adjust to use the new name. Smart rename support in the data model significantly improves the scenarios when the user renames a table, column, calculated field, measure or hierarchy in the Power Pivot window. Specifically, the following enhancements have been made: Affected DAX calculations now adjust to use the new names. This saves the user from manually finding and fixing the invalid DAX formulas. Affected PivotTables and Fields Lists now adjust to use the new names. This saves the user from manually rebuilding the PivotTables. In a similar manner, the affected PivotCharts and Fields Lists adjust to use the new names. This saves the user from manually rebuilding the PivotCharts, as the renamed objects were removed from the PivotChart before. And last but not least, the affected Slicers and Timelines adjust to use the new names. This saves the user from re-creating the Slicers and Timelines, as the affected Slicers and Timelines disappeared from the workbook before. A live demonstration is better than a thousand of words, so let’s see the new experience in Excel 2016: http://officeblogseast.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2016/11/Excel%202016%20Smart%20Rename%20Demo.mp4 Smart rename support for Cube functions and Named Sets in the workbooks is not supported at this stage. We hope that you’ll love the new experience, and we will be glad to hear your feedback. The post Announcing smart rename support in the data model for Excel 2016 appeared first on Office Blogs.

ABB—The collective power of knowledge Today’s post about Office 365 was written by Andy Tidd, global chief information officer at ABB. Disruptive innovation is occurring throughout the power and automation sectors served by ABB—changes in the electric utility value chain, the growing importance of the digital grid, solar and wind power, collaborative robotics, the Internet of Things, services and people—and ABB is driving the change. We pride ourselves on innovation that keeps us at the forefront of technological change in power and automation so we can deliver solutions that make this world a more efficient, cleaner place. My challenge is to ensure that creativity and inspiration continue to flourish at ABB without any technological barriers. How do we meet this challenge for a global company with people working in roughly 100 countries? We connect people to enable collaboration, and for that we use Microsoft Office 365. Obviously security and compliance are important aspects of the purchasing decision for any technology, and Office 365 was no exception. We deployed Office 365 to more than 125,000 of our employees around the world, at a rate of up to 5,000 seats a week. It was a successful example of IT maintaining daily operations while enabling a strategic business objective—fostering global communications and collaboration to drive innovation. But to be relevant, the project had to focus on business productivity and user experience—bringing people together to enable them to create new products that deliver additional value to our customers. So we listened to employees’ expectations for an agile, mobile, always connected work environment that erases geographical boundaries and opens the door to global collaboration. Office 365 helped us meet those expectations. Its flexible cloud-based services are designed to promote mobility and it works with PCs, tablets and mobile phones running on all the major operating systems. ABB has been deployed on all Office 365 services for more than a year and it has proved itself as a suite of modern, intuitive collaboration tools that really support our business-led collaboration focus area. Yammer is everywhere facilitating teamwork. SharePoint Online is used extensively thanks to the simplicity of setting up Sites for project collaboration. Employees are empowered to share knowledge that addresses issues and goals across departments and geographies. Everyone uses the tools as a natural extension of how they work, creating teams, messaging each other and quickly starting up Sites to accelerate projects, foster innovation and get to market faster. And as people share their knowledge and exchange ideas, we build a knowledge base that’s discoverable and accessible to all. Today, I have daily conversations with colleagues in countries around the world; it’s refreshing and helps me understand the challenges out there in our global communities. The more we know about our colleagues, the faster we can pull together to respond quickly to changes in the market. I have been most gratified by the way the whole organization came together to achieve this global transformation. When you are going to affect 125,000 people across the company, it’s a big responsibility. We had dedicated teams that did a lot of planning up front. And Yammer proved itself as a perfect grassroots change agent; teams formed dynamically and worked alongside the implementation groups in each country. Conversations started all over the place, and this turned out to be a fantastic channel for end-user support. By the time the Office 365 deployment was complete, I wondered how we could have got on without this tool. The continual innovation that comes with Office 365 means that I can concentrate on enabling our businesses to more easily focus on their core business, which adds value for our company and for our customers. What is the most lasting benefit of this transformation for ABB? With business-led collaboration, we are achieving the collective power of knowledge. Today, the sum of our talented individuals can be brought together to work toward improving customer satisfaction through innovative products, and to a large extent, that’s down to Office 365. —Andy Tidd The technologies involved ABB fully deployed approximately 125,000 employees on Microsoft Office 365. All employees use Microsoft Exchange Online for web-based email and shared calendaring. Yammer and SharePoint Online are fully deployed for enterprise social and team-based collaboration using Sites. OneDrive for Business provides online storage for all employees, and everyone connects with each other using Skype for Business Online for instant messaging and presence awareness. The post ABB—sparking innovation through the collective power of knowledge appeared first on Office Blogs.

Product teams across Microsoft are striving to follow the spirit of being customer focused, and the Access team is no exception. The Access product team has been conducting onsite customer visits and talking to customers from all over the world to learn more about who our customers are and how they use Access in their business and personal lives. Our goal is to maintain a continuous dialog with the Access community to discover user scenarios, pain points while working with the product, ideas and suggestions for improvements. To achieve this goal, we’ve set up a new dedicated Access UserVoice site. This is a great platform for customers from all over the world to suggest ideas for Access and then vote on them. This platform provides an opportunity for the entire community to voice their opinions and to directly influence the Access roadmap. The Access product team is closely monitoring this site and is responding to suggestions. Please check out our dedicated site at Access UserVoice and let your voice be heard! —The Access product team The post Connecting with our customers on Access UserVoice appeared first on Office Blogs.

On the heels of this week’s announcement of Office 365 bringing significant new value to business customers worldwide, Michael Tejedor returns to Microsoft Mechanics to provide a comprehensive look at the hundreds of new Power BI features that are now generally available. Power BI is a business analytics service that allows you to monitor and analyze all your data in one place, through a single pane of glass. It’s been about 10 months since the start of the Power BI preview followed by our June early look at the new updates and customization options for Power BI. On this week’s show, Michael starts by demonstrating the Power BI dashboard, which provides more visualization capability and includes a new charting engine. He demonstrates the dashboard’s live reports, allowing you to drill into underlying reports and explore additional details as well as obtain new visualizations of the data. A great recent edition to Power BI is the expanded browser experience, and editing capabilities in PowerBI.com. Beyond the browser and dashboard, we share how your business analysts can use the new Power BI Desktop tool to create interactive reports. We also show how you can create custom visualizations or use pre-packaged Content Packs to quickly visualize data from popular services like Salesforce, CRM Online or Adobe Analytics. Content Packs can now even be built from data within your own company. Michael demonstrates a new capability in Power BI to automatically expose trends and uncover patterns in a dataset by simply clicking View Insights. We get hands-on with all of this and more as we walk through the major updates to the Power BI experience on the show. You can try Power BI today for free at PowerBI.com. If your company uses Office 365, Power BI Pro is available as part of the new Office 365 E5 plan, or it’s available as a standalone offering. We’ve featured a lot more Power BI in action on past Mechanics shows highlighting Lotus F1 Team’s implementation and predicting the outcome of last year’s El Clasico match in Barcelona. Thanks for watching, Jeremy Chapman The post A demo tour of updates to Power BI Pro appeared first on Office Blogs.

A critical part of being able to collaborate in Office is the ability to work with others regardless of the platform you are working on or where you are working. With Office for iOS, you can easily find, edit and share documents using your iPhone or iPad! Get started with Office for iOS To get the most out of Office for iOS, we recommend that you sign in with your Microsoft account or organizational account for work/school. Not sure if you have an account? Go to the Account tab, tap Sign in and enter the email address associated with your account. If you have an account, then Office for iOS will redirect to the proper sign-in page; if not, then you are guided through the new user set-up process. Free for everyone Office for iPhone and iPad is free for everyone. After installing Office on your iOS device, you can read Office documents in high fidelity anywhere you take your device. You can also edit files stored on OneDrive for Personal, Dropbox for Personal and iCloud for free without having a subscription. Additionally, if your account already comes with an Office 365 subscription, you can unlock more features, such as Track Changes and options for charts and tables. New users can simply tap the Upgrade icon inside the Account tab to start an Office 365 subscription today. Open files from everywhere Office for iOS allows users to open files from many different storage locations, such as OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox and iCloud. To connect to a OneDrive, SharePoint or Dropbox service, go to the Open tab, tap Add a Place and select the corresponding storage service to add. To open files from iCloud, Google Drive or any supported third party storage service, tap More from the Open tab. Office integrates with the file picker provided by iOS (iOS 8 or above required), and you can edit files from any storage app that opts in for this extension. Files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint provide the best Office experience by offering features such as co-authoring and easy-share. Every Microsoft account comes with OneDrive for Personal, so start using yours today! Seamless experience between devices Today Word, Excel and PowerPoint are available in almost every consumer platform from Windows to iOS. The "Recently used files" and the "Welcome back" features provide seamless transition experiences for those with multiple devices running Office. Recently used files The Recent tab in Office displays the most recently opened documents and is synced across devices if the file is stored in OneDrive for SharePoint. Imagine a scenario where you just left work and need to continue working on a document from your phone. The file will be positioned at the top of your recently used items, even if it was opened from another device. In Office for iPhone and iPad, you can also Pin a document to ensure it stays at the top of the list, and this change will reflect across different devices. Pick up where you left off When opening a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, the Welcome back! pop-out takes you back to the last paragraph/slide you were at, allowing you to quickly pick up where you left off. For files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, this option takes you to your last reading position, even if it was from another device. Work everywhere Office for iOS comes with powerful offline support, so you can work on a document even without having a network connection. The green badge in the Recent tab indicates the file is available for offline editing, and Office for iOS automatically saves the changes back to the server when the device becomes online. Collaboration—easy share Files stored to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint offer the best collaboration experience. To start sharing a document, simply tap the Share icon inside the Open/Recent tab or from within a document. If you have created another document that’s stored locally on your iOS device, all you need to do before you start sharing is upload it to a cloud location. Simply tap the File action icon, select Move to Cloud and then select OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint as your destination. Outlook attachment quick edit Even though sharing using links reduces the hassle of merging files and keeps everyone up to date, many files are still sent as attachments, resulting in a tedious process of having to download the file, make and save your edits, re-attach the document and then email it back. This procedure has been dramatically improved within the recent update for Outlook and Office. The next time you receive a Word, Excel or PowerPoint attachment inside Outlook, simply open the document in the Office app and start editing. When you are done, tap the Back button in Office and the updated file will be available as a draft in Outlook. Productivity everywhere Office for iOS offers familiarity to Office users coming from other platforms, with a brand new look that’s optimized for iPhone and iPad. The teams are working hard and continually delivering new features to address customer feedback. Get Office for iOS from App Store today and start collaborating from your iPhone or iPad! Word for iOS Excel for iOS PowerPoint for iOS —Hugo Song, program manager for the Office team The post Collaboration in Office—Office for iOS offers productivity on the go! appeared first on Office Blogs.

Sway became generally available in August, enabling many additional eligible Office 365 business and education customers to begin using Sway worldwide. We continue to listen to customer feedback and work hard to address top requests from our Office 365 customers. Today we’re excited to announce additional admin capabilities we added to Sway as a result. These new controls allow Office 365 admins to better manage and tailor the way Sway is used within their organizations. Sway now has a per-user licensing model Sway has now implemented a per-user licensing model, which means that Office 365 admins can assign access to Sway on an individual or group basis instead of at the organizational level. Not only does this provide organizations with greater control but it also means that companies can more easily run pilot programs with select users for Sway before rolling it out across the organization. Any user for whom Sway is disabled will not see Sway in the Office 365 app switcher or on the home page. Here is more information on how you can control Sway licensing for your organization using the Office 365 admin center and PowerShell, as well as the Office 365 Admin app. Sway will continue to be on by default for all new Office 365 users, and all users in organizations where Sway was previously enabled at the tenant level are automatically enabled through the new per-user licensing model. Organizations that previously disabled Sway at the tenant level will need to re-disable Sway within the new per-user licensing model for the entire organization or select individuals/groups. Office 365 admins can now assign access to Sway on an individual or group basis. Sway allows Office 365 admins to choose Insert tab sources Sway now allows Office 365 admins to control which third party content sources (such as Flickr, YouTube and Twitter) are enabled in Sway’s Insert tab for users in their organization. This granular control allows admins to tailor the Sway experience for their users. In particular, this addresses requests from education customers wishing to better control what external content their students can access and add to Sway in alignment with organizational policies. To toggle sources on and off, visit the Office 365 admin center, select Sway under Service Settings and simply flip the desired switches. Office 365 admins can now control which third party content sources are enabled in Sway for users in their organization. Sway status now shows in the Service Health Dashboard We know it’s important to our customers to stay informed on how Office 365 services are performing for your organization. That’s why Sway service status is now visible within the Service Health Dashboard in the Office 365 admin center, as well as the Office 365 Admin app. Any future Sway incident will be highlighted and reported in the Sway row and in the app. The Service Health Dashboard now displays Sway service status as well. As always, we’re continuing to listen to your feedback and improve the Sway user experience, as well as the Sway management experience for Office 365 admins. Please keep letting us know on UserVoice what you’d like to see us add or change about Sway. Business and education customers can provide feedback on the Sway experience for Office 365. We’ll keep updating the Sway Admin FAQ as we roll out new features such as those discussed in this blog. —Sway team, @Sway Get Sway  | Follow Sway   The post New Sway admin controls—per-user licensing, Insert tab source controls and more appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake and Richard DiZerega talk to Yina Arenas about the Microsoft Graph. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP74_MicrosoftGraph.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates Hack productivity PowerApp your Office and SharePoint mobile solutions Introducing Microsoft PowerApps Develop an API for PowerApps Office Dev PnP Webcast—asynchronous operations with Office 365 using Azure WebJobs Channel 9.msdn.com with Andrew Coates Advanced Windows 10 development with the Office 365 APIs github.com/jakkaj/DayBar Stalking your favorite celebrities with Office 365 Connectors for Groups Using Office 365 Connectors for Groups in ASP.NET MVC Saving properties on an Exchange item in Outlook add-ins Be careful to case sensitivity in Microsoft Graph REST API Building daemon or service app with the Microsoft Graph PI Office Dev Show: Episode 19—Form.io Show notes  graph.microsoft.io/ Connect(); 2015 videos Microsoft Graph /v1.0 Microsoft Graph /beta 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 Yina Arenas Yina Arenas is an senior program manager in the Office Extensibility team developing the app models for Office servers and services. In previous releases, she worked on the Office authorization infrastructure and the SharePoint app model. Yina is passionate about enabling usage and adoption of Microsoft productivity services through the developer ecosystem and helping developers build collaborative applications more efficiently and effectively by leveraging the capabilities of Office applications and services.   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. Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician and lightning-fast runner   Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Office 365 main blog dev.office.com blog Twitter Facebook FlipBoard Slack channel 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 074 on Microsoft Graph with Yina Arenas—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.

FindTime is an add-in for Outlook that helps you come to consensus on a meeting time across companies. Have you ever spent more time deciding when to meet than actually meeting? FindTime offers intelligent suggestions on what days and times work best for people within your organization. Propose your selected times to all attendees and allow everyone to vote. Once you reach consensus, FindTime sends out the meeting invite on your behalf, eliminating the time consuming back-and-forth usually required to find the best meeting time. Install today at findtime.microsoft.com. How FindTime helps plan your meetings FindTime is an add-in for Outlook that helps you pinpoint times to meet by looking at available free/busy data for your attendees as well as creating a poll where attendees can vote on the times you suggest or suggest new times themselves! Recipients can receive invites on any email provider and can access the FindTime voting website on any device. Organizers’ email accounts must be on Office 365 and can access the FindTime Outlook add-in in Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 or Outlook on the web.* The Microsoft Garage turns fresh ideas into real projects. Find more great projects at garage.microsoft.com. —Anne Legato, chief communicator on the Microsoft Garage team *FindTime is best for Office 365 users with Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016 or Outlook on the web. The post Schedule meetings faster with FindTime—a Microsoft Garage project appeared first on Office Blogs.

The inaugural Microsoft Data Insights Summit is a brand new two-day event specifically created to bring together professional business analysts, leading industry experts and Microsoft product teams. The summit will be held in Bellevue, Washington, on March 22-23, 2016—and space is limited, so reserve your space today. Attendees will receive product insights and hands-on training covering all the favorites—including Power BI and Microsoft Excel. In-depth talks, hands-on demos, workshops and sessions will help you get up to speed on new features. Plus, you can test-drive the latest technology to really get a feel for its potential. You’ll walk away inspired and ready to apply your discoveries. In addition, attendees can schedule one-on-one meetings with the engineering teams or attend Ask-the-Expert sessions to get specific answers to your data analysis questions. Visit DataInsightsSummit.com and register today. The post Announcing the inaugural Microsoft Data Insights Summit appeared first on Office Blogs.

Keeping with the theme of continuous innovations, we are excited to roll out three new improvements to Project Online as a direct result of requests from our users. Email notifications Team members, project managers and resource managers need to stay informed on the tasks that have been assigned to them and pending items others are waiting on to complete. To help, we are bringing improved email notifications functionality to Project Online. Email notifications in Project Online keep you on top of what’s coming, let you know when things are due and what’s currently on your plate. For more details on taking advantage of email notifications see: Turn on notifications in Project Online Get email reminders about your work in Project Online This feature is available today across all Project Web App (PWA) sites. Project IDs One consistent request we have received is a need for organizations to generate a unique project ID for each new project. This allows users to refer to a project independent of the project name, which may change. Organizations accomplished this through a number of ways: manually entering the next number when a project is created, building it into their workflow or using the custom event handler. Instead of having users build custom solutions or introduce a manual process, we thought it would be better to have it baked into the service. We are pleased to introduce a new feature that generates a unique project ID on project creation! To enable this functionality, you need to define your project ID as part of the Enterprise Project Type (EPT): Each EPT has its own project ID definition. You can specify a fixed Pre- and Postfix, Starting Number and Minimum Digit Padding. The project ID can be added to a number of views throughout PWA and in custom reports. It can also be programmatically updated using CSOM. We are just putting the final touches on this feature, and it will start reaching PWA sites over the next couple of months. Watch the Office Roadmap regarding the latest information on its release at: success.office.com/en-us/roadmap. Increasing custom field limits for reporting Another overwhelming piece of feedback we received from users was the ability to include more project text custom fields in their reports. We have increased the limits on ALL custom field types that can be reported on. Here are the new limits: Project custom fields Timesheet custom fields Task and Resource custom fields, combined 450 text fields 450 text fields 450 text fields 450 lookup tables 450 lookup tables 450 lookup tables 450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag) 450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag) 450 of all other custom field types (cost, date, duration, number, flag) This change is effective today across all PWA sites! We are excited to be rolling out these new features. We hope that these new improvements to Project Online will improve your productivity. For more information about upcoming improvements to Project Online, please visit success.office.com/en-us/roadmap. —Chris Boyd, principal program manager for the Project team The post 3 new enhancements to Project Online appeared first on Office Blogs.

Join industry analyst Esteban Kolsky and Microsoft general manager Bill Patterson as they lead a thought leadership webinar, live on Tuesday, December 15 at 11 a.m. PST. They will discuss the impact of siloed or inconsistent knowledge on employee engagement and customer experience; the keys to successfully democratizing knowledge across a brand or organization, including development, collaboration, delivery, use and maintenance; justifications for a greater investment in knowledge; examples of best practices and organizational success and more. Register now for this free webinar and join us live or on demand to learn how you can empower your employees to be more productive from anywhere on any platform. The post Learn how to empower and engage your employees appeared first on Office Blogs.

Every fall, students around the country go back to school, and before that, many go back-to-school shopping. If you plan on buying new clothing and shoes for the upcoming school year, please take the time to dispose of your old items in a responsible, eco-friendly way. Clothing and textiles are nearly 100 percent recyclable and your old clothing can be recycled through donation or simple curbside recycling.  May local governments have information on agencies that collect used clothing to assist disadvantaged families in your specific area.  This not only makes use of items that would have likely ended up in the landfill, it also provides direct assistance to many in need. In addition to thrift store resale, there are clothing recyclers who convert items to scraps or sell them overseas. Recycled clothing can become anything from cleaning rags and carpet padding to rubberized playgrounds and insulation. Some major brands make it easy to recycle their items.  For example, Nike and H&M recycle and reuse their products in creative ways through a "closed loop" system. Nike’s "closed loop" vision involves using the fewest possible materials assembled in such a way as to allow them to easily be recycled into new products.  One example is their Reuse-A-Shoe program.  Started in the early 1990’s, the program was developed to reclaim materials from worn-out athletic shoes that were headed for the landfill.  Since the program’s inception, Nike has collected and recycled more than 30,000 tons of scrap material as well as over 25 million pairs of athletic shoes.  The shoes and scrap materials are recycled into Nike Grind, which is used in sports surfaces, providing safer places for kids to play. According to their website, the clothing company H&M is committed to reducing, reusing and recycling wherever they can. H&M launched a global initiative asking customers to hand in unwanted garments (any brand, any condition) to H&M stores. The fashion company is also developing techniques to create their own "closed loop system", turning old garments into new fashion items. They report that they’ve collected over 3,000 tons of garments - the equivalent of 15 million t-shirts. School supplies and electronics can also be recycled. As you begin thinking about what supplies and items might be needed for the upcoming school year, please keep Reduce, Reuse and Recycle in mind.  If you need to purchase a new item, please find an eco-friendly home for your previously used items. Sources: http://back-to-school-blog.com/ http://www.usagain.com/ http://www.earth911.com/recycling-guide/how-to-recycle-clothing-accessories/       

Monster.com states "The right career is a positive, productive and natural extension of you, your value system and your natural talents." People who work in careers that are well suited to them and their values are happier and healthier! If you’ve been experiencing discontent in your current position or feel like maybe it’s time for a change; take these steps to help discover if a career change is right for you.   1.       Take a career assessment quiz - there are many free options online. Consider your strengths, talents, and skills that perhaps aren’t being utilized to their fullest extent in your current position. 2.      Find inspiration. Keep a "dream journal" where you capture your thoughts and feelings, or read up on different careers, making note of the ones that spark your interest. 3.      Realistically look at your financial situation. While we all want a career that is purposeful and meaningful; it is important to take a close look at all facets of your finances.  How will your income be impacted with a career change? Will there be a time of unemployment or under employment as you pursue your career goals? What is the cost of pursing additional training or education? 4.      Consider talking to a Life Coach or a Career Guide. These professionals can help you tap into your career aspirations and make suggestions of fields that might be a great fit for your interests and talents. 5.      Sign up for a class or a webinar in a topic of interest. Do you feel renewed? Can you see yourself pursuing a career that incorporates this type of work? 6.      Explore what steps would be necessary to pursue your dream career. This may mean additional training, course work or certification. 7.      Obtain any computer training necessary to be successful in your next career.  Become familiar with social media and the ways in which it can help you research possible career paths, get your resume noticed as you search for a new position, or spread the news about a new business endeavor. 8.      Network with everyone you meet. Put yourself out there and let others know that you are interested in making a change. You might hear of opportunities or meet someone who can help you reach your career goals. 9.      Do something every day towards your goal. No matter how big or how small - each step taken gets you that much closer. 10.   Don’t get discouraged. Be patient and steadily work towards your new career goal! Ed4Online can help you explore different careers. We offer hundreds of courses in Career Training, Personal Enrichment, Professional Development and Health & Human Services.  Scroll through our online catalog and see how many of our courses inspire you.  Perhaps you’ve considered a career as a Travel Agent? A Paralegal? Interior Design? Or maybe you are interested in starting your own business. The possibilities are endless and we are here to help! As we mentioned above, there are many career aptitude tests available on the internet; below are a few simple self-assessment quizzes for you to try - just for fun!  First, take the quiz here:  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Who-Are-You-Meant-to-Be-Self-Assessment-Quiz And then find possible career matches here:  http://www.oprah.com/money/Whats-the-Best-Career-for-You_2 Monster.com also offers a quick career assessment test: http://career-advice.monster.com/career-development/changing-careers/how-to-decide-if-you-need-a-career-change-hot-jobs/article.aspx Whatever career path you decide to take, make the most of it - and remain open to change as exciting new opportunities may present themselves along the way. Sources: http://www.thegrindstone.com/2012/04/20/work-life-balance/the-best-jobs-for-mid-life-career-changes-681/#ixzz3FPhftwdr http://career-advice.monster.com/career-development/changing-careers/how-to-decide-if-you-need-a-career-change-hot-jobs/article.aspx         

We received the following letter from a student who recently completed our Pharmacy Technician Professional Program and wanted to share, as it exemplifies everything we hope our courses will provide for students. Dear Ed4Online: First, I would like to thank you and your staff at Ed4Online for providing a very comprehensive course for pharmacy technician. The course gave me an understanding of the history of pharmacy and how it has evolved through the years.  The safeguards that have been placed into effect by the different agencies regulating the production and distribution of medications for the safety of the public to the current laws that are in place today to protect the patient as well as the pharmacist. It gave me glimpse of what it would be like to work in a hospital setting, calculating drug dosages for pediatrics as well as the elderly and the issues they face with medications. The chapters on the different body systems and how the medications are metabolized and used by the different systems, how long the medications are active in the body (half-life) and how they are finally excreted were extremely informative and easy to understand.  The math course (math not being my favorite) was a fantastic refresher for my basic math skills and well as developing my skills to work better as a technician in my current position.  The ability to calculate day supply, drug dosage and do conversions has already become invaluable. Many of the lists in the book I have shared with the other technicians in the pharmacy such as the sig codes that should not be used, the large list of look-a-like sound-a-like medications, and at the beginning of most chapters a listing of the drugs used for that system including brand and generic names and their indications. The course also provided other materials that will continue to be helpful everyday such as websites for researching information, how to join social networks with other pharmacy technicians, where to find CE’s to meet state requirements to maintain our license and keep our skills current. I am excited that I found the course through my local university and that I was allowed the opportunity to complete it. The information it provided will always be valuable and I personally feel that it gave me an advantage as a technician that people that were "grandfathered" into being techs may have missed. Thank you again for everything you and the staff you work with have done, I fully feel that it is a successful course and I would (and have) recommend it to others wanting to get a start in the field of pharmacy. Sincerely, Robert  Thank you to Robert and to other students who have reached out to let us know that our courses have made a difference in their lives! Visit https://ed4online.com/ to view our complete course catalog and find a course or program in Career Training, Professional Development, Personal Enrichment or Health and Human Services today!       

The start of school was always a favorite time of mine. Fresh school year, new school supplies, new classmates and professors, the feeling of "anything is possible". Along with the excitement of starting something new, there was apprehension about the course load and work involved - would I be up to the challenge? For those who may have been out of the learning arena for awhile, these apprehensions may be magnified. However, there are steps that you can take to set yourself up for success: Talk to your educational consultant about the enrollment process and options available for adult learners. If possible, take a physical tour of any campus locations. Make connections with those in charge; they will become valuable assets to you during your learning process. Fill out your application for admission. Make sure that your learning institution has all the necessary paperwork it needs to enroll you, including past transcripts. Apply for financial aid using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). There is no age limit for federal or state aid. Learn more about Financial Assistance here. Complete required placement tests or, if your college offers them, take exams to see if you can offer credit for "prior learning" experiences. Make an appointment with an educational consultant or advisor to map out your course load and project out courses necessary to complete your degree or certification. This "map" or plan will come in handy every semester when it comes time to register for courses. Sign up for your courses, being realistic about the amount of time you have to dedicate to learning.  If you are not a morning person, it might be best if you sign up only for afternoon or evening courses. If you are signing up for online courses, make sure that you are aware of assignment due dates to ensure you’ll be able to meet those deadlines. If you are returning from the military: Make an appointment with an educational consultant or veteran’s counselor at your college. Your military transcript may be worth college credit. Take the time to talk to someone who is familiar with the military to civilian transfer so they can offer advice and assistance. Check to ensure that you are taking advantage of all military financial aid available to you and your branch of service. Learn more about Military Tuition Assistance here. Seek out and network with other military students online and in person; your experiences may give you common ground and allow you to offer support and motivation to one another. The admissions office may offer programs to bring students together on or off campus. If a program isn’t currently available, consider starting one yourself! Understand that your time will not be as tightly structured as when you were in the service. You may need to put systems in place to keep yourself on track. Ed4Online has valuable resources built into our programs and curriculum to help ensure student success. We have skilled Educational Consultants on staff, we offer an Online Student Center as well as Career Coaching. Visit us today to learn more about the Ed4Online difference!  Sources: http://www.iseek.org/education/return-to-school.html         

A few weeks ago, we published the first in a series of Top Websites for Teaching and Learning, as compiled by The American Association of School Librarians (AASL). The AASL makes their yearly selections to honor those internet sites that provide "enhanced learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their teacher collaborators". This week we’ll explore some of the digital storytelling websites available for teachers and students alike. Digital storytelling provides an exciting way for students and teachers to share their knowledge. It may include a combination of video, animation, sound, still images - any type of digital media that can be used to present an idea or tell a story. Below is an overview of the top Digital Storytelling websites selected by the AASL in 2015 along with a few additions of our own! 1.  Booktrack Classroom (AASL top pick) Booktrack Classroom allows students to create and publish eBooks with movie-style soundtracks, or they may create their own soundtrack for any story. Readings of stories, poems, essays and more will be enhanced with the addition of sound and music. Benefits of this method include increased student comprehension, information retention, student engagement, and overall enjoyment! Booktrack Classroom also maintains a free library of books with engaging soundtracks for student and teacher use. https://www.booktrackclassroom.com/content/intro 2.  Metta Metta is an amazing storytelling site for creating visually appealing mixed media stories. Using this tool, learners can make quick movies using videos, text, pictures, and sounds. With the Metta tool, you can also embed polls and quizzes, collect statistics and see how each student has performed overall. You can easily set up your flipped or blended courses by adding groups and assigning video lessons. http://www.metta.io/ 3.  My Storybook (AASL top pick) Make children’s storybooks online for free! Get your book published, share with friends and family, and read stories from the free online children’s book library. My Storybook makes it easy for students to create their own books. They begin with a writing lesson and learn how to create their book step by step. The addition of characters, pictures, and drawings helps bring the story to life. Students are then offered the opportunity to save their work in a high quality, printable eBook or share their story online with others. https://www.mystorybook.com/ 4.  Recite This This website makes it easy for you to take a favorite quote, and create a graphic to go along with it. Users simply enter the quote they want and a slew of poster options are shown. Select the one that fits your need and your mood. Post it right to social media, email it, download it - you have plenty of options! Best of all? The website is free to use! http://www.recitethis.com/ 5.  Storyboard That (AASL top pick) With an extensive image library, flexible layouts and featuring an image resource library, Storyboard That makes it easy to create storyboards! According to the website, those that register for the Individual Edition can create two storyboards a week for free, or upgrade any time for more advanced features. Storyboard That also offers specialized accounts for teachers or businesses. http://www.storyboardthat.com/ 6.  FlipQuiz While technically not a storyboard tool, FlipQuiz provides an easy way to share information and create simple review activities for the end of a lesson. FlipQuiz allows you to create your own game show style boards to test comprehension. With FlipQuiz, questions are displayed on-screen and can be saved for later use. http://flipquiz.me/   At Ed4Online, we love to stay up-to-date on the latest in education and share that information with you! We hope that those interested in integrating digital storytelling into educational activities will find these resources useful. We’d love to hear about your favorite digital storytelling websites! Please feel free to leave a note in the comments section below. Sources: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2015/06/aasl-announces-2015-best-websites-teaching-learning http://edtechreview.in/news/1488-great-websites-you-must-know-for-digital-storytelling         

As we continue our Ed4Online Staff Spotlight series, I thought I would take a moment and introduce myself on this page! I've been with Ed4Online for over four years and have held many positions within the company, allowing me a thorough understanding of each department. I've been in my current role as Social Media Relations Manager for the past two years and have enjoyed this position immensely. I maintain the social media channels for the Ed4Online brand, as well as develop content for weekly blogs, newsletters, and the creation of branded graphics. My primary responsibilities include creating, managing and growing brand presence across all social media channels as well as acting as an aggregator of online education news and events. I hold a degree in Social Work from Florida State University and find that connecting people with one another as well as with available resources is a driving force regardless of my workplace.  Sharing information is, and always has been, a passion. Outside of Ed4Online, I help run a very successful Product Development Consultancy and Market Research agency outside of Orlando, Florida. Helping technologists and consumers communicate is a specialty. My husband and I have been married for 27 years and have two boys age 18 and 22. Once the youngest goes off to college next week, I'll be adding "empty nester" to my resume - something that I'm really not looking forward to!  In my free time, I enjoy cooking, reading and working out. My advice for students and professionals alike is to "find a calendar system that works for you. Put in due dates and work backwards to set goals for assignment completion. Always stay ahead!" And my favorite quote?  "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou         

Higher Ed Insight, a research consulting firm, conducted an evaluation of Lumina Foundation’s Adult College Completion initiative from 2010 to 2014. The resulting report, Adult College Completion in the 21st Century: What We Know and What We Don’t, finds that while interest in adult college completion has increased across the entire higher education and policy communities, there are still challenges that adult students face when they return to college. While not insurmountable, those challenges could become significant if left unaddressed for the 30 to 35 million American adults who have enrolled in college but never completed a degree nor obtained certification. The report seeks to describe the services and support that adults with some college credit need if they are to return to college and successfully complete a degree or credential. Several key needs identified that would benefit returning adult students include: Access to advisers who are capable of addressing adult students' needs; Student services that are available online or during nontraditional business hours; Outreach to adult students who are only a few credit hours away from college degree completion or certificate obtainment; Additional sources of financial aid targeted to adult students; Improved transfer of existing college credit; Flexible course scheduling, online courses and innovative academic programs; Access to opportunities to earn credit for prior learning. Co-authors Wendy Erisman and Patricia Steele state "our hope is that this report contributes to the field by offering an overview of what we know, and what we do not yet know, about this important population of returning adult college students."   Sources: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/19/how-better-serve-returning-adult-students https://higheredinsight.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/luminabriefapril20141.pdf         

This week, as we continue to spotlight the talent behind the Ed4Online brand, we are proud to introduce you to Jason Dellwo, Senior Curriculum Designer with Ed4Online. "My name is Jason Dellwo and I’ve been with Ed4Online since 2012; first as an independent contractor and, as of August, as a full time curriculum designer. I hold a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice and a Masters in Organizational Leadership. Prior to my employment at Ed4online, I was a police officer for over seven years. After that, I worked with Target in a variety of positions (store, district and HQ) for ten years., I guess you could say I’m a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’.  I’ve held many different jobs over the years: low skill, skilled labor, public service, lower/ middle/ upper management, academia, HR, investigations, etc.  The only common thread is they were all legal and I’m proud to say I’ve only been fired once (as a waiter at a fancy restaurant)!  Above all else, my experiences have taught me that people can reinvent themselves at any stage of life as long as they are willing to learn. My personal hobbies include reading, home improvement, building model ships and I’m a huge movie buff! When asked what my goals are I’d have to say, nothing specific, except ‘to do no evil’. My personal tip for students:  Learning is like eating an elephant; best done one bite at a time.  If you wait until the end of the class and try to gobble up the knowledge, you’ll have a bad experience.  If you have and stick to a study plan, pace yourself, and take one bite at a time, you’ll do much better. My favorite quote is ‘Chance favors the prepared mind’ by Louis Pasteur." Jason and the other amazing Ed4Online team members are hard at work bringing you the latest in-demand course offerings. Please check out our course catalog and see what's new today! https://ed4online.com/         

I recently read a blog on The New York Times written by Julie Scelfo entitled, "Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection"  and the stories and statistics are shocking. Six University of Pennsylvania students committed suicide in a 13-month stretch in 2014, Tulane lost four students in 2015 and Appalachian State at least three. Cornell faced six suicides in the 2009-10 academic year and five New York University students leapt to their deaths in 2003-2004. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students and the third-leading cause of death among all youth 15 to 24 years old. More than 4,000 people in that age range commit suicide each year. Eleven hundred of them are college students. Active Minds is a national organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with 330 college chapters on campuses and in communities nationwide. The organization works to empower students to eliminate the stigma often associated with mental health issues on college campuses, speaking openly in order the educate others and encourage all who need it to seek help.  According to the website, Active Minds is "changing the culture on campuses and in the community by providing information, leadership opportunities and advocacy training to the next generation". Through campus-wide events and national programs, Active Minds works to create an open environment for students to discuss mental health issues. By removing the feeling of stigma and shame that often surround mental health, we can help break the silence. Active Minds has created a traveling exhibit, Send Silence Packing. The powerful exhibit contains 1,100 backpacks, representing the number of college students who die by suicide each year. The exhibit is displayed in high-traffic areas on campuses, giving a visual representation of the scope of the issue and the number of victims. Many of the backpacks displayed in the Active Minds exhibit have been collected from people around the country in memory of students who lost their lives to suicide, or are in honor of loved ones impacted by suicide. Some belonged to the students themselves. Many backpacks display personal stories, photos and messages from friends and family members. These stories help put a face behind the names of those lost to suicide and carry a deeply personal message that preventing suicide is about more than simple statistics; it’s about saving the lives of friends, family, sons and daughters. The goals of the Send Silence Packing exhibitions are to encourage students to talk about suicide and other mental health issues, raise awareness of the incidence and impact of suicide, inspire action for suicide prevention, and connect students with the necessary mental health resources. The Fall 2015 tour recently kicked off at the Ball State University in Indiana and will then travel to 11 additional locations in Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and California. Below is the 2015 Send Silence Packing Fall tour: September 14: Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana September 17: University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan September 21: Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan September 23: University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana September 25: Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan September 28: Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois September 30: Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin  October 5: California State University, Sacramento in Sacramento, California October 8: Fresno City College in Fresno, California October 12: University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California October 14: San Jacinto College (Menifee Valley Campus) in Menifee, California October 15: University of California, Riverside in Riverside, California   What a great opportunity to open dialogue among students, family, faculty and the community about mental health! Interested readers can follow the tour’s journey on the blog and on Instagram @active_minds.   Sources: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/22/active_minds_send_silence_packing_spreads_suicide_awareness_in_vermont http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/education/edlife/stress-social-media-and-suicide-on-campus.html?_r=1 https://www.afsp.org/ http://www.activeminds.org/our-programming/send-silence-packing         

This week, in continuation of our Staff Spotlight series, we are excited to introduce Suesan Cullers Sullivan, curriculum designer and instructor for Ed4Online. Suesan has a Masters in the Science of Instructional Technology from University of North Carolina Wilmington and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management and Organizational Development from Mount Olive College.  Suesan has been an instructor for Introduction to Computer, English as a Second Language and a variety of Health and Fitness classes.  She has 30 years of experience in marketing, events management, audience development and community relations. Most recently she served as Executive Director for the Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber of Commerce. In Wilmington, North Carolina, she held positions as Executive Director for the YWCA, Director of Development for the Good Shepherd Center and Public Relations Specialist for Cape Fear Museum of History and Science. She also co-founded the nonprofit Tapestry Theater Company, serving as its Development Director for nearly a decade. In her downtime, Suesan enjoys yoga, Zumba, tennis, golf bike riding, kayaking, volunteering with the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Tarpon Springs and spending as much time as possible with her other half, Michael, the love of her life! Her personal goals for this year include: exercise more, drink better wines, learn a new language and visit somewhere exotic, like Costa Rica. Suesan’s tips for students include: Work hard, stay humble, and never ever stop learning! A favorite quote of hers is: "The mind is everything.  What you think you become."  ~Buddha We’re happy to share the exciting team members behind the Ed4Online brand! Please visit our website at https://ed4online.com to learn more about Ed4Online and our Career Training, Professional Development, Personal Enrichment and Health and Human Services course offerings!