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Improved Outlook for Office365

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Office 365 has recently improved the user interface as well as, the included social and communication features.  Outlook starts in the now-familiar three-pane view, but without the ribbon menus of the full Outlook 2013.  

Navigation pane is located on the left of the screen.  To create, rename, empty or delete folders can be done with a right-click on the specific folder.

Tasks can be accessed through the Task tab at the bottom of the Navigation Pane.  Using color-coordinated icons can easily categorize tasks.  Also, flagged e-mails will show up in the general task list.

The View Pane is located on the right side of the screen.  In the view pane there are options to Reply, Delete and more options (…).  Deleting, printing and creating simple rules are located in the ‘More Options’ drop down menu.  For full control of creating/editing rules, setting automated replies or creating retension policies select Options in the Settings menu.

Your IM status will show next to the account name at the top of the screen.  The IM that is offered as part of Outlook is different than Microsoft Lync.  Microsoft Lync is used for chat, audio/video chat and meetings with anyone, within or outside of your organization.

For more information on Hosted Services & Office365

 please contact us 856-745-9990 or click here.

 

Tips for Switching to Office 365

Office-365-Logo-ThumbTakeaway:  Moving to Office 365 will provide anywhere access for Microsoft features but before you decide to switch there are 10 things everyone should consider.

Migrating

Starting fresh or merging Active Directory from a local machine are options when switching to Office 365.  Exchange 2010 SP2 can minimize the process of merging an existing Active Directory environment by using the included wizard.

Spam Filtering

Microsoft Forefront Online Protection is the spam filter that will need to be setup and configured when switching to Office 365.

Outbound Addressing

Switching to Office 365 you will have to configure user accounts because the e-mail addresses will add ‘.onmicrosoft.com’ to the end of the addresses.

Utilities

For on-site Exchange servers there are additional utilities that can be installed, for Office 365 you cannot install additional software on 365 servers.

DNS Issues

When switching to Office 365 you will have to confirm a list of DNS entries and create SRV records for Microsoft Lync.  If you have a Microsoft DNS server this shouldn’t be an issue.

Management Tools

If there are no longer on-site Exchange servers, Exchange Management Console and ADUC will no longer be used.   Exchange Control Panel is the primary management tool for Office 365.

File Server Permissions

Prior to switching to Office 365, decide how users will access on-site File Servers without on-site Domain Controllers and permissions to manage file access.  There are a few options before switching your network to Office 365.

Mobile Devices

Connecting mobile devices to Office 365 could take several days.  If you chose to start fresh but would like to keep your existing contacts, calendar and mail, you will need to merge the existing PST file to the Office 365 mailbox.  If you have merged your organization to Office 365 this should not be a problem.

Control Issues

Office 365 takes control of common administrative tasks such as:

  • Software upgrades
  • Patch Management
  • & many others.

Microsoft Communication

Microsoft will continue to reach out to your organization via e-mail and phone calls to answer any questions and to ensure that everything works out during the switch.

For more information on Hosted Services and Office 365

 please contact us 856-745-9990 or click here.

 

Office 365 vs. Google Apps

MSvGAMicrosoft and Google have been in a publicity rivalry over the services.  Days before the Google I/O Conference, Microsoft announced Sensia Halsovard, Arysta LifeScience and Sepco III have chosen Office 365 after using Google Apps.  Other companies have also switched to Office 365 are that Caltex Australia, FHI 360 and Santa Clara County

“Google Apps was difficult to use and lacked the capabilities our employees had grown accustomed to in Office,” said Dustin Collins, global head of IT infrastructure, Arysta LifeScience. “With Office 365 we’re able to interact and engage with each other more, allowing us to efficiently and quickly respond to new opportunities. As a result, we’re a more agile, competitive organization.”

Google offers a set price for their services, while Microsoft’s price varies by Residential and Company size.  The familiarity and dependability already established with Microsoft Office products is why many organizations are choosing Office 365 over Google Apps.

For more information on Hosted Services and Office 365

 please contact us 856-745-9990 or click here.

 

How to Resolve Microsoft Office 365 Activation Hassles

Imagine you are a customer of Microsoft’s Office 365 service, including a subscription to the Office desktop applications like Word, Excel and Outlook.

One day you click on the shortcut for Word, but instead of opening, it just shows a “Starting” splash screen which never progresses.

Being smart, you try to start Word in safe mode by holding down the Ctrl key, but the exact same thing happens.

Annoying, when you want to do your work. What is going on?

We took a look at a case like this. Two things you should do (after the usual reboot):

1. Look in the event viewer. Here, we found a clue that the issue is related to software activation, specifically Event 2011 “Office Subscription Licensing exception”:

2. For all things related to Office licensing, open a command prompt, go to (for example) C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16, and type:

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

In this case we got the following:

This told us that Windows thinks TWO product keys for Office are installed. One has expired, the other is fine.

The guilty party may (or may not) be the trial version of Office typically pre-installed with a new PC. Or it could be a consequence of changing your Office 365 subscription. Neither would be the fault of the user, who is fully licensed and has done nothing other than follow Microsoft’s normal procedures for installing Office 365.

Solution: we reinstalled Office from the Office 365 portal, and attempted to remove the dud product key with:

cscript ospp.vbs /unpkey:<Last five characters of product key>

as explained here. All is well for the moment.

Activation and subscription license checking is for the benefit of the vendor, not the user, and should never get in the way like this.

Further, cannot Microsoft find some way of informing the user when this happens, and not have Word simply hang on starting? How difficult is it to check for licensing and activation issues, and throw up a message?

What’s new in search in Office 365

SharePoint now serves up search results personalized to your previous activity and permissions.

In SharePoint Online and on office.com, search is personal, and the search results are even easier to explore. Another user will see different results than you, even when you both search for the same words.

You’ll only see results that you already have access to, and other users can’t find your private documents.

Even before you start typing, you’ll see results based on your previous activity in Office 365. The results update as you start typing.

If these results aren’t what you’re looking for, click the link to see more results or press Enter to open the search results page and see and explore all the results. Here’s an example of search results from SharePoint:

Explore the search results to see more details about the people and files you’ve found, or refine your search to get other results. Here’s an expert tip to quickly see more, or less, details of a result – you can actually click anywhere in the empty space of the result.

You can navigate to locations that you want to explore further and, if you’ve searched in SharePoint Online, you can change where the results come from. For example, if you searched from a site, but really meant to search all of SharePoint, then you’re just one click away. Or, if the site you searched from is associated with another site, but you want to search all the associated sites.

When you exit a search results page, you return to the page where you started your search.

Office 365 to get enhanced Anti-spoofing capabilities

Enhanced anti-spoofing safeguards are rolling out for Office 365.

Microsoft services like OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams are closely guarded by ATP (Advanced Threat Protection). Besides, there are numerous feature updates available in Office 365 threat protection service to address the evolution and advances in the threat landscape. The addition of enhanced Anti-Spoofing capability in Office ATP for protecting against spoofed emails from external domains further strengthens this security framework.

Anti-spoofing in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

The newest anti-spoof features help protect organizations from external domain spoof.  Office 365 recognizes emails from external domains having proper SPF, DMARC, and DKIM authentication settings as legitimate/authentic and therefore allow them to pass authentication, uninterrupted.

This normal process is however challenged when external domains do not have these settings properly configured. Without enforcement of these settings, domains show a high likelihood of being manipulated and maliciously spoofed, leaving customers vulnerable to phishing or spam attacks. The new external domain anti-spoofing capabilities help detect and block emails from external domains that do not have the following features,

  1. Correct authentication configuration
  2. An email infrastructure source with an unknown history

How does it work?

A newly enhanced filter in ATP first checks if the email from external domains, passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC test.  If not, the filter thoroughly checks for historical sending patterns of that domain and associated infrastructure. If any suspicious behavior is noted, ATP assumes the sender does not bear a good reputation and as such, proceeds to junk the message.

Also, a feature worth noticing about Anti-spoofing – The filter constantly evolves and enhances itself based on mail flow patterns it observes.  ATP subscribers can access the spoof intelligence report in their Antispam Policy and take necessary actions if required.

How to access Compliance Manager by Office 365

Compliance Manager is now available

Compliance Manager is a cross-Microsoft-cloud services feature designed to help organizations meet complex compliance obligations, including GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27018, NIST 800-53, and HIPAA. Compliance Manger is rolling out and has been moved from Public Preview to General Availability.

How to access Compliance Manager?

Users can access Compliance Manager by signing into their Office 365, Dynamics 365, or Azure user account via the Service Trust Portal. This new compliance solution is designed to help organizations meet their data protection and regulatory requirements while using Microsoft cloud services. Compliance Manager enables users to perform on-going risk assessments, gain actionable insights to improve data protection capabilities, and simplifies compliance processes through its built-in control management and audit-ready reporting tools.

Compliance Manager is now generally available for Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 Business and Enterprise subscribers in public clouds. Note that Office 365 GCC customers can access Compliance Manager, however, you should evaluate whether to use the document upload feature of compliance manager, as the storage for document upload is currently compliant with Office 365 Tier C only.

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

By default, everyone in your organization with an Office 365, Dynamics 365 or Azure user account has access to Compliance Manager and can perform any action in Compliance Manager. To change the default permissions, at least one user must be added to each Compliance Manager role (see the instructions on our support page linked from Additional Information below). After a user is added to a role, the default permissions are removed and only users that have been added to a role will be able to access Compliance Manager and perform the actions allowed by that role.

Once you log into Compliance Manager you will see a number of assessments and what Microsoft has completed for the various assessments.  You will also see what controls your organization are responsible for.  You can export the assessment to excel if you need to provide it for an auditor or wish to save it for retention purposes.

Once in an assessment, you can update what your organization is doing to meet the requirements for the various supported standards.  This gives you the ability to track your compliance activities.  Some organization may already have GRC tracking software but they will find this tool useful if for no other reason to see the results of Microsoft Managed controls.

If Microsoft allowed you to have an assessment for your on-premises systems.  Like a blank questionnaire, clients could use it might be able to replace a GRC app for some companies.

When updating the Customer Managed Controls you have the ability to upload documents, lookup the related controls, assign an assessor, a test date and document the test results.

Microsoft provides you with detailed guidance for customer actions and allows you to document your control implementation details along with a test plan and any response to the assessment.

There is a Compliance Score that, “is a new intelligent scoring feature that is calculated based on an analysis of industry standard control components. Compliance Manager analyzes controls for their the impact to the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of protected data, as well as external drivers in order to weigh controls based on their impact.”

We think this is a great tool especially for small to medium businesses and local governments.  Most often these smaller organizations don’t have formal governance practices or necessary skills in-house.  This tool could help them develop those processes. We also see this as a great tool or internal auditors to use. It gives businesses a place to document the testing methods and results.

 

Office 365: New capabilities for iPad and iPhone

New features make Office and OneDrive the best place to work on iPad and iPhone

More and more, people around the world are working on the go, changing locations and devices as they create and collaborate with others throughout their day. As they work across their PCs, Macs and mobile devices, they expect an uncompromising experience that is familiar yet optimized for the device they are using.

Microsoft is committed to providing best in class experiences on all devices, and today, we are proud to share with you a set of new Office capabilities across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive on iOS that will delight and make iPad and iPhone users more productive than ever before.

Real-time co-authoring in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on iOS – We live in a world where we’re often collaborating with multiple people in different locations and Office 365 provides the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration between individuals, teams, and entire organizations. Using real-time co-authoring, colleagues, friends, and family can contribute to and edit documents simultaneously in the Word, Excel and PowerPoint iOS apps. This allows you to know who else is working with you in a document, see where they’re working, and view changes automatically within seconds. The co-authoring experiences are also available in Office Online and the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the PC and Mac, all made possible by storing your documents in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Drag and drop files anywhere with OneDrive – Sometimes your files can get scattered between different folders or even services and applications. Now it’s easier than ever to organize and rearrange your files. You can drag files in between folders in OneDrive and, if your teammates use SharePoint to work together, you can even drag OneDrive files to a SharePoint site giving them immediate access. On iPad, you can also drag files from other apps, such as iMessage, into your OneDrive and drag files out of your OneDrive to other apps.

Drag and drop content between Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive on iPad – One of the most common and powerful tasks when creating content is pulling in text, photos, graphs, and other objects from different sources. Now you can pull in content with ease on your iPad with drag and drop support in Office and OneDrive. Easily drag and drop objects from OneDrive or from one Office app to another.

OneDrive Files app support – Today we’re also announcing native support for the Files app in iOS 11. OneDrive integration with the Files app allows you to access, upload, edit, and save your content to OneDrive or SharePoint from apps that support Files app integration. You can also tag and favorite your OneDrive and SharePoint files from within the Files app.

OneDrive redesigned to find the files that matter – The OneDrive iOS app has been redesigned from the ground up with a new layout that uses your screen space more efficiently allowing you to find your files faster. It’s easier to scan across file names, see the information that matters to you, and sort files how you want. New metadata is visible in the list view, so you can easily identify new files and files that have been shared.

Universal link support for shared files – Being able to seamlessly share and securely access files is essential for teamwork. Previously when you received a link to a shared file, you would be directed to a browser and prompted to re-authenticate. Today, we are announcing universal link support, which will open the document directly in the Word, Excel, or PowerPoint iOS apps. Further, if you don’t have a supporting application for the file, you’ll be directed to the OneDrive app to preview the file.

Preview 130+ file types in your OneDrive app – You and the people you work with use a variety of different file formats, but when you’re on your mobile device you might not have access to the native applications for those files. Now, the OneDrive iOS app creates crisp thumbnails and supports large previews of over 130 file types, including Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, RAW, 3D objects, and high-precision DICOM images. OneDrive lets you open, view, and share all of your files without leaving the app.

New accessibility features for Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iOS 11
The VoiceOver rotor in iOS improves navigation and the accessibility of content. For example, you can use the built-in rotor on iOS to navigate line-by-line or word-by-word and change the speed at which VoiceOver speaks. The new Office-specific rotors also let people with vision impairments navigate more efficiently in Word across tables and links, slides in PowerPoint, and sheets in Excel.

Users can also leverage larger text options in accessibility settings to modify the text size in the core Office apps. Visit the support pages for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to learn more.

You can use take advantage of these new capabilities in the coming days by updating the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive apps in the Apple App Store.

Microsoft announced Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence

 

Admins can send simulated phishing and attack emails to find security and training weaknesses.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released a public preview for Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence. On April 17th Microsoft announced that Attack Simulator is now generally available. Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence is available to all Office 365 E5 or Office 365 Threat Intelligence customers.

With Attack Simulator, customers can launch simulated attacks on their end users, determine how end users behave in the event of an attack, and update policies and ensure that appropriate security tools are in place to protect the organization from threats.  The GA of Attack Simulator adds a new HTML editor so realistic looking HTML emails can be sent in simulations of spear-phishing.  Also, two spear-phishing templates are available for immediate use in the spear phishing simulation.

Attack Simulator includes the three attack scenarios from our public preview.

Display Name Spear Phishing Attack: Phishing is the generic term for socially engineered attacks designed to harvest credentials or personally identifiable information (PII). Spear phishing is a subset of this phishing and is more targeted, often aimed at a specific group, individual, or organization.  These attacks are customized and tend to leverage a sender name that generates trust with the recipient.

Password Spray Attack: To prevent bad actors from constantly guessing the passwords of user accounts, often there are account lockout policies.  For example, an account will lockout after a certain number of bad passwords are guessed for a user.  However, if you were to take a single password and try it against every single account in an organization, it would not trigger any lockouts.  The password spray attack leverages commonly used passwords and targets many accounts in an organization with the hope that one of the account holder uses a common password that allows a hacker to enter the account and take control of it.  From this compromised account, a hacker can launch more attacks by assuming the identity of account holder.

Brute Force Password Attack: This type of attack consists of a hacker trying many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found.

 

 

This video demonstrates how Attack Simulator can help organizations educate users to become more secure from cyber threats.  With Attack Simulator, admins can train all their end users, and especially those who are attacked most often.  This proactive training is a powerful way to ensure that your organization can prevent the impact from advanced threats.  Over the coming months, more threat simulations will be added to Attack Simulator so organizations can simulate the most prevalent threat types from the modern threat landscape.

Experience the benefits of Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence by beginning an Office 365 E5 trial or Office 365 Threat Intelligence Trial today.   Also, learn more about how Microsoft leverages threat intelligence and the value of threat intelligence.

Stay Organized With Easy Access to Online Calendars

Calendar

Stay organized and in control with 24/7 access  with Personal or Group Online Calendar.

Never forget an appointment, birthday or anniversary again. Now it’s easy to keep track of family activities, events and important dates. Need help at the office? Personal and Group Online Calendar makes it a snap to share your calendar, projects and files so all your employees are informed and up to date. Find times when everyone is available to meet, manage company resources, and much more!

Overview

  • Easy, 24/7 Access – Access your online calendar anytime, anywhere you have an Internet connection.
  • Password Protect – Keep personal information and details of your calendar private and secure.
  • Upload Files – Share files with group members or individuals invited to an event.
  • Event Reminder – Schedule automatic reminder messages via email or pop-up notification.
  • Task Management – Create and manage your own personal “To Do” list – or keep track of business projects. Set start and end dates and track tasks to completion.
  • Task Sharing – For projects that require work from multiple people, Task Sharing keeps everyone “up to speed” on project status.
  • Email Integration – Send and receive meeting requests and easily add them to your Microsoft Outlook calendar.
  • NEW! Integrate with popular 3rd party calendars – Easily add your events to Google Calendar, iCal or even your iPhone calendar.
  • Email Invitation – Invite individuals to attend meetings or events.
  • Print Options – Choose from multiple print formats for your schedule: daily, weekly, monthly and more!
  • Schedule Resources – No more wasting time tracking down available meeting rooms or other equipment like laptops and projectors.
  • Check User Availability – Easily see when others in your group have free time.
  • Administrator Control – Delegate control by choosing which members have full administrative access to all Group Calendars.
  • Time Zones – Supports 547 Time Zones.
  • Holidays – Automatically add major holidays to your personal calendar. Choose from 14 holiday collections suited to various countries and nationalities – or create and customize your own favorite days!

3 Online Calendar Plans To Choose From

Online Calendar Plan

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