Tag Archives: office

Major OneDrive Updates Include SharePoint Online Sync Preview

OneDrive and SharePoint work together to make storing and accessing all your files simple and powerful. Microsoft recently outlined a vision for file management in Office 365 that included a set of new features, such as simplified file sharing (both inside and outside your organization), the ability to copy files directly from OneDrive to SharePoint, mobile access to all your Office 365 files on iOS and the innovative Discover view that uses Microsoft Graph to suggest relevant and trending files.

Microsoft announced today new sync, browser, mobile and IT capabilities for you!

New sync capabilities include:

  • Ability to sync SharePoint Online document libraries and OneDrive folders shared with you (preview available today).
  • An “activity center” has been added to the OneDrive sync client to allow you to view synchronization and file activity at a glance (preview available today).

New browser capabilities include:

  • Rich thumbnails and previews for over 20 new file types (rolling out before the end of 2016).
  • Ability to access and edit all your files in OneDrive and SharePoint Online from the OneDrive browser client (rolling out before the end of 2016).
  • Capability to download multiple files as a .zip file (rolling out before the end of 2016).

New mobile capabilities include:

  • Notifications to your iOS or Android device when someone shares a OneDrive file with you (available today).
  • Access to SharePoint Online files in the OneDrive app on Android (available today).
  • Multi-page scan enhancements in the OneDrive app on Android (available today).
  • Ability to see over time how many people have discovered and viewed your files in OneDrive for iOS (available today).

New IT capabilities include:

  • Enhancements to integration with Office 2016 (available in First Release).
  • Simple, flexible OneDrive user management in Office 365 (available in First Release).
  • Dedicated OneDrive administration console in Office 365 (rolling out before the end of 2016).

Take your files on the go with powerful new sync options

Microsoft promised to bring a single sync experience for all your files in Office 365, across OneDrive and SharePoint. Today, Microsoft announced the public preview of this eagerly anticipated update for both PC and Mac.

SharePoint sync is being added to the OneDrive sync client, which we released last year, and offers superior levels of reliability, performance and control—including the flexibility to select the specific folders you want to take offline.

Now you have one simple way to take any of your Office 365 files offline. And we’ll make it even easier, with a seamless upgrade from the legacy sync client (groove.exe).

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Shared folder sync is another powerful capability shipping with this preview. If a colleague in your organization shares a folder with you from their OneDrive, then you can choose to take that folder offline. What’s more, it doesn’t count against your storage quota!

For better visibility of what is going on with your sync client, we’re rolling out the activity center. When a file is added, deleted or changed in a folder that you are syncing, the activity center shows you exactly what happened—so you can catch up on the most recent activity and see current sync status.

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To get started with the preview download the setup instructions here.

View files fast with better previews and thumbnails

OneDrive offers deep integration with Office Online, so you can view, edit and create Office files from any browser. There are times you want to view other types of files in the browser without downloading them. So, we’re enabling rich previews for your most commonly used business file types. Without leaving OneDrive, you will be able to preview Adobe files, including Illustrator (.ai), Photoshop (.psd) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps). Email files (.msg and .eml), almost all photo files (including many RAW formats) and streaming video are also supported. Additionally, most of these file types now have high resolution thumbnails in the folder’s tile view. We won’t stop here—we’re continuously building support for new file types, creating better previews and increasing coverage for thumbnails.

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Access all your Office 365 files through the OneDrive browser experience

Our mission is to enable you to work with all your Office 365 files wherever you are. We’re releasing an update to the OneDrive browser experience that enables you to access, edit and share all files and folders in SharePoint Online that you own or follow. We’ll start rolling this out to First Release customers in the coming months, and rollout to all customers will be complete in the first quarter of 2017. Combined with the single experience in mobile apps and sync, you have one consistent way to work with the Office 365 files you care about. Regardless of whether you’re in the browser on PC or Mac, or on your device using our apps, OneDrive is the one place to access, share, edit and collaborate on all your Office 365 files.

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Download multiple files as a .zip file

Based on your feedback, we’ve added another new capability to the OneDrive browser experience. You can now select multiple files and folders and download them in a .zip file.

Keep informed with mobile notifications

For iOS or Android users, we’ve added notifications when a colleague shares a file with you. You can now open the file directly from the notification. You won’t have to rely on email to know when you can start working on that shared proposal with colleagues or complete the final review of tomorrow’s presentation. In the future, we’ll bring notifications to Android and Windows, as well as add notifications for other file activities beyond just sharing.

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Extending the Scan function to handle multiple photos

Earlier this year we released the Scan function on Android, which enables you to take single photos that are then converted to PDF files and uploaded to OneDrive. We’ve now expanded this allow you to add multiple photos and combine them in the one PDF file. Now you can scan your multi-page expense receipt or extensive notes across multiple whiteboards into a single PDF that’s uploaded and stored in OneDrive.

This feature will be rolling out to iOS in the coming weeks.

Understand the reach and impact of your work

When you copy from OneDrive to SharePoint—a feature we recently released—your file becomes accessible and discoverable by your team. We announced in May that we were working on a feature to measure the reach of your files. Starting today on iOS, you can see over time how many people have discovered and viewed your files. This provides simple insight into the impact of your work. We’ll add this capability to Android and Windows in future updates.

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New deeper Office 2016 integration saves you time in collaborating with others

We’re continuing to deliver true, seamless Office integration everywhere you use Microsoft Office and OneDrive. In the top right of the Office 2016 ribbon, you can see the users who are currently editing the file and launch Skype for Business to converse in real-time. You can also share the file, see the history of all activity on the file as well. Being able to share with others and getting a snapshot of what is going on with your file without having to jump out of the Office app are big time-savers.

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Additionally, when you click the File tab to open a file, you’ll notice now that in addition to having access to files you recently accessed in OneDrive and SharePoint Online, you can now also access files most recently shared with you. The result is simple: access to all the files you’re working with on any device—yet another time-saving feature exclusive to OneDrive and SharePoint.

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Secure and manage OneDrive with enhancements for IT pros

Between now and the end of 2016, Microsoft is releasing even more features for IT to secure and manage OneDrive. We’ll add per-user controls for OneDrive directly in the Office 365 User Management console. As an admin, you will be able to set the storage quota and external sharing permissions for a specific user, as well as help a user who misplaced a file or inadvertently shared the wrong file with others. In emergencies, such as a lost device, you can sign a user out of OneDrive on all devices. And, when an employee leaves the organization or is terminated, you can take over the user’s OneDrive to move or copy important files to other locations. This capability complements the feature we shipped earlier this year that allows you to preserve files in a deleted user’s OneDrive for up to 10 years, so that you can be confident important files are not lost. We’ll continue to add new per-user settings and controls.

Microsoft is creating a dedicated administration console for OneDrive in the Office 365 admin center, so you’ll have one place to discover and configure OneDrive-specific settings and perform administrative tasks—many of which used to require PowerShell. The new experience is simple, modern, fast and responsive, and makes managing OneDrive for your organization much easier.

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The future of simple and powerful file sharing is now

We’re pleased to deliver these innovations that lead the way to simple and powerful file sharing for Office 365 customers. OneDrive delivers a single, consistent experience for working with all your files in your individual OneDrive, your SharePoint team sites and Office 365 Groups. We’re bringing you rock-solid sync, a rich browser experience, highly-rated mobile apps and deeper, more powerful integration with Microsoft Office. And we’re bringing all of this to your PC and Mac as well as all your devices. We’re innovating ways to use intelligence to accelerate your productivity, with content discovery and insights into the impact of your work. And of course, behind these great experiences and capabilities are the security, compliance and manageability controls that are the hallmark of Office 365.

Get started with the new updates today!

Contact the Atidan Office 365 team at office365@atidan.com for additional information and special offers.

 

Blog reference: https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/sharepoint-online-sync-preview-headlines-ignite-announcements-for-onedrive/?Wt.mc_id=DX_MVP4029260

 

Video Conferencing for Startups and Small Businesses—10 Hacks to Maximize their Value

Whether you operate a startup on a shoestring budget or have a successful small business, chances are good that you’re always looking for ways to save money, maximize your investments and get your clients, customers and your team excited about what you do. In order to do that, sometimes meeting face to face is necessary—but it can also be cost prohibitive. Between trains, flights and/or the cost of driving a car, plus the actual time you’ll spend traveling (which can be pretty unproductive even when you have the luxury of being able to work on the go), sometimes the benefits of seeing a client in-person just don’t add up.

That’s where video conferencing comes in. It gives you the power to bring everyone together—without the cost of a plane ticket. That said, video conferencing can have its pitfalls and problems, but with a few quick tips you can avoid some of the bumps in the road and get even more from your system.

  • Video conferencing for startups and small businessesGet comfortable with the camera—Looking good in front of the camera isn’t just a matter of putting on a suit and coiffing your hair, so take some time before your debut to practice your camera skills. For instance, learn to concentrate on the camera instead of the screen, slow down your movements, stop nervously picking at your nails, and learn to smile. After all, your clients will see everything that you’re doing, and you don’t want to distract them from your message.
  • Work on your presentation voice—No one likes being shouted at or wants to struggle to hear what you’re saying. So before video conferencing with your clients, test out your mic and figure out how moving around a room changes what people hear. Try speaking softly, loudly and somewhere in between, and ask a co-worker, friend or family member to weigh in on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to sound.
  • Check your settings—As you work on your on-camera mannerisms and presentation voice, don’t forget that you can improve both the way you look and sound by making a few quick adjustments to your webcam’s video settings. With the ability to tweak brightness, exposure, color, white balance and microphone volume, among other things, you can deliver a performance that’s as close to perfect as possible.
  • Location, location, location—Even if you work in an environment that’s all about the hustle, you should seek out a quiet place where background movements won’t distract attendees from your message. As an added bonus, with less motion in the background, your video will also look smoother.
  • Update your technology—With every new iteration of video conferencing technology that comes out, the quality of your experience will improve—either though ease of use, video quality or another factor. By simply updating the version of the technology you’re using, you can get a better conferencing experience. (The good news is that updates are usually included with your technology, so it’s just a matter of clicking a button.)
  • Get wired—For smoother, more consistent audio and video, try to use a wired Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi. In a pinch Wi-Fi will do, but it often results in more lag time and interference, which can reduce the quality of your audio and video, frustrate guests and give you a somewhat less than professional look.
  • Check your bandwidth—Depending on the type of video conferencing you want to do, you may need to increase your bandwidth to get the upload/download speeds you need for a quality experience. Although these numbers are subject to change and may depend on the video conferencing service you use, you can consider these numbers (shown as upload/download) the absolute minimums you should aim for:
    • Video calling with screen sharing: 128kpbs / 128kpbs
    • High-quality video calling: 400kpbs / 400kpbs
    • HD video calling: 1.2Mpbs / 1.2Mpbs
    • 3-person video calling: 512kpbs / 128kpbs
    • 5-person video calling: 2Mpbs / 128kpbs
    • 7-person (or more) video calling: 4Mpbs / 128kpbs
  • Connect early—The importance of this cannot be overstated, especially if you’re conferencing with clients. After all, you don’t want to waste your client’s time and look like a novice by fumbling around with your technology in the process.
  • Encourage interactivity—People are often hesitant to share what’s on their minds when they feel they’ve been put on the spot, but the point of video conferencing is to simulate an in-person meeting experience, which is typically full of questions, comments and asides—all of which can be important to building trust, understanding and creating lasting relationships. In order to encourage this type of banter, let everyone know that they’re free to ask questions at any time. Then, if there’s an opportunity to engage someone in the conversation naturally—just as you would if you were in a room together—do so.
  • Record your meetings—The best way to improve your meeting skills is to see how they read from the other side of the camera. When possible, record both the audio and video of your meetings and evaluate them in the same way that a football team would go over their plays the day after a big game.

Finally, don’t forget to send a follow-up email. Just as with any other meeting, don’t assume that clients will take notes or even fully grasp the information and concepts addressed in a meeting. In order to hedge your bets, it’s always best to err on the side of caution and provide them with a follow-up message containing the salient points of the discussion and an outline of any next steps, expectations or responsibilities. This way, everyone will have seen and heard the information, and participants have something concrete that they can refer back to. It’s a win-win that costs little in terms of time, and allows you to stay in front of your team and clients long after the meeting has ended.

Contact the Atidan team for additional information about Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for Business office365@atidan.com

Content from Microsoft https://blogs.office.com/2015/09/02/video-conferencing-for-startups-and-small-businesses/

Microsoft Office 2016 for Apple Mac Launched

There’s a lot to love in the new Office for Mac

Watch the launch Video Here
Microsoft announced that a totally redesigned and rewritten version of Office is now available for the Macintosh for all Office 365 subscribers who have the Office subscription (E3, Business, Business Premium, etc.). Including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, every application now has a metro interface and many new features.  Please contact the Atidan team to learn more at office365@atidan.com
A MacBook showing a new Word for Mac document with the navigation pane.

Word

Create, polish, and share beautiful and professional documents
The state-of-the-art authoring and reviewing tools in Word make the creation of polished documents easy. The new Insights pane shows relevant contextual information from the web inside Word.
The Design tab enables you to manage layout, colors, and fonts across a document.
Get more done by working together using built-in tools to share and review documents. Several people can work on the same document simultaneously and use threaded comments to have a conversation right next to relevant text.

Excel

Analyze and visualize numbers in new and intuitive ways
The new Excel for Mac enables you to turn numbers into insights. Familiar keyboard shortcuts and data entry enhancements like formula builder and autocomplete immediately make you more productive.
Excel also helps you visualize your data by recommending charts best suited for your numbers, and letting you quickly preview the different options. New PivotTable Slicers help you discover patterns in large volumes of data.
A MacBook showing a new Excel for Mac spreadsheet with charts.
A MacBook showing a new PowerPoint for Mac presentation.

PowerPoint

Create multimedia presentations and present your ideas with confidence
Walk into your next presentation with complete confidence. The new Presenter View in PowerPoint displays the current slide, next slide, speaker notes, and a timer on your Mac, while projecting only the presentation to your audience on the big screen.
A new Animation pane helps you design and fine-tune animations, and refined slide transitions ensure the finished product is polished.
Easily share your presentation and invite others to work on the same presentation simultaneously.

OneNote

Harness your thoughts in your very own digital notebook
Capture, organize, and share your ideas with digital notebooks that you can access on any device. Find things quickly with a powerful search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes, and recognizes text in images and handwritten notes.
Bold, italicize, underline, highlight, insert files, pictures and tables—format your notes like you want.
Easily share notebooks with friends, family, or colleagues so everyone can work together on travel plans, household tasks, or work projects.
A MacBook showing a notebook open in the new OneNote for Mac.
A MacBook showing an inbox in the new Outlook for Mac.

Outlook

Stay organized with an email and calendar experience that’s fast and looks great
Managing your email, calendar, contacts, and tasks has never been easier. The new Outlook for Mac has push mail support so your inbox is always up to date.
The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you’ll never hunt for related messages again. And the new message preview gives you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line, so you can quickly decide if you want to read it now or come back later.

Fuzzy LookUp for Excel – Prelease Download – Identify Textually Similar Data

Microsoft Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel

A challenging problem in data management is that the same entity may be represented in multiple ways throughout the dataset. For instance, customer “Andy Hill” might also be present as “Mr. Andrew Hill” or “Hill, Andrew R.”. Variations can result from merging independent data sources, spelling mistakes, inconsistent naming conventions and abbreviations, or records with additional/missing information.

Microsoft Fuzzy Lookup technology, developed by Microsoft Research, allows you to quickly identify data records which are textually similar. You can identify fuzzy duplicates within a single table or perform a fuzzy join between two different tables. The default configuration works well for a wide variety of data, but the matching may also be customized for specific domains.

Fuzzy Lookup for Excel Beta - Atidan

Installation

System Requirements

The add-in works on any Microsoft Windows operating system with Microsoft Excel 2010 or newer installed.

Installation Steps

Close any open instances of Excel. Uninstall any existing versions of Microsoft Fuzzy Lookup Add-in For Excel using the Windows control panel. Navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15011, then download and run Setup.exe to launch the installation wizard.

If Setup.exe is run with administrator privileges, it will be installed for all users on the machine. It will be installed only for the current user otherwise.

Once successfully installed, launch Excel and you should see a Fuzzy Lookup tab in the Excel Ribbon bar.

See Portfolio Sample section for an introduction on how to use the add-in.

Installation Folder

The add-in, documentation and samples will be installed to the folder:

If the installer is run without administrator privileges,

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Fuzzy Lookup Add-In For Excel\         %LOCALAPPDATA% is typically C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local

If the installer is run as administrator on a 32-bit operating system,

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft\Fuzzy Lookup Add-In For Excel\         %ProgramFiles% is typically C:\Program Files

If the installer is run as administrator on a 64-bit operating system,

%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft\Fuzzy Lookup Add-In For Excel\         %ProgramFiles(x86)% is typically C:\Program Files (x86)

Portfolio Sample

This section describes how to use the Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel with the spreadsheet Portfolio.xlsx which is located in the installation folder.

Imagine you have a stock portfolio described by two columns Company and Shares and that you are interested in computing the average price/earnings (P/E) ratio of the companies in the portfolio. To do this, you need to join your portfolio table with another table containing P/E ratios. The spreadsheet contains a second tab called SP500 which contains company data imported from the stock screener at the http://finviz.com website. Looking at the data, one can see that an exact join on the Company columns of the two tables would fail as the string representations of the companies differ (e.g., “AMAZON COM INC STK” and “Amazon.com Inc.”).

A fuzzy join of the two tables can be performed as follows:

  1. Turn the each data range into an Excel table by selecting a region and pressing CTRL-L. You can assign a name to the table clicking on it and selecting the Design tab in the Excel ribbon.
  2. Open the Fuzzy Lookup pane by clicking on the Fuzzy Lookup button in the Fuzzy Lookup tab of the Excel ribbon.
  3. Pick the left and right tables from the drop down menus. Matching rows from the right table will be returned for each row in the left table.
  4. Select the columns to match on. If the two tables share one or more column names in common, a default join will already have been added. If you wish to match on different columns, first delete the existing join by pressing the “X” button on the join row in the Match Columns table. To create a new column binding, select one or more columns from each table (multiple columns may be selected by holding down SHIFT or CTRL and click on the column names). Next, press the button in between the two lists of columns to add a row to the Match Columns table.
  5. Select one or more output columns to be output for each match.
  6. Select the maximum number of matches to be returned for each left row.
  7. Set the similarity threshold. All matches returned must have a similarity greater than or equal to this value.
  8. Move the current cell selected in the Excel spreadsheet to an empty cell which has empty space to the right and below it. The Fuzzy Lookup matches will be output starting at this cell.
  9. Press the “Go” button to perform the match.

One should see the results as indicated in the screenshot above. Notice that each returned match includes a similarity score indicating how close the two records are. 1.0 means an exact match while lower scores indicate less similarity.

Note that Fuzzy Lookup can also be used to identify matches in a single table by setting the left and right tables to be the same.

Advanced Concepts

Fuzzy Lookup technology is based upon a very simple, yet flexible measure of similarity between two records.

Jaccard similarity

Fuzzy Lookup uses Jaccard similarity, which is defined as the size of the set intersection divided by the size of the set union for two sets of objects. For example, the sets {a, b, c} and {a, c, d} have a Jaccard similarity of 2/4 = 0.5 because the intersection is {a, c} and the union is {a, b, c, d}. The more that the two sets have in common, the closer the Jaccard similarity will be to 1.0.

Weighted Jaccard similarity and tokenization of records

With Fuzzy Lookup, you can assign weights to each item in a set and define the weighted Jaccard similarity as the total weight of the intersection divided by the total weight of the union. For the weighted sets {(a, 2), (b, 5), (c, 3)}, {(a, 2), (c, 3), (d, 7)}, the weighted Jaccard similariyt is (2 + 3)/(2 + 3 + 5 +7) = 5/17 = .294.

Because Jaccard similarity is defined over sets, Fuzzy Lookup must first convert data records to sets before it calculates the Jaccard similarity. Fuzzy Lookup converts the data to sets using a Tokenizer. For example, the record {“Jesper Aaberg”, “4567 Main Street”} might be tokenized into the set, {“ Jesper”, “Aaberg”, “4567”, “Main”, “Street”}. The default tokenizer is for English text, but one may change the LocaleId property in Configure=>Global Settings to specify tokenizers for other languages.

Token weighting

Because not all tokens are of equal importance, Fuzzy Lookup assigns weights to tokens. Tokens are assigned high weights if they occur infrequently in a sample of records and low weights if they occur frequently. For example, frequent words such as “Corporation” might be given lower weight, while less frequent words such as “Abracadabra” might be given a higher weight. One may override the default token weights by supplying their own table of token weights.

Transformations

Transformations greatly increase the power of Jaccard similarity by allowing tokens to be converted from one string to another. For instance, one might know that the name “Bob” can be converted to “Robert”; that “USA” is the same as “United States”; or that “Missispi” is a misspelling of “Mississippi”. There are many classes of such transformations that Fuzzy Lookup handles automatically such as spelling mistakes (using Edit Transformations described below), string prefixes, and string merge/split operations. You can also specify a table containing your own custom transformations.

Jaccard similarity under transformations

The Jaccard similarity under transformations is the maximum Jaccard similarity between any two transformations of each set. Given a set of transformation rules, all possible transformations of the set are considered. For example, for the sets {a, b, c} and {a, c, d} and the transformation rules {b=>d, d=>e}, the Jaccard similarity is computed as follows: Variations of {a, b, c}: {a, b, c}, {a, d, c} Variations of {a, c, d}: {a, c, d}, {a, c, e} Maximum Jaccard similarity between all pairs: J({a, b, c}, {a, c, d}) = 2/4 = 0.5 J({a, b, c}, {a, c, e}) = 2/4 = 0.5 J({a, d, c}, {a, c, d}) = 3/3 = 1.0 J({a, d, c}, {a, c, e}) = 2/4 = 0.5 The maximum is 1.0. Note: Weghted Jaccard similiary under transformations is simply the maximum weighted Jaccard similarity across all pairs of transformed sets.

Edit distance

Edit distance is the total number of character insertions, deletions, or substitutions that it takes to convert one string to another. For example, the edit distance between “misissipi” and “mississippi” is 2 because two character insertions are required. One of the transformation providers that’s included with Fuzzy Lookup is the EditTransformationProvider, which generates specific transformations for each input record and creates a transformation from the token to all words in its dictionary that are within a given edit distance. The normalized edit distance is the edit distance divided by the length of the input string. In the previous example, the normalized edit distance is 2/9 = .222.

Technical resources

For more technical details on Fuzzy Lookup, see the following resources:

Microsoft Research Data Cleaning Project

Transformation-based Framework for Record Matching

Efficient Exact Set-Similarity Joins

Help and Support

The Fuzzy Lookup Add-in for Excel is pre-release software and no support is officially provided by Microsoft.

A forum for questions about the add-in is available here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/business_intelligence_labs/archive/2011/04/27/fuzzy-lookup-add-in-for-excel.aspx

Questions and comments may also be sent to dcrt@microsoft.com

This document is provided “as-is”.  Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. Some examples depicted herein are provided for illustration only and are fictitious.  No real association or connection is intended or should be inferred.  This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes.

© 2005-2014 Microsoft. All rights reserved.

Special Brainstorm Training Offer – Through June 30

Special Offer through June 30, 2014!  Discounted 1 Year QuickHelp Video Library license plus Quick Start Card for Windows 8.1 and Office 365.  brainstorm@atidan.com

BrainStorm offers a self-service approach that can increase productivity. Users get the right training, right where and when they need it. Individual licenses can be purchased as needed.  Each single-user training bundle includes: 1 Quick Start Card for Windows 8.1, 1 Quick Start Card for Office 365, and 1 one-year license for use of QuickHelp.   

Quick Start Card for Windows 8.1
Offer beginner and intermediate users the answers they’re searching for with this six-page tri-fold reference card covering the most common Windows 8.1 tasks.

Quick Start Card for Office 365
Give users a jump start in learning and using all the incredible features of Office 365 with this six-page tri-fold reference card.

QuickHelp license for one year
Provide users with access to thousands of short, on-demand training clips. Videos are hosted in the cloud and viewable from within the user’s application.

 

Microsoft® Office 365 Training From BrainStorm and Atidan

Microsoft® Office 365 users can create, modify, and share their best work like never before. BrainStorm provides state of the art training that enables business users to do better work, faster. Our training on the web, at the desktop, in the Windows 8 app store, at the office, and inside the Ribbon in Office ensures that all your users get the right training, right where and when they need it.

Whether you are moving from an older version of Office or if you’ve never used Office before, we have complete end-user training solutions to get your organization up to speed quick on this new software.

The BrainStorm Stages to Adoption Success

BrainStorm offers effective awareness, deployment, adoption, and training solutions for every stage in your organization’s rollout of Microsoft Office 365. Our training solutions include:

QuickHelp™ Video Training

  • Thousands of quick, highly consumable training videos
  • Can be accessed right via a Windows 8 app, the Ribbon in Office, or a web portal
  • Numerous Admin and Help Desk tools available
Quick Start Cards

  • 6-pages of step-by-step instructions with full-color screenshots and shortcuts
  • Customize or localize content to fit the needs of your organization
  • Include your corporate logo for easy brand recognition
Instructor-led Training

  • On-site or online expert training
  • Customizable training content and curriculum
  • Our trainers have over 100 years of training experience

Want to learn more? Interested in Samples?

We’d love to be a part of your organization’s Office 365 success. Use the link below to start your users toward success with BrainStorm.  brainstorm@atidan.com

This Quick Start Card for Microsoft® Office 365™ is loaded with step-by-step instructions and links to online content that give beginner and intermediate users the know-how they need to get the most out Office 365.

Quick Start Card for Microsoft Office 365

This Quick Start Card for Microsoft® Office 365™ is loaded with step-by-step instructions and links to online content that give beginner and intermediate users the know-how they need to get the most out Office 365.

Microsoft Quietly Releases SP1 for Office 2013, Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013

Today Microsoft released several important software updates – the most important are the Office 2013 SP1 and SharePoint 2013 SP1 (for On Premise servers). 

 

Atidan’s IT team will be working with all of our clients who manage desktop software through Intune to ensure smooth distribution and updates for Office 2013 products.

 

Atidan’s SharePoint team will work with affected customers who run SharePoint 2013 On Premise to begin the testing and installation process.  SharePoint Online users will get these changes automatically in the next regular update.

 

Please let us know if we can answer any questions or assist you!

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Today, February 25, Microsoft is making good on its promise and making SP1 available for its latest Office client, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013. SP1 includes a variety of stability, security and functionality updates and fixes across the Office family.

For Office client and SharePoint Server, here’s a partial list of what’s included in SP1:

  • Compatibility fixes for Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11 for client and for Windows Server 2012 R2 for server
  • Better support for modern hardware, such as high DPI devices and the precision touchpad.
  • New APIs for developers.
  • Power Map for Excel, a 3D visualization tool for mapping, exploring, and interacting with geographical and temporal data in Excel, is now available to Office 365 ProPlus subscription customers
  • Improvements to the Click-to-Run virtualization technology that installs and updates Office 365 desktop applications.
  • SkyDrive Pro is now OneDrive for Business

Office 2013 SP1 also includes all public updates and cumulative updates that Microsoft has released between the date when Office 2013 became available (fall 2013) through early this year.

Here’s a list of all the fixes in Office 2013 SP1 and SharePoint 2013 SP1.

The SP1 updates for the Windows Installer (MSI) versions of the Office 2013 desktop products and SharePoint 2013 Server available from the Microsoft Download Center, Windows Update and WSUS starting today. After a 30-day period, SP1 will begin releasing as an automatic update through Microsoft Update, Microsoft officials said. For those with Office 365, Microsoft will be including the SP1 changes automatically in their next regular update, Microsoft execs said.

Here’s the 32-bit version of Office 2013 SP1; here’s the 64-bit SP1 download.

Information above from ZD Net  http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-delivers-service-pack-1-for-office-2013-client-and-servers-7000026754/

On Demand Webinars – Office 365, SQL, Windows 8

Atidan Special On Demand Events – Available Until June 30

A Discussion & Demo on Office 365, your Office in the cloud!

Office 365 is Microsoft’s fastest billion dollar growing business. It’s bringing enterprise class capabilities to the masses at predictable & affordable rates. Is it right for you? Find out as we discuss the business value & solution overview of Office 365 as well as watch a demonstration of a day in the life of an end user.  Click the link below to watch now!

https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=175757

 

Keep Your Business Up and Running with SQL Server AlwaysOn

This is a brief session explaining how the SQL Server 2012 can help you to keep your business up and running, while keeping costs down and improving overall system performance together with near real-time reporting. We cover the highlights of the SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups and you will also see demonstrations of high availability, disaster recovery, reporting capabilities and deployment options.  Click the link below to watch now!

https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=175756

 

The New Office for Midsize Businesses

This session covers some of the common business challenges that midmarket customers face today and how Office 365 address those challenges.  It reviews the features and benefits of Office 365 and of the cloud in general, and finishes off with a live demonstration of the services and some next steps and how to get started.

This session covers some of the common business challenges that midmarket customers face today and how Office 365 address those challenges.  It reviews the features and benefits of Office 365 and of the cloud in general, and finishes off with a live demonstration of the services and some next steps and how to get started.  Click the link below to watch now!

https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=175755

 

Windows Server 2012 R2 overview
This is a brief overview of some of the most compelling new capabilities offered by Windows Server 2012 R2.  We cover Server Consolidation, Disaster Recovery, Cost Effective Storage, and our Mobile User scenarios.  This overview also includes demonstrations of how easy it is to leverage Windows Server 2012 for Disaster Recovery implementation, Storage Management and managing our mobile device scenario including support for our iPad users.  Click the link below to watch now!

https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=175754

 

Countdown2Modern – Available Until May 1

Learn the benefits of moving from XP to Windows 8.1.  Click the link below to watch now!

https://readytogo.microsoft.com/en-us/MPE/Pages/Preview.aspx?CurrentEventID=175752

 

Microsoft Office 365 Fast Track Funding Offer for Free Deployment Services

Get the comprehensive IT Online solutions you need now, and earn funding towards deployment!

For every net new Office 365 purchase between September 1, 2013 and March 31, 2014, you can earn subsidy funds to be redeemed with Atidan!

Eligible subscriptions include: E1, E3, E4 and Exchange Online plans

  • 150-249 Seats = $5,000
  • 250-999 seats = $12,000
  • 1,000+ = $20,000

How does The Office 365 Fast Track Offer help my business?

A comprehensive solution can seem out of reach for most small to mid-sized Organizations. Most are accustomed to purchasing products and solutions piecemeal, and postponing planned upgrades or refreshes due to budget constraints. With the Office 365 Fast Track Offer, you can earn subsidy funds, which can be used for additional services from Atidan – a welcome injection to your IT budget. The Microsoft Office 365 Fast Track Offer includes Microsoft cloud services, which help businesses to access scalable and reliable applications while lessening the burden of provisioning and maintenance – saving money and simplifying IT management.

What is a subsidy?

A subsidy is a check made payable to Atidan. This subsidy can be used to enrich and implement your overall solution as it allows you to purchase additional services. The subsidy helps provide organizations with an affordable software version upgrade or solution adoption path – so your organization can realize the enhanced productivity, security and network performance benefits of the latest software solutions.

Qualified Organizations must work directly with Atidan to pilot, deploy and extend Microsoft Office 365 in order to be eligible for this special offer.

For full terms and conditions please, visit: http://fasttrack.office.com/Media/Default/DeploymentOffer/Office_365_Deployment_Offer_Terms_and_Conditions_ENG.pdf

Office Remote – Windows Phone Remote Access for Microsoft Office

Office Remote

Office Remote turns your Windows Phone into a smart remote for Microsoft Office, providing convenient touch-based control of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents projected from your PC. It lets you show what you want, when you want, with all the freedom you need to walk around and connect with your audience.

Office Remote is a Microsoft Research application developed in partnership with Microsoft Office. The goal of our ongoing collaboration is to create more natural and seamless interaction across multiple screens and devices, in ways that help people to create and communicate more effectively.

Video

Releasing Office Remote as a research application is one of many ways in which we hope to gain a deeper understanding of real-world presentation practices. Try it out and let us know what you think. Your feedback is valuable to us, and we will use it to inform the design of new tools, technologies, and applications that have the potential to transform everyday productivity activities for the better.

Requirements

– Microsoft Office 2013 (does not work with earlier or RT versions)
– Bluetooth on your PC (does not work on PCs without Bluetooth)
– Desktop Add-In for Office installed on your PC (download here)

Usage

Open the Office documents you want to project, pick up your phone, and you are ready to present.

Start your PowerPoint slideshow and navigate slides with ease. Large, easy to reach buttons give you direct access to the next and previous slides, while bringing up the list of slide thumbnails gives you fast access to any presentation slide without missing a beat.

Stay on time and on-message with a glanceable timer, progress indicator, and speaker cues extracted from your slide notes.

Want to highlight a key point? Simply activate the touch-based laser pointer for accurate, non-shaky pointing at a distance.

Want to share data? Jump into Excel spreadsheets and hop between sheets and graphs. Wow your audience by controlling complex data slicers from the palm of your hand, bringing your argument to life.

How about more details? Smoothly switch to Word documents, scrolling freely or jumping directly to specific sections or comments.

Here is a full list of features incorporated in Office Remote:

PowerPoint

– Navigate next slide/previous slide
– View slide thumbnails and jump to slide
– View speaker notes on phone
– View presentation timer and slide progress
– Laser point using touch on your phone

Excel

– Navigate rows and columns
– Change sheets by swiping
– Use Slicers, PivotTables and Filters
– Jump to any named object in your workbook
– Change zoom level

Word

– Jump to headings
– Jump to comments
– Screen up/down
– Line up/down
– Change zoom level

 

Download

Mobile App for Windows Phone 8

Desktop Add-In for Office 2013

Move to Office 365 Fast with Free Funding from Microsoft

Move to Office 365 fast from Atidan
For a limited time, Office 365 customers can save thousands of dollars on deployment.

Buy a minimum of 150 qualifying Office 3651 seats between September 2013 and March 2014 and we’ll help you accelerate your adoption of Office 365 by investing in Office 365 FastTrack Step 2 deployment activities with Atidan.

The more seats you buy, the more we invest in your deployment

With the Office 365 Deployment offer, Microsoft will contribute to your successful deployment:

Number of eligible Office 365 seats Deployment investment paid to Atidan2
1,000 or more $20,000
250-999 $12,000
150-249 $5,000

Get Atidan’s expertise to help you deploy

The Office 365 Deployment offer can help you offset the costs of partner-led deployment activities in an Office 365 FastTrack Step 2 engagement. These can include:

  • IT-led migration
  • Customer domain
  • Directory sync
  • Password sync
  • Admin migrations

How the offer works

When you buy at least 150 Office 365 Exchange Online or Office 365 Enterprise seats between September 2013 and March 2014, we’ll help you speed up adoption using the FastTrack Step 2 methodology. The deployment investment is paid directly to Atidan.

With the new Microsoft FastTrack deployment methodology, you can use the service within hours, deploy within days, and add features on your own terms in just weeks. Learn more about the FastTrack three-step approach to Office 365 deployment.

How to get started

  1. Read the details of the Office 365 Deployment offer, including the Terms & Conditions.
  2. Buy 150 or more seats of an Office 365 Enterprise plan or an Office 365 Exchange Online plan. Add the seats to your cart, and then complete your purchase. Compare plans.
  3. Select a deployment partner.
1 This offer is good on net new Office 365 Enterprise plan or Exchange Online seats and is available to commercial and government customers in all countries where Office 365 is available. Customers must buy a minimum of 150 net new seats during the September 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014 offer period. This investment is paid directly to Atidan. Volume Licensing customers may also qualify for this offer. Please see your Microsoft or Atidan representative for details.
2 All investment amounts listed in USD; equivalents are based on published Microsoft exchange rates.