Tag Archives: Outlook

Attachments in Outlook 2016 – Enhanced Collaboration

Tired of digging around for the file you want to attach when you were just working on it earlier? Tired of later trying to sift through emails to find links shared with you? With the Windows release of Outlook 2016, attachments just got a whole lot better. You can now skip the hassles associated with finding and sharing files, regardless of whether you were working on them on your computer, phone or tablet.

The next time you go to attach a file to your email, the first thing you’ll notice is a list of recently accessed documents under the Recent Items. The Recent Items list is comprised of documents on your local hard drive as well as OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint—making it simple to pick files you have accessed across any of your devices.

Attachments in Outlook 2016 - 1

If you can’t find what you were looking for in the Recent Items list, we make it easy to navigate to your OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint locations by selecting Browse Web Locations. To find other files saved on your PC, choose the Browse this PC option to open File Explorer.

If you select a OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint file to share, Outlook’s new attachment feature shows you what permissions you’re granting to your recipients at a glance. Of course, you also have the ability to change these permissions or even attach a copy instead—all without having to go to where it’s stored.

When you send your email, Outlook does the work of granting everyone the right set of permissions behind the scenes. Additionally, because the OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint links now appear side-by-side with your other attachments, you’ll notice a paperclip associated with them and have the ability to search for them just as you do with attachments today.

This new attachment experience is available today for users of Outlook 2016 on Windows devices, while continuous improvements and new features will be delivered to Office 365 subscribers. The best way to get the latest features with Office is to subscribe to Office 365. If you aren’t already taking advantage of the new experience, give it a try with your next attachment!

From Microsoft Outlook Team https://blogs.office.com/2015/11/09/attachments-in-outlook-2016-ready-for-collaboration/

Create the Modern Workplace Webcast Series – Join Us!

Join us for a virtual webcast series live from the Microsoft Technology Center to learn how to empower your employees and organization with tools from Office 365.

With the industry’s most advanced productivity suite—Office 365—Microsoft is focused on creating the modern workplace to help you communicate and collaborate without borders and barriers. We know that connecting with coworkers, customers and partners is critical for your business. With better tools and better connections, your opportunities for business growth are limitless.

This three-part webcast series will help you learn about the industry’s most innovative productivity suite. Today, with Office 2016 and Office 365, there is no one else who takes such a broad view of productivity. We think about productivity across individuals, teams/groups and organizations. Explore how you can take advantage of our solutions to create a more modern workplace.

Join this virtual webcast series to hear insights into Microsoft’s latest productivity solutions and to understand how you can:

  • Improve meetings with new features in Skype for Business and Office 365.
  • Collaborate and share files in real time with advanced tools and the cloud.
  • Enable mobile productivity with Office 365.
Date Webcast title Registration link
November 12, 2015 at 10 a.m. PST 5 Ways You Can Modernize Your Meetings Register here
November 19, 2015 at 10 a.m. PST Drive Connected Collaboration Register here
December 4, 2015 at 10 a.m. PST Fuel Mobile Productivity with Office 2016 Register here

Register now and join us live or on demand and learn how you can empower your employees to be more productive from anywhere on any device or platform.

Brainstorm Training for Microsoft Office 365 – QuickHelp Video Training On Demand

With the launch of Office 2016 and so many other new features in Office 365, Atidan is pleased to partner with Brainstorm to offer their QuickHelp On Demand training offering. Brainstorm QuickHelp is a subscription that gives all of your users access to video and reference help right within the applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. for immediate help and training right when and where they need it. The subscription includes:

  • Thousands of short, on-demand training clips hosted in the cloud
  • Searchable content complete with course lists, favorites, and Quick Ribbon tips
  • Simultaneous see-and-do clips, delivered immediately

Please check out the enclosed video demo link:  Brainstorm QuickHelp Video Demonstration

Brainstorm Training Vision - Atidan

Videos are added very frequently as new products and features are released. Also included is a live monthly training called QuickCasts at no additional charge.

Initial subscription covers up to 50 users and is extremely cost effective. Additional subscriptions can be purchased individually and volume licensing is available. Considering the cost of training and your staff’s productivity , we believe this will pay for itself many times over!

Brainstorm QuickCast-Screenshots - Atidan

Why Quickcasts work:

  • Assisted help desk functionality to answer questions via videos
  • Customized course lists and the ability to add corporate content
  • Relevant reports on personal, company, and help desk usage

What’s in it for you

  • Improve user adoption, ease transition
  • Increase usage, increase productivity
  • Decrease help desk calls and costs
  • Increase software ROI

Another offering from Brainstorm are their ‘famous’ Quick Start reference cards. These are orderable in any quantity for any topic including Office 365, all of the Office 2016 products, Windows 10, etc.

QuickReference Cards Brainstorm - Atidan

Contact the Atidan team today at brainstorm@atidan.com !

What is New with Nintex Workflow, Forms and Processes for SharePoint

Nintex Mobile Enterprise: Create collections of Nintex Forms & Workflow Tasks

Atidan is pleased to expand our Workflow, Process, Forms and Mobile offerings for Microsoft SharePoint through our partnership with Nintex. New features and benefits just released for our Office 365 users and information about the new Enterprise editions for Mobile and Forms is enclosed in this blog post. To schedule a demonstration and free trial contact us at nintex@atidan.com

Nintex Mobile Enterprise: Create Collections of Nintex Forms and Workflow Tasks

You can now explicitly specify which forms or workflow tasks are to be included in a Nintex Mobile Enterprise app, giving you the ability to build and deploy departmental or process-specific applications. Deliver a richer alternative to web-based access for your SharePoint and Office 365 users. They’ll gain the convenience of a single entry point for the forms and workflow tasks that are relevant to them.

  • Create line-of-business-targeted apps using the tools you are already familiar with (Nintex Workflow and Nintex Forms)
  • Give your business users access to only the forms and workflows that are relevant to them, on their device, via a manageable and governable solution

Nintex Add-in for Outlook

Nintex Add-in for Outlook

The Nintex Office Add-in for Outlook is a great way to “Be Where Your Users Are” by enhancing the Nintex LazyApproval experience for Outlook. Now you can interact directly with a LazyApproval-enabled task seamlessly inside of your Outlook 2013/2016 client or directly from within the Outlook Web app. The Nintex Office Add-In automatically recognizes LazyApproval messages in your inbox and displays the available approval options for the user to click. With this latest release, we’ve added support for Nintex Workflow for Office 365 LazyApproval to complement the existing Nintex Workflow on-premises support. Nintex Add-in for Outlook is available for free from the Office Store.

Workflow for Office 365: Task Escalation

Workflow for Office 365: Task Escalation

“Leave no task behind” by incorporating a task escalation option as you configure your task actions. Set a task to be assigned to another person or group if the original assignee doesn’t respond within a specified time.

Nintex Workflow for Office 365: Workflow Gallery

Workflow for Office 365: Workflow Gallery

Build and manage workflows in one place, faster, and with fewer clicks. Create new workflows, modify existing workflows, delete unwanted workflows, and much more – do it all from the Workflow Gallery.

Nintex Mobile Enterprise Edition

Mobile Enterprise Edition

Mobilize your users and your workflows across the enterprise.

  • Rapidly build, integrate, deploy, and manage your mobile workflow app
  • Custom brand your app
  • Build your app once and easily deploy it anywhere
  • Create powerful apps without coding skills
  • Provide native user experiences (geolocation, camera, etc.) across all mobile devices and compatible with all major platforms (iOS, Windows Phone, Android)
  • Co-exist with a Mobile Device Management solution
  • Work seamlessly with SharePoint and Office 365

Learn About Nintex Mobile

Nintex Forms Enterprise Edition

Forms Enterprise Edition

Build enterprise-grade forms that drive workflow applications for SharePoint.

  • Quickly design and publish web-ready and mobile-ready forms with custom branding
  • Connect forms with your business processes through workflow triggers and task notifications
  • Build integrations with databases and business applications, on-premises or in the cloud
  • Enable online and offline data capture
  • Administer and manage forms assets
  • Work seamlessly with SharePoint

Introducing Office 2016 – Takes the Work Out of Working Together

Atidan is pleased to announce the availability of Office 2016! Contact us for a free trial and no obligation briefing and demonstration.

The New Microsoft Office 2016 Video

Office 2016 Product Guide

The new Office—takes the work out of working together

Check out additional resources on our SlideShare site here

The new office is here 1 v2

Collaboration is the way we get things done in the workplace, but the process itself can be complex and frustrating. It shouldn’t have to be. We set out to make working together easier and more impactful by building a suite of integrated apps and services that removes barriers and empowers teams to do and achieve more.

Office has always been the go-to tool for helping individuals do their best work—whether for professional documents, powerful analyses or school presentations. People often start and end their work in Office, but there is often a messy middle that involves a lot of discussion—in person, by phone or via various tools—as well as multiple (sometimes conflicting) inputs. Today we are delivering a set of experiences that is built for making teamwork seamless.

  • We have had real-time co-authoring in all of our web apps since 2013. We are now taking it to the next level by building it directly into our native apps. With this release, we’re making co-authoring in Word real-time, which lets you see what others are writing immediately, as it happens. We’re committed to expanding real-time co-authoring to each of our native apps and you should expect to see more over time.
  • Skype for Business is now available in the client apps, allowing you to IM, screen share, talk or video chat right in your docs. This same experience will be coming to Office Online later this fall. Skype for Business also has faster screen sharing and now adds the option to start a real-time co-authoring session from any conversation or meeting.
  • Keep teams connected with Office 365 Groups, now available as part of Outlook 2016 and in a new Outlook Groups app on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Office 365 Groups allows individuals to easily create public or private teams. Each group includes a shared inbox, calendar, cloud storage for group files, and a shared OneNote notebook to keep the team productive.
  • Office 365 Planner helps teams organize their work, with the ability to create new plans, organize and assign tasks, set due dates and update status. Planner’s visual dashboards and email notifications help keep everyone informed on the overall progress of their initiative. Planner will be available in preview, to Office 365 First Release customers, starting next quarter.
  • Originally unveiled earlier this year, GigJam is today available in private preview and will become part of Office 365 in 2016. GigJam is an unprecedented new way for teams to accomplish tasks and transform business processes by breaking down the barriers between devices, apps and people.

Works for you

Excel 2016 - New Sunburst Chart

In today’s workplace, we have too many apps, devices and tools—we just don’t have enough time. Office is built to cut through the complexity and help you get things done quickly. It gets work done for you.

Some highlights:

  • Outlook 2016 provides the smartest inbox yet, delivering lightning fast search, removing low priority mail automatically and making sure everyone on the To: line has the right access to modern, cloud-based attachments from OneDrive.
  • We also have significant new updates to OneDrive for Business coming later this month across sync, browser, mobile, IT control and developer experiences. The highlight is the preview of the next generation sync client for Windows and Mac, offering improved reliability and selective sync, as well as increased file size and volume limits.
  • Tell Me helps you easily and quickly find the right Office feature or command, and Smart Lookup brings insights from the web right into your documents. Previously available only in Office Online, Tell Me and Smart Lookup are now available across the Office 2016 client apps.
  • Excel 2016 now includes integrated publishing to Power BI and new modern chart-types to help you make the most of your data.
  • The cloud-powered most recently used documents list allows you to pick up right where you left off in seconds, because it travels with you across your devices whether working in Office Online, the mobile apps or in the 2016 client apps.

Perfect with Windows 10

Office Mobile Apps

While we have made a lot of progress on delivering Office cross-platform and remain committed to this strategy, we see Windows as being “home” for Office. Together, Office 365 and Windows 10 are the most complete solution for getting things done.

  • With Windows Hello, you can sign in to your PC and Office 365 with a simple look or a touch—no need to type a password anymore.
  • In the coming months, Cortana will get even smarter and more useful by gathering intelligence on Office 365 through Outlook 2016 support.
  • With the Office Mobile apps and Continuum on Windows phones, your phone can act as a desktop, and you can project, create or edit your presentation or sales budget from your phone to a monitor while using the same phone to take notes with the OneNote app.
  • Sway on Windows 10 was released in early August, and customers love it! It has received a 4.6/5 app store ranking, with customers calling it “funtastic,” “brilliant” and “elegant.” People love Sway’s simple and intuitive yet powerful approach to next-generation digital storytelling. With Sway, you provide the content, and Sway creates beautiful, shareable, interactive stories that look great on any screen.
  • Our Office Mobile apps on Windows 10 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) have also received great reception and 4+ app store rankings. Customers say they are touch-friendly, fast and easy to use—making them wonderful for on-the-go-productivity.

For the enterprise

Office 2016 apps with Office 365 provide the most secure Office yet. We are adding built-in Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to significantly reduce the risk of leaking sensitive data by giving IT admins tools to centrally create, manage and enforce policies for content authoring and document sharing. Multifactor Authentication ensures secure access to content anywhere when employees are away from the corporate network. We are also adding Information Rights Management to Visio. Then, later this year, we will be enabling Enterprise Data Protection (EDP) in Windows 10, with support in Office Mobile, which allows more secure corporate content sharing across corporate managed apps and network/cloud locations, preventing inadvertent content sharing outside corporate boundaries. We will be following up with EDP for Office on Windows desktop in early 2016.

Some of our favorite enterprise apps—Visio and Project—have been updated as well. With Visio 2016, customers can get started quickly with diagramming using starter diagrams and contextual tips. Bringing process models, manufacturing plant or IT architecture to life is now only one step away. With Project 2016, customers can streamline resource engagement processes, manage resource pools through visual heat maps, benefit from multiple timelines, and create custom experiences in Project desktop through write-back capabilities for add-ins.

We are also making deployment easier and have a lot of other new capabilities to help IT professionals, as announced in our blog to IT admins two weeks ago.

Office 2016 for Mac

The new office is here 4 v2

In July, we released Office 2016 for Mac to our Office 365 customers. The new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote are a significant step forward and provide the best of both worlds for Mac users—a familiar Office experience paired with the best of the Mac platform. The level of engagement and excitement about this Office for Mac release has surpassed our expectations. As promised in July, today Office 2016 for Mac will also be available as a one-time purchase.

Ongoing Office 365 customer value

Whew—that was a lot! With this release, we’re also shifting the cadence of Office on Windows to feel much more like the cadence we have on the Office mobile and web apps, which release every month with new value. So, going forward, Office 365 customers will now enjoy new features and capabilities delivered continuously in the Office desktop applications as part of their subscription. It’s a new day for our desktop apps.

And as a bit of a teaser, here are some examples of the types of new features and benefits Office 365 customers will see:

  • Built for teamwork—We’re committed to rich co-authoring and collaboration across our native clients, starting in Word 2016, with other big advances in collaboration coming throughout the year. By the end of 2015, we’ll introduce Office 365 Groups insights and discovery in Office Delve. In addition, we will have a new generation of personal work analytics in Office Delve that will help individuals, teams and organizations to be more effective at work by understanding their reach and impact, time allocation and network.
  • Works for you—For those of you who are excited about our new charts and forecasting, we will be delivering even more new charts, formulas, connectors and other Excel capabilities throughout the year. (If you’re interested in telling us which charts and charting features you’d like to see first, we have a survey going on our Excel Facebook page right now!). We also have some very exciting developments in the pipeline for PowerPoint that will make it easier to design and deliver presentations to wow and engage your audience.
  • Perfect on Windows 10—We are especially excited about how even more valuable your personal assistant Cortana can be when she has insights from Office. This will start to allow Cortana to unlock helpful scenarios, like retrieving your documents, preparing for meetings and more.

Get started

  • Are you ready to purchase? Buy Office 365 to get the new 2016 apps – contact us at office365@atidan.com
  • Are you an existing Office 365 customer who is ready to upgrade? Go here for instructions on how to upgrade to Office 2016 for home, or here for business customers.
  • Do you want to learn more? Go to office.com/2016.

Credit for this blog content is from Microsoft blog https://blogs.office.com/2015/09/22/thenewoffice/

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.

Skype for Business Events – Welcome to a Unified Communications World

Join Atidan for live demonstrations showcasing the latest Skype for Business and Office 365!

June 12, 2015, Friday 1PM Eastern – Register Here

June 19, 2015, Friday 11AM Eastern – Register Here

June 30, 2015, Tuesday 2PM Eastern – Register Here

Microsoft is already delivering the tools that make meetings more productive – with assets that are integrated, familiar, and part of the everyday work experience. And yet, so much more is possible with Skype for Business as a part of Office 365. Atidan is pleased to invite you to experience Skype for Business during our live demonstration and discussion.

We will show you how schedule and start a meeting right from within your Exchange Email and share documents directly from Office apps like PowerPoint. Take notes with OneNote and share information from SharePoint portals. Skype for Business supports all kinds of meetings – from highly interactive collaborative sessions to more formal, large presentations.

Audio, video and web conferencing is integrated into a single experience. People connect easily and stay focused on the things they’re doing together—whether it’s sharing an app, co-authoring, or presenting content. Frequent meeting organizers and hosts will save time on routine activities.

Skype for Business automatically captures participant lists via OneNote. Sharing and co-editing the meeting notes can be done without having to switch back-and-forth from one app to another. Skype for Business means the freedom to work with anyone, in any location, at any time – virtually eliminating the need for travel.

Spontaneous conversations, working sessions, and meetings can happen at any time. People in different locations meet and make decisions in an instant. Online meetings are easy to host, join, and manage with Skype for Business.

Everyone registered will receive a free trial offer and we are giving away copies of Microsoft Office to several lucky winners!

Introducing Skype for Business – Presented by Atidan

Skype for Business Quick Introduction Video

What is New in Skype for Business Video

Lync is now Skype for Business — see what’s new

What’s Skype for Business?

Change your picture

Add a contact from your org or the Skype directory
Send an IM
Make and receive a video call

Make a call using your PBX desk phone for audio

Set up a Skype for Business meeting in Outlook

Join a Skype for Business meeting

Call into a meeting on your mobile or other phone

Set up and test Skype for Business audio and video

As always, the Atidan team is here to support you and if we can assist you with Skype for Business or any other questions please contact us!Skype 1 Skype 2 Skype 3 Skype 4

New Office 2016 Beta Features – Office 365 Subscribers Should Join the Preview

If you haven’t started testing the new Office 2016 for Windows Preview, now is a great time to join the public Beta. New features are being added monthly. If you need information about Office 365 and Office please contact the Atidan team at office365@atidan.com

Here’s a quick look at a few of the highlights:

  • Real Time Presence in Word—While Real Time Typing will ship in subsequent builds, a key part of that collaborative experience with Real Time Presence is now available. Real Time Presence allows you to see where in a document your teammates are editing. We are turning this on first for OneDrive for Business subscribers but it will be available more broadly soon.
  • Simplified file sharing—Simplified the process of sharing files and making them available to others to review, comment, and edit. Just clicking Share on the Ribbon will save your file to the Cloud and make it available to others in one easy step.
  • Insights for Office (currently in Word and Outlook)—Insights, powered by Bing, brings you contextual information from the web right into your reading experience. Try it by selecting keywords, like people or places, in your content and watch as Insights pulls relevant information into the Task pane to help you learn more.
  • Version History improvements—It is now easier to find different versions of files stored on SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. You can click the History command in the File menu to view or restore any previous version.
  • Tell Me in Outlook—Tell Me now available in Outlook, a new search tool already available in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, serves up the commands you need by simply typing what you want to do using natural language. For example, in Outlook if you want to mark an e-mail as unread, you would simply type “mark unread” in the Tell Me Box.

These are just a few of the highlights, with many others available including Power Pivot improvements, improved grammar checkers, and more.

If you haven’t joined Office 2016 Preview, it’s not too late. Join here.

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Data analysis made faster and easier—New analysis capabilities are built into Excel, so you can pull, map, analyze and visualize your data faster and easier than ever.

  • One-click forecasting. Create forecasts on your data series with one click to future trends.
  • Intuitive data connecting and shaping capabilities. With integrated Power Query, use Excel as your personal analysis workspace by connecting to and viewing all the data around you. Take advantage of a broad range of data sources, including tables from websites, corporate data like SAP Business Objects, unstructured sources like Hadoop, and services like Salesforce. After bringing all your data together in one place, quickly shape and combine to fit your unique business needs and get to analysis in seconds
  • Easy data modeling and powerful analysis. With improved Power Pivot features as part of Excel, map different data sets with drag-and-drop ease to build data models to give you the bigger picture of your business. Take advantage of intuitive analysis functions, automatic time grouping and other features that enhance your PivotTable and PivotChart analysis experience. Now with the ability to calculate 100s of millions of rows of data, perform deeper analysis with high speed.
  • Publish to Microsoft Power BI Preview. Effortlessly publish and share your Excel workbooks to users of Power BI.
  • New modern charts and graphs, including TreeMap, Sunburst, Waterfall, Box & Whisker and Histogram & Pareto in Excel help you to present your data in fresh ways.

New for IT

Office 2016 will offer new security, compliance, and deployment features, giving organizations more control over sensitive data and IT more flexibility in deployment and management.

Compliance and security controls

  • Data Loss Protection (DLP). DLP is now available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. IT admins can centrally create, manage and enforce policies for content authoring and document sharing. End users will see policy tips or sharing restrictions when the apps detect a potential policy violation.
  • Outlook Multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication now available in Outlook through integration with the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL).
  • Information Rights Management (IRM). IRM protection is now extended to Visio files, enabling both online and offline protection of Visio diagrams.

Flexible deployment and management options

  • Better network traffic management. New Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS) helps prevent congestion on the network. BITS throttles back the use of bandwidth when another critical network traffic is present.
  • Enhanced distribution management. Improved integration with ConfigMgr allows IT admins to efficiently download and distribute monthly Office updates using the native ConfigMgr features.
  • Flexible update management. Admins can now manage the pace at which they receive feature updates and bug fixes while continuing to receive regular security updates.
  • Simplified activation management. New controls in the Office 365 Admin Portal allows admins to manage device activations across users.

Reference and information from Microsoft: http://blogs.office.com/2015/06/03/office-2016-on-windows-preview-update/

New “Groups” Launching in Office 365 for Improved Enterprise Collaboration

This past week, I was presenting the ‘Modern Office’ and the collection of Office 365 applications from Microsoft to a CIO and his senior team commented on the challenge of introducing so many applications, especially Yammer, Lync, and SharePoint on top of email, OneDrive, and new Office 2013. Too many disconnected tools!

It is great news that the new ‘Groups’ solution is launching to all Office 365 users starting today for early release subscribers and will continue with general availability by the end of 2014. It is a place for ad hoc teams to collaborate through email, calendars, files and conversations in one place. For everyone who has hesitated to roll out Yammer, this is a great way to get started on enterprise social collaboration.

Public and private groups are possible and you may include participants outside of your organization. Conversations come back to your inbox so everything can be done in Outlook or through the Group site on Office 365 Web Access.  A Group calendar can be created and synced automatically to your personal calendar. All files are stored in the OneDrive for Business workplace. Search is again a powerful productivity tool for group members to find information fast.

Unfortunately, this initial release is via the Outlook or Office 365 WEB APP only. Exciting news is that Lync and Yammer will be added to the equation soon, and many more features are coming in 2015.

  • Note for IT Teams: you can impose access request controls for external sharing and you can manage Group membership in the Office 365 Admin center
  • Some sample screen shots enclosed below where we started a small conversation about event we are holding on Tuesday- sharing links, photos, presentations, etc. with automatic emails to the team.
  • Enclosing links to additional support and instructions about Groups that you can post on your SharePoint Intranet
  • Great comparison chart describing the differences between Groups, Distribution Lists, Site Mailboxes, Shared Mailbox and Public Folders
  • As always, please let us know if we can assist you with Office 365 administration, training or support!

Office 365 Groups Page 1 Office 365 Groups Page 3 Office 365 Groups Page 2

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Find help about groups in Office 365

A group is a shared workspace for email, conversations, files, and calendar events where group members can conveniently collaborate and quickly get stuff done. To learn how to use and manage groups to be even more productive, check out the topics below.

Getting started

Using groups day-to-day

Managing groups

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Collaboration in Office 365

Office 365 encourages collaboration through Groups, distribution lists (also called distribution groups), site mailboxes, shared mailboxes, and public folders. Each of these options has a different purpose, user experience, and feature set. What to use depends on what the user needs to do and which tools your organization provides.

Summary of collaboration options

This table explains the various collaboration options available to you with Office 365.

Collaboration tool Description
Group A shared workspace that works across all applications in Office 365. Includes a shared inbox, calendar, and OneDrive for Business site for storing files. Users can create, find, and join Groups right from their email or calendar. Users need both a OneDrive for Business license and an Exchange Online license to participate in Groups.
Distribution list (also called distribution group) Used to distribute email messages to two or more people at the same time. Distribution groups are also known as mail-enabled distribution groups. A variant of the distribution group, called the dynamic distribution group, is a mail-enabled Active Directory group object used to send email to a large and evolving group of recipients. The exact recipients are determined by filters and conditions that you specify, such as all members of a particular locale or all full-time employees.
Site mailbox Includes SharePoint Online site membership (owners and members), shared storage through an Exchange mailbox for email messages, and a SharePoint Online site to store and share documents. A site mailbox brings Exchange email and SharePoint documents together. A site mailbox serves as a central filing cabinet for the project, providing a place to file project email and documents that can be accessed and edited only by site members. In addition, site mailboxes have a specified lifecycle and are optimized to be used for projects that have set start and end dates.
Shared mailbox A mailbox for select users to read and send email messages and share a common calendar. Shared mailboxes also can serve as a generic email address (such as info@contoso.com or sales@contoso.com) that customers can use to inquire about your company. When the Send As permission is enabled on the shared mailbox, email sent from the mailbox will use the generic address (e.g., sales@contoso.com).
Public folder Designed for shared access, pubic folders provide an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in your organization. Public folders organize content in a deep hierarchy that’s easy to browse and always visible in the Outlook folder view. A public folder can be mail-enabled and added as a member of the distribution group. Email sent to the distribution group is automatically added to the public folder for archiving or later reference. Public folders also provide simple document sharing when you don’t have a SharePoint Online subscription.

Which collaboration tool to use?

The following table gives you a quick glance at the various types of groups and explains when and how to use them with the various collaboration features of Office 365.

Groups Distribution lists Site mailboxes Shared mailboxes Public folders
Who uses? Users who want a collaboration workspace for their group messages, files, and calendar that is integrated with the Office 365 services they already use (Outlook Web App, OneDrive for Business) Users who need to send email to a group of recipients with a common interest or characteristic. Users who work together on a specific project with definitive start and end dates. Project documents are stored on a SharePoint Online site and team members send and receive project-related email via the site mailbox. Delegates working on behalf of a virtual identity, such as support@contoso.com. Delgates can respond to email as that shared mailbox identity. With the proper permissions, everyone in your organization can access and search public folders. They are ideal for email archiving or for sharing documents.
Ideal group size Any Large Small Small Large
Access Exchange Online and Office 365 users For distribution groups, members, must be manually added. For dynamic distribution groups, members are added based on filtering criteria. Site mailbox owners and members Users can be granted Full Access and/or Send As permissions. If granted Full Access permissions, users must also add the shared mailbox to their Outlook profile to access the shared mailbox. Accessible by anyone in your organization
Shared calendar? Yes No No Yes Yes
Email arrives in user’s personal Inbox? No. Users can subscribe to a group and then forward all Group messages to their inbox Yes. Email arrives in the inbox of all distribution group members. No. Email arrives in the site mailbox. No. Email arrives in the Inbox of the shared mailbox. No. Email arrives in the public folder.
Supported clients
  • Outlook 2013 (forward after subscribing)
  • Outlook Web App
  • Outlook 2010 (forward after subscribing)
  • Outlook 2007 (forward after subscribing)
  • Outlook 2013
  • Outlook Web App
  • Outlook 2010
  • Outlook 2007
  • Outlook 2013
  • SharePoint Online
  • Outlook 2013
  • Outlook Web App
  • Outlook 2010
  • Outlook 2007
  • Outlook 2013
  • Outlook Web App
  • Outlook 2010
  • Outlook 2007

Build real world solutions on the SharePoint platform with OnePlaceMail R6.6

Build real world solutions on the SharePoint platform with OnePlaceMail R6.6

Build real world solutions on the SharePoint platform with OnePlaceMail R6.6

Building on the well-received capabilities of Release 6.5, further enhancements have been made to the new Outlook Style experience for SharePoint. Significant enhancements such as;

  • filtering locations on the navigation tree
  • search for locations when saving
  • create document sets/folders without leaving Outlook

are some of the new capabilities enabling the creation of engaging business solution on the SharePoint platform.

Get started in less than 3 minutes

OnePlaceMail Release 6.6 is now available for download in the feature rich Enterprise edition and the free Express edition (limited features).  Contact us oneplacemail@atidan.com for FREE EDITION or FREE ENTERPRISE TRIAL

Navigation tree filter and search

Access SharePoint locations, favorites and document sets from many places within the OnePlaceMail solution.  This and the navigation tree is consistent across Outlook, Windows Explorer, and Office applications.

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Filter locations with type-ahead inside the navigation tree

Search for a location within the navigation tree

 

Document sets and folders

Allow end users to efficiently work with SharePoint from within their familiar business applications.

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New document sets

Document set enhancements

 

SharePoint list items

When saving emails, email attachments, files and documents from office applications, OnePlaceMail allows the completion of SharePoint columns. The columns presented are based on the configuration of your SharePoint content Types and/or destination library/list.

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Other highlights include

  • Support for custom (tokenized) file naming formats when saving email to SharePoint
  • Support for automatic capture of SMTP addresses from email

  Contact us at oneplacemail@atidan.com for FREE EDITION or FREE ENTERPRISE TRIAL