Tag Archives: security

Hyperfish – Complete Your Directory

Atidan is honored to be a launch partner today at Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta. Visit us at Booth #852

What is Hyperfish?

Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is a foundation for businesses around the world, but most are missing critical business information. To the organization, the AD is a faceless list of names, and many IT projects fail due to insufficient people and profile information.

Hyperfish enables organizations to automatically identify and populate missing information in Active Directory, quickly and easily.

http://www.slideshare.net/d501159/hyperfish-for-active-directory-video

How does it work?

Hyperfish monitors your Active Directory (AD) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) for information that is missing, incorrect or out of date. Using next generation technology, Hyperfish starts a conversation with each user making it super easy for them to update their information by:

  • Breaking up requests into small, bite size pieces
  • Finding the best way and time to initiate contact
  • Enabling users to respond to requests via email and instant messaging
  • Offering an easy to use mobile-friendly interface
  • Providing suggestions based on information found in Email, LinkedIn and other data sources

What does Hyperfish deliver?

By implementing Hyperfish to complete your directory, you can:

  • Improve the speed and quality of communications across your organization
  • Reduce IT Support costs in maintaining directories
  • Ensure quality and consistent directory information
  • Enable and accelerate key IT projects including Approval Workflows, Personalized Portal, Cloud Migration, Corporate Directory, Mobile Intranet and Organizational Chart
  • Unlock the value in Microsoft Office 365 including Delve, Skype for Business, and SharePoint

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

 

New Capabilities in SharePoint Online Team Sites Including Integration With Office 365 Groups

Microsoft has announced the rollout of several new enhancements to SharePoint Online team sites in Office 365, including deeper integration with Office 365 Groups. These enhancements will begin rolling out to Office 365 First Release customers starting next week.

The home page of a SharePoint Online modern team site gives you immediate visibility into site activity and important documents, with quick access to Office 365 Groups, its members and associated Office 365 apps.

Team site publishing pages and new web parts

Modern team site pages are fast, easy to author and support rich multimedia content. And pages look great on any device, in a browser or from within the SharePoint app. Using pages is a great way to communicate and share your ideas—such as status and trip reports, how-to write-ups, know-before-you-go guides and frequently asked questions.

Team site publishing pages are easily created in your browser when you click New within a SharePoint Online team site.

SharePoint pages are built with web parts, which you can customize according to your needs. You can add documents, videos, images, site activities, Yammer feeds and more. Just click the + sign and pick a web part from the toolbox to add content to your page. The new “highlighted content” web part lets you set criteria so that specific content will automatically and dynamically populate in that area of the page. And using the SharePoint Framework, developers can build custom web parts that will show up right in the toolbox.

New capabilities in SharePoint Online team sites including integration with Office 365 Groups 3

The toolbox allows you to add web parts to your SharePoint page.

To get started using SharePoint Online team sites in Office 365 follow these easy steps:

How to get started

  1. From the upper-right of any team site home page, click the gear icon to open the Settings menu and then clickAdd a page. Alternatively, on the modern team site home page, click New and then click Page. The new page appears.
  2. Click Name your page and then type a title for the page.
  3. Click the + sign to add content using the toolbox. Your work is saved automatically.
  4. Click Save and close when you are finished.
  5. To edit a saved page, click Edit.
  6. After the page looks perfect, click Publish.

To share the page via email, just click Share at the top of the page.

Learn more how to add a page to a site.

Office 365 Groups + team sites integration

When you create a group, Office 365 gives the group a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote notebook, a Planner for task management—and now, a full-powered SharePoint team site. Each group gets a modern home page—with the ability to create additional pages—document libraries, lists and business apps.

The integration of groups and SharePoint team sites means that any time a new team site is created, a new group membership will be created as well. You can easily see the members of the site, if the site is listed as public or private within your organization and how it has been classified. In addition, all existing Office 365 groups will be updated with their own team site. And once the rollout is complete for your tenant, all newly created groups will get a team site by default.

We’re also rolling out a number of new capabilities that members of the group will have access to within the team site.

Let’s dive in to the details of what’s new.

Home page—We redesigned the team site home page to focus on the team’s most relevant content, while maintaining easy navigation to the team’s lists, libraries, pages, subsites and apps. The home page also provides quick access to the group’s Outlook conversations. And when you click on the name of the team site (“Loyalty Program” in the below screenshot), you will see the group card with navigation links to more of the group’s calendar, files and more.

New capabilities in SharePoint Online team sites including integration with Office 365 Groups 4

The new SharePoint Online team site home page for an Office 365 group showcases important content and site activity.

Quick links—Make it easy for your team to find what matters. Simply click Add, choose the file or insert the URL—now the content appears at the top of the home page. Content within Quick links can be files, pages and apps from inside your team site or from anywhere on the web.

Activity—Stay in the know with visibility into what is happening, and who’s doing what, throughout your team site. The Activity section surfaces recent actions on files, lists, pages and more.

The Office 365 Groups team site includes all of the updates we made to SharePoint in recent months including:

Modern lists and support for Microsoft Flow and PowerApps—Collaborate on structured data, connect with other data sources, automate business processes and create mobile business applications based on SharePoint lists.

Modern document libraries—Create, co-author, share and organize files, and access those files across devices with a rich, browser-based experience, or with the SharePoint and OneDrive apps. Note: Microsoft PowerApps and Flow will both soon come to the modern document library experience.

Updated Site Contents page—Create, manage and evaluate the reach and impact of content in your team site.

Learn more about modern team sites and Office 365 Groups for users and admins.

New site collection limit

As more and more teams embrace the breadth of capabilities offered in SharePoint Online across team sites, Office 365 Video and portal sites, their content storage requirements are growing. To address this, we will increase the SharePoint Online site collection storage limit in the coming weeks from 1 TB to 25 TB. This increased limit will be immediately reflected in the official SharePoint Online boundaries and limits article. Note: this is an increase to the capacity potential of individual site collections.

Manageability and extensibility

Managing modern team sites aligns to a great degree with Office 365 Groups administration by following usage guidelines, naming conventions and classification. There are some site administration tasks that team sites rely on that are controlled within the SharePoint Online admin center—like storage quota or the ability to adhere to a custom site provisioning experience if desired.

And when you want to customize the home page, we are committed to enabling page configuration (choosing web parts, adding text) and extensibility (writing custom code) in our modern experiences going forward—inclusive of continuity for customers taking advantage of extensibility in classic experiences for the foreseeable future. We plan to add support for customizing the home page using modern development techniques. Existing customized home pages will remain in classic mode.

For more information please contact Atidan at office365@atidan.com.

Reference: https://blogs.office.com/2016/08/31/new-capabilities-in-sharepoint-online-team-sites-including-integration-with-office-365-groups/

 

National Small Business Week Webcast—“Small Business, Big Ideas: Live Expert Q&A”

Small Business Big Ideas

Join us for a bonus episode of the Office Small Business Academy, “Small Business, Big Ideas: Live Expert Q&A,” in celebration of National Small Business Week, airing May 5 at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET.

We invite the small business community to ask our experts their questions about entrepreneurship during this special one-night event live from the Microsoft flagship store in New York. Together, we’ll discuss the best ways to lead and grow your small business—including tips to empower employees, embrace change, manage resources and create a loyal customer base.

Carol Roth, CNBC on-air contributor and best-selling author of “The Entrepreneur Equation,” will host the event and take your questions, along with Ramon Ray, publisher of Smart Hustle Magazine and small business evangelist, and Rieva Lesonsky, CEO of GrowBiz Media and former editorial director of Entrepreneur Magazine. Don’t miss this chance to ask our experts your burning questions!

Submit your questions now—Don’t miss this opportunity to ask our experts your burning questions! Submit your questions for Carol, Ramon and Rieva on Twitter with the hashtag #OfficeSmallBiz.

Special offer—And as a special offer for attendees, One Month of Office 365 Enterprise Plans or Two Months Office 365 Business Premium Free from Atidan with a one year committment. Email office365@atidan.com Offer good through May 31. You do not need to attend this event, just mention this offer.

5 Commonly Overlooked Security Threats

 The Internet is a vast place that brings amazing information to our fingertips in a matter of seconds. While this is a wonderful attribute, it also can be dangerous to your personal information or business’s data. That’s because there are hackers out there just itching to access your information and email is still a common way they accomplish this feat. And as we’ve seen through several recent examples—including the 2015 Pentagon and 2014 Sony email hacks—simply having a “strong” email password isn’t enough to keep your data from being compromised.

While some may jokingly (or not-so-jokingly) call for less email usage and more frequent use of the phone to communicate important information, it’s not always possible in our highly digital world. So in addition to being cautious about what is communicated in your emails, it’s important to understand how to protect those emails in the first place. To ensure secure email on your personal and work devices, you first have to recognize threats to your email system—including the less common ones.

Overlooked security threats

Here are five often overlooked threats to your email security:

  1. Social engineering schemes that use your mobile number—Did you know that attackers only need your mobile number to trick you into giving access to your email? Essentially, they’ll send you a text posing as your email provider (e.g., Outlook) and tell you you’re about to receive a code to ensure your email account is secure. This text will then ask you to reply with the code to confirm. Then, they’ll trigger the password reset process, you’ll receive a real message with the unlock code—and if you send it to the attackers unknowingly—they’ll use it to reset your password without your knowledge. Check out this video if you want more specifics on this scheme.
  2. Sharing your access credentials with others—It’s common for some employees to share their credentials—including their password—with a fellow employee or manager when they’ll be out of the office, whether on vacation or during short-term or long-term disability. If organizations don’t have defined security policies for these situations, a lack of accountability could lead to compromised email security.
  3. Loss of a phone with pertinent information—Password management applications are wonderful tools that help you keep track of all the passwords for all of the email accounts you undoubtedly have. But if this application is installed on a phone that is lost or stolen, that can be a problem. Of course, it’s important that your phone is also password-protected, but organizations should take security one step further when it comes to work or personal devices that carry business data or information. Specifically, a business should standardize acceptable use policies regarding the local storage of files, remote wipe capability and network connectivity.
  4. Lack of email encryption—Just because data is passed via a secure email server doesn’t mean it’s 100 percent safe. To add an extra layer of protection, companies should invest in an encrypted email service, which seals email messages and ensures only those with a decryption key can read and access sensitive information.
  5. Crypto-ransomware—Ransomware is nothing new, but it’s a nasty way for hackers to operate. They essentially take the files on your computer or devices hostage until you pay a ransom to have them released. Crypto-ransomware is even nastier, as the hackers encrypt your computer’s files and will only surrender decryption keys upon payment. How is this related to email? These attacks are typically triggered through the opening of some sort of email attachment (e.g., an invoice, energy bill, image, etc.) and they often look legitimate. According to Symantec’s 2015 Internet Security Threat Report, attacks of this nature are highly profitable (bringing in approximately $34,000 per month for one group alone) and growing in popularity.

Whether through phishing schemes or direct malware attacks, email security threats are prevalent—and as we’ve seen, even the mighty can fall prey to them. That’s why it’s more important than ever for organizations to invest in a secure email service that will help them keep their data safe. In addition, employee education is a large part of maintaining a secure email environment. When people know what to expect, they’re better equipped to protect themselves and their companies from liability.

Get more out of your email to help grow your business with solutions from Atidan and Microsoft. Contact us today at office365@atidan.com

 

Blog credit to Microsoft: https://blogs.office.com/2016/01/28/overlooked-email-security-threats/

Email Archiving—5 Reasons Why This is the Best Email Feature You Never Use

Whether you work in the corporate world or not, you probably send and receive multiple emails every day. It’s a fast, convenient way to communicate with peers, colleagues, clients, friends and family. Of course, email is an extremely popular communication tool for companies—in part because of its ability to document conversations and serve as a searchable repository of information.

In fact, studies suggest that three-fourths of an organization’s intellectual property is contained within email and messaging systems. That means it’s important to protect this data and not just send it to the trash. But keeping that much information can overload your company’s storage servers.

So what’s the best solution?

Email archiving is nothing new. The tool has been around for years—so why don’t more companies use it? Here are five benefits to using an email archiving solution:

  • Storage. When email data is stored on live servers, it can greatly reduce performance as the server gets fuller. The only other options are to delete emails altogether—not a wise option, since important data can be lost forever—or store them elsewhere. Email archiving follows this latter option and moves data to a secure off-site server or cloud environment. Some solutions use advanced compression and/or deduplication to reduce the required disk space in the archive—sometimes by 50 percent or more.
  • Restoration. Depending on what backup solutions you already have in place, email archiving can speed up the process whenever your data needs to be restored. This is because the archived data takes up less space. In addition, restoring non-archived emails becomes faster and easier, because the mail server’s data load is lessened.
  • Security. Just because your old emails are “out of sight” and stored elsewhere doesn’t mean they aren’t protected as well as emails in your live inbox environment. If you’ve got the right email archiving solution, your data is immutably preserved and safeguarded with continuous data backup and premier disaster recovery capabilities. For the best service, look for a provider that delivers reliability, availability and performance with a guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime and financially backed service level agreement.
  • Productivity. When your live servers are bogged down with tons of email data, it can make searching for a specific email or a specific subject grueling and slow. In addition, by getting rid of email box quotas and setting up automatic email archiving, employees no longer have to spend precious time deleting emails or moving them to PST files like the old days. Finally, when you give your employees the ability to easily access archived and backed up email data, you place the power in their hands—meaning they won’t have to engage the IT department to do it for them.
  • Compliance. Most industries require organizations to keep business records—and since emails often contain such records, deleting them is a no-no. Specific industries like health care, financial services, pharmaceuticals and energy have even stricter regulations about what business records must be kept.

When you consider an email archiving solution, remember to research providers and select one that will deliver a user-friendly solution that keeps you in control and maintains high standards of security and reliability.

Related content:

Credit to Microsoft Office Team:https://blogs.office.com/2015/11/05/email-archiving-the-best-email-feature-you-never-use/

ExpressRoute for Office 365 Now Available for Secure and Fast Cloud Connections

Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute is now available for Office 365 in addition to pure Azure Cloud deployments. Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 enables organizations to establish a private, managed network connection to Office 365 as an alternative to connecting over the Internet.

This direct connection offers you more predictable network performance, an SLA for guaranteed availability and additional data privacy. As more organizations depend on Office 365 for document collaboration (SharePoint/OneDrive/PowerBI) and communications (Skype – Video and Voice), they will come to depend more and more on the network connectivity they have between their users and Office 365. Pricing is based on port speed and starts at $300/month for unlimited data (metered data plans also available), including two redundant connections.

As always, the Atidan team is available to assist with Azure and Office 365 solutions and security. office365@atidan.com

Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 - Atidan

Express Route Partners and Peering Locations

Case Study from Microsoft

Today we’re pleased to announce that Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 is now generally available from these network operators:

  • British Telecom
  • Equinix
  • Tata Communications
  • TeleCity Group
  • Verizon

Connecting your network to Office 365 using Azure ExpressRoute

Depending on your network configuration, here’s how you can work with network operators offering ExpressRoute for Office 365 to establish a connection between your network and Office 365:

  • If your organization already uses Azure ExpressRoute, your network operator can simply turn on the connectivity for you. Since use of Office 365 generates additional network traffic, you should discuss the requirements for additional bandwidth with your network operator.
  • Organizations using IP VPN technology for a WAN provided by a network operator can ask the network operator to add Office 365 as a node on your WAN. Once Office 365 connectivity is added, Office 365 services appear as if they are on your WAN—like an offsite datacenter.
  • ExpressRoute can also support large or point-to-point network connections. If you have a large broad network, then you may already have a network connection in a co-location facility where Azure ExpressRoute is available. You should work with your network provider to identify the best way to connect to Azure ExpressRoute.

For more information, read about ExpressRoute for Office 365 here and watch this episode of Office Mechanics:

Frequently asked questions

  1. Where in the world is ExpressRoute for Office 365 available?
  2. Your users can connect from anywhere in the world that your network operator provides access. Each network operator connects to the Microsoft network at specific locations. They can provide networking from the user location to the Microsoft network connection. You should discuss the options with your network operator. The locations where they will connect to Microsoft’s network are listed here.
  3. How do organizations purchase ExpressRoute for Office 365?
  4. Organizations interested in purchasing ExpressRoute for Office 365 should have an Azure subscription and should discuss details of the connectivity with an Azure ExpressRoute partner.
  5. Are there any Office 365 services that Azure ExpressRoute cannot provide a connection to?
  6. Today connectivity is available for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Skype for Business Online, Azure Active Directory, Office 365 Video, Power BI, Delve and Project Online. Services that ExpressRoute does not provide connectivity to include download of Office 365 ProPlus installation files, Yammer, Domain Name Service and Content Delivery Network servers.
  7. Is QoS supported on Azure ExpressRoute?
  8. Yes. QoS is supported for Skype for Business Online over Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365.
  9. Does Microsoft provide tools to test for network performance issues?
  10. Yes. We have the Office Client Performance Analyzer (OCPA), which was recently updated to add a number of new performance test metrics. Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 may be a solution to network performance problems experienced by users. OCPA can be downloaded from the Office 365 admin console here.

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

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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/

How Does The Cloud Change The Way We Do Business?

“Crawl, walk, run” is what we are advising clients of all sizes when it comes to the cloud. Atidan is helping to deliver a variety of cloud services including backup, test/development servers, production servers, application and mobile services, advanced security solutions and much more. Contact us for a no obligation analysis and briefing to find out your best path to the cloud.
 

This article excerpt, by Stewart Parkin, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1AM21pt 
How has the cloud revolution enabled businesses to be more efficient and cutting edge? Let’s count the ways. There are many.
Effective and Inexpensive
First of all, the cloud has made businesses more cost effective by allowing them to store unlimited amounts of data inexpensively. Companies don’t have to spend exorbitant amounts of money to access cloud technology. A major capital expenditure is not necessary to access cloud based applications. This cost saving allows businesses to be more efficient and streamlined. This is just one of the many benefits of what the cloud has to offer.
Performing Varied Functions
For example, customers can have instant access to information and services using only a laptop or using their smartphones. The cloud allows them to perform a variety of functions online ranging from shopping, reading, participating in discussions, and many more, all in one place. Cloud technology essentially offers the end user a one-stop portal. There is no need to flip through the yellow pages of your old phone company.
Mobility
The same is true for a company’s employees. They can have instant access to company files and information allowing them to interact with the home office, suppliers and customers. The data they need can be accessed instantly in one convenient place on the web, saving them time and making them more efficient.
In fact, access to cloud-based applications also allows employees more mobility and freedom. While traveling the globe, all they need is access to the Internet via a laptop or their smartphone, or just have to pop into an Internet café to access their data in the cloud. Their data and important documents and files can be safely stored and accessed in the cloud, allowing them to travel without worries, with peace of mind.
Instant Access
Collaboration is a breeze thanks to the cloud. Businesses can share information with their suppliers and employees, allowing them to access important data instantaneously. Sharing information, ideas and data has never been so easy.
Improved Technology
In addition, the cloud has helped businesses in a variety of other ways, including compliance and risk management, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, E-commerce, help desk and support services, document management, disaster recovery, and supply chain management. All of these tasks have been made easier thanks to the advent of the cloud. As the technology keeps improving, there will be many more ways in which the cloud can help companies become more efficient.
So, for these and many other reasons, the cloud has changed the way we do business. What’s there not to like? The cloud has changed the way we do business for the better.
Contact Atidan today at azure@atidan.com to find out more about our cloud solutions!

Microsoft Exchange Advanced Threat Protection Launch

Pleased to announce that an Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service is available now to all Exchange/Office 365 subscribers (Coming August 1 for volume (Open/EA) license customers). You already have Microsoft’s Exchange Online Protection (EOP) at no charge to protect against spam and malware. Exchange Advanced Threat Protection or ATP is a new offering launched this week and is priced at $2 per user per month. You can activate any number of licenses to suit your needs – try it for your top executive team, for users who work with sensitive content or for your entire enterprise.

Key benefits and my comments include:

1.  Better protection against day zero viruses and unknown malware

  a.  Even after EOP filtering, something that has never been seen before can get through filters

  b.  Machine learning with behavior analysis watches content and makes real time validations called Safe Attachments

    i. Could cause possible message delays in suspicious message receipt fyi

2.  Real time protection against malicious URLs

   a.  Protect against phishing attacks and redirection

   b.  Check is performed at time of reading

         i.  Note this could cause a time delay while URL is scanned as the link is clicked

3.  Reporting and URL Tracing

a.  Analyze patterns of attacks, categories of attacks and conduct investigations

It is hard to put a value on this service but the cost is insignificant compared to the cost of an attack such as the Cryptolocker virus. One single incident could dwarf the costs of this subscription and I’ve posted a great white paper study from Ponemon detailing the average data breach cost .

Active Atidan clients can get our assistance to turn on this service at NO CHARGE. Additional consulting is always available to help you with new security features in Office 365 such as Rights Management, Encryption, eDiscovery, Legal Hold, Archiving and more.

Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection

Protect your email in real time against unknown and sophisticated attacks.

Secure your mailboxes against advanced threats

New malware campaigns are being launched every day, and Office 365 has a solution to help protect your email against them. With Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection, you can protect your mailboxes against new, sophisticated attacks in real time. By protecting against unsafe attachments and expanding protection against malicious links, it complements the security features of Exchange Online Protection to provide better zero-day protection.

Protect against unsafe attachments

With Safe Attachments, you can prevent malicious attachments from impacting your messaging environment, even if their signatures are not known. All suspicious content goes through a real-time behavioral malware analysis that uses machine learning techniques to evaluate the content for suspicious activity. Unsafe attachments are sandboxed in a detonation chamber before being sent to recipients. The advantage is a malware free and cleaner inbox with better zero-day attack protection.

Protect your environment when users click malicious links

Exchange Online Protection provides protection against malicious links by scanning content. Safe Links expands on this by protecting your environment when users click a link. While the content is being scanned, the URLs are rewritten to go through Office 365. The URLs are examined in real time, at the time a user clicks them. If a link is unsafe, the user is warned not to visit the site or informed that the site has been blocked. Reporting is available, so administrators can track which users clicked a link and when they clicked it.

Get rich reporting and track links in messages

Gain critical insights into who is being targeted in your organization and the category of attacks you are facing. Reporting and message trace allow you to investigate messages that have been blocked due to unknown viruses or malware, while URL trace capability allows you to track individual malicious links in the messages that have been clicked.