Tuesday 8 March 2022

Microsfot Teams Comes Up With New Communications Solutions for SMES

 Microsoft Teams is constantly adding new features to its service. This makes it one the most viable solutions available on the market, especially considering that we are now in the era of hybrid work and telecommuting.

They now announce that interested businesses can now purchase Teams Phones with Calling Plan through Business Partners in 31 markets including Spain. This is in addition to being available directly on the Teams Phone website in the United States and United Kingdom. They also promise to expand this service to other markets in February.

What is Teams Phone with a Calling Plan? It is, as stated in their statement a solution that reduces costs and simplifies operations. It focuses on small and medium-sized businesses.

Microsoft designed it so that the solution integrates in the exact same functions of calls and chats, meetings and collaboration directly within the same application. This allows users to make phone calls from any place and on any device.

They also indicated that the solution includes essential telephone components such as a telephone system, and a national calling program, all for GBP 11.43 per month per user.

The audio conferencing feature will be available starting March 1 for all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscriptions which include Teams. This will allow companies to collaborate in more ways.

As MSPowerUs points out, it includes:

  • A cloud-based phone system that integrates advanced calling capabilities and multi-level automated assistants.
  • A national calling plan that provides 3,000 minutes per user per year within the United States or Canada.
  • Make calls from any device and place through Microsoft Teams for landlines, mobiles, web, and desktop.
  •  24/7 customer support.

Monday 24 January 2022

Explore with The New Update of Microsoft Teams Video Conference

 To achieve Microsoft Teams acceptance, enterprises must provide a streamlined video conferencing environment as they shift to Microsoft Teams as their significant communication hub. This post will go through the new capabilities of Microsoft Teams video conferencing in the workplace, as well as why having Teams video conferencing in meeting rooms is so important for a successful Teams rollout.

Previously, in Teams conferences, each participant's video was presented in the lower right quadrant of the conference display. Users may now easily conceal that video while in a conference thanks to the new version. The ability to use Teams in a shared space aids in the establishment of Teams meetings as the new unofficial approach for group collaboration, resulting in the mindset shift required for speedier adoption.

Conversation Distractions

This will assist eliminate distractions during the conversation while still allowing other participants to see your video." Users will soon be able to use Microsoft Teams, according to a recent release. Turn off the notice. They don't want to be interrupted when they're on a video conference.

The video conference was held the platform has announced that it is developing a new feature that will allow users to hide their video feed while on a call. This means that Microsoft Teams users will no longer see their face appearing to be paying attention (or losing focus) and will instead be able to view the faces of their colleagues.

Microsoft Teams is also working on a new version, which will be released in November 2021, that will allow users to pin their video during meetings, ensuring that they can see themselves at all times.

Last but not least, your video will appear identical to everyone except you, and you won't be tempted to spend the entire conversation zoning out because you're preoccupied with closing your mouth or arranging your hair. Microsoft Teams hasn't commented on the matter other than to say that the new version is intended to "minimize distractions," which seems reasonable.


Tuesday 14 September 2021

Benefits of Remote IT Support Company

 With nearly all businesses using some form of computer network to run their business, it is not wonder that most will employ some measures to keep their system up and running. Computers and computer networks from the core of companies that require them for a number of tasks. Gone are the days when computers were just used for basic word processing; now, they are used for pretty much everything and keeping them up and running is of vital importance. However, not all employers will be aware of the dangers that threaten their systems. There are a number of different IT support services available, but not all of them will be suitable for your business. Here I will take your through the benefits of Remote IT support; a unique form of specialist assistance that could be just what you are looking for.

What is Remote IT Support?

Remote IT support incorporates any type of IT assistance that is off site. This could be telephone assistance, e-mail, monitoring from another network (in some cases referred to as outsourcing depending on the location). This offers many benefits over the traditional systems that larger companies employ. Other than the financial benefits, it offers you a peace of mind, knowing that you will be covered wherever you are should a problem arise. There are some downfalls to this however. Not having someone on site can prove risky with complex computer networks that require constant maintenance. It completely depends on the nature and size of your business.


Outsourcing IT Solutions – A Cost Effective IT Solutions

There have always been agreements and disagreements over the idea of outsourcing one’s IT Support to the IT Firms. While some consider IT outsourcing a deft expedient, the others think that it is expensive and delivers sub-standard output. To those who believe in the latter, some of the appropriate reasons as to why one should outsource IT Solutions are listed below. On perusing these, one could easily understand the benefits of IT Solutions outsourcing over doing it in-house.


Starting with the primary reason, ‘Cost effectiveness’, which simply asserts that by outsourcing IT Solutions one can lay hands on affordable IT support that is otherwise hard to embrace. Hiring a full-fledged in-house IT team is certainly not economical, as it involves the recruitment cost, maintenance cost and compensation cost thereafter. By outsourcing IT solutions, one can let go off these mounting costs and can acquire specialized IT solutions at imperceptible cost. Outsourcing saves companies from spending money on various unnecessary heads like hiring IT professionals, imparting them training, providing them resources and infrastructure etc. Thus, it is certainly a wise alternative to go for.

Monday 6 September 2021

Know How to Migrate On-Premise Email to Office 365

 Cloud services and other Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are huge right now. Office 365 has now reached over 200 million monthly active users, up from just 60 million active users in November 20151. This shift is largely due to the functionality it provides in terms of working from anywhere, collaborating with ease, always having up to date software, the manageable monthly cost, improved security features, and the ability to mix and match the features that best suit your needs. If your company is ready to jump onto the cloud, then you’ll first need to understand how to manage your email migration. Despite being relatively old tech, email is still a prominent and essential part of the business landscape so the migration needs to be as smooth as possible.


Migration Methods


There are several ways to handle your email migration. Let’s take a look at the most common migration methods.


Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) migration


You can use Exchange Online PowerShell or the Exchange Admin Center to migrate the data within your users’ mailboxes to Office 365.


Staged Migration


If you plan to migrate all mailboxes eventually, but want to do it over several weeks or even months, then a staged migration is the best option for your business. It’s important to note that you can’t opt for a staged migration if you plan to upgrade from Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, or 2013 to Office 365.


Cutover Migration


This approach is favoured for companies who want to migrate over a period of days and plan to move the mailboxes for their whole organization. However, the recommended number of mailboxes you should migrate in a cutover migration is 150, despite the maximum being 2000 mailboxes. This is because performance starts to suffer over 150 mailboxes.


Hybrid Migration


A hybrid migration is somewhere in between on-premise and full Office 365. You can choose the level of administrative control you retain from your on-premise solution, as well as the part of Office 365 you want access to. This is a common approach for companies who are unsure whether the cloud is the right fit for their business.


Third-Party Migration


This approach utilizes tools from third parties to conduct the migration. Several third-parties provide these migration services including Binary Tree, BitTitan, Matalogix, SkyKick, and more.

What Factors Affect Migration Performance?


Migration can take anywhere from several hours to several days depending on the size of the mailbox. However, other factors can also affect the performance of your migration.


Gmail has limits on how much data can be extracted within a certain time frame which can slow the process down.

The number of mail items can also affect the speed of the migration, even when the mailboxes are the same size.

Your data migration engine may have its own set of limitations that slow down the migration.

Your overall network performance and firewall configurations can also slow down the migration. Even if you have a fast network, if it suffers from stability issues then this can also slow the migration.

Get Migrating!


This article isn’t an exhaustive step-by-step guide to migration but rather an overview to help you get on your way with migrating your on-premise email over to Office 365.


How to Migrate On-Premise Email to Office 365 (serverconsultancy.co.uk)

Wednesday 25 August 2021

Automatic redirection from Office 365 Security and Compliance Center to Microsoft 365 Defender

 Users of the legacy Office 365 Security and () Compliance center will soon be routed to Microsoft 365 Defender; this will include all security workflows, including Alerts, Threat Management, and Reports.


Security-related items in the Office 365 Security and Compliance center will not be redirected to Microsoft 365 Defender. Compliance solutions will be redirected to Microsoft 365 Compliance Center (March 2021, MC244886).



Earlier this year, Microsoft started migrating security workflows to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal. 

 

For customers who have already enabled redirect as part of the previous communication during Microsoft's new homepage Defender for 365, the automatic redirect will now include alerts and redirect alert policies, in addition to any previously redirected.


For more information, please refer to this redirection support document.



Wednesday 21 July 2021

Role of IT Outsourcing in Digital Transformation

 IT outsourcing has become a game-changing factor for the businesses that go through digital transformation as it allows them to adapt better according to the digital landscapes.

More details