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What's new with Microsoft 365 in September? Here are some highlights: Dark Mode - now available on Office 365 Mobile and Office.com. Dark mode offers users the choice to change appearance of your app to use a darker color palette. It offers an inverted color system perfect for low light settings that can be easier on your eyes and reduce eye strain. For mobile users it also significantly saves battery life. To activate dark mode in office.com: find profile picture upper right click the setting icon toggle on/off dark mode To turn dark mode on using your mobile device: open left navigation pane click the settings icon scroll all the way down to preferences toggle on/off dark mode Microsoft To Do Updates: To do has a new design now offering more customization options with a wide range of background and configuration options including a new dark mode. A unique features added includes a smart daily planner called my day which uses smart suggestions to help give you suggestions on what to do in any given day. To-do also syncs across all platforms on all devices (including both android and iOS). It can see all tasks in one centralized view (flagged emails, planner tasks, etc.). To being using To Do download the Microsoft to do app on any device. Link to slides: Powerpoint for the web now allows users the option to share presentations by linking directly to a specific slide that you want to reference. To use this new option: Right click on the slide thumbnail that'd you like to share select link to slide copy link share link to others Powerpoint Presenter Coach: Presenter coach uses the power of AI to give you real time on- screen feedback to help your presentation skills. Use this new feature to practice your presentation and get professional feedback while practicing. To use Presenter Coach: Select slideshow Select rehearse with coach Yammer Mobile: Yammer mobile has a few design updates this month to improve the user's experience including: new card based design to sharpen content easy to read formatting and styling. Link previews and in line videos so you don't have to leave the feed To see these new updates, update your app. Intune Support - Now available for business accounts using android devices. IT admins can now make sure security and admin settings will take effect on all business users accounts. For end users it will be easier to log in with one touch and rest assured that security concerns will be taken care of. Users can now keep personal and business accounts separate. User template for Admins - With Microsoft's new user template feature admins can now create and use template to save time and standardize settings when adding multiple users. This feature is great for admins who need to add users who have similar roles and will need similar settings without having to recreate the wheel. To create a template: Go to admin center Go to users Go to active user Select template Select create template Automated Incident Response: This new feature applies powerful automation capabilities to investigation and response workflows. Available to organization with ATP plan 2, Microsoft Office 365 E5, and Microsoft Office 365 EF Security.

Outlook lets you create multiple calendars to help you organize your meetings and appointments. For example, you can create a calendar for personal events that you keep separate from your work calendar. To learn how to create and manage multiple calendars watch the below video from Microsoft. For more information on setting up or configuring Outlook and other Office 365 apps for your business, contact us or call us at 800-358-7447.

MyAnalytics is a new feature offered by Microsoft for many of the Office 365 plans. To find out if your Office 365 subscription includes MyAnalytics visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace-analytics/myanalytics/overview/plans-environments MyAnalytics gives you a personalized dashboard that gives you valuable insights into how to increase focus, achieve work-life balance, and improve your work relationships and team collaboration. To view your dashboard (if you have one) visit www.myanalytics.microsoft.com. Getting to Know Your Dashboard Home: The home screen is the opening page of your MyAnalytics dashboard. It shows you statistics about your work patterns over the past month. Some of these statistics include your focus and collaboration time, how many days you were able to disconnect from work, and how effectively you are networking with your coworkers. Focus and Wellbeing: The Focus section of your dashboard helps you get a better understanding of how much focused time on tasks you have available. It also gives tips on how to protect your calendar and manage distractions. The Wellbeing section shows you how well you are doing at disconnecting from work during non working hours and time off and suggests ways to reduce stress and burnout. Network and Collaboration: The Network section shows information about your relationships with people in your network, based on your work activities over the past year. The Collaboration section highlights who you are actively collaborating with over the previous month. It pulls in all social areas including emails, chats, calls, and meetings. Productivity Insights This section looks at all of your workplace activity and makes suggestions to help you improve upon your current work patterns. Microsoft's MyAnalytics are a great new tool that can help you step back and look at your overall work patterns and behaviors. With this data you can learn to work more efficiently and make sure you are setting up your schedule to allow for proper time to complete tasks and projects and also enjoy uninterrupted down time. For more information on MyAnalytics visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace-analytics/myanalytics/use/dashboard-2

As many workforces are shifting to more remote work, businesses are taking advantage of platforms to help their team stay connected, collaborate, and video chat. Two of the most popular options for these solutions are Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Both have a place in the workplace and bring different strengths to the table. In fact some organizations find that utilizing both of the services works best for their team. We have compiled some of the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms to help inform your decision in which choice is the right choice for your organizations needs. Microsoft Teams Overview Microsoft Teams includes robust chat services that allows quick communication without the need to set up a conference call. Teams also syncs with Office 365 which makes collaboration easy by allowing file sharing and calendar support. If your organization is already using the Microsoft Office application, Teams seamlessly fits into the portfolio of applications. Teams is focused primarily on perfecting internal communication and makes collaboration on projects easy. Teams allows channel and Teams set up and collaboration to customize each grouping to your organizations needs and creates a great set up for internal communication. Key Features: Full integration with Office 365 Video conferencing with background blur Excellent audio with in-line transcription File and screen sharing Instant messaging one-to-one in groups Fully searchable conversational channels Access from all devices End-to-end security Endless bots for integrating extra functionality Tabs to make finding information easy Recording Teams and Channel set up for easy collaboration Zoom Overview Zoom is not as focused on internal collaboration and is more focused on video and audio conferencing. Zoom makes conference calls easy to set up and join and makes the process seamless for those that are not apart of the organization as well as internal teammates. Zoom also provides features such as multiple screen sharing to support web-based presentations and boasts high-quality video and audio. Zoom features many ways to customize your video conference session including green screen backgrounds, white board presentations, and hand raises. Key Features HD Video and Audio Support to up to 1,000 video participants Up to 49 videos on screen End-to-end encryption for all meetings Streamlined calendaring with integrations to Outlook and Gmail Role-based security Screen sharing and co-annotation Recording and transcription Team chat with groups Searchable history Limited file sharing Microsoft Teams Limitations The utility of Teams is lost slightly if your business is not using Microsoft's suite of office software. Teams also lacks many third-party integrations and doesn't have all of the advanced conferencing features of zoom like multiple screen share and the ability to hand-raise and see a large amount of users on the screen at one time. Zoom Limitations While Zoom has powerful web conferencing features it is lacking in collaboration features. Zoom does not include a robust chat or file sharing platform like Teams. Zoom also has experienced some performance issues when it comes to international conferences. The free option for Zoom also has a 40 minute time limit for group conferences. Which is right for your organization? As mentioned above, the right choice for your organization depends on what you need out of your software. While both Teams and Zoom allow for videoconferencing, they offer a different set of solutions. If your organization is looking for robust videoconferencing and large meeting sizes including a lot of attendees from outside of your organizations, Zoom may be the best fit. If your organization is looking for a seamless way to collaborate, chat and share Office 365 files Teams is probably the best solution. It may be that your organization needs a combination of both solutions to meet all of your needs. Resources for Teams & Zoom Looking to set up and learn how to use Teams to its full potential? Join us for a Remote 2 hour training session where you will learn the ins and outs of the program and how you can use it to its full potential within your organization. More information here. We have compiled some free Zoom resources to help you get set up and use Zoom to its full potential. If you need hands on consulting in Zoom we can help with that too. View the free resources here. Set up consultation here. Security Concerns Videoconferencing security concerns have been headline news lately. Learn how to modify settings to be sure you are being mindful of security here.

This month's recap of Microsoft 365 updates focuses on collaboration and design. To begin there is a breakdown of Microsoft's Fluid Framework. This new approach to collaboration focuses on meeting customers contextually instead of just visually across apps. When you collaborate with others you're normally thinking where to share, should you share on email, collaborate directly in documents, or communicate through teams. Microsoft's Fluid Framework allows you to collaborate more fluidly. You can start in one place or in one application and easily copy and elsewhere. You can keep going from application to application and they will all match. You can work directly wherever you wish and other collaborators can use their preferred tool or application. Fluid framework is in public preview right now you can view it at www.fluidpreview.com in it's simplest form and also provide your feedback. The next topic in this month's recap is mobile productivity. Microsoft recently pushed out new designs to all of its office 365 mobile apps. The main focus of the redesign was to use data on phone usage to improve the experience and also allow breakdowns for more micro-productivity. A couple of highlights in the new apps include: Play My Emails in Outlook - this tool is available in Outlook's iOS app and allows you to listen to your inbox like a podcast and use voice commands to respond. This helps you be productive in times where you are unable to be reading your emails. Fluid Mobile - Simplifies the Microsoft suite on phones and brings the best of Microsoft forward.

Covid-19 has caused swift changes in the way organizations get work done. It leads us to question what adaptations will be here to stay. As Covid-19 continues to sweep its way through the country (and world), businesses have had to make quick changes to accommodate for remote workers and are using a distributed workforce like never before. While remote work has been a topic in the IT industry for the past decade or so, the pandemic has quickly shifted from remote workers being a small portion of workforces to most businesses adapting to having their entire workforce working remotely. This has brought many questions about the future of the workforce and certainly makes an argument that having a remote work strategy and set-up is vital for the future. A report by Global Workplace Analytics noted that the number of remote workers has grown 173% from 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce. This number is only set to expand as a March 30th Gallup survey stated that 74% of CFOs plan to move even more onsite employees to remote workspaces permanently after the Covid-19 restrictions end. As the pandemic has shifted much of America's corporate workforce to remote work, organizations have had a unique opportunity to critically review how a distributed workforce affects the organization and if there are long term benefits of having the ability to have a workforce adapted to such work. Is a Distributed Workforce the "New Normal"? As organizations begin thinking about the future and what their organization may look like after Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, there will be considerations for positive ways that distributed workforces can continue to be a part of the organization. For many organizations, having all staff with the ability to work remote as needed may very well be the norm. It is smart to assume that there will be long lasting effects from this pandemic on the way people work. While some organizations may shift more employees to an entirely remote experience, others may look at having employees set up with a remote work office as well as an on-site office. This allows teammates to work both in-office and remote and allows them to be productive from anywhere to accommodate personal illness, family illness, or personal problems that may keep them from being physically in the office. Considerations for a long-term Distributed Workforce As restrictions are lifted and organizations adapt to new work from home policies and make way for more remote work there are some considerations to keep in mind. Setting Up A Remote Work Space One of the most important aspects of remote work is ensuring that the worker has everything they need to be successful. This includes: A working computer - a laptop is preferred as employees can plug in on-site and at home with ease A fast and reliable internet connection - working via a VPN or remote session will not be an enjoyable experience without a fast and reliable internet connection. A quiet place to work free of distractions - when working from home it can be easy to become distracted. Make sure that employees have a dedicated workspace at home Set office hours - while working from home can provide more flexibility to the work-day it is best practice to expect your workforce to work during a standard set of business hours. This makes sure that communication and collaboration is effective. Security Considerations Security needs to be at the top of your priority list when setting up your distributed workforce. Here are some security considerations to keep top of mind: Utilize full disk encryption to ensure that even if the device falls into the wrong hands, the company's data is not accessible Continue to enforce strong password policies and use of 2FA as often as possible where applicable Use a VPN to connect remote workers to the organization's internal network. This prevents access from unknown entities from remote locations. Have employees use company owned devices as much as possible, using personal devices increases risk of secured files and data being saved on unsecure devices When it is not possible to use a company owned device use a solution such as GC Connect to connect securely into a user's machine at work for their day-to-day tasks. (For our current GC customers we are offering free 60 days of our GC Connect, contact your CRM for more information) Collaboration & Connectivity Considerations Distributed workforces bring new challenges when it comes to connecting and collaboration within your organization. It is important to consider these challenges and create opportunities for collaboration and connection within your distributed workforce. We recommend using a tool such as Microsoft Teams which offers videoconferencing, chat, project collaboration, file sharing, and more. Teams is a robust solution that allows workers to connect with each other easily and efficiently no matter where they are working. To learn more about Teams & to learn how Teams can work for your organization visit: https://www.mapletronics.com/post/workforce-going-remote

Does your workplace use Office 365? Do you have sensitive company data that needs to stay contained within your organization? If so, security should absolutely be at the top of your priority list. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is one way to safeguard your company's data. ATP is a cloud-based email filtering service that helps protect your organization against unknown malware and viruses by providing robust zero-day protection, and includes features to safeguard your organization from harmful links in real time. ATP has rich reporting and URL trace capabilities that give administrators insight into the kind of attacks happening in your organization. ATP is a feature that is available as an additional plan alongside an Office 365 subscription. Some key features of ATP are: ATP Safe Attachments - Checks your emails to see if attachments are malicious. Your administrator whether in house or with you IT company, has the ability to set appropriate policies for your organization's security. When a user checks their email, ATP Safe Attachment will scan them and take the appropriate actions according to the policy settings. ATP Safe Links - Works by checking the URLs contained within emails and Office documents. Before emails reach the inbox, they go through office 365 Exchange Online Protection. There, signature-based malware protection, anti-spam and malware, and internet protocol (IP) are applied to emails. After these are applied, the user can then open the email. If they click on a link, it's immediately flagged as safe, malicious, or blocked. For malicious or blocked emails users will get a warning page. If links take you to a downloadable file, those also get scanned for anything harmful and blocked if necessary. Anti-Phishing Policies - By utilizing machine learning models with impersonation detection algorithms, ATP uses a sophisticated method to identify phishing. When any email comes in, the machine learning models analyze them to determine if they're safe and what actions to take if they're not. Your office 365 administrator sets policies to help determine what actions are taken. Spoof Intelligence - Spoofing is a popular way that criminals attempt to phish users information. Having capabilities to recognize malicious spoofing is vital to your organization's security. ATP has built in spoof intelligence that is always on for your domains and external ones. To keep criminals from spoofing your organizations email addresses, spoof intelligence allows you to specify which entities are allowed to spoof your domains and send emails for you so they won't be blocked. ATP adds valuable security benefits to your Office 365 suite. For more information on Advanced Threat Protection and how your organization can benefit from it, or to get your organization set up to use ATP you can contact us or call us at 800-358-7447

Today's Office 365 tip shows how to use Teams channels to get in contact with a specific group via email. If you want to send an email to a channel in Microsoft Teams, use the channel email address. Once an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Watch the video below for a more detailed how-to: Microsoft Teams is a wonderful and expansive tool that can help your organization communicate and collaborate effectively. If you'd like to learn more about Teams and how it can benefit your organization we invite you to join us for teams training. For more information visit mapletronics.com/training.

Phishing Testing for 3 Months Has Taken Our Phishing Prone Percentage from 14.3% to 4.5% Due to the ever-growing cybersecurity concerns for businesses of all sizes, Mapletronics is has been focusing many of our internal efforts on "Securing Our House" in 2020. This means we are internally working on policies and plans for how to protect our business and ensuring we are doing all that we can to reduce our risk of a security breach. One way with which we have focused on securing our house is by enabling phishing testing on all of our users. Phishing continues to be a main way that cybercriminals target businesses, in fact a November 2019 study found that 91% of cyberattacks begin with a spear phishing email. (More info about phishing found here). Our main goal with phishing testing is to gauge how well our user's can identify a phishing email and to use the data to educate our users and improve our internal security awareness to reduce the risk of a user falling for a phishing scheme. Since beginning using phishing testing software on our users, we have noticed a significant improvement in our user awareness. In fact, from January to March 2020 we went from a 14.3% phish-prone percentage to a 4.5% phish-prone percentage. As you can see from the data below, employing regular phishing testing on our users and educating through security awareness training has greatly impacted our security awareness and greatly reduced the likelihood that a user will click on a phishing email in the future. January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 Phish Your Users Want to being phishing testing on your users? Our phishing testing software includes both sending out regular phishing test emails to your users as well as responding with regular security awareness training and reporting to you on how your organization can improve your phishing awareness. More information on how phishing testing works here. Contact your security experts at Mapletronics to begin phishing testing and security awareness education today.

So, What is “The Cloud” Anyway? If you have a business, you have undoubtedly heard about “The Cloud”. Your ERP, CRM, and any other line of business software provider probably has approached you about taking their application to “The Cloud”. These providers have also probably given you the 10 cent overview of cloud computing and all the benefits. First, let’s define “The Cloud”: A software application hosted in “The Cloud” simply means that the application is hosted on the software provider’s servers and accessed by your users via the internet. This means you do not have to purchase server hardware in order to use the software application. Instead, you pay a monthly fee usually based on the number of users that access the software. Benefits of “The Cloud” Low capital expense to implement/use line of business applications. There is no server hardware/software to buy. Also, there is no need for a data protection solution in place for a cloud application. Access from anywhere on any device. Your software login is usually good to go anywhere there is an internet connection and can be accessed from any computer/tablet/phone. Software upgrades are usually very easy and seamless as the software provider handles them for you. Potential Pitfalls of "The Cloud" You are completely reliant on your internet connection in order to use a cloud hosted application. If your internet is down, you are dead in the water. Many companies that use cloud hosted solutions put in place a redundant internet connection (two separate providers). The cost for the second internet service and hardware to manage both connections can eat up the savings you got upfront by not buying server hardware/software. Most Cloud application providers have extensive security measures in place. With breaches happening at many large providers, we know that there is no measure of security that is 100% foolproof. Hackers will target large providers with lots of data because it’s more bang for their effort. This means your data may be more secure if housed in your establishment. Pricing for a Cloud application takes into account the overhead for the provider’s cost to present the application to you. They have hardware, security, and manpower behind the application and still need to make a profit. Although the initial cost of ownership is low, the monthly/yearly cost over time may be more expensive than hosting the application yourself. A big question that has come up with Cloud applications is regarding the ownership of company data. If you want to change software providers, you may not be able to get your data back in a form that will import into the new system. While some Cloud providers have excellent technical support, others can leave you in the cold. Questions to Ask Your Cloud Application Provider How much downtime in the last 3 years? Is there compensation in the form of credits for downtime and lost revenue? What are the terms of the contract and do you offer price protection? What is the process for software upgrades and how do they affect my business? What is your disaster recovery plan? What is your Service Level Agreement (SLA)?How do I get my data back? Summary Taking your software application to “The Cloud” may be a great idea. It’s also a great idea to make sure your decision is in line with your expectations of business continuity, security, & productivity.

We are excited to officially launch Mapletronics new Podcast "Mapletronics Tech Talk". You can download today's episode on any of your favorite Podcasting Apps. In today's episode we give a rundown of what you can expect from future episodes. We started Mapletronics Tech Talk to give a quick 15-20 minute run down on trending topics in Tech. This includes security updates, software and programs that you need to know about, technology news and exciting innovations, among other topics. We hope to break these topics down in a way that is easy for you to follow along with no matter how "tech-savy" you may or may not be. The first episode Jordan & Scott dive into a discussion on passwords. Jordan brings up Google's new Chrome Extension (read about it here) that helps you find out if your password has been compromised during a hacking event. Scott talks about why you need strong passwords and what you can do to create strong passwords. Jordan & Scott discuss password policy and why it is important for all organizations to create and follow strict password policies. To wrap things up Scott mentions some different methods for organizing and keeping passwords secure.

Episode 9 is here! In this week's episode Jordan & Scott discuss why you would be interested in outsourcing your I.T. services. Scott gives a brief overview of what benefits come from outsourcing I.T. services. You can find more about why outsourcing I.T. makes sense for your company here. They then go into a discussion on questions you should ask when looking for an I.T. services company. If you are already outsourcing I.T. these questions are great to ask your current provider as well, to make sure you are on the same page and know what to expect. At the end of the podcast, Jordan & Scott discuss Mapletronics unique way of solving with their clients instead of solving for. Make sure to subscribe & rate our podcast and leave any feedback you may have about past episodes or what you'd like to hear in future episodes.