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Last week, we welcomed Brian Solis, Altimeter principal analyst, thought leader and book author, to Yammer HQ to give a fireside chat, followed by signing of his new book: "What's The Future of Business?" I was thrilled to interview Brian, and we covered a variety of really meaty subjects - just check out the video below! The theme of the evening was transformation - transformation that is happening in our lives as individuals, how we relate to each other through technology and what we as businesses must do to stay relevant to the connected customer. Even the book itself is transformation of the book publishing convention. Unlike a regular, information-dense business book, "What's the Future of Business" attempts to bring together the best of both worlds: hard-hitting facts and practical frameworks, as well as a visual experience. The experience of the book is just as important as the content therein. What is the future of business? The future of business is experience, according to Solis. We as connected consumers make decisions outside of the sales funnel that companies have organized themselves around. We reference experiences of consumers who came before us, and contribute our own experiences to this dynamic tapestry. When consumers share, they are reacting to an experience, and the future of any business depends on its ability to provide experiences that are worth sharing. In his talk, Brian talked about the 4 moments of truth that add up to shareable experiences. At every stage of the customer journey, it is our job as businesses to design an experience to trigger the sharing of a moment. The Zero Moment of Truth comes when the consumer is starting to explore choices and is just becoming aware of needs and possible solutions. 1st Moment of Truth happens when the consumer is ready to buy. Consumer packaged goods companies have perfected providing the right experience at this point. 2nd Moment of Truth happens after the consumer purchases,

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Today marks the general availability of Office 2016 for Windows, a suite of desktop applications that together with new mobile and web apps pushes Microsoft's new vision for PC-based productivity. Office 2016 is available immediately to Office 365 subscribers, as well as to individuals who would prefer to buy the software in standalone form. "We see Office 2016 as being just as important as the first release of Office," Microsoft group program manager Shawn Villaron told me in a briefing last week. "In the early days, Office was about bringing really important tools together to empower the individual for personal productivity. That was the way people wanted to work at that time. And for 20 to 30 years, Office fit right in. Today, things are changing. More people collaborate on work as groups and teams, so Office 2016 represents the change from personal productivity to team productivity." And that, really, is Office 2016 in a nutshell. If you're a typical information worker, student, or other person in need of standard productivity tools, Office 2016 of course works fine and represents an obvious and stable evolution from the Office version you're currently using. But the real meat in this release-now and going forward, as Office will of course be updated regularly, like Windows 10-is the designed around this new way of working. Confusing matters somewhat, Office-not Office 2016, but Office generally-is all over the place now. In addition to the classic, full-featured desktop suites on both Windows and Mac, Microsoft has high-quality Office Online web apps, mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows/Windows phones-and Office 365-specific solutions that are often available as web apps but are sometimes just integrated into the desktop applications. This ain't your father's Office anymore. Office everywhere: Microsoft Office is available on virtually any device you care to use. - www.office.com/setup Office eve

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last year, we released Microsoft Bookings to customers in the U.S. and Canada, introducing an easy way for small businesses to schedule and manage appointments with their customers. Today, we are pleased to announce that we're beginning to roll out the service to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers worldwide. Based on your feedback, we are bringing several new features to Bookings: Add your Office 365 calendar to Bookings-Connect your Office 365 calendar to Bookings, so that the times you are busy will automatically be blocked in your public Booking page. Add buffer time before and after your appointments-Do you need prep time before or after an appointment? Adding buffer time to a service automatically blocks that time in your Booking page too. Bookings apps for your iOS and Android phone-Now you can book an appointment, contact a customer or check a staff member's appointments while away from the office. Customize your Booking page-We added more color customization options, so you can better personalize your Booking page. These new capabilities will start showing up automatically in Bookings in the coming weeks. Let's take a detailed look at what's new. ADD YOUR OFFICE 365 CALENDAR TO BOOKINGS One of the top pieces of feedback we've heard is that you want to be able to add events from your Office 365 calendar to Bookings. So, we added integration between these calendars to help you avoid booking customer meetings during the time you've set aside for personal appointments, staff and partner meetings or other aspects of running your business. To add Office 365 calendars to Bookings, click the Staff tab on the left navigation panel. On the Staff details page, select the Events on Office 365 calendar affect availability checkbox. www.office.com/setup Add Office 365 calendar events to Bookings. Once you activate this option, the system automatically blocks busy times on the Bookings calendar and on the self-ser

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: WHICH VERSION OF MICROSOFT OFFICE IS BEST FOR ME? www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 365 and Office 2016 share a lot of similarities, yet deciding between the two involves a lot of factors. Office 365 is a subscription-based service that currently uses Office 2016 apps, but when the next version of Office is released, users will get that as part of their subscription. Office 2016 is a buy-once app suite that brings you the Office 2016 apps as they are, without any available updates in the future. If you want to upgrade to the latest version of Office without paying for a subscription, you'll have to pay full price for the new version - there's no discounted upgrade option. These are only a couple differences between the two products. Looking to invest in Office? We break down the differences between the two products to help you decide which is better for personal and home use. See at Microsoft Store Quick-reference table Apps and pricing Multiple devices Connectivity Support Storage Conclusion QUICK-REFERENCE TABLE Category Office 365 Home Office 365 Personal Office Home & Student 2016 Office Home & Business 2016 Office Professional 2016 Price $99.99 /year $9.99 /month $69.99 /year $6.99 /month $149.99 $229.99 $399.99 Users Up to 5 1 1 1 1 Apps Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Devices 5 PCs or Macs 5 tablets 5 phones 1 PC or Mac 1 tablet 1 phone 1 PC 1 PC 1 PC Skype minutes 60 per month for each user 60 None None None OneDrive storage 1TB each for five users 1TB None None None APPS AND PRICING Office apps on the go. - www.office.com/setup Office 365 is a subscription-based service. If you choose to pay on a yearly basis, you essentially get a discount that works out to two free months per year. If you choose to pay on a monthly b

This post is brought to you by Seayoung Rhee, Product Marketing Manager in the SharePoint Product Marketing Group. Reliable business intelligence and insight are key to a thriving business. Excel, SharePoint and Office 365 make business intelligence (BI) in the new Office more accessible to everyone across an organization as part of their everyday work. New and enhanced features in familiar tools such as Excel empower everyone in a business to easily explore, model, analyze, and visualize data from various sources. With SharePoint, users of all levels can collaboratively develop and share insights through dashboards and scorecards, and this experience continues seamlessly in the cloud with Office 365. For corporate environments, these features are further enhanced by SQL Server for higher levels of performance and scalability both on-premises and in the cloud with BI Azure. Ultimately with Microsoft BI, anyone in the organization can develop the insights that help drive new discoveries and make better, more informed decisions. EXPLORE YOUR DATA PowerPivot was a popular add-in to Excel 2010, allowing users to create large data models with hundreds of millions of rows in Excel. This feature is now natively embedded in Excel to reduce the hassle of downloads and installation. PowerPivot is also supported in SharePoint with SQL Server Analysis Services where the workbooks with PowerPivot models can be shared broadly across the organization. New features like Quick Explore aid users in navigating their data, and Quick Analysis provides previews of their charts, graphs, and scorecards. Users can: Combine and analyze large datasets with PowerPivot Summarize data and discover trends with Quick Explore Instantly preview charts and pivot tables with Quick Analysis www.office.com/setup VISUALIZE YOUR INSIGHTS Introduced with SQL Server 2012, Power View provided a canvas to create visual dashboards in SharePoint. Now this feature is embedded into Excel and SharePoint so

www.office.com/setup Blogs: The new admin center reached general availability one month ago. This was a big milestone in our mission to provide you with a first-class admin experience, with tools that enable you to efficiently manage all aspects of the service. We continue to evolve the admin center. This month, we focused on providing you with additional usage insights, including new usage reports, the preview of the Office 365 adoption content pack in Power BI and more role-based permissions through a new Power BI admin role. Here's a summary of the October updates: NEW USAGE REPORTS STARTING TO ROLL OUT TODAY In March, we launched the new reporting dashboard in the Office 365 admin center that makes it easier for you to efficiently monitor your service, identify issues, plan training and report back on the investment to your management. Today, we are happy to announce four new usage reports for active users, Email clients, Skype for Business clients and Office 365 Groups, that provide you with additional insights about how users in your organization are using and adopting Office 365. Here's a look at each report: Active Users report-Lets you see which of your users actively use one or more of the different Office 365 services. This report is especially helpful for admins to identify users for whom they might want to plan some additional training and communication. Often, after being assigned an Office 365 license, users need a helping hand to get started with the different services. They might not know how to activate the product or how the product can help them to be more productive. The image below shows all users that are licensed for one or more products and the last date they used any of those products. By clicking the Column icon, admins can modify the table to see which license has been assigned to a user, as well as when the license was assigned to the user. admin-center-october-1 - www.office.com/setup Blogs Skype for Business clients used r

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects to save $12 million over four years. The City of Chicago anticipates saving $1.3 million over the same length of time. And the State of Minnesota expects to save at least $800,000. Governments of all sizes are finding ways to reduce IT costs while improving efficiency. What's their secret weapon? With public sector budgets shrinking in many places around the globe, smart governments are making taxpayer dollars stretch further by migrating from an on-premise environment to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. By moving to Office 365, governments can reduce both their capital and operating costs. And by saving money, they can make taxpayer dollars go further during a time when budgets are tight and there's often less revenue to work with. So how exactly can Office 365 save governments money? First, governments can cut back on the capital cost of investing in more computer servers. Second, they can reduce the administrative cost of having to maintain an IT environment. Third, they can lower their energy costs by reducing the size of their data centers. And they can also reduce costs using the many tools within Office 365 that improve employee efficiency. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, Office 365 delivers an ROI of 321 percent with a payback period of two months for a composite midsize organization. That translates into huge value for public sector organizations! Among the government agencies that anticipating money saved by implementing Office 365 is the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency expects to save $12 million over four years by moving to the cloud and Office 365. Some of those savings will be in energy costs as the agency relies on Microsoft to operate its data centers. "The EPA will continue to lead the pack on environmental stewardship, and moving an IT environment to the cloud is a natural part of that," says Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal. "There

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Evernote and OneNote are two of our favorite tools, but both have changed substantially since we last compared these two apps-in some ways, not for the best. Here's where these two stand today. www.office.com/setup LIFEHACKER FACEOFF: ONENOTE VS. EVERNOTE Now that Microsoft OneNote is free for Mac and Windows, the price and cross-platform barriers to…Read more WHAT'S NEW IN EVERNOTE In the last year, Evernote introduced a new pricing plan, redesigned its webapp, and added new features for its Android and iOS apps. THE FREE PLAN LOSES A FEATURE, BUT NOW THERE'S A MORE AFFORDABLE PAID PLAN Let's talk price first with Evernote, since it's the biggest change in the last year. The free plan no longer lets you email notes to Evernote, something most users enjoyed and used often prior to that change. Although you can get around this limitation with an IFTTT recipe, you won't get the full flexibility of Evernote's email-to-notes feature, such as specifying your destination notebook in the email subject line. So that's a bummer. On the positive side, however, Evernote introduced a new, more affordable paid plan called Evernote Plus. For $25 a year, you get offline notebooks for Evernote's mobile apps and the ability to lock the app on your phone with a PIN. Both of these used to require Evernote's Premium plan, which used to cost $45 a year. Finally, Evernote's Premium plan now costs $50 a year. But in return for those five extra bucks, you get larger upload limits: 10GB a month, instead of the previous 4GB data cap. With Evernote Premium, you can search attachments, scan business cards, view previous note versions, annotate PDFs, and use the new note presentation mode. EVERNOTE'S USER INTERFACE KEEPS EVOLVING www.office.com/setup Last year, Evernote took its redesigned, minimalist web client out of beta. Though slicker and easier on the eyes, the makeover also made the webapp less functional. You can't order

Part of the thrill of working for the Office Division is the opportunity to tackle thorny business issues on behalf of our customers while providing them with a road map for the future. That may be why an interesting article caught my attention this week. In it, the author examined some of the investments Microsoft is making in the unified communications space. While I didn't agree with all of the conclusions it contained, the article certainly underscored the interest in communications and collaboration and how to make people more productive. Communicating and collaborating with others is really at the heart of what we do every day. Whether at work or at home, people have the need to make meaningful connections with one another. Compounding that need are the realities of the world we live in where instant access to information is expected, friends and coworkers are scattered across geographies and many adults are juggling multiple mobile devices. At Microsoft, we believe technology isn't the problem to these complexities, it's the answer. We're committed to providing capabilities that help people make sense of it all and to do so in a way that is intuitive, barrier free and agnostic to the devices on which we rely. We're incredibly proud of the fact that our long term-term vision for communications and collaboration not only marries the best of the cloud and the desktop, it's a holistic approach that spans "from the living room to the boardroom" placing people at the center of everything we do. Our communication and collaboration vision comes to life utilizing client and cloud assets, including Lync, Skype, Yammer, Outlook and SharePoint. These tools are enabling enterprise social capabilities, HD video conferencing and document collaboration as part of a highly secured, reliable and extensible platform. At the risk of looking geeky, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Lync and it's comforting to know I'm not alone. More than 90% of

Today's post was written by Howard Kourik, Director, Information Systems, San Diego County Regional Airport Authority The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority manages operations at one of Southern California's busiest regional airports, San Diego International. We were created to serve the public and have a mandate from the state of California to address the local area's long-term transportation needs. While we are a public entity, we function very much like any other business. In fact, we don't accept any tax dollars to support our operations. Instead, we rely on landing fees, the rent we receive from tenants, and a percentage of the profits from concessions-the restaurants, newsstands, and other shops located in the airport-to fund our growth. And like every business, we're constantly looking for ways to bring down our costs by operating more efficiently. We evaluated a lot of technologies to help us trim costs, but we selected Office 365 because it not only saves money, it gives us what we need to meet future IT demands. With our eyes on current and future needs, we did some modeling to gauge regional demand for our airport services over the next decade. It quickly became clear that we needed to add runways, terminals, and other "bricks and mortar" facilities, and upgrade our network infrastructure. Still, the only way we could budget for that expansion was to reduce or eliminate some of our fixed capital costs. I knew that one important way we could trim expenses was by taking a closer look at the technology we use and how we manage it. Our email system offered a prime example of how, by rethinking the way we deliver core IT services, we could cut down on operational "drag" and potentially save our IT team lots of time. Historically, we've managed our email in a clustered environment across four physical servers. So, we were not only worrying about the cost of the servers; we had to invest in mirroring software and an antivirus so

Right around the same time as we moved into our new digs on Market Street, we launched Yammer's civic engagement initiative called Mid-Market Matters, which focuses our community efforts on issues affecting our new neighborhood. Through this initiative we encourage Yammer employees to get out of the office (as beautiful as it is) and interact with our neighbors - whether that means grabbing a coffee at MaVelous, taking dance classes at LINES Dance Center, or volunteering at a local non-profit. Up until the 1950s the Mid-Market neighborhood was a thriving theater district. www.office.com/setup (UPFROMTHEDEEP.COM POSTCARD, CIRCA 1957) www.office.com/setup (SOURCE: SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SF PUBLICLIBRARY) However, after years of neglect and the unfortunate consequences of various policy decisions, we were left with many empty storefronts and a haven for illicit activity. www.office.com/setup (SOURCE: UPFROMTHEDEEP.COM) After numerous attempts at revitalization, it seems we finally have a fighting chance to make some lasting improvements to the area. Thanks to the public-private partnerships formed and the intense focus by all parties involved, we hope to make a difference in the lives of Mid-Market residents and businesses. . This time around everyone is at the table (transit, the arts, non-profits, the Mayor's office, and the business community). We all want to bring Market Street back to its former glory! Since January we've been busy! So far we've sent 70 employees to St Anthony's Foundation to serve meals and sort clothes: www.office.com/setup We've donated 50 monitors to the Tenderloin Tech Lab. www.office.com/setup 15 employees volunteered at the Tenderloin Community School to help teachers with classroom activities www.office.com/setup And we've sent a few folks out to keep the streets safe while kids get to their afterschool programs. www.office.com/setup This Friday April 12th, Yammer is giving back in a big way. Al

Last week, we welcomed Brian Solis, Altimeter principal analyst, thought leader and book author, to Yammer HQ to give a fireside chat, followed by signing of his new book: "What's The Future of Business?" I was thrilled to interview Brian, and we covered a variety of really meaty subjects - just check out the video below!

www.office.com/setup Blogs: When it comes to technology in the workplace, most every convenience is balanced against a potential threat. Email and the cloud-for as much as they've revolutionized the way we do business-have enabled new methods of theft and fraud and necessitated new regulations. That means planning a secure future for your company is no easy task. Thankfully, you don't have to set out on the road to protection without a map. Keeping a few key considerations in mind can help guide your way and keep your business safe from harm.

Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, and Google's top rated Futurist Speaker. Unlike most speakers, Thomas works closely with his Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies. This enables him to speak on unusual topics and translate trends into unique business opportunities.

A few years ago I was taking a tour of a dome shaped house, and the architect explained to me that domes are an optical illusion. Whenever someone enters a room, their eyes inadvertently glance up at the corners of the room to give them the contextual dimensions of the space they're in.

Part of the thrill of working for the Office Division is the opportunity to tackle thorny business issues on behalf of our customers while providing them with a road map for the future. That may be why an interesting article caught my attention this week. In it, the author examined some of the investments Microsoft is making in the unified communications space. While I didn't agree with all of the conclusions it contained, the article certainly underscored the interest in communications and collaboration and how to make people more productive.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last week, Outlook for Mac released two highly requested features designed to help you get more done, quickly. First, we added support for the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro users. Through the Touch Bar, we intelligently put the most common inbox, formatting and view commands at your fingertips-all based on what you're doing in Outlook. Additionally, we're bringing your favorite apps to your inbox with add-ins for Outlook for Mac. Whether it's translating emails on the fly or updating your notes or project board, you will now be able to accomplish all this and more right from your inbox. These add-ins are also available across Outlook for Windows, iOS and the web, so your favorite apps are always there to help you accomplish tasks quickly. Here's a look at what's new! INTUITIVE COMMANDS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS WITH TOUCH BAR SUPPORT IN OUTLOOK FOR MAC The Touch Bar in Outlook intelligently provides quick access to the most commonly used commands as you work on email and manage your calendar. When composing a new mail or meeting request, the Touch Bar displays the common formatting options. When viewing your calendar, you can switch between different views. And when viewing the reminders window, you can join an online meeting with one tap on the Touch Bar. www.office.com/setup Support for Touch Bar in Outlook for Mac is available to all Office 365 subscribers, as well as all Office 2016 for Mac customers. ACCOMPLISH TASKS QUICKLY WITH NEW ADD-INS Add-ins bring your favorite apps right inside Outlook, so you can accomplish tasks quickly without needing to switch back and forth between email and other apps. Last year, we announced the rollout of add-ins to Outlook 2016 for Mac in Office Insider. We are now making add-ins available to all Outlook 2016 for Mac customers who have Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 or higher, or Office 365 or Outlook.com mailboxes. Use these add-ins to translate emails on the fly, edit a record in your CRM s

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last week, Outlook for Mac released two highly requested features designed to help you get more done, quickly. First, we added support for the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro users. Through the Touch Bar, we intelligently put the most common inbox, formatting and view commands at your fingertips-all based on what you're doing in Outlook. Additionally, we're bringing your favorite apps to your inbox with add-ins for Outlook for Mac. Whether it's translating emails on the fly or updating your notes or project board, you will now be able to accomplish all this and more right from your inbox. These add-ins are also available across Outlook for Windows, iOS and the web, so your favorite apps are always there to help you accomplish tasks quickly. Here's a look at what's new! INTUITIVE COMMANDS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS WITH TOUCH BAR SUPPORT IN OUTLOOK FOR MAC The Touch Bar in Outlook intelligently provides quick access to the most commonly used commands as you work on email and manage your calendar. When composing a new mail or meeting request, the Touch Bar displays the common formatting options. When viewing your calendar, you can switch between different views. And when viewing the reminders window, you can join an online meeting with one tap on the Touch Bar. www.office.com/setup Support for Touch Bar in Outlook for Mac is available to all Office 365 subscribers, as well as all Office 2016 for Mac customers. ACCOMPLISH TASKS QUICKLY WITH NEW ADD-INS Add-ins bring your favorite apps right inside Outlook, so you can accomplish tasks quickly without needing to switch back and forth between email and other apps. Last year, we announced the rollout of add-ins to Outlook 2016 for Mac in Office Insider. We are now making add-ins available to all Outlook 2016 for Mac customers who have Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 or higher, or Office 365 or Outlook.com mailboxes. Use these add-ins to translate emails on the fly, edit a record in your CRM s