Group items tagged

If you're a fan of PowerPoint, you may have heard about Microsoft's latest presentation tool, Microsoft Sway. With Sway, you can create and share presentations like never before! In today's blog, we'll give you a basic overview as to what Sway can do as well as some of our personal favorite features. Let's dive in!

If you've got a really killer PowerPoint presentation but would like to extract all the information to Microsoft Word - you can. Sometimes this is necessary because the size of your PowerPoint presentation is rather large and you would like to share it with others over email or an intranet. Converting it to Word will help reduce the size and make it easier to view for everyone involved. It's also possible that you would like your slides presented as thumbnails, with or without speaker notes included, for easier reviewing, editing, or handing out during the presentation itself. You can convert your presentation in one of three ways. The directions for converting on a Mac OS and a Windows OS are as follows. If you're feeling a bit ambitious, why not become a PowerPoint Ninja?

Pre-installed copies of Office may come with a product key, or it will activate over the Internet with no product key being required. If the product key is not required, please note that this is a limited time offer and expires six months after you activate Windows. The expiry date will be shown as below.

You have 15 minutes of your Senior Manager's time. Your goal: encourage his/her participation on Yammer. What are the three items you would focus on? Sounds like an awesome challenge, doesn't it? This was exactly the challenge that one of our customers Ernst Décsey, Intranet Manager from UNICEF posed in the YCN, Yammer Champion Community. His question was greeted with a flurry of amazing responses, which we just had to share here (with participants' permissions of course!)

In order to be taken seriously, small businesses need to convince customers of their professional ability and their value. Small businesses can punch above their weight by taking the time to go to market with a professional set of business documents, templates and content to ensure customers aren't dismissing them before they have a chance to pitch the value of their product or service.

Small businesses have enough to focus on without having to spend time and energy worrying about email, data storage or backup servers. In fact, most small businesses don't know or understand what a server is. The good news is that in today's technology environment, they don't need to. This is because more small businesses are rapidly moving from outdated technology solutions to Web-based solutions to power their company, also known as "moving to the cloud." By moving to cloud solutions like Office 365, small businesses find they can concentrate their resources on growing their business rather than trying to solve technical issues.

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at the Microsoft Community Summit about communities of practice - their business value, how they are different from other internal and external communities, and strategies for success in starting them up and growing them in a sustainable way. I invite you to view the presentation embedded below; here are some main points.

We're excited to announce a major upgrade for our Outlook.com app for Android devices that overhauls the entire user interface and provides a number of new features. You can get the latest app here.

When FHI 360 wanted to move to cloud-based business productivity services, the organization decided to implement a Microsoft cloud-based solution. We recently spoke to Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT Infrastructure at FHI 360, to learn how the company is benefiting: FHI360 logoQ: Please tell us about FHI 360. Douglas Wilkins: FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Our staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender equality, youth, research, technology, communication, and social marketing-creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today's interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 serves more than 60 countries and all US states and territories. Q: Why did you want to move to cloud-based services for messaging and collaboration? Wilkins: We had a diverse IT infrastructure. Employees in the US had different IT toolsets and Internet access than staff in countries like Mozambique. Subscribing employees to a single, cloud-based solution was the most expedient way to ensure that everyone had the same IT tools, to work efficiently regardless of location. Migrating our communication and collaboration technologies to the cloud reduced much of the time required by our IT staff to manage divergent IT infrastructures and connectivity options found around the world. Q: What criteria did you use to select Microsoft as your vendor for cloud-based business productivity services? Wilkins: We wanted a vendor that demonstrated a real interest in our mission and goals, and that offered online business productivity tools tailored for the enterprise space. The capabilities of the Microsoft Services Consulting team, and the work of Intellinet, the partner Microsoft introduced us to, provided us with that. We migrated our 4,300 staff members around the world from diverse platforms to a Microsoft Offi

Guest blogger Emily Warn is co-owner of Two Pens, which provides blogging services and teaches business how to write content that grows a social media following. My writer friends think I'm a geek. You can do what?! I can create a spreadsheet with book sales numbers that can be sorted by name and number. I know that is only the first rung of Excel Geek-dom, and unlike my compatriots, I aspire to climb into the ranks of those who know how to create snazzy charts and perform other formatting feats. Perhaps I'll be able to brand myself as a writer who plays with numbers.

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.

Every couple weeks, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. We hope you enjoy our latest selections. The Office 365 Upgrade: New Outlook Web App. The new Office 365 includes "a vastly improved" Outlook Web App. ABB Deploys Office 365 and Yammer Worldwide. Power automation firm ABB plans to deploy Office 365 to its 145,000 employees around the world. V8 Supercar Races Off with Microsoft Office 365. V8 Supercars chooses Office 365 because of trust in Microsoft brand. Microsoft's Lync Communications Platform Used by President Obama's Re-election Campaign. The Obama campaign used the Lync platform during the 2012 elections, enabling staff to work from anywhere. Why Office 365 Makes Sense for Small Business. Three compelling reasons why Office 365 may make sense for small businesses: a low upfront cost, multiple licenses, and Exchange Online. Microsoft's Top Ten SharePoint Online Features. A senior product manager on the SharePoint Team shares his top 10 features of SharePoint Online. Microsoft Turns Up 'Scroogled' Attacks with Campaign Against Google Apps. Microsoft calls on Google to stop providing user information to third-party Android developers.

You can access and share Office documents with browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Learn some of the basics and the latest features of these free tools. Note: Office Online was formerly known as Office Web Apps. There is an updated webinar about Office Online at http://aka.ms/online123.

Social apps can make working with Office 2013 more engaging, efficient, and fun. They combine the networking and outreach capabilities of social media sites with the mobile productivity power of Office. Together, Office and social apps give you more insight into your contacts, allow you to monitor your social channels without using a browser, and can spice up your SharePoint sites in ways that you'll "like" (thumbs up). The LinkedIn for Outlook app is one of the most popular of the social apps. It lets you see LinkedIn profile data for your contacts while you are using Outlook. Not only can this app give you greater insight into your email contacts, it can help you build your professional network quickly from one of your most valuable professional resources: your Outlook contact list. Likewise, if you're an active Tweeter, you may want to add the ExTweet app to your library. It offers a way to display real-time Tweets that match the data in your Excel workbook. From the most popular social media website comes the Facebook Integration App. Use it to add Facebook social plug-ins to your SharePoint site so people can interact with it as they would a Facebook page. It can make your site more social by encouraging increased user engagement and eliciting immediate feedback and comments. Similarly, the ConnectWithUs app lets you connect your SharePoint site to your page on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, or any other community. These are just a few examples of apps that work with the Office applications you use every day to make them even more dynamic and useful. Explore the Office Apps Store to find more apps for Office 2013 that can make your work easier, increase your productivity, and help you have fun.

As announced earlier today, over the next few days we are releasing an update to Microsoft account. For people who use Outlook.com, this includes a number of new features such as two-step verification, the ability to sign in with an alias and new international domains for your email address. OPTIONAL TWO-STEP VERIFICATION HELPS KEEP YOU MORE SECURE You can now choose to enable two-step verification for your entire account. Two-step verification is when we ask you for two pieces of information when you sign in to your account-your password plus a code sent to a phone or email that you gave us as security info. Many of you have asked for this and we're delighted to be able to offer this capability. Two-step verification is a great way to add extra protection to your account. Once you've enabled two-step verification, even if a criminal gets your password (for example, through malware on a friend's machine that you used, or if you use the same password for another service that gets breached) they can't access your account.

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!

Today's post was written by Jacob Guttman, IT Manager, Menchies It's hard to believe it when you look at our rapid growth, but Menchies is still a very young company. We were founded in 2007 with a single store in Valley Village, California. Now, we have more than 300 franchise locations around the world. Maintaining connections between Menchies headquarters, the franchise community, and our guests is critical to our success.

A teacher would never be satisfied with her performance if she discovered that the entire back row of her classroom was unable to hear her lecture. In the world of cloud services for business, we see things the same way. With Office 365, every user counts! Google has a different approach. It starts counting downtime only after at least 5 percent of users are affected. Imagine if 100 of your 2,000 users had no access to email. Would you, as an IT professional, be satisfied with your performance? Would your business hold you accountable for your performance? The answers to these questions are clear. Calculating downtime only after 5 percent of your users cannot access email, as Google does, makes it more difficult for you to assess impact to user productivity. Google's approach doesn't help your business with meaningful performance metrics.

Over the past few months, customers across the globe and from a wide range of industries have chosen Office 365 to communicate and collaborate more effectively using familiar cloud based applications they know and trust. The retail industry is using technology more than ever to stay competitive while better serving the needs of their customers. In January we shared how large companies like Tescoand Helly Hansen have joined other notable brands such as, 'wichcraft, BCBG, and Sephora who are moving to Office 365 for security-enhanced access to the familiar productivity tools they rely on at all levels of their business. Office 365 has become the go-to-choice for retailers looking to move their productivity to the cloud - in fact, our retail customers employ more than 8 million people worldwide, more than the total population of Hong Kong!

The concept of a 'physical office' as a small business hub of productivity is quickly being replaced by the connected 'mobile office,' which connects employees wherever they happen to be. Today's business landscape favors those who are nimble and able to adapt rapidly by collaborating on the go, sharing ideas quickly and anticipating customer needs. Luckily, small businesses today can achieve this dynamic work environment through the use of Web-based software available for both desktop and mobile platforms. Web-based software is known as 'cloud services' or as 'the cloud' for short. Today, small businesses have access to IT solutions that were previously only available to enterprises - allowing them to punch above their weight class and better compete in their industry. By taking advantage of these Web-based and mobile solutions, small businesses can effectively run their company from anywhere - even from a mobile device or tablet.