Windows XP End of Support

Greetings ! As you may be probably aware , the support for Windows XP officially ends on 8 April 2014. As a user , what does it mean to you? I will try and answer few of those questions:  

Security Issues

Post 8 April 2014, any security vulnerability which is discovered , will not be patched. So the unpatched Computer will be open to infection . And an infected machine will then most likely infect other Computers in the network. So if your Computer is in a network or is connected to Internet , then using such a PC is a big risk. However , if you are not connected to the Internet and working as a Standalone PC, then the risk is minimal.  

Driver Support

You may say that even if Microsoft does not issue a security patch , you have a third party anti virus to protect you. The bad news is that these products will not be tested for XP. Your other applications also will not be tested for XP post the deadline. So over time, the XP machines are likely to become unstable . And new applications will simply not work on XP.  

Solution

You should consider to move to a current computer with a current operating system. And with imminent launch of Windows 8.1, it will be the ideal time to upgrade your PC . Of course, you do have Windows 8 PC available even today. In fact , more than 100 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold so far.  However , if you are still reluctant to dump Windows XP, then at least ensure that

 a) It is not connected to Internet

b) It is not connected to other computers

Wish you Happy and Safe Computing !


with warm regards

Suresh Ramani www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

What is Email Journaling

 

Greetings !

Email is by far the most important mode of Business Communication. Most of the businesses would simply come to a stand still if Email is banned from use. However , Email is also a source of Data Leakage in an Organization. Hence Companies need to implement processes to minimize the data leakage via Email. One such effective method of minimizing data leakage is Journaling.

 

What is Email Journaling

Simply put , for every mail which is received or sent by any user in an Organization, a copy is generated and mailed to a pre defined mail box. The access to this Journal Mailbox is restricted. One can define the users to be covered by Email Journaling. The best way is to cover all users . Democracy !

 

How does Journaling differ from Archiving

Journaling is the ability to record email communications, in an organization

Archiving refers to backing up the data, removing it from its native environment, and storing it elsewhere, therefore reducing the strain of data storage.

Journal Rules and scope

The following are key aspects of journal rules:

•Journal rule scope Defines which messages are journaled by the Journaling agent.

•Journal recipient Specifies the SMTP address of the recipient you want to journal.

•Journaling mailbox Specifies one or more mailboxes used for collecting journal reports.

Note:

In Office 365, the maximum number of journal rules you can create is 10.

Journal rule scope

You can use a journal rule to journal only internal messages, only external messages, or both. The following list describes these scopes:

•Internal messages only Journal rules with the scope set to journal internal messages sent between the recipients inside your Exchange organization.

•External messages only Journal rules with the scope set to journal external messages sent to recipients or received from senders outside your Exchange organization.

•All messages Journal rules with the scope set to journal all messages that pass through your organization regardless of origin or destination. These include messages that may have already been processed by journal rules in the Internal and External scopes.

Journal recipient

You can implement targeted journaling rules by specifying the SMTP address of the recipient you want to journal. These recipients may be subject to regulatory requirements, or they may be involved in legal proceedings where email messages or other communications are collected as evidence. By targeting specific recipients or groups of recipients, you can easily configure a journaling environment that matches your organization's processes and meets regulatory and legal requirements. Targeting only the specific recipients that need to be journaled also minimizes storage and other costs associated with retention of large amounts of data.

All messages sent to or from the journaling recipients you specify in a journaling rule are journaled. If you specify a distribution group as the journaling recipient, all messages sent to or from members of the distribution group are journaled. If you don't specify a journaling recipient, all messages sent to or from recipients that match the journal rule scope are journaled.

Journaling mailbox

The journaling mailbox is used to collect journal reports. How you configure the journaling mailbox depends on your organization's policies, regulatory requirements, and legal requirements. You can specify one journaling mailbox to collect messages for all the journal rules configured in the organization, or you can use different journaling mailboxes for different journal rules or sets of journal rules.

Important:

You can't designate an Office 365 mailbox as a journaling mailbox for on-premises mailboxes. If you’re running a hybrid deployment with your mailboxes split between on-premises servers and Office 365, you can designate an on-premises mailbox as the journaling mailbox for your Office 365 and on-premises mailboxes.

 

Usage Scenarios

To meet an increasing number of regulatory and compliance requirements, many organizations must maintain records of communications that occur when employees perform daily business tasks.

For eg. corporate officers in some financial sectors may be held liable for the claims made by their employees to their customers. To verify that the claims are accurate, a corporate officer may set up a system where managers review some part of employee-to-client communications regularly

Another usage is to have a backup of all Emails . Some Customers in fact do not take backup of individual users. They only backup Journal Mailbox .

 

So how does one setup Email Journaling

Here’s how we have setup Journaling in our Company. First we create a group containing the members whose mails need to be journaled. The group name is AllUsers as seen below:

Once the rule is enabled , then the magic begins. What you see below is the Distribution Group AllUsers whose members have been defined as per previous snapshot.

Now you are good to go. Given below is the snap shot of Outlook one of the users  :

The same mail has also been sent to Journal mailbox which has been created on Outlook.com which has also collected mails from other users:

I do hope that you have understood the importance of Journaling. Get started today. You need to implement the same at the earliest !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

What is SkyDrive Pro

 

Greetings !

In my last post, I discussed about my personal Cloud which is SkyDrive . Today I shall talk about SkyDrive Pro .

 

Difference between SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro

The first question which will come to anyone’s mind is how’s SkyDrive Pro different from SkyDrive ? So here we go:

1) SkyDrive is your Personal Cloud which can be used to store your documents, pictures, videos , songs . SkyDrive Pro on the other hand is your Professional Cloud. And it is primarily to store your documents since in our professional work , we mainly work with documents .

2) SkyDrive Cloud is hosted as a free service on Microsoft Servers. SkyDrive Pro Cloud on the other hand, is hosted on SharePoint , whether On Premise or Online, as a part of Office365 Cloud Service . So it is essentially a part of your Company Intranet .

3) The document storage in SkyDrive is simple storage without any version control. The documents in SkyDrive Pro have built in capability of version control.

4) You can add ratings feature to your SkyDrive Pro document library . This is not available in SkyDrive .

How do you get SkyDrive Pro

SkyDrive Pro comes in 2 parts

a) A component of Microsoft SharePoint , either SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server

b) Client component of Office 2013 Pro Plus .

So when you install Office 2013 Pro Plus , the SkyDrive Pro gets auto installed . But kindly note that unless you have SharePoint , the SkyDrive Pro does not have much use. So it would be correct to state that SkyDrive Pro = SharePoint + Office Pro plus 2013

This is My SkyDrive Pro

Now let me deep dive into my SkyDrive Pro . Given below is the screen shot of my PC. I have highlighted 2 icons a) SkyDrive b) SharePoint . The SkyDrive icon is my SkyDrive . The SharePoint icon is actually the SkyDrive Pro icon.

Now let me go inside my SharePoint ( SkyDrive Pro ) folder :

As can be seen , I have 6 folders in my SharePoint folder . Of these , there are 2 Admin folders , 2 Marketing folders , 1 Sales folder , 1 Jobs & Hiring folder .

Now let me go one level deeper into the Techgyan Events folder within Marketing:

As is seen above, I have highlighted the path . Within the Techgyan Events , you can see 6 folders representing 6 events which we have recently hosted. Against each folder on the left , you can see a green tick indicating that the folder is in sync with the Cloud. These folders are all on my PC. And where is the Cloud? Lets see that :

The Cloud is on our SharePoint which is part of our Office365 Service hosted and managed by Microsoft .I have highlighted few portions as follows:

1) The Internet path where our SharePoint is located

2) The Marketing Team site

3) TechGyan Events

And within TechGyan events are the same folders which appear above on my PC as local folders.

So the way I use SkyDrive Pro is that I have offline access to various document libraries of different Teams in our Company like Sales, Admin, Marketing . These folders are shared with the respective Team members . So whether I am in office or outside, I am actually working on files available on the hard disk of my local PC . This gives me great speed as I work on files which are locally available and NOT on the Internet nor on my SharePoint site .

 

SkyDrive Pro usage scenarios

So having understood the above , SkyDrive Pro gives rise to various interesting scenarios :

1) If I go to outstation and I do not have access to Internet continuously, I need not stop my work. I would continue to work . And as soon as the PC senses Internet connection, it will automatically sync the changes to my SharePoint Server . And it will only sync the delta changes , making it extremely fast .

2) If my Office Internet has slowed down for any reason, I don’t have to slow down as I am working locally on my PC . All my edits will get auto synced with my SharePoint server depending on the speed of my Internet. But that does not affect my work as I continue to work with the locally available SharePoint files.

3) This also is a great way to have an offline backup of my SharePoint data .

Hopefully I have been able to explain to you what is SkyDrive Pro. Trust me, its an awesome technology once you start using it . This one piece of Technology can improve your productivity by leaps and bounds. Seriously !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

SkyDrive is my PC

 

Greetings !

Over past many months , various “so-called” experts have been predicting death of the PC. While I have own strong views about this which are contrary to the views of these experts , today I will share with you something pretty fundamental which has happened to the way I use Computers . In fact I will go to state that in past few months , the PC for me no longer means “Personal Computer “. It now means “Personal Cloud” . And while there are few popular “Personal Clouds “ out there , what I will focus is the personal cloud , or lets call it PC , that I use. My PC of choice is SkyDrive.

How do you get SkyDrive

First question is , how does one get SkyDrive ? This one is a no brainer. Anyone who uses Hotmail or live id , already has SkyDrive . And now with Hotmail being retired, you can go to www.outlook.com and signup for new email id with @outlook.com . Once you login to your account, you will get the following option as shown here :

Click on the SkyDrive option and you are good to go !

My SkyDrive

Let me now take you inside my SkyDrive. This is how my SkyDrive looks:

At bottom left corner, it tells me that I have 21.6 GB space available. I can also get SkyDrive apps for PC, Windows Phone and other platforms as SkyDrive is true cross platform solution.

Just above that is the list of my various PC’s which access SkyDrive. Above that are some of the groups I have created .

In the center are the various folders I have created for my Data, Pictures, Videos.

 

SkyDrive Office WebApps

One killer feature of SkyDrive which is lacking in other Cloud Solutions is the support of Office WebApps . I can open and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote in a browser. Yes. You read it right. You can edit MS Office documents which are stored on SkyDrive directly in a browser without needing to use MS Office stored on your PC . And Office WebApps on SkyDrive support co-authoring meaning multiple people can edit the same file at the same time. How cool is that !

 

SkyDrive PhotoApp

The Photo sharing app on SkyDrive is wonderful. I use it extensively to store my digital pictures . In functionality , it is comparable to the best dedicated photo sharing applications available.

SkyDrive App for Windows OS

This is by far the killer feature as far as I am concerned. I have downloaded SkyDrive App on my PC . This creates a SkyDrive folder on my PC . Next I decide which SkyDrive folders I wish to sync with the PC SkyDrive folder . So I can select folder a, b, c , d to sync with my Office PC. Next I can select folder a and b to sync with my home PC.

Now whatever data I create in my SkyDrive folder of my PC gets synced with my SkyDrive Cloud. This gives me an effective online backup solution. And if I add or edit anything online, the same gets reflected on my local hard disk .

I typically work on my hard disk as it is much faster . But while I am working on the hard disk of my PC, the SkyDrive app is pushing the data into my Personal Cloud giving me an online backup.

SkyDrive App for Windows Phone

I have also downloaded the SkyDrive app for my Windows Phone. So using SkyDrive app on my phone, I can access the complete SkyDrive which in my case is of 25 GB. I can not only access my files, but also work on them using my phone. And the edits I do using my phone get synced with all my Computers which are connected with my SkyDrive Account. I can also send a link to my SkyDrive file to anyone by email.

 

Conclusion

For me, SkyDrive has become one of the most useful applications . It has truly made me mobile . I can now work on my Data from any device . While there are other Cloud Solutions out there which offer some of the functions of SkyDrive , I prefer SkyDrive due to following reasons :

1) Ability to use Office Web apps , which is missing in other services.

2) I can buy extra storage at a nominal cost from Microsoft. And I can increase my storage to mind boggling 100 GB

3) I trust Microsoft more than other services like Dropbox, Box, etc. The reason is that most of the other services are currently running on VC money . They do not have any revenue model . So they may go down any time . But Microsoft is one Company which will not disappear in a hurry. And they cannot allow negative publicity to affect their other profitable business . So my data will remain secure with Microsoft as compared to others.

So go ahead and give SkyDrive a try. You will fall in love with it . Take it from me.

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

Microsoft MVP 2009
Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year 2011 & 2007

Office365 new plans announced

Greetings !

Yesterday Microsoft announced a few major changes in their Industry leading Cloud Service Office365 . I will highlight some of those changes which to me appear most exciting .

1) Office365 E1 Enterprise Plan

This Plan was available at USD 8 per user per month and it consisted of :

MS Exchange for Messaging

MS SharePoint for Collaboration and Public website

MS Lync for Communication

What’s new is that without changing the price , Office Web Apps are now bundled in this plan. This means that that if you subscribe to this plan , you can also get the Web edition of MS Office consisting of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote . So you can edit any Office document using any browser . How cool is that ! Great Value and a BIG Thumbs Up from me.

2) Office365 Mid Business Plan

This is a new member of the Office365 family . It is meant for Companies upto 300 users . The plan price is USD 15 per user per month and you get:

MS Exchange for Messaging

MS SharePoint for Collaboration and Public website

MS Lync for Communication

Office Web Apps

MS Office Professional Plus

To understand what you will get in Office Professional Plus, click here .

You can download the copy of MS Office on your PC and use it. Also you can install it on upto 5 devices . Besides, you will always get the latest edition . To know more about MS Office as a Service, click here .

I believe Ofice365 Mid Business has “winner “ written all over it .

I shall come back with other changes in Office365 later.

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Microsoft MVP 2009
Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year 2011 & 2007

Nokia Lumia 920 The Best Smartphone in the World

Greetings !

 

Yesterday I was invited for a preview of new Windows Phone 8 models being launched by Nokia next week in India.  There are 2 models being launched   :

 

a) The Lumia 920

b) The Lumia 820

 

This post will focus on 920 as it is truly a mind blowing phone !

 

The event began with the Nokia representative gives some details of the Lumia Sales. Nokia has sold more than 100,000 Lumia units only during the 4 days of Diwali in November . That's pretty decent ! They also cracked the largest Corporate deal involving 4500 Lumia devices . Very Impressive . Makes me wonder about the crap dished out by experts saying that Lumia sales are very poor!  These experts can be really biased ! And they are biased against Windows Platform for sure!

 

Next we were given some hardware specs of the models . I have summarized some of these in this post below. We were told of various awards won by Nokia Lumia 920 . These have also been summarized below.

 

Pricing:

 

The indicative pricing of the models which will be released next week are:

 

Lumia 920 @ Rs. 37000/=

 

Lumia 820 @ Rs. 27000/=

 

Demos

We then saw some jaw dropping demos:

 

a) Camera quality vs. Samsung Galaxy  for night picture

No comparison here . Lumia was miles ahead

 

b) Optical Image Stabilization

The video shot with 920 was rock steady. The one with Samsung Galaxy was wobbly.

 

c) Nokia Lens by which one can remove unwanted objects from the picture.

 

d) Great Sound

 

Given below is the summary of the hardware specs

 

Specifications:

Lumia 920 has many things which are better or You don't have at all with iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S3:

 1. The best screen - 2.4x faster than Samsung S3's screen and 5.4x faster than iPhone 5's screen (tested with Lagom test). Super sensitive and bright screen that can be used with gloves or finger nails.  It's the first smartphone in the world to deliver a full 60 frames-per-second (FPS) without any blurring.

2. It has 3pcs HAAC (High Amplitude Audio Capture) microphones and so the recorded audio is distortion free also at the loudest music performances and it can record also very low bass sound vs its rivals has nonHAAC mics and so the recorded audio at music concert recordings is mostly distorted and they can't capture low bass sound.

3. Nokia Lumia 920 is the first smartphone which has pentaband LTE support.

4. Nokia Lumia 920 is the first smartphone with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) system which makes it possible to get better photos in the low light and makes more stable videos. Floating-lens PureView camera with optical image stabilization

5. Nokia Lumia 920 is the first smartphone with integrated wireless charging.

6. WP8 is smooth, efficient and simple. MS Word & Excel seamlessly integrated.

7. Free Apps: City Lens, Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, Smartshoot etc. Augmented reality City Lens is very cool.

8. Aluminium cover of iPhone 5 and Samsung S3 gets broken easier than Lumia 920's polycarbonate cover - polycarbonate is used for example with bulletproof windows

9. Premium GPS that can be used also without internet!

10. NFC ( Near Field Communications)

11. Rich sound recording in vids

12. Wireless Purity Pro headphones

 

 

The awards:

 

Before that , lets see some images. First lets see the Windows UI vs. Apple UI . Clearly the Apple iPhone UI looks very tired as compared to super sleek LIVE Tiles of Microsoft.

 

 

 

Now lets see the 920 in full glory. Its looks absolutely gorgeous !

 

 

 

 Awards Won By Nokia Lumia 920

 

The Top Smartphone of 2012, V3, UK

Top rated product on Amazon based on Customer reviews

The Best Mobile Phone of 2012, Readers Choice Award, Gizmodo, Australia.

iF Award for Outstanding Design, International Forum Design, Germany

Mobil Award for Best Smartphone Design, Mobile Magazine, Denmark

Best Smartphones of 2012, The Next Web, USA

Top Score Award, Mobil, Sweden

The Best High End Smartphones for the Holidays, CNET, USA

Best Productivity Phone, Best Camera Phone, Best Mapping Phone, Best Windows Phone, Runner up, Arstechnic, USA

Top 25 Tech of 2012, Mashable, USA

Top Smartphone of the Year, Mybroadband, South Africa

Best AT&T Smartphones of 2012, BGR, USA

 

 

I am totally convinced that over next few months, Windows Phone 8 will keep gaining marketshare and in particular, the Lumia range will be a big Winner . Willing to bet ?

with warm regards

 

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

 

Microsoft MVP 2009
Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year 2011 & 2007

Windows 8 for Business

Greetings !

Just before the year ended , we did a wonderful event on "Windows 8 for Business" on December 27, 2012 , at the ITC Grand Central .

First , Mr Satabdee Hait  of Microsoft started the proceedings by doing a detailed presentation cum demo on Windows 8 features specially those which are meant for business. He spoke about the following features:

• Direct Access
• Hyper V
• Windows to Go
• SkyDrive
• SkyDrive Pro

and many more.

Next it was my turn . I focused on the Microsoft Ecosystem and its advantages over the Apple and Google Ecosystems. And of course I spent some time on showing how comfortable it was to use on my old laptop which had no touch . Some of the business benefits I spoke about were :

1)  Much faster boot up time
2)  20% more battery life
3)  Live Tile User Interface
4)  Great apps for Windows 8

After the formal part was over , we cut the cake welcoming Windows 8 . After that we took a few Group pictures. These have been put up on the events page of Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151389583268530.488937.118067228529&type=1

There was also a small Nokia Counter where we had latest Windows 8 based Lumia Smartphones on display . Many Customers showed interest in the devices on display.

All in all , the Customers were hopefully clear that Windows 8 is THE BEST EVER Operating System for a Business User.

with warm regards
Suresh Ramani www.TechGyan.com
Microsoft MVP 2009
Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year 2011 & 2007