Managing Team Tasks in Office365

 

Teams are a reality for every Company , Large or Small. These Teams usually have a Team Leader whose job it is to ensure that Team members work in unison and complete the Team tasks .

In order to effectively manage the Team Tasks , the Team leader can make use of the Team tasks which is available in SharePoint , a part of Office365 . Let me show you how we make use of Team Tasks in our Company TechGyan.

Given below is the snapshot of our Team site “Admin “ . You can see various tasks that are created along with the name of the person to whom they are assigned ; status; priority; due date; % complete.

These tasks can be easily added and updated on SharePoint itself. For example, given below is the snapshot of one of the Tasks which has description of the Task . And being an update on SharePoint , you can see that it has various bells and whistles like Description , Workflow, Shared with, etc.

 

Alerts can also be set so that as soon as task is created , an alert can go to the person assigned the task. You can have various alerts configured as can be seen in the following snapshot below:

By itself, the above system is very efficient in managing the tasks between the Team members thereby improving the efficiency of the Team . But the functionality can be taken to the next level by integrating the Team tasks with the Outlook of the User . In the screenshot below , the Admin Tasks have been integrated with the local outlook on my PC :

 

In the above snapshot , the Admin Task list of SharePoint has been synced with my local Outlook . It appears to me as a regular Task item of Outlook. What that means to me is that I allocate tasks using Outlook without having the need to go to the SharePoint. However , in case I wish to allocate a task while I am on the rod, I can do that by going to SharePoint and updating the Task. This will then sync up with my outlook .

What this means

By implementing the Team tasks in SharePoint and then integrating the same with MS Outlook, we have created a very effective Platform within our Company which allows us to share and manage Team Tasks without bothering about the location of the Team members. This has considerably added to our productivity and mobility because ultimately Work = series of tasks . So if we can streamline Team Tasks , it means we have streamlined work . How’s that for Productivity !

So get going and implement Office365 based Team Tasks in your Company ! Now !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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

Benefits of Alias in Office365

 

There is a very useful feature available in Exchange Online . Its called alias. Today I will discuss the benefits of using alias in a Business. I shall show you how we use Alias within our Company TechGyan.

We have created a few aliases as follows:

Helpdesk : This is for existing Customers. They can send a mail to this alias if they wish to record a support call; they have some queries in billing ; they need any kind of information. In short , if an existing Customer needs to communicate with us , there is only one email id he should remember.

Sales : If a new Customer wants some information on our products or service or if we have to send a proposal , then this alias is used.

Services : If the Customer is discussing any issue with the Services Team

Infoline : General information

Officeadmin : Communication with Vendors

Advantage of alias :

In every Company , people change or leave . So it always creates a disconnect between the Company and the external stake holders . Mails bounce or go unanswered. To overcome this problem, we have created the above aliases in Exchange Online. They are also called as Distribution Lists . So if an existing Customer sends a mail to Helpdesk , there is a Distribution List linked to this alias by which , any email to Help Desk will get auto forwarded to the people in Distribution list . If any person in the list changes , we have to just remove old name and add new name . The alias name remains unaffected.

The above screen shot shows the general information about the alias Helpdesk

Other Features of Alias in Exchange Online:

1) Membership

The above screen shows the list of people who are members of this alias. Here you can add or remove people as per your requirement .

2) Membership approval

As shown above, various options are available. Group can be open or closed. Members can join it by themselves or only owners can add them.

3) Delivery management

You can create alias such that only senders inside the organization can send the mail . Or , as in our case for Helpdesk , you can specify that Senders from inside and outside the organization can send the mail

4) Message approval

Any messages sent to this alias could be moderated before being delivered. In our case, we have not kept any moderator as we want any Customer to contact our Helpdesk without restriction.

5) Group delegation

By creating Group delegation, a group member can send outgoing mail also as an alias

So in the above case , we have given kkalani and bnaik the required group delegation. What happens with that can be seen in the next screen shot:

In the above image, you can see that Kavita is sending mail from her outlook. But the outgoing mail has mail id of helpdesk@techgyan.com .

As you can understand, the alias feature in Exchange Online is very powerful and can be customized with various options. And the best part is that it is FREE . Which means , you can create as many aliases as you wish to and there will be no charges for the same.

So get going and implement Office365 aliases in your Company ! Now !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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

Task Sync in Office365

 

 

Work plays a very important role in our daily life . So what is work? It is nothing but a series of tasks . Tasks have different priorities , different due dates , different owners, etc.

One of the most efficient ways to manage Tasks is to use MS Outlook, which is part of MS Office . And most of the working people do in fact use Tasks . So typically , as soon as people reach workplace , they spend about 15 to 20 minutes to plan their schedule for the day using Tasks of MS Outlook. Needless to say , MS Outlook is the best tool for Task management.

When you use Office365 , the Tasks of Outlook are in complete sync with the Tasks of Outlook on a browser , also called as Outlook Web Access or OWA for short . So even if you do not have access to your PC with Outlook, it does not matter as your Tasks are available on the browser.

However , it does not stop here . If your Smartphone , like Windows Phone , is configured with Office365, you can get your Outlook Tasks even on your Phone . And this takes productivity to the next level. Let me explain this with a scenario.

So normally when you come to work, you would spend about 15 minutes planning your Tasks for the day using MS Outlook. All of us travel at least for 1 hour every day to Work. Now while travelling , you could easily plan your tasks on your Smartphone . So you could set a Task reminder like say a) at 3 PM to call Mr. Mehta or at 4 PM speak to Peter . And guess what , at 3 PM and 4 PM respectively, you will get reminders on Outlook of your Work PC. Similarly if you have set a reminder in MS outlook and at that time you are Out of Office, you will get reminder on your mobile. There is seamless integration of tasks between Outlook, Browser and mobile.

So what is the BIG DEAL ? I believe this is HUGE .

Savings

So if we assume that an average person takes about 15 minutes to plan his To Do list for the day , then for 100 people Company , the time taken will be 100 x 15 = 1500 minutes . That is 25 hours per day spent on planning the tasks for the Day.

Now if these 100 people use their Smartphones to plan their To Do , what will happen is that when they reach office , they will already find their To Do list updated . Which means a saving of 15 minutes per person which is 25 hours per day .

Now 25 hours x 25 working days = 625 hours saved per month .

That is 625 x 12 = 7500 hours saved per year

So at average cost to Company per hour per person being about Rs. 200, this translates to a saving of Rs. 15,00,000 . This is a HUGE increase in productivity .

So get going and implement Office365 Tasks Sync in your Company ! Now !

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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

Shared Email Address Book in Office365

 

 

In my daily interactions with many Companies , one common area where I see inefficiency is in managing Email Address Book . A majority of the Companies maintain Address Book at Individual levels. This leads to following problems :

1. Duplication of Contacts

If there is a 100 user Company , and all are part of Email system , then its quite likely that they would be using MS Outlook as Email Client . The reason is that it’s the BEST Email Client in the World . And  it is part of MS Office which is a de facto standard for any Business User. If we assume that the average number of Contacts per user are 500 , more often than not , about 300 will be contacts which are common with other users in the Company . So we have this scenario where 300 contacts are entered in 100 address books leading to a huge waste of time.

Now , if one Contact changes phone number or the address , that means 100 address books have to be updated. So much waste of precious time.

2. Searching for Contact information which already exists in Company

Contact Information is already existing in the Company . But that is with some users who have stored the same in their address books . If this information is required by someone who does not have this information, then the process of searching will start and will include browsing the Internet or even calling the person for his information. All this means wastage of the precious commodity called TIME .

We can resolve this issue using SharePoint , which comes bundled with Office365 . Let me explain using our example.

We have created a TechGyan Contacts List on our SharePoint as can be seen in the highlighted portion of the snapshot below:

 

 

Now , I have gone inside this list and selected a contact “Baburaj” . So what you see in the snapshot below is the contact form in SharePoint populated with the entry of the Contact

Next I have synced this Contact List with my Outlook . What you see on the highlighted portion on the left is the name “TechGyan Contacts “. And on the right is the same contact “baburaj” appearing as a regular Outlook contact .

 

 

 

 

Finally in the snapshot below , you see that the TechGyan Contacts address book appears as a Outlook Address Book from where you can pickup an address of your choice and mail the same.

 

Savings

So if we assume that an average person takes about 5 minutes to fill up an Outlook address contact , then for 300 contacts and 100 people Company , the time savings are:

5 x 300 x 100 = 1,50,000 minutes = 2500 hours

So at average cost to Company per hour per person being about Rs. 200, this translates to a saving of 5,00,000 . This is not a small saving by any measure.

And this saving will increase whenever the Contact has to be modified , updated . And when we calculate the savings , I am not calculating the time wasted in trying to find the information here and there and calling Customers and creating a sub optimal impression.

So hopefully I have given you a very strong justification for using Shared Contacts . So go ahead and start planning how to implement Shared Contacts within your Company . Start Now!

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 launched

 

I was recently invited to the launch of Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 in Mumbai. Not having any exposure to the Android World, I was a little hesitant to go . But then I thought it would be a good opportunity to see one of the leading Tablets of the Market . And since Enterprise Mobility is one of my core focus areas , it made sense to go.

I will not spend much time in hardware specs as they are available on the Web. I will talk about what I saw and liked/disliked.

Some good features are:

· 10.1” screen which appears smaller than 10.1”

· Record and play in full HD

· Reading mode which adjusts the screen to surrounding light, etc.

· Create your own menu screen for pinning apps , videos , etc. Similar to the start screen of Windows Tablet

· Multi tasking

· S-pen functionality . This is touted as one of the USP’s of the Tablet . You can for eg. Write a phone number and directly update your commands. Or you can scribble address and search the Maps directly . Very responsive pen.

· Scrapbooker . This lets you collect info from variety of media like YouTube, webpage, etc. This is again similar to the OneNote App

· S- finder . This is a decent Search

· Comes with 3G and wifi

So in my opinion , it is a well designed Tablet with good specs. Well suited for Content consumption. However , I found very little which can convince me that it can also be very useful for Work and Content creation .

And for that the price of Rs. 49,900/= did seem to be a little too steep to 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 Retention Polices for Email

 

Exchange Online, which comes bundled with Office365 , has a very unique feature for Email compliance . It is called Retention Policies.

It offers two types of policies: archive policies and delete policies . Exchange Online offers retention policies to help organizations reduce the liabilities associated with email and other communications. With these policies, administrators can apply retention settings to specific folders in users’ inboxes. Administrators can also give users a menu of retention policies and let them apply the policies to specific items, conversations, or folders using Outlook 2010 or later or Outlook Web App.

Exchange Online offers two types of policies: archive policies and delete policies. Both types can be combined on the same item or folder. For example, a user can tag an email message to be automatically moved to the In-Place Archive in a specified number of days and deleted after another span of days.

Have a look at some of the Retention Policies that you may use as is shown in the snapshot below:

Let me highlight this with my example . I receive many newsletters every day . So I have this rule that all newsletters should go to my Newsletter folder . That rule saves me time to manually move the item to the Newsletter folder. I can have a glance at them as per my convenience . I have also applied a retention policy to my Newsletter folder . The policy is “6 months deletion” . What happens is that as soon as any item in this folder crosses 6 months , it gets auto deleted. Have a look at the screen shot below :

The newsletter folder is highlighted on the left . And the folder policy is highlighted on the right. And it says 6 months.

With Outlook 2010 or later and Outlook Web App, users can apply retention policies to folders, conversations, or individual messages. They can also view the applied retention policies and expected deletion dates on messages. Users of other email clients can only have email messages deleted or archived based on server-side retention policies set by the administrator.

So by making intelligent use of Retention policies , you can manage your email system much better and at the same time ensure compliance also .

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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

Enhancements to Office365

 

Office365, the Cloud Service from Microsoft , has been enhanced in a major way recently. Let me share the improvements with you.

1) Exchange Online Plan P1 goes up from 25 GB to 50 GB per mailbox

2) Exchange Kiosk goes up from 1 GB to 2 GB per mailbox

3) Shared Mailbox storage doubled to 10 GB

4) Resource Mailbox storage doubled to 10 GB

5) Site Mailbox storage remains at 5 GB

6) SkyDrive Pro storage goes up from 5 GB to 25 GB

7) SkyDrive Pro file size limit increased to 2 GB

8) SkyDrive Pro can now store 20,000 files from personal libraries

9) Versioning now enabled by default on SkyDrive Pro documents with default of 10 file versions

10) Shared with me view of SkyDrive Pro helps to easily locate files shared by your colleagues with you

11) Recycle bin retention increased from 30 days to 90 days

Let's look at what that means for the overall storage for each user. With Office 365, you get 25 GB of SkyDrive Pro storage + 50 GB of email storage + 5 GB for each site mailbox you create + your total available tenant storage, which for every Office 365 business customer starts at 10 GB + (500 MB x # of user(s).

I am really excited with these announced enhancements . What about you?

To know more about Office365 Service , click here .

with warm regards

Suresh Ramani

www.TechGyan.com

Blog: www.CloudChangesEverything.com

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