Office 365 technical support- What it offers

Microsoft launched a new program empowering Managed Service Providers (MSP) to have and offer robust tech support to customers for the tech giant's popular product Office 365, a cloud-based office suite. Now onwards authorized Microsoft partners have been given the power to offer tech support for Office 365 to end customers and the permission to direct customer subscriptions. The Cloud Solution Provider program's objective is to have a dedicated partner assigned to every customer for both onsite services and follow-on work. The service has the potential to benefits MSP's, independent software vendors and hosting providers. Microsoft has plans to offer this program to each of its cloud-offerings including Azure, CRM online and Dynamics. This program will be offered by select Microsoft partners in 48 countries in the year 2015. According to Microsoft the cloud solution provider program is a major milestone. The company has taken a country wise approach to determine who are included in this Cloud Solution Provider program.

Office 365 support services

Office 365 technical support is available both through the Office 365 online portal and via telephone for paid/trial subscriptions. Administrators who are given authority can request tech support either online or through phone. Administrators are granted permissions to open and close all the service requests they have submitted. However, note that once the request has been closed, can be opened only up to 14 days from the day of closing the request.

Basic Installation and setup services for the following is offered.

1. Exchange Online- Here help is provided for Office 365 mail box migration. Configuration is done for the user which includes assigning mail box permissions, configuring mail forwarding and shared mailbox. Also provided is Autodiscover configuration.
2. SharePoint Online- Assigning permissions and creating user groups. Configuration of external users is done by the technical team of the Microsoft Partners.
3. Lync Online-This involves the installation process and creation of contacts.

There exists a valuable repository of troubleshooting tools and videos, help articles and videos. The Office 365 community also has forums and wikis to help out members. Here we have listed some of the support features that are offered by the Microsoft office 365 experts for the Business and Enterprise plans.

• Proactive support- As a user you should be aware of the fact that the cloud services have 99.9% uptime. Also keep yourself up to date on the maintenance services of your Office 365 services.
• Self-help support- If you want to troubleshoot on your own before getting the technical assistance, you can refer to the blogs in the community forums. Here you will come across many helpful blogs and also the queries answered by Office 365 experts.
• Assisted Support- If you are unable to troubleshoot on your own, you can get the help of the experts either by sending an email with all your queries. Another solution is to get the help of the technical support from the Microsoft partner from whom you purchased your software.
• Technical phone support- If you are unsatisfied with the assisted tech support, you can always phone the Office 365 customer care center which has global network of experts who are more than willing to help you solve your technical issues.

This software has been designed with features that are easy to use. However, if you want to get most out of your investment, get in touch with a reputed Microsoft Partner.

Simplify your life with Lync Online

There can be none other better option that Cloud when it comes to simplify the business process and when it comes to connect business enterprises across channels, Lync Online is the undisputed champion with its unified communication features.

The new upgraded Lync 2013 is the product of latest cutting edge innovation which goes a long way to ease the communication channels across various business enterprises. Because of its high potential, it has been included in Office 365 productive suite which is designed to cater the all in one business solutions on Cloud. Lync 2013 enables end-users to eliminate the sender/receiver images without actually disabling them in contact.

Features of Lync Online:

• High Definition Video Conferencing: Get flicker free video conferencing with 1080 pixels resolutions that allow users to interact happily with sharp display features. With H264 SVC as its video codecs, it is supported on broad range of devices.
• Skype: Skype is the most popular video conferencing tool employed by Microsoft. Taking one step closer to unified communication, Microsoft has embedded Lync online with Skype to offer instant messaging and voice capabilities to users. 
• Office 365: Office 365 for Cloud is designed to empower business enterprises to be more productive. Lync 2013 is integrated with Office 365 to empower small and medium enterprises to communicate on secured platform. With Lync going Online with Office 365, business enterprises are able to cut down the operational costs by almost 30% and enhance the employee productivity by almost 20%.
• Lync 2013 for Mobile App: Adding another milestone to Cloud, Microsoft has developed cross application platform for Lync 2013. Users are empowered to use Lync 2013 on various mobile platforms-Android, Windows, iOS to name a few.  Do instant messaging and connect with peers at no point of time.
• Web App: Adding another interesting feature on Lync Online, Microsoft has empowered its users to connect with their team mates using a web browser. Users don’t have to have Lync application to leverage full potential of cloud. This feature surely accounts to greater IT solutions.

There are many communication tools available in the market. What lets Lync 2013 stand out of the league is its cost effectiveness and inbuilt features that is well supported on cross platform. Give it a try if you haven’t yet landed on Cloud. Industries can avail Lync Online as inbuilt productive tools with Office 365. It needs fewer IT services and scales your business productivity to height.

Office 365 for Financial Services

Finance has always been a key factor in business enterprises. Financial services have traversed a long distance to meet customer’s demand from time to time. From a private treasurer to banking sector, financial services have adopted many forms with technological advancement.

The 21st century is marked with digital technologies. Companies are leveraging Cloud to offer technological solutions to global clients. With advent of IT, there is no doubt, financial organization too need IT solutions that can help reduce IT infrastructure cost and eases the business operations.  Office 365 is a cloud based suite that offers customized IT services to customers. With Office 365, financial organizations can keep a record of client’s confidential data and gives access to employee to stay productive.

According to a recent survey, Cloud boosts business productivity by almost 30% and increases employee productivity by 20%.

Potential Benefits of Office 365 for Financial Services:

Office 365 enables financial services to move with their customers.

1.  Customer Acquisition and Retention

• With Office 365, front desk staffs are able to connect with product experts, gain actionable insights into cross sales and thereby offer the best suited plan as per customer demand.
• It simplifies e-discovery process to help front desk support to retrieve messages stored across SharePoint, Lync and Exchange servers.
• With video conferencing, Office 365 bridges the gap between remote advisors and clients. Product experts can seamlessly connect to their customers and offer sound financial knowledge to them at no point of time. 

      2. Mobility and Social Enterprise

• Greet your esteemed VIP clients on a happy note with electronic notifications generated through Cloud based Office 365.
• Build long term relationship with your customers with Office 365.
• Discuss financial services with your clients while you are on remote location with client. Office 365 is supported on all devices that provides immersive and interactive look to the whole business process.

      3.    Business Insight and Compliance

• Manage and protect the customer data into Cloud with enterprise class Office 365 suite.
• Reduce regulatory compliance and stay updated with latest development with the help of Office 365.
• Office 365 ads agility to business provides key business insights to streamline the business operations.  With Microsoft SQL, Office 365 empowers employees to prepare reports within seconds by browser based data exploration.

Going through the potential benefits of Office 365, it is quite clear that Office 365 is indeed the best Cloud suite empowered with highly productive suite-Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, OneNote Share, and Office Web apps.

With IT going Cloud, financial services will soon see a major transition towards Cloud so as to increase business turnover exponentially. Give Office 365 a try if you haven’t yet landed on Cloud.

Benefits of Migrating Towards New Trend of Office 365

You wish to enlarge your business, but not prepared to pay for more server? Are you forced to turn away certain projects in the light of the fact that IT cannot keep up with your business requirement? In case your answer is yes, then  you will be happy to know of a solution, Office 365 that can help you stay in front of the opposition, and free-up IT so that you can focus to accelerate your productivity compared to competitors.

Business enterprises of all sizes are making the move to Office 365 (or some type of hosted Exchange) in a yearning to wipe out the management of on-premises hardware, easily disaster recovery, and high accessibility of their email foundation.

Key benefits of Migrating towards office 365

Office 365 is easy to use, as well as furnishes you with "virtual" anyplace access to your emails, records, and individuals, so that you can react speedier to clients. Despite the fact that, Office 365 offers a few profits, here are the real benefits of migrating to Office 365:

• Robust Security Features

Microsoft Office 365 is specially designed to meet organization’s security requirements, offering robust and reliable security features that keep customers in control. Here’s a summary of different Office 365 security features:

1. Microsoft Office 365 mainly works with Information Rights Management that allows use to avoid issues such as editing, sharing and manage content expiration. 
2. Office 365 with International Traffics in Arms Regulations (ITAR) support offers a higher level of data isolation to government organizations.
3. Moreover, it offers robust password schemes such as complexity and length integrated with account lockout.

• Cutoff Your Expenses

In the present era, nearly all the technology infrastructure is quite expensive to maintain on own premise. The new trend is evolving  towards monthly subscription for these services at significantly lower cost than purchasing and maintaining software and hardware.  The web of purchasing a  new server, frequently updating software, hardware failure and much more are enhancing the expenses along with the complexity in business operation. Stepping towards the new trend of Office 365 will not only allow you to outflow the hardware and software costs, but also facilitates you to avoid maintenance and disaster recovery along with all back end updates

• Supporting Values of Office 365

It is important to note that migration to Office 365 consequently furnishes your clients with the state-of-the-art gimmicks and different versions of cloud software and cooperative tools. It also eliminates the burden of hardware and software management  so that IT assets can be used for other mission critical areas of business enterprises. Not just this, Microsoft Office 365 is very well compatible for all previous versions of Microsoft operating system, and includes an advanced security features to assure user identities for approved access from various devices, such as laptop, tablet and Smart Phones.

Office 365 Migration Services: Looking to the Cloud!

With every Office 365 migration, new challenges and needs crop up which have to be dealt with appropriately, otherwise the entire process can prove to be complex and expensive. Office 365 Migration services comprise of Exchange to Office 365 migration or from myriad platforms like Gmail, Lotus Notes etc.

For Office 365 Migration, the entire team has to work closely with the concerned business organization. The migration plan which suits your organization has to be selected as per your specific business requirements. The process has to be streamlined, end-user troubles and the disruptions kept to the minimum and many such challenges met with confidently. Experience is what counts here.

Switching to Cloud Environment --- Why is it needed?

Migrating from your existing IT infrastructure to the cloud environment successfully requires years of experience in similar field, expertise, use of Microsoft best practices and know-how of cloud computing skills.

Office 365 solutions comprise of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Office applications. Office 365 Migration Services are required for your enterprise for the following reasons:

• Eliminates server storage and cooling costs. Your chance to go green!
• Up gradation of existing technology for better Information Technology solutions.
• Flexibility of operations. Work from mobile or desktop, from office or on the go.
• More streamlined, automated and modernized business processes.
• Increases efficiency, accelerates business performance with enhanced customer service.
• Communication between workforce result in informing and faster business decisions.
• Increased ROI (return on Investment) due to cost effective implementation process and fast rollout.
• With Office 365 suite, your organization enjoys the benefits of enhanced collaboration and productivity solutions which align with your business requirements.
• Management of on-premises hardware infrastructure and disaster recovery not required.

Smooth Transition --- Office 365 Migration Services

Office 365 migration services are not about 'one size fits all solution'! Highly developed methodologies and tools are needed to overcome migration challenges and a seamless transition to the cloud. Finding the cloud architecture that suits your specific enterprise needs is paramount. So, selecting the right Office 365 plan, planning and preparation for migration, scrutinizing hybrid cloud environments, evaluating financial impact and technical details, in-depth analysis of your infrastructure, analysing best practices as far as security and governance are concerned, there are a lot many aspects to explore before commencing Office 365 Migration.

Planning to avoid Office 365 Migration Bottlenecks

Unplanned delays have to be avoided, underlying risks and other performance issues have to be studied beforehand. For a smooth transition, some service companies even use live application traffic to check performance baselines and end-user response times. This way the entire migration is completed speedily and with much confidence.

User experiences, networks and applications must be monitored both during the migration and after the migration to diagnose for any performance issues and also for taking corrective measures well in time.
If these impediments are taken care of through comprehensive planning, Office 365 Migration services enable you to improve overall response time, trim down bandwidth usage and deliver a superior, uninterrupted and continuous Office 365 user experience. 

                                      
Advantages of Office 365 Suite  
   

                                            
Where ever you are, at home, in your office or attending to your official appointments anywhere in the globe, Office 365 keeps you updated and abreast with the latest business developments with a suite of productivity and collaboration applications which include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online as well as Office Professional Plus.

An Overview of Deploying Office 365 for IT Pros

Office365 migration is one of the hottest happenings in the IT world. This is a buzz that is created mainly among those companies which rely much on the Microsoft’s Productivity Suite available online. This is because it has the ability to make an extensive use of many capabilities like Exchange Servers, Lync and Cloud based functionalities. Before moving to the deployment process, let us weigh the options of switching over to the Office 365 suite.

Pros of Office365 Deployment

Deploying Office 365 is one of the trickier tasks. You may face different challenges during the deployment process. However, here are the benefits you can get from a successful deployment process.

• Reduced Software and Hardware cost which in turn give a greater chance of increased revenue.
• Administration becomes a much easier task when migrating to Office365. No worries about the staffing and administrative needs.
• You can connect almost anywhere after your happy ending deployment. This is one of the weighted advantages IT pros look forward with this lively Office365.
• The look and feel is one of the major changes you can notice after the deployment. It gives a fresh and comfy look to the users working 24 hours a day in Office365.

The Basics of Office365 Deployment

Planning plays a key role in the successful deployment. This is the ultimate weapon for a smooth transition from traditional SharePoint to the cloud based technology. Let us get to the basics of the deployment steps that help you attain a smooth migration process.

• Proper Research in Selecting Plans

This is one of the preliminary steps one should follow for deploying Office365 successfully. Office365 provides a wide variety plan suitable for any types of users. You can have the plan you wish according to the capabilities and packages Microsoft offers. The plan provided by Microsoft accommodates all types of plans for small business, mid-level business organization and an enterprise level suite.

• Build up the Migration Strategy

Once you are finished with the thorough research of selecting the desired plan, you can start with the strategies involved in migration. Though the plan may vary according to the size and the need of organization, this step is the base for a successful deployment. Estimate your data size, list out the administrative functionalities and other checklists related to your organization.

• Communicate with your Peers

Since the deployment process mostly involves teamwork, you should well inform your team about the entire migration process. Provide proper technical assistance and take the responsibility of guiding through the entire process in a step by step manner. Make sure that your team is balanced and backup resources are available if any issues.

• Ensure Proper Testing

Whether your migration is with small data blocks or large data dump, testing plays a vital role in letting you know the expected results. Hence, always keep in mind to do proper testing and share the results to your peers and give chance for suggestions and feedback.

Excellent Office 365 Tech Support – Access 24 x7 Availability Advantage

The Office 365 suite encompasses three package options for businesses, small, medium, and the enterprise edition. Excellent Office 365 tech support is available in all three formats. Microsoft entitles customers with direct assistance if you purchased the program from the official website.

Buyers who received their package from a Microsoft authorized reseller are also eligible for support, but indirectly. In the indirect option, you need to access the ‘Manage Delegated Administrator’ option under the Admin header. The assigned administrator takes up your issue with the Microsoft support team until it resolves. 

24/7 availability advantage

In fact, the perfect support and troubleshooting advantage is a key factor why many businesses choose Office 365 in the first place. The support system is active 24/7, and it guarantees full resolution of your unique issue at the earliest. However, there are slight variations in the 24/7 availability format. You can access support 24/7 only for critical issues in the small business package.

In the medium business package, usual business hours are assigned for non-critical issues. Of course, the serious problems are open to 24/7 support. The best of the formats is obviously the Enterprise edition where full support is available all the time. In all critical issues, the maximum phone response time is within 1 hour. Surely, one hour is a long time to hold on to the holding music. In reality, it usually does not take more than 10/15 minutes for the support team to respond. 

The troubleshooting covers all key aspects. 

The assistance includes:

•  A guarantee of 99.99% uptime, backed financially with the SLA (Service Level Agreement)
•  Provision for service health dashboard where users can access the detailed history of current and past technical issues
• The support system has arrangements to plan the periodic maintenance schedule of your Office 365 suite
•  Besides the immediately useful technical phone support, customers also benefit from pre-sales support, email support, virtual chat support, plus support for accounts & billing

The final feedbacks

Actual user reviews are always in high praise about the superb Office 365 tech support. The customer representative on the other side of the phone never tells you “We do not have support available for this issue.” Instead, the rep listens carefully and in full detail to your problems before resolving them fully and finally. The executive takes as much time as it takes, and you can have multiple support staffs working on the issue if it is highly critical. 

Help from the community

Users can immensely benefit from the Office 365 community forums. You can find answers to almost all and any general queries in the forums. Users can find helpful resources such as blogs, discussion threads, and direct replies from forum moderators. Approaching the community is a good option to self-help your Office 365 issues. 

However, if the problem is pertinent, the troubleshooting team is always ready to answer your unique queries. Simplifying matters further, Microsoft arranges the support in around 20 languages. Besides the usual English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Italian, users can also place their queries in Chinese, Thai, Korean, Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew among other languages. 

Office 365 Integration with Windows Azure for Managing a Scattered Clientele

Office 365 is subscription-based online office software which primarily offers MS Office suite on the cloud. It can be resized for use of small stores, SMEs and big businesses on the basis of features and number of users.Office 365 Integration with Windows Azure extends its capabilities on the cloud and allows for more data mobility. With its latest update, Windows Azure now offers the option to host apps developed for Office 365 on the platform.

Office 365 on Windows Azure

SharePoint apps can be created using ASP.NET and integrated with Office 365 using OAuth2 and Windows Azure Active Directory. This allows users to securely create and store data on Office 365 document repositories and to host web apps on Windows Azure. Further, you can interchangeably install the apps on SharePoint and/or Office 365. Once an app ha downloaded from Office 365 to SharePoint, a copy of the same will be automatically deployed on Windows Azure site. Thus, custom web apps can be comfortably used on the cloud and on the system. 

Office 365 data integration support

Windows Azure Active Directory is the primary directory for all Microsoft online enterprise services. Windows Azure integration with Office365 supports its management portal. Once Office 365 integration with Windows Azure has been completed, the Windows Azure Access Panel will appear to access any application. The integration framework supports Office 365 data integration with Windows Azure apps so that employees can stay mobile and access the required data any time with their mobile devices on the cloud via internet rather than downloading data onto their devices. 

Changing the Way you Work

Mobility is the key to stay connected with customers scattered across diverse places and have to be reached out to by sending representatives to them directly. For instance, if you customer care or sales representative has to personally visit partners or clients for discussions, their time away from the office is not completely unproductive and they are connected with business operation news and updates. Since Office 265 ProPlus can be installed in up to five devices by a single user, they can stay connected to their data via their smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC at work. Also, since they do not have to sync the data on their devices, they do not have to worry about memory space and amount of data they can carry.

Office365 integration packages include numerous other enterprise software and application by Microsoft which will extend capabilities and also improve productivity simultaneously.

Office 365 Integration with Yammer for Social Networking

Office 365 integration with Yammer adds a social angle to the enterprise software, matching latest trend in enterprise communication. People in business have moved from the traditional email and telephonic conversation to instant messaging. The perks of instant messaging are that information is shared in precise format instantly and hence reactions are also instantaneous. 

Yammer enterprise social network

Yammer is an enterprise social networking platform available as web and mobile application. Its key features are instant messaging, file sharing, group chats, and remote collaboration to support business functions. Its chief benefit is that information is relaying information in real time to all the team members involved for projects. Any interesting brainwaves or strong ideas, reviews can be shared instantaneously to capture business opportunities or to simple share information. 

Yammer + Office 365 

Yammer and Office 365 when used in conjunction, users can manipulate the technologies for complete and comprehensive solutions. Office 365 is the online Office suite by Microsoft and on Yammer; Office 365 data integration support allows users to collaborate over data stored on Office 365 instantly. With Yammer on Office 365, you can view Yammer feeds on Office 365 and use the Office web apps on Yammer. The benefits are a two-way street that benefit users in numerous ways and for Office 365 subscribers, they can store and share files, communicate and collaborate internally with members on a single platform.

Mobile Advantage

As both Office 365 and Yammer are available as mobile applications, you can stay connected with your business even when you are on the move. An idea captured at a brunch on vacation, which appears as a viable business opportunity and translate it into a real working plan instantly through Yammer collaboration with groups. In addition, with Yammer all employees stay connected and visible, which allows them to contribute towards the business in a positive way.

Yammer helps business improve itself in various fronts, for instance a conversation with the customer, whether it is a feedback or a complaint is shared with the correct people to address the issue and is immediatelyacted upon. Businesses data faces shorter lifecycle and hence it is important to act upon it immediately and the Yammer Office 365 integration facilitates immediate actions.